Israel in Gaza: A Textbook Case of Genocide
16.10.2023
In LALIT, we would like to cite, for our readers, from the recent article in the journal Jewish Currents by Raz Segal. It is entitled “A Textbook Case of Genocide: Israel has been explicit about what it’s carrying out in Gaza. Why isn’t the world listening?” We re-iterate his call. In all urgency.
The excellent article, sounding a warning specially to the West, says:
"Israel’s campaign to displace Gazans—and potentially expel them altogether into Egypt—is yet another chapter in the Nakba, in which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel. But the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.”
Please read his whole article at https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
The author Raz Segal is Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University in the USA, and the endowed professor in the study of modern genocide. The article was published on 13 October 2023 in the magazine, Jewish Currents, founded in 1946. Segal then added, appropriately, “I say this as a scholar of genocide, who has spent many years writing about Israeli mass violence against Palestinians."
In a letter to LALIT from Omar Barghouti, who is the Palestinian who co-ordinates, from inside Palestine, the world-wide Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, he called on us to help stop the genocide. He said this is the top priority of the moment. LALIT member Alain Ah Vee first made contact with him in Cape Town South Africa at the international gathering of War Resisters’ International, hosted by Ceasefire Campaign, an organization that LALIT has long been in touch with.
“Everything else,” Omar Bargouthi said, in the face of this announcement of, and start of a genocide, “can and must wait.”
This is his call:
“The most urgent goal that Palestinians are calling for is an immediate ceasefire, allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza (including food, water, fuel and medical supplies), UN protection for civilians, and stopping the planned ethnic cleansing to Egypt (which Israel, the US and Europe are pushing for). Pressuring policymakers to adopt the above is the most urgent task at hand.
“No one can claim not to know, not to have heard. Genocide is happening now in Palestine. And US and European enablers of Israel's genocide (governments, many MPs, military corporations, most of the corporate media, etc.) are partners in crime and must be pressured to stop.
“Citizens of the quasi democratic countries of the racist colonial West therefore have a special ethical responsibility today to do everything possible to make their "elected" officials step back from supporting genocide to accepting an immediate ceasefire.
“We can all pick up the legitimate and needed debates on violence, oppression, resistance, and the rest of international law's stipulations later, after/if we avert genocide. Now our utmost ethical duty is to stop it.
“Omar Barghouti”
In LALIT, we have warned of the same need – on radio and on-line TV and at our vigil on 14 October – for Israel to at once: Stop the genocide!
