Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/28/23: Israeli Historian Raz Segal On Genocide And Gaza

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

Ryan and Emily sit down with Israeli historian and Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Raz Segal to ask him about Genocide and Gaza. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. We're joined now by Professor Rod Siegel,

who is the Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University, where he also serves as director of the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Now, Professor Siegel, toward the very beginning of Israel's response to Hamas's October 7th assault, published a widely read piece in Jewish Currents titled A Textbook Case of Genocide,

which was controversial and and uh debated at at the time we're now more than two months away from that piece and more than 20 000 more than 20 000 civilian or casualties away from that piece as well so we wanted to check back in with with professor siegel about um what what what we're seeing what's going on. So first of all, thank you so much for joining us and lending your expertise here. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Let me start by asking, what does it mean to be a kind of professor of genocide studies? What is that field like? Where did it come from and how did you get involved in it?

Well, I mean, my involvement in the field started actually from a master's degree in Jewish history with a focus on the Holocaust. And then I went on to do a PhD in history, again, with a focus on Holocaust and genocide studies. And the field, we can talk about it a bit more in detail perhaps, but these days being, I think, working in Holocaust and genocide studies is maybe I would say very confusing. The world in 2023 was not supposed to look like it looks like for people working in this field for a few decades now. And people in this field definitely never imagined, I think, that we would be seeing what we're seeing now in Israel's genocidal attack on Gaza. And that's why we're also seeing a major

crisis in Holocaust and genocide studies today. I think the field is very divided between people who say that what we're seeing now, what we're witnessing, this Israeli attack on Gaza, requires that we really rethink perhaps various assumptions that we've had in the field. And then there are others who unfortunately say, no, there's nothing here that requires any rethinking and basically business as usual. I mean, among the people in the first group, and I include myself in them who think that this requires major rethinking, you can think about the statement of scholars, of 60 scholars in Holocaust and Genocide Studies that was published last week, which I coordinated and organized and helped draft the statement that we put together about Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and its meanings and implications. And among the second group, there was a statement several weeks ago that was circulated primarily by scholars of the Holocaust. And that one, for instance, did not mention any kind of crime in Israel's attack on Gaza.

Not genocide, of course, but not any other crime. And also engaged in this dehumanization of Palestinians who appear in that statement by Holocaust scholars really only as quote unquote human shields, right? So their humanity is recognized, but actually not really recognized only when they appear as human shields. And it's actually in some part in response to that statement by Holocaust scholars that the second statement by Holocaust and Genocide Studies scholars,

again, 60 scholars, some of them really central figures in the field, very influential scholars for decades in the field, have signed our statement that its meaning, as I said, is that business as usual in Holocaust and genocide studies is not possible moving forward. And so a lot of lay people who hear the claim that Israel is carrying out a genocidal attack often respond by saying that's wildly inflammatory.

It does a disservice to the memory of the Holocaust. What does that critique get wrong? What are some misconceptions about what genocide is? Well, one of the misconceptions about genocide is that it's about killing all the members of the targeted group immediately or very quickly. And that's how genocide is supposed to look like. Now, this is just actually wrong. The only way that we can actually think about genocide is according to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of

Genocide from December 1948, and we'll come back to that in a second. But it's important to mention that this misconception about what genocide is, is also based on a misconception of actually what the Holocaust was. Because this misconception is basically based on the idea that genocide is supposed to look like the Holocaust. And for many people, the Holocaust is about just the Nazis killing all the Jews immediately, which was not the case. The Holocaust, actually, when you really look at the history of the Holocaust, it shows us that genocide is a process.

The Holocaust was a process. And the process involved two and a half years, actually, of the Nazis attacking Jews, including killing Jews, but various forms of mass violence against Jews, and experimenting mostly with forced displacement, with what we call more commonly, quote, ethnic cleansing, right? That is pushing as many Jews as possible out of German-controlled territories, expanding German-controlled territories during the war.

So from the fall of 1939, for two and a half years until the spring of 1942, this process of ethnic cleansing intensified in various ways, primarily in the context of the war, so that by the spring of 1942, the Germans arrive at their final version of what was this final solution of the Jewish question, that is to kill every Jew within German reach. But it takes two and a half years. It involves many other forms of mass violence, ghettoization, starvation, forced labor, but again, mostly forced displacement, ethnic cleansing. So it's important to say that this misconception about what genocide is, is actually rooted in a misconception of what the Holocaust was. But when we look at the convention, at the UN Genocide Convention, it's also important to say that in international law, by the way, there is no hierarchy, right?

So this popular idea that there's a hierarchy of international crimes is simply not true. In international law, there are different crimes with different elements to them. And when we look at genocide, there are indeed a number of elements that differentiate it from other crimes. One of them is intent. So the language of the convention is that

genocide is a crime that has intent to destroy a group that's defined in national, ethnic, religious, or racial terms as such, meaning that the members of the group need to be targeted as members of the group, right, and not for any individual reason or for any other reason, right, as members of the group, and certainly as the perpetrators imagine their group membership. And there needs to be an intent. Now, intent is a very high threshold, right? And that's the reason that we don't have many cases of mass violence since 1948

that are recognized as genocide. We can think about the Rwanda genocide, of course, and all the wars and violence in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, only Srebrenica is recognized as an act of genocide, but there's very few. Why? Because perpetrators don't walk around expressing their intent explicitly and clearly. Here, in this case, they do. Again, we can think why this is, why we have such unashamed, clear, explicit, direct statements of intent. That also happened, by the way, it's important to say, over time, right? It's not as has been argued just in the first week after the 7th of October, the Hamas-led attack and massacre of about 1,200 Israelis. No, it's over time, and it actually also uses various mechanisms

of expressing this intent and also dehumanizing Palestinians, right? So intent is one thing that differentiates genocide from other crimes, but also very importantly in the UN Genocide Convention. So intent is explained in Article 2, where genocide is defined in international law, right? And another issue that differentiates genocide from other crimes is the legal obligation in Article 1 that once states recognize that there is a clear risk of genocide or that genocide is already unfolding, but it's enough that there's a clear risk of genocide, right? There's an obligation to intervene to stop it and to prevent it, which is very different than other crimes in

international law. Another issue that, again, we can elaborate more on perhaps is incitement, right, which is again a different crime in the Genocide Convention, that's Article 3, but related. So incitement to genocide, which usually happens actually in media discourses, but also in political discourses or in just in sometimes in public spaces in various ways. And it's important to say that Israel today and anyone who follows Hebrew language sources and they're all over social media today and the Israeli media,

Israel is very deeply immersed in a genocidal discourse. We see this in the media, in the Israeli media since 7th of October. We see this in politics. We see this in public spaces. And I'm talking about, you know, huge signs hanging on the bridges of the Tel Aviv freeway right after the 7th of October, calling to flatten Gaza, to destroy Gaza, written on them directly that the image of triumph would be zero people in Gaza. So very direct, again, very explicit. You don't need a degree in comparative literature to interpret these kinds of signs and statements. But in the media discourse and in the political discourse in

Israel after 7th of October, we see clear incitement to genocide, right? Clear, clear incitement to genocide. And all this has been widely published and I can repeat some of the quotes here if needed. But it's important to say that, you know, one of the cases that comes close to this kind of society immersed in a genocidal discourse perhaps is Rwanda and the Rwanda genocide in 1994, that as the genocide was unfolding, right, we had journalists and radio people inciting for genocide,

for the murder of Tutsis in that case. And it's important to say that in the ICTR, in the post-genocide trials, in the case of Rwanda, there was also a media case where journalists indeed stood trial and were convicted for incitement to genocide. So that's another element that actually differentiates genocide from other crimes in international law. And again, we see here, like the issue of intent, which is an article too, and refers to people with what's called command authority in international law. So state leaders, war cabinet ministers, and senior army officers, also their statements are very clear, explicit, and unashamed.

Also incitement in Israel is clear, explicit, and unashamed. Also incitement in Israel is clear, explicit, and unashamed. I mean, just yesterday or the day before, just to give a recent example, a journalist, Tzvi Haskeli, on Channel 13, on the TV in Israel, just openly, outright said that he thinks that at the beginning Israel made a mistake because it should have, the Israeli attack on Gaza should have been much more actually violent and severe and it should have killed 100,000 Palestinians, right? Now, only the TV anchor there, you know, said, are you sure that that's what you're saying? There was some

exchange between them, you know, is this, all the other people there sitting had nothing to say. And the official response of Channel 13 of the Israeli TV to that was that it's, you know, that we're just expressing the plurality of, you know, positions in Israeli society, right? So this is outright unashamed, right? It's very common today. It's in Israel. And it's something I think we should all be paying attention to. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024.

VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked

together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets.

Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free

on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his

irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their

mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I mean, I want to pick up on that point because, and I definitely don't mean this as a leading question. I'm genuinely curious. A lot of people in Israel are afraid that they live amongst other countries where it's not safe to be Jewish and where people engage in, by this definition of genocide, arguably a genocidal discourse. And I wanted to get your thoughts on that, not to suggest that there's any justification for, you know, sort of apples to

apples in terms of military operations or anything like that. But is Hamas engaged in genocidal intentionality? Are they engaged in genocidal discourse? I know they're not a state actor in the same way. And maybe that's a sort of difference by the UN definition. I'm curious about that. But also countries like Iran and the way that they approach just Jewish people who live around the world, who live in Israel. Does that, by the definition, the UN definition in 1948, does that sort of fit into it? How should we think about the way they discuss Jews? Well, I think it's important to explain also that the UN definition requires five acts, right? It lists five acts that are considered

genocide. So there's intent, there's the dynamics on the ground, but it's not directly in the convention, but it's very clear that genocide also requires capacity to carry it out, right? And if you don't have that capacity, so it's not, intent itself is not enough, right? You have to show the dynamics of violence on the ground in order to show genocide. And I think that in Israel's attack on Gaza now, we have enough evidence so far that the attack, as many experts now have said, is unprecedented in its intensity, in its levels of killing and destruction, unprecedented that is since World War II, right?

We have, as you said at the beginning, more than 20,000 Palestinians who have been killed so far. I mean, the north of Gaza is basically destroyed completely. And it's important to say that Israel's attack targets everything there, schools, mosques, universities, churches, agricultural fields, right? Israel has bombed from the beginning agricultural fields. Well, there is nothing there except agricultural fields, which tells us something, of course, about the intention of the attack. The levels of destruction, more than half of all the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed. The infrastructure has been destroyed. More than 2 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced,

right? Specific groups are targeted, right? Journalists, as we know very clearly, are targeted at least one or two, but on average a day. So it would be very hard for Palestinians to actually document the attack against them. Healthcare professionals and doctors are targeted. Hospitals specifically are targeted, which is very, very important when we think about genocide and the total siege policy of Israel. So deliberately creating conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the group in whole and in part, which is one of the acts of genocide in the convention. Targeting of hospitals shows us that very clearly. But for all of these things, you need capacity, right? And it's clear that the

Hamas has no capacity to carry out a genocidal assault on Israel. It's important to say that the Hamas-led attack on 7th of October was a horrific and horrendous act of mass murder. It was a massive terrorist attack. It definitely involved war crimes and crimes against humanity that are also ongoing in the sense of hostage taking. There's no doubt about any of this. But Hamas has no capacity to carry out genocide. And also we don't see in the case of Hamas, this kind of the way that intention has been expressed

and is being expressed in the case of Israel over time using various mechanisms in an unashamed way. We don't see this actually in the case of Hamas. Yes, there are some statements in the case of Hamas about destroying Israel, absolutely. But do we see in a kind of systematic way, as we see in Israel's attack, together with the dynamics of violence, together with the capacity to carry out a genocidal assault, no, we don't see it in the case of Hamas. It's also very important to mention, by the way,

that there is a military response that is genocidal, right? That is what Israel did after the 7th of October, right? So a military response that is genocidal, right? That is what Israel did after the 7th of October, right? So a military response that is genocidal is illegal in any case under international law, right? Genocide is an illegal response under international law, even if the Hamas attack would be considered genocide. And as I just explained, it cannot actually be considered genocidal. So one of the characteristics, as you mentioned, of meeting the kind of genocide

threshold is, you know, attacking an ethnic group, you know, and destroying them in whole or in part. So what does it mean by in part? Because, you know, Hamas's attack on October 7th, depending on the definition of in part, would seem to fit just as the IDF's attack on Palestinians in Gaza seems to fit with in part. So what does in part mean? Especially if you consider, for example, Iran potentially funding Hamas in this case. I think that's a fair question, right? Right. Well, again, I think it's important to, as I just said, that genocide requires that you have the capacity to carry it out, right? That there's a state capacity to carry it out.

And there is no such capacity by Hamas, right? That's firstly. Now, in part, that's a good question, and there's a lot of discussion about this. But I think that we is total. The idea, and actually, you know, from the very first days, in the 13th of October, there was a document that was leaked by the Israeli intelligence ministry that outlined the complete ethnic cleansing, basically, of Palestinians from Gaza. So the removal to the Sinai Desert in Egypt. And of course, there is repeated calls

in Israeli politics and society and media, as I said, about, quote, a second Nakba, right? Referring to the 1948 Nakba during the 1948 war when Israel was created and 750,000 Palestinians were expelled, 15,000 Palestinians were victims of massacres, hundreds of Palestinians' towns and villages were destroyed completely and erased. So the Palestinian Nakba. And then, of course, the ongoing Palestinian Nakba since then in various forms of Israeli mass violence

and attack against Palestinians, including military occupation, siege, internment, torture, you know, ongoing since then. And now indeed, right, a second Nakba has been called for from the 7th of October. And actually, it's important to say that in many cases, the statements about creating a second Nakba are calling for a Nakba that, quote, will overshadow, right, the 1948 Nakba, which indeed is what we're seeing actually also in terms of numbers, but in terms of, again, the intensity of the killing and destruction.

So the destruction that we're now seeing in Gaza, right, and again, there's numerous experts who are telling us that the levels of destruction, this carpet bombing from the sky, from the ground, right, the levels of killing, 20,000, more than 20,000 people, and there are of course thousands buried under the rubble in a bit more than two months, right? This takes us now into really, we have to understand in the sphere of total destruction of Palestinian society and culture, because also cultural archaeological sites are bombed, cultural sites are bombed, right? The idea is to destroy and erase, right, Palestinian life and society in Gaza and remove Palestinians from there completely. And this is, again, expressed in various ways in Israeli media and culture and society in public spaces, unashamed, right? This calling for a second Nakba. And as I said, forced displacement,

as we're seeing now in Gaza, about 2 million, so virtually almost all the population in Gaza is forcibly displaced under conditions of total siege. Israel's 9th of October, Israeli Defense Minister Yavgan's total siege proclamation. No food, no water. So starvation policies. There's no clean water. We're already seeing the outbreak of infectious disease, right? So deliberately creating conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction of the group. So forced displacement, indeed, as in the Nazi case, by the way, right, in many cases

escalates into basically outright mass murder, right? So genocide. So we're seeing this now unfolding in front of our eyes. But it's also important, by the way, to say that the discourse about deporting millions of people into a desert, which is what we're hearing now in the case of Palestinians and Gaza, deporting them to the Sinai desert, should also raise all the alarms that we have because we know historically that deserts have been used as a weapon of genocide historically. We can think about the Armenian genocide, the deportations of the Armenians to the Syrian-Iraq desert, right? The massacres on the way, but the idea that they would reach the desert and they would die there, right?

We can think about the Herero and Nama genocide in German South East Africa in the early 20th century, where the Germans put down, by the way, a rebellion by the colonized Herero, by chasing them into the desert where they died of starvation and dehydration, right? Almost all the Herero actually were destroyed. 80% of the group were destroyed in this case of genocide. So I think that in the case of Gaza, we have to be clear, we're actually beyond the whole or in part that we are now witnessing, right, the destruction of Palestinian life and society in Gaza in whole. And to your

point about the infectious diseases, we have new numbers from the Gaza Ministry of Health. This is 355,000 people, which is approaching a quarter of the population, are suffering from infectious diseases at this point. And that number is only going to continue to grow. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal.

It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head head to apple podcasts and subscribe today

dna test proves he is not the father now i'm taking the inheritance wait a minute john who's not the father well sam luckily it's you're not the father week on the ok story time podcast so we'll find out soon this author writes my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son even though it was promised to us now i find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead but i I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants

to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. But one of the interesting phenomena in this debate over the last two months has been the different way that the war is talked about here in the United States versus Israel. Oftentimes, United States politicians, we had Ted Cruz on here making this claim here that nobody tries harder to protect civilian life than the Israelis.

But then you follow the discourse in Israel, and you don't see those claims being made. You see claims to the opposite, that we need damage is more important than precision, for instance. So I'm curious how that translates when it comes to the question of genocide. What is the debate like in Hebrew language media and Israeli media over the question of whether Israel is carrying out a genocidal attack? Does that get discussed? Is it rejected because it's saying that that is outrageous and can't even be discussed? Or are there people who are saying, yes, we are, and we ought to be because it's justified? No, I mean, Israeli society today, almost in its entirety, is immersed

in a very destructive and indigenocidal discourse. Would they agree with that claim? Would they say, yes, that's where we are? Of course not. But it's very important to say, historically, perpetrators of genocide and societies that were engaged in the genocidal attack against another group, almost always see themselves as the victims, right? The Nazis actually understood themselves to be under acute danger and attack by quote-unquote world jury, right? So their attack against the Jews

was merely a self-defense, right? Against these evil forces conspiring to destroy Germany and attack them, right? This is a very common mechanism. The Ottoman authorities in World War I saw the state as under attack by Armenians who are actually agents of the Russian enemies during World War I. So deporting them to the desert was merely an act of self-defense, of removing them from the front so that they don't collaborate with a Russian enemy. This is a very, very typical mechanism of perpetrators

in societies immersed in genocidal violence. There's nothing very special here. So, of course, that's what we're seeing. That's what we're hearing now in Israel, that this is basically just, this is really, in Israel, we're actually seeing a heightened sort of this kind of discourse, right? This is actually war in defense of Western civilization, right? This is a war, of course, against Hamas and so on and so forth.

But again, so this would be in the social setting. And I do have to say that there is a minority of people in Israel still very committed to a different kind of discourse, including in the media. So if we think about Plus 972, the Jewish-Palestinian media outlet, which I urge all your listeners and viewers to check it out, Plus 972, definitely publishes continuously a lot of critique, including discussions about the discourse related to the issue of genocide. But the Israeli media, mainstream media and society, and this cuts across political divides, left, right, center, whatever it is, right, is very immersed in a discourse that this

is self-defense, right? This a discourse that this is self-defense, right? This genocidal assault is self-defense, even though we have, and again, just yesterday, I think there was an officer in the Israeli army that outright in a public event, right, referring actually to a biblical story, which is important because one of the mechanisms of intent was, as expressed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was the invocation of the biblical story of Amalek, right, one of the expressions of genocidal intent. So this officer in the Israeli army spoke about what his unit did under his command, right, in Gaza as an act of genocidal revenge, basically. He framed it as, you know, the 7th of October attack was an attack

against the honor of the Israeli nation. And his acts in Gaza, his unit reacted as genocidal revenge. And he said that this should be extended to all of Gaza, right, to restore this, you know, the honor of the nation. So even though we have these kinds of things, and of course, actually a lot of videos that Israeli soldiers and officers themselves have taken and posted on social media that mirror the language of intent by people with command authority in Israel, and then the language of incitement in Israeli media. So we have soldiers talking about the fact that they understand that they're in Gaza to root out the seed of a Malek, quote, or soldiers singing that the slogan of their unit is there are no

innocent civilians, right? Again, explicitly unashamed. We have all of this, right? It's in front of our eyes constantly, right? Or we have soldiers, another video that went very viral on social media, the soldiers burning the truck with food and water in it, right? And explaining as they're doing it, right, that Palestinian children are all terrorists, right, for example. So 1.1 people, a million people in Gaza under the age of 18, right? All terrorists, right? No innocent civilians. All these things, even though we have all of this, right, we still have a discourse, which is basically a denialist discourse. And this is, again, very common. States and societies engaged in genocide usually deny it already as it's unfolding. They also deny

it later, but the denial starts as the genocide unfolds. So even though we have these now, we live in this media age, in the social media age, even though everything is in our face, right, we're still in this common mechanism of denying what is in our face. We should start facing this reality. And my last question just kind of goes back to what we were talking about initially, the disconnect between the reality of the UN definition that was established in 1948 and how a lot of people look back or compare contemporary genocides unfolding in front of their eyes to, for example, the Holocaust and even misconceptions about the Holocaust that have sort of been passed down through simplified narratives that you get taught in history class

and all of that. There's a not insignificant portion of the Israeli population that is Muslim. And I think a lot of people, and probably a lot of people in Israel who look at, you know, what they're doing is primarily self-defense, to your point, would say, well, that's kind of the difference here is that, you know, we're not trying to eliminate our own Muslim population outside of these contested territories, outside of Gaza and the West Bank, we protect and we can have a whole conversation about the difference in rights between Muslim Israelis and Jewish Israelis. But the bottom line is that question of eliminating the sort of lives of Muslims who live in Israel. Is that part of the disconnect here that the UN

definition functions in a different way than a lot of people who maybe are in Israel or defend Israel here in the US and say, if it were a genocide, Israel would be putting Muslim Israelis in the same, that they would be attacking them in the same way. Is that part of this? I think that you're referring, first of all, to Israeli Palestinians. And there is a not insignificant part of Israeli Palestinians who are Christians, not only Muslims. That's absolutely true, yeah. Israel, by the way, has completely destroyed the Christian community in Gaza as well in this attack. It's another thing.

So you're talking about Palestinian citizens of Israel. That's what you're talking about, almost 2 million people. So again, it's important to say that genocide is a process. And what we're seeing now, this process of the attack in Gaza, and especially in the frame of incitement, the acute incitement in Israel, it's definitely part of the Genocide Convention. It's a convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. If we think about prevention, yes, Palestinian Israelis are in grave danger now. And we see it, by the way, in the West Bank with an unbelievable intensified attack.

In any case, 2023, even before the 7th of October, by the way, was the most lethal year for Palestinians in the West Bank, right? Hamas does not control the West Bank, by the way, right? We still see unbelievable ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, right? Hamas does not control the West Bank, by the way, right? We still see unbelievable ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. I mean, Area C, which is 60% of the West Bank, is basically all of it is now under Israel settler control and full of Israeli settlements, right? Israel has killed now hundreds of Palestinians only since the 7th of October.

There's also hundreds in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been killed since the 7th of October. There's also hundreds in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have been killed before the 7th of October in 2023. But hundreds, thousands have been arrested. 16 whole communities and probably more have been completely forcibly displaced in the West Bank since the 7th of October. Again, no Hamas, right? So in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,

we definitely see a very quickly escalating violence, which was already intense against Palestinians. That's one thing. If we think about genocide as the process that it always is, also in the case of the Holocaust, but with Israeli Palestinians, we also see very, very worrying signs. So just a couple of minutes on this, because you asked, and it's actually very, very, very important. We have to remember that historically, the 156,000 Palestinians who survived the Nakban remained within what became Israel in 1948,

were immediately placed under military rule until 1966. So almost 20 years of military rule, that is, they were immediately seen as potential enemies, basically. And the most dangerous kind of enemies because the enemy's within, right? Like Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I in that sense.

Now, this is very important because in 2018, Israel enacted a new basic law, the Jewish nation state law. Israel doesn't have a constitution, so basic laws replace a constitution. And that basic law explicitly relegated Israeli Palestinians, so 21% of the citizens of the state, to second-class citizenship within an explicit framework of settler colonialism, by the way. And it's important to say that three years afterwards in May 2021, the events of May 2021, when Israeli Palestinians came out to protest

and in support against Israeli violence in East Jerusalem and the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, but also against yet another attack on Gaza, right? Because in these 16 years of siege of Israel on Gaza before the 7th of October, there were repeated attacks, right? Israeli Palestinians came out in support. The response of the state this time was unbelievably violent, a lot of violence, a lot of oppression across Israel. But this time, also Jewish citizens of the state joined the police in attacking Palestinian citizens.

In some cases, as in Haifa, even breaking into the houses of Palestinian citizens in Haifa and attacking them in their houses. This is May 2021. So we have the nation state law in 2018. We have this in 2021. We have the background of how the state looks at Palestinian citizens, right, from the beginning as basically potential enemies. And now we have unbelievable media incitement, right, against Palestinians as a whole, right? So yes, if we think about prevention, and if we think genocide as a process, Israeli Palestinians, certainly Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, are in grave, grave danger. This in no way makes things better in the case of Israel, as some people might say.

Quite the contrary, it makes the urgency of talking about genocide, right, of forefronting the genocidal assault in Gaza, in order to think about, as I said, incitement, the obligation to intervene and to prevent, right, And what's going on in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and what is going on? And that actually leads to my last question, which is, what does it matter if we determine that what we're seeing is a genocidal assault? What are the international mechanisms that could be deployed to prevent it? And what are the mechanisms that can come about to provide some measure of accountability if there are either? Yeah. So, I mean, it matters. It matters

greatly because, as I said, there's an obligation to intervene and prevent. So it matters in terms of arms deals because actually states that continue to provide arms to Israel, so all the Western powers that continue to support Israel, are actually, if we recognize the crime of genocide, are actually working against their legal obligations in the convention. Of course, not to aid and abet genocide, but they're actually supposed to be working to prevent genocide. And then if we think about the international legal framework, right, of course, there's issues of accountability. That's not only for genocide, by the way, that's for the very well-documented war crimes now in

this case and crimes against humanity. And yes, should the Hamas perpetrators and planners for the 7th of October should be put on trial as well? Absolutely. International law should apply to everyone, but should apply to everyone, right? So also to the many, many Israelis now involved in Israel's genocidal attack on Gaza. So there are definitely very important implications, right, in terms of prevention, in terms of stopping the violence, in terms of holding the perpetrators accountable. And then also in terms of thinking how we got to the 7th of October, right? So as I said, the larger context of Israeli mass violence from the 1948 Nakba until today, Israeli settler colonialism, and how we move forward, right, from here, all this is also very important. Ratz, did you have anything else? No, I was just going to say the only,

I just want to clarify the only reason I specifically invoked the faith in the last question I asked was just because I meant it in the context of the UN definition. I didn't mean to overlook the ethnic Palestinian question. I just meant it in the sort of broad context of the UN definition. Anyway, I just wanted to clarify. Well, Professor Siegel, he's the Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University.

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