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Amos Goldberg: 'What is happening in Gaza is a genocide because Gaza does not exist anymore' [1]
['Stéphanie Le Bars']
Date: 2024-10-29
Amos Goldberg, Israeli historian. YANN LEGENDRE
In April, historian Amos Goldberg, the Jonah M. Machover Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, published an article in the online magazine Local Call (Siha Mekomit, in Hebrew) accusing Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza. He explains his position in an interview with Le Monde.
This interview was conducted in English in May and updated at the end of September. It has been edited for brevity.
In April, you accused your country of committing a "genocide" in Gaza. How did you come to this conclusion, six months after the start of the war?
It took me time. October 7 was a shock, a tragedy, a horrendous attack. It was painful, criminal. It was of a magnitude we never experienced in Israel. Some 850 civilians [1,200 people in total] were killed in one day. Men, women, children, even babies and elderly were taken hostage. Some kibbutzim were completely destroyed. And the testimonies started flowing about cruelty, sexual violence, destruction by Hamas. I personally know people, some of them very close, affected by the attack. Some killed, some taken hostages, some barely survived. I had no words to explain the situation, to digest it, to mourn it. It was outrageous, traumatizing, personal.
I understood the context of occupation, of the siege [of Gaza], of apartheid [in the West Bank], but even if that could have explained why that happened, it could not have justified such atrocities. Immediately afterward, heavy Israeli bombings started, and within weeks thousands of civilians died in Gaza. And there were not only bombings. Genocidal rhetoric erupted and dominated the media, the political and public spheres: "We are fighting human animals" [Yoav Gallant, minister of defense, October 10, 2023]; "It is an entire nation out there that is responsible" [Isaac Herzog, president of Israel, October 14, 2023]; "We should drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza" [Amihai Eliyahu, minister of heritage, November 5, 2023]. "Gaza Nakba 2023" [Avi Dichter, minister of agriculture, on November 11, 2023, in reference to the forced displacement and expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 war, after the creation of Israel.] And that was so shocking that I had no words for that either.
Read more Subscribers only Israel-Hamas war: Gaza genocide accusation constitutes unprecedented test for international justice
In January, I signed an open letter with 50 other Holocaust and Jewish studies Israeli researchers, asking Yad Vashem [the Israeli national memorial for the victims of the Holocaust in Jerusalem] to condemn explicit or implicit Israeli discourse calling for genocide in Gaza. If it's not something we learned from the Holocaust, then what did we learn? One of the first Israeli laws after its creation, in 1948, was adopting the Genocide Convention into Israeli law [December 9, 1948]. And one of its clauses specifies that genocide is not only about the crimes committed, the convention also criminalizes the incitement to commit genocide. And it was clearly the case. And by the way, Yad Vashem refused to condemn this discourse.
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[1] Url:
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2024/10/29/amos-goldberg-what-is-happening-in-gaza-is-a-genocide-because-gaza-does-not-exist-anymore_6730881_23.html
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