01.08.24
Editorial Note
Mohammad Elias Feroz is an Afghani PhD student at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. His research area is the history of Israel and Palestine, as well as “cultures of remembrance and their role within national identity constructions.” Feroz “studied in Jerusalem and Cairo as part of exchange programs in order to delve deeper into the modern history of the Middle East and to study Arabic and Hebrew.”
Feroz is also a team member of the Islamic Forum Innsbruck (IFI). The IFI’s mission is “Creating science-based and context-related educational spaces for all… Creating open spaces for discourse in our ideologically pluralistic and democratic society… Promoting intercultural and interreligious activities and encounters to cultivate peaceful coexistence. “O mankind, We created you from a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that you may recognize one another…” (Quran 49:13) We introduce ourselves … We are a group of young adults who live in Innsbruck and live their Muslim life there as part of the pluralistic Austrian society. Our community is characterized by our roots in different cultures, traditions and spiritual orientations and draws strength from this for a diverse and open coexistence. We came together mainly through studying together at the University of Innsbruck, especially at the Institute for Islamic Theology and Religious Education.”
Feroz is a freelance writer and teacher in Austria. One of his earlier articles was a piece for TRT World, a Turkish media, titled “Are Austrian politicians responsible for increased anti-Muslim hate crimes?”
In February, Feroz published an article with the anti-Israel website Mondoweiss, titled “Thirty years after Baruch Goldstein’s massacre, his followers are now carrying out a genocide.” Where he discussed how thirty years have gone since “Baruch Goldstein carried out his massacre of Palestinian worshippers in Hebron. His legacy of bloodshed continues in Gaza and the West Bank as his followers are now in power.” For Feroz, this is like an “Orwellian novel: a Minister of National Security distributing weapons and advocating for ethnic cleansing.” By “’encouraging’ Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — a euphemism for ethnic cleansing and a continuation of the Nakba that began in 1948.” Feroz argues, “Since the beginning of the war, around 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza. In the West Bank, the number of deaths due to violent settlers is also rising. At least 400 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, and more than 7,000 have been detained. After a shooting by Palestinian gunmen at a checkpoint in Jerusalem, in which an Israeli also died.”
But in his most recent article last week, he interviewed Prof. Amos Goldberg, a Hebrew University expert in Holocaust Studies and a radical-leftist activist. Feroz described Goldberg as a “leading critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, which he calls genocide.” In his interview, he “explained why the term applies.”
Goldberg told Feroz, “I’ve lived my entire life in Jerusalem as an activist and academic, acting and writing in hopes of change. In a coedited book with my friend and colleague Professor Bashir Bashir, The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History, and in other articles we wrote, we envisioned an egalitarian binational solution. This solution emphasizes equal rights for all, both collective and individual. This vision now feels more remote than science fiction. The two-state solution is also just a smoke screen used by the international community, as there is no realistic path to achieving a viable two-state solution that grants Palestinians their rights. The expansion of settlements has left no room for it, and the idea of two equal states is not even considered. Even the most progressive proposals from the Israeli left and the international community fall short of the minimum level of dignity, sovereignty, and independence that Palestinians can accept. Within Israeli society, racism, violence, militarism, and a narcissistic focus on Israeli suffering alone are so prevalent that there is almost no public support for any solution other than more force and killing.”
Goldberg continues, “The status quo is unsustainable and will continue to lead to more violence. Israel, which was never a full democracy to begin with, is losing even its partial democratic features. Today there are more or less 7.5 million Jews and 7.5 million Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under Israeli control. The former enjoy full rights while the latter enjoy no rights or partial rights. The Israeli Jewish society is becoming more militant, expansionist, and authoritarian. Germany, the US, and most Western countries have contributed significantly to the current dead end. I’m very pessimistic and depressed about the future.” I say this with great sadness because Israel is my society and my home. Nevertheless, history has shown us that the future can be unpredictable, and perhaps things will change for the better, but this requires immense international pressure. This abstract notion is my only hope.”
In April, Goldberg published an article in Local Call, in which he “concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza are genocidal.” He wrote, “In the case of Gaza, the ‘safe haven zones’ have often become death traps and deliberate extermination zones, and in these refuges Israel deliberately starves out the population. For this reason, there are quite a few commentators who believe that ethnic cleansing is the goal of the fighting in Gaza.”
Goldberg ended his article by referring to an article he wrote in 2011 in Haaretz about the genocide in Southwest Africa, where he concluded, “We can learn from the Herero and Nama genocide how colonial domination, based on a sense of cultural and racial superiority, can spill over, in the face of local rebellion, into horrific crimes such as mass expulsion, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The case of the Herero rebellion should serve as a horrifying warning sign for us here in Israel, which has already known one Nakba in its history.”
For the last forty years, a growing number of Israeli academics and activists have been persuaded by their Western colleagues that it is possible to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. However, because some Palestinian factions decided to embrace a radical Islamist agenda, the path to agreement is not feasible. Goldberg is a clear example of someone who has been misled all these years.
The problem with Goldberg’s theory is that he does not find any fault with the Palestinians, he blames Israel alone and cannot acknowledge any wrongdoing by the Palestinians, not even by Hamas. Goldberg’s decision to give an interview illustrates this point: Muhammad Elias Feroz, who pretends to promote “intercultural and interreligious activities and encounters to cultivate peaceful coexistence,” is promoting an outright anti-Israel agenda. Goldberg, as an expert on Holocaust Studies, is falsifying the truth to suit this politics at the expense of the Israeli taxpayers who pay his salary.
REFERENCES:
https://jacobin.com/2024/07/amos-goldberg-genocide-gaza-israel
Israeli Historian: This Is Exactly What Genocide Looks Like
AN INTERVIEW WITHAMOS GOLDBERG
7.11.2024
Israeli historian Amos Goldberg has been a leading critic of Israel’s war in Gaza, which he calls genocide. In an interview, he told Jacobin why the term applies — and why the international community needs to wake up to this reality.
Over nine months since Hamas’s October 7 attacks slaughtered over a thousand Israelis, there is still no end in sight in Palestine. Israel’s war in the name of physically eliminating Hamas has reduced much of the Gaza Strip to rubble and killed tens of thousands of people, in their large majority civilians. Even if the war did end tomorrow, much of Gaza would be uninhabitable for years.
This new level of escalation — and the extent of the destruction in Gaza — have sparked debate about whether Israel’s actions should be classified as genocide. This was the accusation raised by South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice, later joined by Spain, Belgium, and Mexico. The question remains controversial among experts, but ever more of them agree that such an assessment is at least plausible. In Israel itself, most of the population is united behind its army. But there surely are critics of the war.
Amos Goldberg is an associate professor at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In April, an article by him was published in Local Call, in which he concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza are genocidal. In the following interview, he speaks about his views and conclusions regarding the ongoing war, the situation in the West Bank, and the future of Israel-Palestine.
Elias Feroz
A few weeks ago, you described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” against the Palestinian population there. Can you briefly explain which specific definition of genocide you are applying, and why you think it is important to use the term to describe what is happening in Gaza?
Amos Goldberg
I wrote an article in Hebrew titled “Yes, It Is a Genocide” in a magazine called Sicha Mekommit, which means Local Call. It was then translated into English and circulated widely.
I acknowledge that this is a serious allegation, and I don’t take it lightly. It was very difficult for me to write this article, because it is also about my people and my society. As a part of this society, I also bare responsibility for what is happening. The magnitude of the atrocities and destruction in Israel on October 7 were unprecedented. It took me some time to be able to digest what was happening and to be able to articulate what I saw unfolding in front of my eyes. But once you see what is happening, you cannot be silent anymore. Even if it is agonizing and painful for me, my readers, or Israeli society, the debate must start somewhere.I acknowledge that this is a serious allegation, and I don’t take it lightly.
There are various definitions of genocide but only one is globally accepted and that is the Genocide Convention’s [The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide], which was adopted by the UN in December 1948. It’s a legal definition, but still vague and open to interpretation, which is why it was and still is criticized. The convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such. The intent to annihilate is crucial — though it does not have to be full annihilation; it can be “in whole or in part.”
The definition has been criticized for its omission of other categories, such as political groups, which the Soviet Union opposed. By the same token, the convention does not specify “cultural genocide,” because the US feared being accused of committing genocide against its own indigenous population. Including cultural aspects in the conventions was very important for the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” and lobbied for it in the UN, but he was forced to compromise in order to get the convention approved.
Ultimately, the definition put forward by the convention was the outcome of a certain political and historical moment in the UN, when the Global South had very few representatives and the US and USSR dominated. Nevertheless, most scholars refer to this definition when they speak about genocide today. Many coined additional terms like democide, ethnocide, politicide, etc. (which are not legal anyhow) or turned away from definitions all together. But the basic widely accepted definition is the legal one from the convention.
Elias Feroz
Your article also mentions other examples of genocide, such as in Bosnia, Armenia, or the Herero and Nama genocide in what is today Namibia. Around 8,000 Bosnians were killed in Srebrenica, while anywhere between several hundred thousand to 1.5 million people are thought to have perished in the Armenian genocide. You also emphasize that not every genocide has to result in the horrors of the Holocaust. At what point in the current war were you sure that Israel’s actions in Gaza had become genocidal?
Amos Goldberg
As a historian, if you look at the overall picture, you have all the elements of genocide. There is clear intent: the president, the prime minister, the minister of defense, and many high-ranking military officers have expressed that very openly. We have seen countless incitements to turn Gaza into rubble, claims that there are no innocent people there, etc. Popular calls for the destruction of Gaza are heard from all quarters of society and the political leadership. A radical atmosphere of dehumanization of the Palestinians prevails in Israeli society to an extent that I can’t remember in my fifty-eight years of living here.
The outcome is as would be expected: tens of thousands of innocent children, women, and men killed or injured, the almost-total destruction of infrastructure, intentional starvation and the blocking of humanitarian aid, mass graves of which we still don’t know the full extent, mass displacement, etc. There is also reliable testimony of summary executions, not to mention the numerous bombings of civilians in so-called “safe zones.” Gaza as we knew it does not exist anymore. Thus, the outcome fits perfectly with the intentions. To understand the full scale of this destruction and cruelty, I recommend reading Dr Lee Mordechai’s report, which is the most comprehensive and updated record of what has been happening in Gaza since October 7.
A radical atmosphere of dehumanization of the Palestinians prevails in Israeli society to an extent that I can’t remember in my fifty-eight years of living here.
For mass killings to be considered genocide it does not have to be a total annihilation. As we already mentioned the definition states explicitly that destroying a group in whole or in part could be considered genocide. This is what happened in Srebrenica as you mentioned, or in the case of the Rohingya in Myanmar.
I admit that, at first, I was reluctant to call it genocide, and sought any indication to convince myself that it is not. No one wants to see themselves as part of a genocidal society. But there was explicit intent, a systematic pattern, and a genocidal outcome — so, I came to the conclusion that this is exactly what genocide looks like. And once you come to this conclusion, you cannot remain silent.
Elias Feroz
How do your students, colleagues, or friends react when you elaborate on your conclusions?
Amos Goldberg
As I have mentioned before, I wrote my article in Hebrew. I didn’t write it in English because I primarily wanted Israelis to confront it and to help my society overcome the denial and the impulse not to see what is happening in Gaza. I would say that denial is part of all genocidal processes and acts of mass violence.
Some students were very angry at me for my article, but others thanked me. Some colleagues argued with me, and one even wrote on Facebook that he hopes that students will not attend my classes anymore. Others agreed with me, while some told me that I gave them food for thought. There are also people who disagree with me, but whom I at least managed to convince that the allegation of genocide is not an absurd allegation motivated by antisemitism.
Elias Feroz
In Germany, Israel’s universities are often seen as a bastion of resistance against the [Benjamin] Netanyahu government. What is the mood like on Israeli campuses right now?
Amos Goldberg
It is true that the universities are a bastion of opposition to the Netanyahu government. This started with the judicial overhaul before the war. Many voices within the universities are speaking up against the war, although many actively support it, or even encourage the government to increase the already inhumane pressure on Gaza.
Many of those who oppose the war do so primarily because of the hostages — which is a very worthy cause — but only a minority in Israel acknowledges the inhumane and criminal nature of the war as such. I should also stress the many displays of solidarity between Jews and Palestinians that happened in the universities. Nevertheless, overall, I would say that, as institutions, the universities failed this test of their morality and their obligations to free speech, humanism, and the critical analysis of reality in times of crisis.
Tel Aviv University and its president, Ariel Porat, might be an exception, as he for the most part stood up for free speech, but on the whole, there is an atmosphere of fear and suppression. This is particularly true for Palestinian professors and students, who feel they cannot even express any kind of public empathy toward their brothers and sisters in Gaza. There is no room for their feelings or their perspectives on campus, in the public sphere, or on social media.
Denial is part of all genocidal processes and acts of mass violence.
Some professors — Jews included — have lost their jobs in colleges for expressing legitimate criticisms, but others who did not lose their jobs were harassed. The most well-known incident happened to Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a world-renowned Palestinian professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem known for her outspoken views on genocide and Zionism. She was suspended by the university from teaching for a short while. She faced harassment from colleagues and threats, and was even arrested and detained for two days. Police interrogated her several times. Her critique might have sounded harsh and unpleasant to most Israeli ears, but it is still legitimate and, in my opinion, for the most part very true. She is now waiting to see whether she will be indicted for “incitement” based also on her peer-reviewed academic articles.
Another worrying development is the National Union of Israeli Students’ promotion of a controversial bill that would oblige universities to summarily fire anyone, including tenured professors, for practically any criticism of the state or army which the education minister considers to be “incitement.” Not all local student unions, including the chapter at Hebrew University, support the bill, and the universities themselves are also vehemently opposing it. I hope the bill fails, but the government coalition is pushing it hard, together with parts of the opposition. It is truly shameful that students in the Israeli academic community are pushing for such a draconian, totalitarian measure, and it is frightening to think about the outcomes should the bill indeed pass.
Elias Feroz
Your own university rejects the allegations of genocide against Israel, but on the other hand, immediately labeled the Hamas attack on October 7 as such. What is your opinion? Did October 7 meet the criteria to qualify as a genocide?
Amos Goldberg
I agree with most UN and other assessments, including the current warrants issued by the [International Criminal Court] chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, which state that the Hamas attack was horrendous and criminal, involving war crimes and crimes against humanity. Though some consider it a genocidal act, I don’t think so. I believe it was a terrible crime, particularly the targeting of civilians, the destruction of the kibbutzim, and the taking of hostages, including children. However, calling it genocide stretches the definition to the point of meaninglessness.
The university explicitly rejected the term genocide with regard to Israel’s actions when condemning Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian. They stated that it was outrageous to call it genocide, despite many legal experts, historians, and genocide experts like Raz Segal, Marion Kaplan, Victoria Sanford, Ronald Suny, and Francesca Albanese using the term. Other prominent experts, such as Omer Bartov, believe that the situation may be on course to become a genocide.
We also know that the highest court on earth, the International Court of Justice, ruled in January on several provisional measures while stating that it is indeed plausible that the rights of the Palestinians according to the Genocide Convention were violated, or, in other words, that it is plausible that what is happening in Gaza is a genocide.
As academics, our role is to examine facts and draw conclusions, not to reject terms ideologically.
I think the dismissal of the term genocide to describe Israel’s actions as “baseless” is a grave mistake. As academics, our role is to examine facts and draw conclusions, not to reject terms ideologically. While one might conclude that it is not in fact genocide, it is not baseless to call it so, given the evidence and so many experts who have reached the same conclusion. Dismissing it as outrageous without considering the facts and the arguments contradicts our academic commitment to the truth.
Elias Feroz
The German government also rejects the genocide allegations and supports Israel at the International Court of Justice. Since October 7, a number of Palestinians and Israelis who are critical of Israel’s war conduct have seen their voices silenced or even been banned from entering the country. Given your own opinion on the war, do you think the German government is drawing the wrong lessons from history?
Amos Goldberg
Yes, Germany is drawing the wrong lessons from history. The German government and most German media are biased, wrong, and hypocritical when it comes to Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. This stance is not new. Germany supports Israel and its narrative due to the idea of a German Staatsräson, or reason of state, which ties the state’s legitimacy to its support for Israel. It’s not only that they don’t want to see what is happening. They actively refuse to see! This unwavering support, seen as a carte blanche for Israel’s actions, including what I view as genocide, is not good for Israel.
Germany, the country that committed the Holocaust under Nazi rule, should stand for universal values. “Never again” must apply to all. Almost 30 percent of Israel’s ammunition and arms imports come from Germany. This helps neither Palestinians nor Israelis.Germany is drawing the wrong lessons from history.
The issue of Germany suppressing free speech predates the current war, as the German state considers almost any critique of Israel, including criticism expressed by Jews, antisemitic. The German media and government deliberately ignore the reality in Israel and Palestine, enabling Israel to commit crimes and continue its apartheid, annexation, occupation, and settlement policies. I do not believe that Germany’s actions help Israel. On the contrary, they push Israeli society further toward an abyss from which it may not be able to recover.
Elias Feroz
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, recently announced that he wanted to turn the cities and villages of the West Bank into ruins, like the Gaza Strip. While most of the world’s attention is focused on Gaza, the situation in the West Bank is also spiraling out of control, with growing attacks on the Palestinian population and moves by the Israeli government to expand settlements there. Is this part of a unified strategy?
Amos Goldberg
The government and many settlers and their supporters see the war as an opportunity to expand settlements, take over land, and expel Palestinians. More than five hundred Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have been killed by the Israeli army and settlers since the war started.
I’m part of an Israeli group called Jordan Valley Activists that tries to protect Palestinian shepherd communities and help them maintain their land and livelihoods. I’ve witnessed settler violence firsthand. Just recently, a horrific incident occurred in which settlers seemingly from Shadmot Mehola attacked Palestinian shepherds and farmers, stealing a car, breaking all its windows, hitting people and injuring them, and constantly terrorizing and harassing them. It’s clear that the settlers are taking advantage of the war to expand their territory, expel Palestinians from their land, particularly in Zone C of the West Bank, and “Judaize” the territory.
In many cases, the army and police support the settlers’ actions, either actively or passively, by deliberately not intervening nor holding the perpetrators accountable. The police does not serve the rule of law but rather the lawless settlers. Hence, the attackers almost never have to show up in court. The US and other countries ultimately placed sanctions on those settlers because they understood that the Israeli legal system would rarely hold them accountable.
In 2017, Bezalel Smotrich published something called the “Decisive Plan,” which offered Palestinians two options: accept living under apartheid or leave. He actually threatened to annihilate Palestinians who decide to oppose these two options. This plan, designed by high-ranking politicians, enjoys widespread support. I suspect that even if not formally adopted by the current government, its spirit determines its policy.
Elias Feroz
High levels of support for the war among the Israeli population are evidenced by almost all available polling data, but at the same time, protests for a cease-fire and Netanyahu’s resignation are also growing. Is the mood in Israel beginning to shift?
Amos Goldberg
The mood is changing bit by bit, as many understand that the only way to bring back the hostages is by reaching a permanent cease-fire. Some also don’t see the point of the war anymore. However, the majority still supports the war and is undoubtedly completely blind to the crimes Israel is committing in Gaza.
One positive thing I want to point out is that organizations like the Jordan Valley Activists, which I mentioned before, or grassroots movements like Standing Together are growing as well, although these are very small groups compared to the rest of society. A notable action by Standing Together involved the escorting of humanitarian aid convoys, which were being blocked and vandalized by settlers and right-wingers, to Gaza. The minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, even ordered police not to protect the convoys, allowing the vandalism to happen. Standing Together activists protected the trucks until they reached the Gaza border crossing.
The mood is changing bit by bit, as many understand that the only way to bring back the hostages is by reaching a permanent cease-fire.
This movement consists mainly of Jews and Arabs from within the 1948 borders, who protest the war and demand the freeing of the hostages, because they understand that the war will not lead us anywhere and that both sides are indeed paying a huge price. However, these voices are heavily suppressed by the government, the police, and even local officials — such as the mayor of Haifa, Yona Yahav, who said that demonstrations against the war should not take place in his city Haifa.
Elias Feroz
What future do you see for Israel–Palestine after the war? What will its long-term effects be?
Amos Goldberg
Nothing good will come from this war, and I see no way out of this dead end. I’ve lived my entire life in Jerusalem as an activist and academic, acting and writing in hopes of change. In a coedited book with my friend and colleague Professor Bashir Bashir, The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History, and in other articles we wrote, we envisioned an egalitarian binational solution. This solution emphasizes equal rights for all, both collective and individual. This vision now feels more remote than science fiction.
The two-state solution is also just a smoke screen used by the international community, as there is no realistic path to achieving a viable two-state solution that grants Palestinians their rights. The expansion of settlements has left no room for it, and the idea of two equal states is not even considered. Even the most progressive proposals from the Israeli left and the international community fall short of the minimum level of dignity, sovereignty, and independence that Palestinians can accept. Within Israeli society, racism, violence, militarism, and a narcissistic focus on Israeli suffering alone are so prevalent that there is almost no public support for any solution other than more force and killing.
The status quo is unsustainable and will continue to lead to more violence. Israel, which was never a full democracy to begin with, is losing even its partial democratic features. Today there are more or less 7.5 million Jews and 7.5 million Palestinians between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea under Israeli control. The former enjoy full rights while the latter enjoy no rights or partial rights. The Israeli Jewish society is becoming more militant, expansionist, and authoritarian. Germany, the US, and most Western countries have contributed significantly to the current dead end. I’m very pessimistic and depressed about the future. I say this with great sadness because Israel is my society and my home.
Nevertheless, history has shown us that the future can be unpredictable, and perhaps things will change for the better, but this requires immense international pressure. This abstract notion is my only hope.
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Thirty years after Baruch Goldstein’s massacre, his followers are now carrying out a genocide
It has been thirty years since Baruch Goldstein carried out his massacre of Palestinian worshippers in Hebron. His legacy of bloodshed continues in Gaza and the West Bank as his followers are now in power.
By Elias FerozFebruary 26, 2024
Thirty years ago, on February 25, 1994, the Zionist terrorist Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Palestinian worshippers and injured another 125 inside the Ibrahimi Mosque in the old city of Hebron. Today, Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and other admirers of the mass murderer, continue his legacy by calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank.
Last year, Ben-Gvir praised the terrorist Goldstein in a speech on the memorial day of Israeli Independence at a yeshiva (a Jewish religious educational institution), which was founded by another extremist called Meir Kahane. Kahane and Goldstein (both originally from the United States) dreamed of a Jewish theocracy that would extend far beyond the borders of Palestine. Their idea of “Greater Israel” included parts of today’s Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt as a place exclusively for Jews. To politically implement the expulsion of Arab Palestinians, Kahane founded the right-wing extremist Jewish Orthodox party, “Kach,” in 1971, which was declared a terrorist organization and banned by the Israeli government in 1994 after Goldstein’s terror attack.
Today, however, Zionist hatred towards Palestinians lives on and is stronger than ever. After all, Ben-Gvir himself was part of the right-wing Kach organization, and his speeches advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, whether in Gaza or other Palestinian territories, demonstrate that he continues to remain loyal to the racist ideologies of his two idols. His party, Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”), is the ideological successor to the right-wing Kach organization.
Ben-Gvir lives with his family in an illegal settlement in the West Bank called Kiryat Arba, where Goldstein also resided and where he is buried. Apart from the fact that Ben-Gvir is not just anyone, but a leading politician in the current Israeli government, he cannot be regarded as an exception. Even before October 7, other members of the Israeli government, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, used genocidal language. In March of last year, he called for the eradication of the Palestinian town of Huwwara.
This does not prevent the United States and Germany from continuing to unconditionally support Israel’s most right-wing government in history. A few days ago, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded at the Munich Security Conference to the question of what evidence he relies on when claiming that Israel is abiding by international law in Gaza by stating: “We are asking that they [i.e. Israel] do so, and we are constantly discussing this question…”
One wonders with whom the German government is engaging in these discussions. Netanyahu, who rejects a two-state solution? Ben-Gvir, who calls for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank? Or Bezalel Smotrich, who also threatened to wipe out Palestinian cities?
Meanwhile, the next escalation is already looming, as Ben-Gvir does not cease to provoke. The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan is just around the corner, and he stated just recently that residents of the West Bank should be denied entrance to the al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the third most important mosque in Islam. In a speech last month at a conference in Jerusalem, he spoke about “encouraging” Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — a euphemism for ethnic cleansing and a continuation of the Nakba that began in 1948.
Furthermore, Netanyahu threatens to attack Rafah during Ramadan, where 1.5 million refugees are located. In the meantime, food prices continue to skyrocket. Since the beginning of the war, around 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza. In the West Bank, the number of deaths due to violent settlers is also rising. At least 400 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, and more than 7,000 have been detained. After a shooting by Palestinian gunmen at a checkpoint in Jerusalem, in which an Israeli also died, Ben-Gvir once again advocated for the distribution of weapons to Israeli civilians and settlers.
In Israel and Palestine, the tragedy of war and occupation often resembles an Orwellian novel: a Minister of National Security distributing weapons and advocating for ethnic cleansing. Yet, irony also permeates Goldstein’s biography. Despite studying medicine in the United States, he, instead of saving lives, ruthlessly killed and injured innocent worshippers — also during the month of Ramadan. His legacy of bloodshed persists even 30 years after his death. However, in contrast to the past, his beliefs now find greater acceptance within Israeli society, extending to the highest echelons of the government.
*****
Elias Feroz
Elias Feroz is a PhD student at the University of Innsbruck in Austria whose research area is the history of Israel and Palestine, as well as cultures of remembrance and their role within national identity constructions. Feroz studied in Jerusalem and Cairo as part of exchange programs in order to delve deeper into the modern history of the Middle East and to study Arabic and Hebrew.
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https://thepalestineproject.medium.com/yes-it-is-genocide-634a07ea27d4
Yes, it is genocide
In most cases of genocide, from Bosnia to Namibia, from Rwanda to Armenia, the perpetrators of the murder said they were acting in self-defence. The fact that what is happening in Gaza does not resemble the Holocaust, writes Holocaust scholar Amos Goldberg, does not mean that it is not genocide
Apr 18, 2024
By Amos Goldberg* • Translated by Sol Salbe
*Amos Goldberg is a Holocaust and genocide researcher at the Hebrew University, whose book VeZcharta — And Thou Shalt Remember: Five Critical Readings in Israeli Holocaust Remembrance will be published by Resling in the coming weeks.
Yes, it is genocide. It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but despite all that, and despite all our efforts to think otherwise, after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion. Jewish history will henceforth be stained with the mark of Cain for the “most horrible of crimes,” which cannot be erased from its forehead. As such, this is the way it will be viewed in history’s judgment for generations to come.
From a legal point of view, there is still no telling what the International Court of Justice in The Hague will decide, although in light of its temporary rulings so far and in light of increasing prevalence of reports by jurists, international organisations, and investigative journalists, the trajectory of the prospective judgement seems quite clear.
As early as January 26, the ICJ ruled overwhelmingly (14–2) that Israel may be committing genocide in Gaza. On 28 March, following Israel’s deliberate starvation of the Gazan populace in Gaza, the court issued additional orders (this time by a vote of 15–1, with the only dissent coming from Israeli Judge Aharon Barak) calling on Israel not to deny Palestinians their rights which are protected under the Genocide Convention.
The well-argued, and well-reasoned report by UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, reached a slightly more determined conclusion and is another layer in establishing the understanding that Israel is indeed committing genocide. Israeli academic Dr. Lee Mordechai’s detailed and periodically updated report [Heb], which collects information on the level of Israeli violence in Gaza, reached the same conclusion. Leading academics such as Jeffrey Sachs, a professor of economics at Columbia University (and a Jew with a warm attitude toward traditional Zionism), with whom heads of state all over the world regularly consult on international issues, speaks of the Israeli genocide as something taken for granted.
Excellent investigative reports such as those [Heb] of Yuval Avraham in Local Call, and especially his recent investigation of the artificial intelligence systems used by the military in selecting targets and carrying out the assassinations, further deepen this accusation. The fact that the military allowed, for example, the killing of 300 innocent people and the destruction of an entire residential quarter in order to take out one Hamas brigade commander shows that military targets are almost incidental targets for killing civilians and that every Palestinian in Gaza is a target for killing. This is the logic of genocide.
Yes. I know, they are all antisemites or self-hating Jews. Only we, Israelis, whose minds are fed by the IDF Spokesperson’s announcements and exposed only to the images sifted for us by the Israeli media, see reality as it is. As if interminable literature had not been written about the social and cultural denial mechanisms of societies committing serious war crimes. Israel is really a paradigmatic case of such societies, a case that will still be taught in every university seminar in the world dealing with the subject.
It will be several years before the court in The Hague will hand down its verdict, but we must not look at the catastrophic situation purely through legal lenses. What is happening in Gaza is genocide because the level and pace of indiscriminate killing, destruction, mass expulsions, displacement, famine, executions, the wiping out of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanisation of the Palestinians — create an overall picture of genocide, of a deliberate conscious crushing of Palestinian existence in Gaza.
In the way we normally understand such concepts, Palestinian Gaza as a geographical-political-cultural-human complex no longer exists. Genocide is the deliberate annihilation of a collective or part of it — not all of its individuals. And that’s what’s happening in Gaza. The result is undoubtedly genocide. The numerous declarations of extermination by senior Israeli government officials, and the general exterminating tone of the public discourse, rightly pointed out by Haaretz columnist Carolina Landsman, indicate that this was also the intention.
Israelis mistakenly think that to be viewed as such a genocide needs to look like the Holocaust. They imagine trains, gas chambers, crematoria, killing pits, concentration and extermination camps, and the systematic persecution to death of all members of the group of victims to the last one. An occurrence like this has indeed not taken place in Gaza. In a similar way to what happened in the Holocaust, most Israelis also imagine that the victims collective is not involved in violent activity or actual conflict, and that the murderers exterminate them because of an insane senseless ideology. This is also not the case with Gaza.
The brutal Hamas attack of October 7 was a heinous terrible crime. Some 1,200 people were killed or murdered, including more than 850 Israeli (and foreign) civilians, including many children and the elderly, some 240 live Israelis were abducted to Gaza, and atrocities such as rape were committed. This is an event with Profound, catastrophic, and lasting traumatic effects for many years, certainly for the direct victims and their immediate circle, but also for Israeli society as a whole. The attack forced Israel to respond in self-defence.
However, although each case of genocide has a different character, in the scope and features of the murder, the common denominator of most of them is that they were carried through out of an authentic sense of self-defence. Legally, an event cannot be both self-defence and genocide. These two legal categories are mutually exclusive. But historically, self-defence is not incompatible with genocide, but is usually one of its main causes, if not the main one.
In Srebrenica — on which the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia determined on two different levels that a genocide took place in July 1995 — “only” about 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and youths, over the age of 16, were murdered. The women and children had been expelled earlier.
The Bosnian Serb forces were responsible for the murder, their offensive took place in the midst of a bloody civil war, during which both sides committed war crimes (albeit immeasurably more by the Serbs) and which erupted following a unilateral decision by the Bosnian Croats and Muslims to break away from Yugoslavia and establish an independent Bosnian state, in which the Serbs were a minority.
Bosnian Serbs, with bleak past memories of persecution and murder from World War II, felt threatened. The complexity of the conflict, in which neither side was innocent, did not prevent the ICC from recognising the Srebrenica massacre as an act of genocide, which exceeded the other war crimes committed by the parties, since these crimes cannot justify genocide. The court explained that the Serbian forces intentionally destroyed, through murder, expulsion and destruction Bosnian-Muslim existence in Srebrenica. Today, by the way, Bosnian Muslims live there again, and some of the mosques that were destroyed have been reinstated. But the genocide continues to haunt the descendants of murderers and victims alike.
The case of Rwanda is totally different. There, for a long time, as part of the Belgian colonial control structure, based on divide and rule, the Tutsi minority group ruled, and it oppressed the Hutu majority group. However, in the 1960s the situation was reversed, and upon independence from Belgium in 1962, the Hutu took control of the country and adopted an oppressive and discriminatory policy against the Tutsi, this time too with the support of the former colonial powers.
Gradually, this policy became intolerable, and a brutal bloody civil war broke out in 1990, beginning with the invasion of a Tutsi army, the Rwanda Patriotic Front, consisting mainly of Tutsi who fled Rwanda after the fall of colonial rule. As a result, in the eyes of the Hutu regime, the Tutsi became collectively identified with an actual military enemy.
During the war, both sides committed serious crimes on Rwandan soil, as well as on the soil of neighboring countries to which the war spilled over. Neither side was absolutely innocent or absolutely evil. The civil war ended with the Arusha Accords, signed in 1993, which were supposed to involve Tutsi people in government institutions, the army, and state structures.
But these agreements collapsed, and in April 1994, Rwanda’s Hutu president’s plane was shot down. To this day, it is not known who shot down the plane, and it is believed that they were actually Hutu fighters. However, the Hutu were convinced that the crime had been committed by Tutsi resistance fighters, and this was perceived as a genuine threat to the country. The Tutsi genocide was on its way. The official rationale for the act of genocide was the need to remove the Tutsi existential threat once and for all.
The case of the Rohingya, which the Biden administration recently recognised as genocide, is very different again. Initially, after Myanmar (formerly Burma) independence in 1948, the Muslim Rohingya were seen as equal citizens and part of the mostly Buddhist national entity. But over the years, and especially after the establishment of the military dictatorship in 1962, Burmese nationalism was identified with several dominant ethnic groups, who were mainly Buddhist, of which the Rohingya were not a member.
In 1982 and thereafter, citizenship laws were enacted, stripping most Rohingya of their citizenship and their rights. They were viewed as foreigners and as a threat to the existence of the state. The Rohingya, among whom there have been small rebel groups in the past, made an effort not to be dragged into violent resistance, but in 2016 many felt they could not prevent their disenfranchisement, repression, state and mob violence against them, and their gradual expulsion, and an underground Rohingya movement attacked Myanmar police stations.
The reaction was brutal. Raids by Myanmar’s security forces expelled most Rohingya from their villages, many were massacred, and their villages completely obliterated. When in March 2022 Secretary of State Antony Blinken read out the statement at the Holocaust Museum in Washington 2022 acknowledging that what was done to Rohingya was genocide, he said that in 2016 and 2017, about 850,000 Rohingya were deported to Bangladesh and about 9,000 of them were murdered. This was enough to recognise what was done to Rohingya as the eighth such an occurrence that the United States views as a genocide, apart from the Holocaust. The Rohingya case reminds us of what many genocide scholars have established in terms of research, and is very relevant to the case of Gaza: a link between ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The connection between the two phenomena is twofold, and both are relevant to Gaza, where the vast majority of the population was expelled from their places of residence, and only Egypt’s refusal to absorb masses of Palestinians on its territory prevented them from leaving Gaza. On the one hand, ethnic cleansing signals the willingness to eliminate the enemy group at any cost and without compromise, and therefore easily slips into genocide or is part of it. On the other hand, ethnic cleansing usually creates conditions that enable or cause (e.g. disease and famine) the partial or complete extermination of the group of victims.
In the case of Gaza, the “safe haven zones” have often become death traps and deliberate extermination zones, and in these refuges Israel deliberately starves out the population. For this reason, there are quite a few commentators who believe that ethnic cleansing is the goal of the fighting in Gaza.
The genocide of Armenians during World War I also had a context. During the declining years of the Ottoman Empire, Armenians developed their own national identity and demanded self-determination. Their different religious and ethnic character, as well as their strategic location on the border between the Ottoman and Russian empires, made them a dangerous population in the eyes of the Ottoman authorities.
Horrific outbreaks of violence against the Armenians occurred as early as the end of the 19th century, and therefore some Armenians were indeed sympathetic to the Russians and saw them as potential liberators. Small Armenian-Russian groups even collaborated with the Russian army against the Turks, calling on their brethren across the border to join them, which led to an intensification of the sense of an existential threat in the eyes of the Ottoman regime. This sense of a threat, which developed during a deep crisis of the empire, was a major factor in the development of the Armenian Genocide, which also began a process of expulsion.
The first genocide of the twentieth century was also executed out of a concept of self-defense by the German settlers against the Herero and Nama people in southwest Africa (present-day Namibia). As a result of the severe repression by the German settlers, the locals rebelled and in a brutal attack murdered some 123 (perhaps more) unarmed men. The sense of threat in the small settler community, which numbered only a few thousand, was real, and Germany feared that it had lost its deterrence vis-à-vis the natives.
The response was in accordance with the perceived threat. Germany sent an army led by an unrestrained commander, and there, too, out of a sense of self-defence, most of these tribesmen were murdered between 1904 and 1908 — some by direct killing, some under conditions of hunger and thirst forced on them by the Germans (again by deportation, this time to the Omaka desert) and some in cruel internment and labour camps. Similar processes occurred during the expulsion and extermination of indigenous peoples in North America, especially during the 19th century.
In all these cases, the perpetrators of the genocide felt an existential threat, more or less justified, and the genocide came in response. The destruction of the collective of victims was not contrary to an act of self-defence, but from an authentic motive of self-defence.
In 2011, I had a short article [Heb] published in Haaretz about the genocide in Southwest Africa, concluding with the following words: “ We can learn from the Herero and Nama genocide how colonial domination, based on a sense of cultural and racial superiority, can spill over, in the face of local rebellion, into horrific crimes such as mass expulsion, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The case of the Herero rebellion should serve as a horrifying warning sign for us here in Israel, which has already known one Nakba in its history.”
Translated by Sol Salbe, Middle East News Service
שיחה מיקומית (Local Call) Hebrew original article
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https://glimmer.io/u/qeqex-enete-visor-oxaso/
Elias F.
Innsbruck, Austria
About
My Name is M. Elias Feroz an I am an Austrian writer. I received my Bachelor of Education in Lectureship and my subjects are History & Political Education and Islamic Religion. I speak English, German and (since my parents are originally from Afghanistan) also Dari. Currently, I’m also learning Arabic. My topics: – Islam and Islamic History – Middle East and “Muslim World” in general – Austria (politics etc.) – Education
Produced for TRT World Digital
Are Austrian politicians responsible for increased anti-Muslim hate crimes?
Reporter / Journalist
5 years ago
Are Austrian politicians responsible for increased anti-Muslim hate crimes?
The rise in hate crimes towards Muslims in Austria is part of a broader trend that has real and negative ramifications for their safety in Europe.
Elias Feroz
The Anti-Muslim Racism Report 2018 shows an increasing number of anti-Muslim incidents in Austria. The main target of these incidents were women. In 2017, a total of 309 incidents had been reported and in 2018, the number of reported events increased by 74 percent, which makes a total of 540 incidents.
Recently in Vienna, Austria, an older woman insulted a young Muslim lady and spat at her afterwards. “That is my country you wh**e!” the old woman shouted. She referred to the Muslim lady as an “animal” and “pig”.
The Muslim lady pointed out that she was born in Austria and that she is not going to leave her home country. The woman responded by shouting that the FPO (the Austrian Freedom Party, which is also part of the coalition government) would throw all of “them” (meaning Muslims) out.
Anti-Muslim racism is a daily problem in Austria and there is a risk that this behaviour is becoming increasingly normalised in the country’s political and social climate.
The Austrian government’s anti-Muslim smear campaign
Austria’s Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, from the Christian Democratic People’s Party (OVP) strongly condemned the incident on Monday. He said: “A disgusting attack that I condemn in the strongest terms. In Austria, we stand for a respectful and peaceful coexistence of all religions!”
That might seem like a statesmanlike act from Kurz, but both he and FPO Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache are taking part in this smear campaign against Islam and its followers.
Their whole election campaign in 2017 was grounded in combatting “political Islam”, a term, which was not even defined or explained.
In public debate, it is striking that concepts and terms (such as Sharia or jihad) based in Islamic tradition are rarely explained. In most cases, words that are not known to the public at large are deliberately deployed to stir up confusion and anxiety in society.
Before using such terms, it is important to clarify them and convey the different views on the subject. The vagueness of the term benefits the very purpose of the Austrian government. It is easier to scapegoat somebody if the problem stays abstract. As a result, the wedge between Muslims and non-Muslims threatens to be driven deeper and deeper as politicians and other protagonists are continue to demonise Islam.
Links to the Christchurch terrorist
The far-right FPO has links with right-wing extremists such as the Identitarian Movement of Austria, which, it was recently revealed, received a significant donation of nearly $1700 from the Christchurch terrorist who attacked two mosques in New Zealand, killing 50 Muslims.
The Christchurch killer had networked internationally with several right-wing extremist groups, but so far, the clearest connection is with Vienna.
The terrorist wrote in his ‘manifesto’, which he posted online before the attack, that he had donated money to many nationalist groups and associations.
The leader of the Identitarian Movement of Austria, Martin Sellner, claimed he didn’t know that the donation was from the Christchurch assassin, but the link prompted a preliminary investigation into Sellner under Austria’s anti-terrorism laws.
Strache emphasises that his party has nothing to do with the Identitarian Movement, however he has repeatedly shared posts from the movement on his official Facebook page.
Photos from 2015 have also emerged showing Strache and members of the Identitarian Movement at the same table.
Both the chancellor and vice chancellor expressed their sympathy for the victims of Christchurch on the day of the terrorist attack via Twitter.
However, no such post appeared on their Facebook pages, ensuring there was no awkward backlash from their Facebook followers.
The Anti-Muslim Racism Report 2018 also shows that more than 50 percent of the reported anti-Muslim incidents occur online.
It is no secret that the FPO has carried out several anti-Muslim campaigns in the past.
The current Home Secretary Herbert Kickl is famous for using Nazi terminology against migrants and refugees. He also pulls the strings behind several anti-Muslim slogans such as “home instead of Islam.”
The opposition Social Democrats and liberal party JETZT have demanded Kickl’s resignation.
The government is carefully taking steps against Muslims and migrants. Kurz is arguing for the shutdown of Islamic kindergartens, saying they are dangerous. It once again highlights the unequal treatment of those with Islamic faith, compared to the followers of Christianity, Judaism or any other religion.
Islam is the very concern of Kurz and Strache and through the way they deal with Muslims and Islam, it is likely that the discrimination will only increase.
Elias Feroz is a freelance writer and teacher in Austria.
israel-academia-monitor.com 
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