Preface by Tess Lawrence
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has just released its damning Resolution on the Situation in Gaza. This report pulls no punches, acquiesces to no-one but reality and evidence-based facts. It is a declaration that places the government of Israel in the league of Hitler’s Third Reich and more contemporary examples of genocide.
The President of IAGS is Dr Melanie O’Brien, who is also the Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western Australia. Her formidable qualifications and appointments include Deputy Head of School (Research) at the UWA Law School and last year she completed 12 months as Visiting Professor at the Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota, USA where she continues to be a Visiting Scholar at the Human Rights Center, Law School.
Resolution are passed only when endorsed by a two-thirds majority of voting members. Eighty-six percent of 500 members voted in favour, confirming that the legal criteria for Genocide has been met in Israel’s war on Gaza.
The Resolutions are unequivocal that Israel’s war on Gaza is a genocidal war.
Reuters quoted Dr O’Brien:
“… This is a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide,” the association’s president, Melanie O’Brien, a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia who specialises in genocide…
…“There is no justification for the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, not even self defence…”
Israel has both denounced and denied the IAGS findings. IAGS has also called out the war crimes by Hamas on October 7.2023.
The AIMN publishes the Resolutions in full below to confirm the depth of the findings and so you can read it for yourselves without interference from malevolent distorters.
IAGS Resolution on the Situation in Gaza
Recognising that, since the horrific Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023, which itself constitutes international crimes, the government of Israel has engaged in systematic and widespread crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, including indiscriminate and deliberate attacks against the civilians and civilian infrastructure (hospitals, homes, commercial buildings, etc.) of Gaza, which, according to official UN estimates, at the date of this resolution, has killed more than 59,000 adults and children in Gaza;
Recognising that these crimes are estimated to have left many thousands of people buried under the rubble or otherwise inaccessible, and most probably dead;
Recognising that this bombing and other violence is estimated to have injured more than 143,000 people, with many maimed;
Recognising that the actions of the Israeli government against Palestinians have included torture, arbitrary detention, and sexual and reproductive violence; deliberate attacks on medical professionals, humanitarian aid workers and journalists; and the deliberate deprivation of food, water, medicine, and electricity essential to the survival of the population;
Recognising that Israel has forcibly displaced nearly all of the 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip multiple times, and demolished more than 90 percent of the housing infrastructure in the territory;
Recognising that the consequences of these crimes have included destroying entire families and multiple generations of Palestinians;
Recognising that Israel has destroyed schools, universities, libraries, museums, and archives, all of them essential to the continued existence of Palestinian collective well-being and identity;
Recognising that Israel has killed or injured more than 50,000 children and that this destruction of a substantial part of a group constitutes genocide, as emphasized in a joint declaration of intervention in the International Court of Justice case of The Gambia v Myanmar by six countries—Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom— which states “that children form a substantial part of the groups protected by the Genocide Convention, and that the targeting of children provides an indication of the intention to destroy a group as such, at least in part. Children are essential to the survival of any group as such, since the physical destruction of the group is assured where it is unable to regenerate itself.”;
Recognising that Israeli governmental leaders, war cabinet ministers, and senior army officers have made explicit statements of “intent to destroy”, characterizing Palestinians in Gaza as a whole as enemies and “human animals” and stating the intention of inflicting “maximum damage” on Gaza, “flattening Gaza,” and turning Gaza into “hell”;
Recognising that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed the current US President’s plan to forcibly expel all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, with no right of return, in what Navi Pillay, head of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, has said amounts to ethnic cleansing;
Recognising that the deliberate destruction of agricultural fields, food warehouses, and bakeries and other violence that prevents food production, in conjunction with denial and restriction of humanitarian aid, indicate the intentional infliction of unlivable conditions resulting in starvation of Palestinians in Gaza;
Acknowledging that, on 21 November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of Israel, in the court’s ongoing investigation opened on 3 March 2021, of crimes committed on Palestinian territory since 13 June 2014, charging them with crimes identified in the Rome Statute, in the Gaza Strip from at least 8 October 2023, including the starvation of civilians, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, murder, and persecution;
Whereas Israel’s actions in response to the October 7 attack and subsequent holding of hostages have not only been directed against the Hamas group responsible for these, but have also targeted the entire Gazan population;
Acknowledging that the International Court of Justice found in three provisional measures order in the case of South Africa v. Israel – January, March, and May 2024 – that it is plausible that Israel is committing genocide in its attack in Gaza and
Acknowledging that leading global international law organizations and UN bodies, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Forensic Architecture, DAWN, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, have conducted extensive investigations and issued reports concluding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza;
Acknowledging that a number of Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish, and other scholarly experts working in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and in International Law have concluded that Israeli governmental and military actions constitute genocide;
Acknowledging that international civil society has a responsibility to prevent genocide by encouraging and assisting states to fulfil their obligations under the Genocide Convention to prevent, suppress, and punish genocide;
its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement of genocide and to ensure the ordered Israel to take all measures within provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza;
Acknowledging that putative security measures against members of a group are often pretext for mass killing and genocide as it has become in this case;
Therefore, the International Association of Genocide Scholars:
Declares that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948);
Declares that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity as defined in international humanitarian law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court;
Calls upon the government of Israel to immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza, including deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians including children; starvation; deprivation of humanitarian aid, water, fuel, and other items essential to the survival of the population; sexual and reproductive violence; and forced displacement of the population;
Calls upon the government of Israel to comply with the Provisional Measures orders of the International Court of Justice;
Calls upon the state parties of the International Criminal Court to comply with their obligations, cooperate with the Court, and surrender any individual subject to an arrest warrant;
Calls upon all states to actively pursue policies to ensure respect for their obligations under international law, including under the Genocide Convention, the Arms Trade Treaty and international humanitarian law, with regards to Israel and Palestine;
and
Calls upon the government of Israel and all other United Nations members to support a process of repair and transitional justice that will afford democracy, freedom, dignity, and security for all people of Gaza.
Current as of 28 July 2025 Resolution passed 31 August 2025
Dear reader, we need your support
Independent sites such as The AIMN provide a platform for public interest journalists. From its humble beginning in January 2013, The AIMN has grown into one of the most trusted and popular independent media organisations.
One of the reasons we have succeeded has been due to the support we receive from our readers through their financial contributions.
With increasing costs to maintain The AIMN, we need this continued support.
Your donation – large or small – to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
Thank you for that : I saw the ABC Four Corners program on Monday night and I am appalled that Israel continues to deny what is going on in Gaza.
My father attended the Nuremberg WWII trials in 1946 as an observer and I remember my mother saying that he was deeply moved by what he heard and saw. Humanity is going through another very dark period, we need to fully support the International Criminal Court and the ICJ in bringing those responsible to justice.
We cannot turn a blind eye and say, ‘nothing to see here’. It is our business:
“The standard we walk past is the standard we accept and it diminishes all of us.”
TERRY MILLS
Dear Terry, this is fascinating about your Father. Are there any letters,journals, recordings by him ? Did he go as an observer for the Govt ? Or a particular group ? Would love to know more about him – and your Mother’s recollections too. Personal stories are so important for our shared histories. Thanks as always, for your comment.xxx
Hi Tess
My father was a marine engineer and salvage expert and was recruited by the British Government to oversee the removal of shipping from the Kiel harbour which had been heavily bombed by the allies – Kiel is located in northern Germany on the southwestern shore of the Baltic Sea and connects the Baltic to the North Sea. It was a major port of refuge and supply for Nazi shipping and submarines during the war.
I’m not sure what my Dad was doing in Nuremberg but those trials were seen at the time as highly significant for the allies then occupying Germany.
Terry Mills, the Nuremberg Trials were about “never again” and a moving on to more civilised times. Given global history since WW2, it seems many nations didn’t get the message.
The images from Gaza are a fearful reality check.
TERRY MILLS
This is gripping info Terry. How intriguing.I learn so much from comments. Maybe you’ll consider writing an article for AIMN about your Father. Hopefully you’ve got some photos. What a generation. Invariably so modest about their achievements. Imagine being a witness to the Nuremberg Trials.
Better late than never, I suppose. But genocide was always the Zionist goal. Even before “Israel” was invented by gangs of Zionist terrorists in 1947.
Is the real shock Israel’s barbarism or the complicity of the US and its lackeys?
The main driver seems to be insanity.
I have seen so many pics from another site, of kids with their legs blown off, old folk with guns pointed at their heads and people hanging around desperately at (possible) food distribution that could be just cynical traps for air aids to claim even more wretched lives.
There is possibly a limit you can reach expressing shock at Israel, and they will say they have their reasons, but in the end I’m as repulsed by Biden, Sturmer, Trump and other supposed “leaders”: the Lobby Lackeys.
And the crass cowardice and lies involved with gormless media and press misreporting.
Terry, I can see where you got your brains from.
Big responsibility for your dad.
…
We had good childhoods, I’m guessing.
To observe the Sturm und Drang of the last couple of years snd its human toll, has been sn ugly sight and the biggest shock of all, from people who know what genocide is/was, how repulsive it is, inflicted on others who can’t fight back today..
Excellent that the scholars have made their pronouncement.
However, it’s all very largely late, just like the moronic & useless Genocide Convention, which does SFA (except pontificate) until the act(s) it espouses to prevent have substantially concluded.
It’s a script that gives the benefit of doubt to the warmongering perpetrators, as opposed to the victims. As clearly demonstrated by the wiles of Netanyahu’s Israel and the USA (and its international cling-ons).
At the dreaded soc meeja earlier, and it offered a figure Of 400,000 plus dead, no t the sixty thousand mentioned for months elsewhere.The source looked reliable. probably should cite it but it is impossible sometimes to dig up posts there.
Although the Israel Defense Forces’ use of starvation as yet another means of war against innocent Palestinian non-combatants, including many children, may occasionally be internationally ‘condemned’ as ‘intolerable’, the atrocities will ultimately be tolerated, if not implicitly encouraged, by those nations with any ability to hinder the Israeli state’s crimes against humanity.
Therefore, such condemnations — which are relatively few when considering the seriousness and scope of the atrocities committed — are but paper tigers, if not simply the cruelest frauds.
Yet, significantly, there are many Jews/Semites, both inside and outside Israel, who are vocally condemning the/their nation’s prolonged and heartless IDF onslaught (e.g. Dr. Gabor Mate).
It indeed must be difficult for decent Jews/Semites with such a strong conscience when they publicly denounce Israel’s atrocities and are then denounced and referred to as “self-hating” by the extreme-Zionism powers, likely in large part to try shaming them into self-censoring.
I’ve long been, and still am, vocally critical of the clear decades-long maltreatment (to put it mildly) of the general Palestinian populace by the Israeli government and security/defense agencies.
But I was pleasantly surprised at reading the cutline below the large photo accompanying a June 26 story (headlined “UK’s largest Jewish group punishes members who broke silence on Gaza genocide”) posted on the Middle East Monitor’s website:
“A young Charedi Orthodox Jew holds a placard during the demonstration. Orthodox Charedi Jews joined many thousands of pro-Palestinian protestors outside Downing Street accusing Israel and Zionists of genocide in Gaza.”
They may see that all lives and needless suffering should matter to us all, yet that’s much easier for a conscience to dismiss when one considers another an innately much lower lifeform. … As a ‘gentile’, I can only try to imagine how I would act if in their position; if I could be as conscientiously strong-willed and brave.
It’s interesting that Netanyahu claims that the genocide in Gaza and Israeli attacks on various countries are to ensure that the hostages are released.
According to a recent BBC article:
“The Hostages and Missing Families Forum: Bring Them Home Now wrote on social media that Israel’s strike on Qatar last week shows “every time a deal approaches, Netanyahu sabotages it”.
Here it is if you want to read the whole thing:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1dqrg32zd9o
Am I dumb? Just a cynic or have I just missed the point? The US has its’ biggest active airbase in Qatar – so how did they not see, hear or electronically detect the incoming Israeli jets that bombed and killed the Hamas negotiators in Doha? If they detected the incoming Israelis and did not respond then they must have known they were coming and knew what their target was and thus did not care. Am I entitled to believe there is an element of malignant co-operation here? Clearly Netanyahu needs Israeli citizens to remain captured and hostage so that he can continue his vain war of retribution. Trump, Rubio, Cruz, Huckerbee and the US Christian Zionists lobby ensure that this disaster continues.