A Sense of Doubt blog post #4194 - The Future of Genocide
This is a red line issue for me. Full stop.
Thanks for tuning in.
What we have seen unfold in Gaza, where Israel stands accused in the International Court of Justice of committing genocide in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, appears to portend a new future for the crime.
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| https://pchrgaza.org/entering-a-third-year-of-genocide-in-gaza-pchr-al-haq-and-al-mezan-condemn-international-inaction-in-the-face-of-the-ongoing-destruction-and-dispossession-of-palestinians/ |
- Mass Killings and Targeting: Investigations document wide-scale bombardment of residential areas, safe zones, and schools, alongside direct and intentional harm directed at civilians, including high proportions of children and women.
- Destruction of Life-Sustaining Systems: Reports highlight the deliberate dismantling of hospitals, water sanitation networks, and neonatal care centers, coupled with severe blockades restricting food, fuel, and medical entry.
- Reproductive and Demographic Impact: Agencies have noted actions targeting reproductive infrastructure—such as fertility clinics and maternity wards—as measures intended to impact future births within the population. [6, 8]
- International Court of Justice (ICJ): The International Court of Justice is reviewing a case initiated by South Africa alleging that Israeli actions violate the 1948 Genocide Convention, issuing provisional measures demanding the prevention of genocidal acts.
- Official Positions: While UN commissions and international NGOs conclude that the scale, pattern of conduct, and statements by various officials indicate genocidal intent, the Israeli government strongly rejects these accusations, labeling the charges baseless and politically or antisemitically motivated. [4, 5, 10]
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| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/two-israeli-rights-groups-say-their-country-is-committing-genocide-in-gaza |
I’m a Scholar of Genocide. We’re Entering a Terrifying New Era.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/opinion/israel-gaza-palestinians-genocide.html
How do genocides end? In most cases, there are two options.
Either the perpetrators accomplish their goal, or a military force stops them,
and accountability ensues.
In
1904 the Imperial German Army began a campaign that nearly wiped out the Herero
and Nama peoples in what was then German South West Africa, now Namibia,
through fatal expulsions into the desert, incarceration in forced labor camps
and outright murder. No one intervened. In 1915 the Ottoman Empire murdered
vast numbers of Armenians it sought to remove from the heartland of Anatolia or
caused their deaths by forced marches. Feeble efforts to bring former Ottoman
leaders to account were quickly abandoned. To this day, Turkey denies the
genocide.
Conversely,
because the Nazi regime was defeated in World War II, its genocide of the Jews
and its other mass crimes were adjudicated at Nuremberg. Other genocides that
also ended with the military defeat of the perpetrators — such as in Cambodia
in 1979, in Rwanda in 1994 and in Bosnia in 1995 — culminated in some sort of
reckoning, however belated and incomplete. Denial of what occurred thus became
impossible.
In the earlier case of
genocides that succeeded because of impunity at the time or the absence of
subsequent accountability, the perpetrator state went on to benefit from its
criminal actions. The invention and codification of the concept of genocide
after World War II was meant to prevent the persistence of this dynamic of
impunity and profit.
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| https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/145834-gaza-darfur-genocide-convention.html |
What we have seen unfold in Gaza, where Israel stands accused in the International Court of Justice of committing genocide in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, appears to portend a new future for the crime.
It is
a future in which other nations or leaders may have an incentive to pursue
genocidal policies knowing they will not only get away with murder but may even
benefit from it. It is a future in which the countries and international organizations
that had been committed to stopping and punishing genocide may give license to
its recurrence.
Since
the current cease-fire in Gaza went into effect on Oct. 10 and President
Trump’s 20-point plan was endorsed by the Security Council on Nov. 17, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by
Israeli attacks. The military now controls nearly 70 percent of the Gaza Strip. Two million
Palestinians, who previously lived in one of the most densely populated areas
in the world, are now confined to a third of it, trying to survive in
devastated spaces lacking the most basic humanitarian infrastructure.
After
the cease-fire and exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners,
Phase 2 of Mr. Trump’s plan began in mid-January, which intends to bring about
the full demilitarization and reconstruction of the strip, to be managed by a
transitional technocratic Palestinian body. Overseeing the process is an
international Board of Peace chaired by Mr. Trump. His administration has spoken about creating a multibillion-dollar
futuristic “New Gaza” in the long term and is reportedly planning
to build a major military and personnel base for
multinational forces. This will inevitably consign Palestinians in Gaza to the
role of construction workers and service providers for the rich inhabiting what
used to be their land.
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| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/south-africa-recalls-ambassador-to-israel-and-accuses-country-of-genocide-in-gaza |
How did we get here?
The Israeli political and
military leadership conducted an operation in Gaza that killed at least 70,000
people (as admitted now by the Israeli military), most of them civilians; wounded
close to 200,000; and caused vast numbers to die indirectly because of the
utter destruction of medical facilities, housing and infrastructure, as well as
the deprivation of food and clean water. As I wrote in July 2025, as a scholar of genocide, I
believe this was a concerted attempt to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza, in
whole or in part, and that the operation therefore reached the high bar of the
1948 Genocide Convention’s definition of this crime.
And so
Israeli leaders will probably not be held to account, unless they are at some
point handed over to the International Criminal Court by a new Israeli
government unwilling to bring them to justice in Israel and eager to restore
the nation’s international standing. That possibility is remote. Mr. Trump’s
20-point plan would effectively bypass any possible accountability or
punishment for the authors of this crime by promising a bright future for
everyone involved, although calls for the restoration of a semblance of
normality for the Palestinians would be unlikely to gain much sympathy when
Israel and its allies would be engaged in constructing an ideal city. What
would be the point of stirring up old accusations when a brave new world is
about to emerge?
It is
true that Israel is experiencing increasing global isolation and disapproval
among Americans across the political spectrum, but that is precisely what the
glossy plans for a new Gaza may attenuate or even reverse: by persuading
distracted publics in a troubled world that the issue of Gaza has been settled
to everyone’s satisfaction.
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| https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/09/israel-palestine-gaza-hamas-invasion-genocide-united-states/ |
The
Trump plan, if its vision is ever realized, would mean that the U.S. government
or American businesspeople working on its behalf would be selling rights for
leasing and construction on land expropriated from its residents, whose value
is expected to rise sky high.
A collection of real estate
moguls — possibly including Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and Mr. Trump himself
— or companies they promote would in that way reap a financial bonanza for
businesses and investors, transforming the erasure of the Gaza Strip into an
international investment opportunity. While the coastline would be
dominated by prime real estate made up of mixed-use towers seemingly for
foreign purchase and tourism, providing profits for developers, Palestinians
would almost certainly be priced out of housing on what used to be their land.
The plan would not only all but eradicate Gaza’s history and society but also
transform it into a free-market economy for foreign corporations being offered “amazing investment opportunities,” as Mr.
Kushner put it.
Building Mr. Trump’s so-called Riviera of the Middle East would depend on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states putting up vast amounts of money on the promise of ensuring even tighter strategic and economic links with the United States. For now, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as Turkey, Egypt and Indonesia, have signaled interest by joining Mr. Trump’s Board of Peace. Israel, as the Board of Peace consolidates control and Gaza is redeveloped, would take another step in its long-term objective of obliterating Palestinians’ hopes for an end to the Israeli occupation of their territories.
Other
nations, by declining to hold Israel accountable, would also benefit. Germany
is Israel’s second-biggest supplier of arms, after the United States, and has
signed major contracts purchasing military technology from Israel. Germany is
defending itself at the International Court of Justice against accusations by
Nicaragua of facilitating genocide in Gaza by funding Israel and cutting aid to
the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, so it has every political and
economic interest in taking the issue off the table. (Germany has denied the
allegations.) Britain is believed to have used its military bases in Cyprus to
support Israel and is laboring to improve its relations with the United States.
France is trying to maintain its political influence in the Levant and to move
on from the question of genocide in Gaza, which, according to President
Emmanuel Macron, will be determined by “historians, in due time.”
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| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/27/un-israel-food-starvation-palestinians-war-crime-genocide |
Israel,
too, is profiting. Even though some European governments have canceled weapons
deals and imposed sanctions on Israeli military firms in response to Israeli
violence in Gaza, business has remained brisk for Israel’s arms industry.
Israeli export arms sales rose by 30 percent last year over 2024, to a record
$19.2 billion, according to Calcalist, an Israeli financial news site,
and the battle testing of weapons systems in Gaza serves as a selling point,
Calcalist reported. In other words, wreaking destruction brings profits.
For
now, Israel’s impunity will enable its Jewish citizens to continue to ignore
the genocide, the consequences of which will be a deepening degradation of Israeli ethics and morality, erosion of the rule of law,
internal police violence against the state’s Palestinian and Jewish citizens
and the undermining of whatever is left of Israeli democracy. Beyond being
deprived of any justice and accountability for their suffering, the Gazan victims
of Israeli actions will continue to live in dire conditions, under military
supervision and with very limited prospects.
Since Defense Minister Israel
Katz reportedly proclaimed last July that Israel was planning to
establish a “humanitarian city” in the southern part of the Gaza Strip,
conditions on the ground have only deteriorated. It appears conceivable that
Mr. Trump’s plan will be facilitated by an international force aided by
Palestinian security personnel and the Israel Defense Forces to enclose the
population in such cities, from which they will be able to emerge only to
service the wealthy residents of the so-called New Gaza. In those extensive parts of the strip remaining under Israeli
control, new flourishing Jewish settlements are likely to be planted.
 |
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/08/04/gaza-palestinian-genocide-israel-book/ |
Some
may argue that the case of Gaza is singular because Israel enjoys a unique
international position, thanks to its tight alliance with the United States and
its reliance on the legacy of the Holocaust. Perhaps other states cannot expect
to be rewarded and may even be punished for genocide. Yet what we are seeing
today sets an extraordinary precedent, one that has the potential of
undermining the entire premise of genocide as a crime punishable under
post-World War II international law.
If the plans that are being
elaborated for Gaza go forward, genocide may come to be seen by some nations as
the legitimate and lucrative extension of politics by other means. At the
least, other nations that benefit in some way from the genocide may be less
likely to hold future perpetrators accountable. Raphael Lemkin, the man who
coined the term in 1944 and fought for the adoption of the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide four years later, had hoped
to prevent exactly this outcome. It may well be the future of genocide.
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| https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/11/13/23954731/genocide-israel-gaza-palestine |
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2608.11 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 4058 days ago & DAD = 712 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
