Sep 09, 2024
Gaza: The Crossroads Between Justice and Chaos
Dyab Abou Jahjah*
This isn’t just about Gaza; it’s about the world you live in, the world your children will inherit. If Gaza is allowed to be forgotten, it sets a precedent—a world where your children, too, could be slaughtered without accountability, where the powerful decide who lives and dies with no regard for justice. This is the choice before us: either Gaza marks the end of impunity, where the world finally stands for justice, or it signals the collapse of everything we claim to value—the rule of law, human dignity, and the future of a civilized world.
If we fail to act now, Gaza will become the defining moment when the world chose to let the powerful rewrite the rules, making all of us vulnerable to the same fate. We must decide: do we allow this precedent to take hold, or do we say "no more"? The future of your children depends on the answer.
Of course, some may argue that this narrative of reigning justice and law was always a lie, and that we knew it from the start, and to some extent, they are right. But the matter was more complicated than that, especially when it comes to what is legally termed as "crimes against humanity". These crimes are not just war crimes but constitute a separate category of offenses. War crimes involve attacks on civilians, whether through killing, rape, theft, or unjustified detention, without these acts being part of a systematic policy by the offending party. This happens in every war, without exception, committed by all sides. Just as every society includes criminals, so does every army. For example, if a soldier or fighter kills a civilian on their own initiative, it is a war crime committed by that individual, but not a crime against humanity in the legal sense. However, if the killing of civilians is ordered by leadership, then it becomes a crime against humanity. The systematic nature of war crimes can indicate that they are a political and strategic choice, even in the absence of a formal written order from leadership. When crimes are systematic, they are inherently part of a broader, systemic plan. Systematic war crimes can also be classified as crimes against humanity. As such, international law does not require proof of a specific order to establish a crime against humanity; rather, it requires proof of intent. The structured and repetitive nature of these crimes serves as evidence of this intent, which is sufficient to qualify them as crimes against humanity, even without an explicit order.
Many people believe that discussing genocide requires the death of hundreds of thousands of people or a significant percentage of the total population of a given group. Just two days ago, I saw a representative of a French Jewish group on a news channel say that what is happening in Gaza is not genocide because the percentage of those killed is about 2% of the population, and for it to be called genocide, 800,000 people would need to die.
This perception stems from the fact that, in European popular culture, genocide is often associated with events like the Holocaust. Many Europeans tend to believe that genocide involves not only vast numbers of deaths but also industrialized methods of execution. The Rwandan genocide challenged this notion by demonstrating that genocide need not be industrial—it can be a direct, systematic slaughter, a bloody massacre on a massive scale. Anything less than this is often not recognized as genocide.
This explains why many Europeans do not acknowledge the genocide of Indigenous Americans, which unfolded over centuries and relied not solely on direct killing but also on disease, displacement, and harsh living conditions. A similar pattern is seen in European colonial genocides, where, despite large-scale massacres, the millions of deaths were largely caused by the brutal conditions imposed by colonizers, rather than just outright violence.
The average European may hold a different belief, but international law defines genocide more precisely. Genocide can be established even if only a few individuals—such as three people—are killed, as long as there is clear intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the group to which those individuals belong. This intent is key to the legal definition of genocide, not the scale of the killing.
In Gaza, this intent has been openly expressed by Israeli leadership for decades. There is no need to speculate—it has been repeatedly and explicitly stated: the goal to eradicate the Palestinian people, whether fully or partially. When such intent is coupled with the deliberate killing of even a few people solely because they are Palestinian, the legal conditions for genocide and crimes against humanity are met.
Under international law, including the 1948 Genocide Convention, intent to destroy a group "in whole or in part" is a defining element. Proof of intent does not require mass killing, but rather a clear and deliberate attempt to undermine the group's existence, whether through physical destruction or other means. When a state or leadership articulates this intent and acts on it, even with limited casualties, it satisfies the legal threshold for genocide.
Moreover, the act of killing is not required to establish genocide or crimes against humanity. Simply creating conditions that could lead to the destruction of part or all of a group is sufficient. In the case of Gaza, the conditions imposed by Israel over the past 17 years, especially the deteriorating and horrific circumstances of the past 11 months, provide a clear basis for establishing genocide. These conditions alone—without even accounting for the ongoing mass killings—already meet the legal threshold for genocide, as they demonstrate intent to destroy the Palestinian population, at least in part.
Now, consider this legal framework in light of the actual mass killing of more than 40,000 civilians, including 20,000 children, with potentially five times more victims trapped under rubble or killed by the circumstances created by Israel. This reality intensifies the case, adding further evidence of both genocide and crimes against humanity.
Another argument suggests that Israel's actions are a reaction to what Hamas did on October 7. However, this event must be viewed within the broader context of the crimes against humanity that Israel has been committing since at least 1948, starting with ethnic cleansing and ongoing acts of genocide—massacres and the creation of conditions for the destruction of the Palestinian group.
A stronger counterargument to this logic is that genocide can never be justified by any event, including acts of retaliation. Revenge has no place in international law when it comes to civilians. Collective punishment through genocide is still genocide, regardless of the claimed provocation.
Take, for example, the Armenian genocide, which is legally recognized in Europe. This genocide occurred directly after massacres committed by extremist Armenian groups in Turkish and Kurdish towns. From a legal standpoint, that is irrelevant. Similarly, the Rwandan genocide is not justified by the massacres carried out by Tutsi opposition forces in some Hutu villages, or by the assassination of the country's president through the downing of his helicopter. None of that matters. Committing genocide as an act of revenge does not change the fact of the genocide itself. It’s like saying, "I went into my neighbor’s house and killed him, his wife, and their children because he killed my brother." The fact that he killed my brother does not change that I am a monster and should be punished for my horrific crime. This is in criminal law, which deals with individual human behavior driven by emotions, impulses, and instincts. How much worse, then, when it comes to state institutions, members of the United Nations, which claim to be democratic.
What is happening in Gaza is a crime against humanity and a genocide, fully defined and proven. This will be established legally sooner or later and will be recognized historically, culturally, and academically. But Gaza is different from everything that came before, especially since the end of the Cold War, because it is a genocide happening before the eyes of the entire world, with the blessing of those who claim to be the “free world,” and direct support for the killer through weapons, money, and media.
This is something that has not happened anywhere in the world since the 1990s, except in Palestine on a smaller scale. After the 1990s, international institutions would rush to hold perpetrators of crimes against humanity accountable, as if to say, "This is the red line between politics and humanity." Even when they could not hold them accountable or did not have the power to do so, they would at least impose sanctions or, in the worst cases, condemn and denounce the actions.
In contrast, now, the United States threatens the International Criminal Court, mocks the International Court of Justice, welcomes the killer, and applauds him in Congress.
Gaza is the final reckoning. It will either signal the collapse of the arrogance embodied by the United States, its client Israel, and their allies, or it will shatter the very illusion of an international community governed by law and justice. This is an end without a horizon, a closing chapter that may well herald the demise of long-standing ideas, institutions, and myths—those that have propped up the façade of a civilized global order and the belief in a system rooted in the rule of law.
If Gaza is allowed to fall into the abyss of forgotten atrocities, it will be the death knell for any hope that international law holds meaning. The failure to act, to intervene, to uphold justice in the face of genocide and collective punishment will expose the international community as little more than a convenient fiction, a smokescreen behind which power and impunity reign supreme. The collapse will not only be Gaza's but the unraveling of the global order itself.
* The writer is President of the March 30 Movement
