Walling People In Is Always The First Step
The world should have paid closer attention to what Israel has been doing for the past seventy-six years
(If you have received this by email, please click on the title to read the latest version. I often correct typos and continue to edit my essays after publishing the first version).
Genocide does not always look like gas chambers and Zyklon-B. It can take many forms, and these forms do not need to be identical to be what they are: the mass displacement and murder of a targeted population. Settler-colonialism is inherently genocidal since its core purpose—one population forcibly replacing another in a particular area—meets the very definition of genocide.
The UN ‘Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’ acknowledges that intent can be difficult to prove; however in the case of Zionism and Israel, this intent is extensively documented. When Israel created Gaza, genocide was always the plan, as the Zionist movement’s own records reveal. Everything Israel has done since 1948 has always been calculated and intentional. Israel’s only goal and raison d'être is to complete its settler-colonial project. Jewish Israelis believe they will never be safe until all the Palestinians are removed—one way or another—from historic Palestine.
Walling people off is never meant to be permanent. Israel began trapping its 1948 ethnic cleansing victims in Gaza, creating virtual and real walls and steadily tightening control over Gaza’s population. The illegal separation wall, 85% of which runs inside the colonised West Bank, was always justified as a security measure; but its true intent has always been to concentrate Palestinians in a limited area, and control their life and their movement. When walls combine with discriminatory laws, they pave the way for genocide. People who are defined by law1 as ‘undesirable others’, are easier to kill when they are concentrated in one place.
We see this strategy now within Gaza itself. Israel has deliberately separated north from south to create smaller, controllable populations. Israel controls everything: food, medicine, and movement. It intentionally starves people, denies medical care, and its military engages in psychopathic acts of torture and murder. When a population is marked for extermination, their dignity and well-being are forfeited. International deliberations about Israel ‘allowing’ humanitarian aid are absurd, and pointless. Israel learned well from Nazi Germany, but the world either learned nothing, or is cynically throwing the Palestinians under the bus as it has always done.
Many supporters of Israel ridicule the notion of genocide in Palestine on the ground of numbers. They disingenuously suggest that unless an entire people is killed it is not a genocide. But as you can see from the definition below, genocide is defined more by intent and the targeting of a particular group of people, rather than by mere numbers. Whatever the excuse or reason given to a settler-colonial project—it is by definition a genocide.
Israel seized an opportunity last October to enact its version of the 'final solution' in Gaza. It is already targeting the besieged and walled population of the colonised West Bank. The next step will likely be stripping Palestinian citizens of Israel of their citizenship—those who survive will face expulsion to Jordan and Syria at gunpoint.
Israel's population has been indoctrinated to believe they are always on borrowed time. As absurd as this might appear to outsiders, inside a cult society things appear very different from the reality outside the cult. Regardless of the obscene and limitless amount of support Israel receives from our governments—bought with our tax money—Jewish Israelis believe they are always alone and under existential threat. Jewish Israeli society not only feels entitled. Its people see even this massive support as insufficient. They show no gratitude, while maintaining their self-perception as perpetual victims. Israel wants all criticism and sympathy for its victims to stop. It expects the world to stand aside while it completes the elimination of all the Palestinians who are still alive in historic Palestine. This should strengthen our resolve to not be silenced or sidelined, and to increase the pressure on our politicians and media to start doing the right thing.
Do not be too encouraged by the fact that Netanyahu is back in court to face trial for his corruption. Whatever happens to Netanyahu, the next Israeli leader is likely to be worse. Israeli society dislikes Netanyahu, but not because he is committing genocide, but because he is not doing it well enough, or fast enough. Things are set to get much worse for the Palestinian people, unless our own countries enact a decisive boycott, sanctions and an arms embargo, recall their ambassadors and turn Israel into an impoverished pariah state. There is no status-quo in Palestine and never has been, and what is going on there is not a war. It is a settler-colonial genocide in motion.
Genocide
Genocide was first recognised as a crime under international law in 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/96-I). It was codified as an independent crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The Convention has been ratified by 153 States (as of April 2022). (United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, Definitions of Genocide and Related Crimes)
Israel ratified the Convention in 1950.
Definition
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Elements of the crime
The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.
The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:
A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and
A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
The intent is the most difficult element to determine. To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. It is this special intent, or dolus specialis, that makes the crime of genocide so unique. In addition, case law has associated intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy, even if the definition of genocide in international law does not include that element.
Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted - not randomly – because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention (which excludes political groups, for example). This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, and not its members as individuals. Genocide can also be committed against only a part of the group, as long as that part is identifiable (including within a geographically limited area) and “substantial.” (—United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, Definitions of Genocide and Related Crimes)
The Convention defines genocide as a crime, with the dual purpose of preventing and punishing both perpetrators and their enablers. Below is a table of genocides committed since WWII, that I have adapted from Wikipedia. The full historical record stretches far longer—through WWII, back to the 13th Century, and likely into humanity's earliest days—as archaeologists continue uncovering ancient massacre sites.
I am sure there are inaccuracies and omissions in this table. For example, the 1948 Nakba is not listed. Perhaps the writer of the Wikipedia entry does not think the Nakba—the forced expulsion of 750,000, almost 50% of the non-Jewish population of Palestine—qualifies as genocide. The numbers in the ‘estimated killings’ column are not precise, but they allow us to appreciate the devastating scale of the atrocities humans commit against their own kind. As I formatted this table, I could think only of those poor people, the traumatised survivors, and the generations living in the shadow of what was done to their people. Genocides, persecution, discrimination and injustice leave their mark on us for hundreds, if not thousands of years, whether our ancestors were victims, perpetrators, or both.
The locations of modern genocides trace our shameful colonial and post-colonial legacy. Examining this grim catalogue should bring us nothing but shame. With all humanity’s potential, we have failed to prevent or punish these systematic, recurring, sometimes overlapping horrors. The Convention has so far been a dismal failure.
Is this truly the height of our civilisation—to stand by while people are methodically erased? Is this the best we can do?
A comment on paid subscriptions
Substack encourages writers to apply paid subscriptions. They take a small cut to enable them to provide this, otherwise free-to-use platform. A few readers have pledged money for monthly or yearly subscriptions, to which I am grateful. I enjoy, and feel privileged to write and publish on this platform. But I am holding back on monetising my Substack channel, because I do not want to turn my writing into an obligation.
Below you will see a ‘buy me a coffee’ button. If you haven’t seen it before, it is a way of offering a donation to freelance writers, and others who provide similar services that are not paid work. Payments are processed securely on the ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ site, using Stripe, and I believe people can keep donations anonymous if they wish. This is entirely voluntary. Everyone is welcome to read my work free of charge.
Thank you so much for reading my work!
Israel’s 2018 Nation-State Bill (חוֹק הַלְּאוֹם) is an apartheid law that defines the state of Israel as a state for Jews only. As the Adalah website (hyperlinked above) states: “This law – which has distinct apartheid characteristics – guarantees the ethnic-religious character of Israel as exclusively Jewish and entrenches the privileges enjoyed by Jewish citizens, while simultaneously anchoring discrimination against Palestinian citizens and legitimizing exclusion, racism, and systemic inequality.”
Avigail skewers the awful ambitions of the criminal scum who call themselves Israelis by laying out in black and white the legal description of genocide. I have long since decided that the only way to help Palestine and its people survive is to crush the Israeli economy and the economies of those states knowingly turning a blind eye to their crimes. This will be easier said than done but continuing the absurd search for a two-state solution is unacceptable. Boycott everything coming out of that vile place and all companies and financial institutions investing into it. Boycott now.
🙏