5 thoughts on “Washington Post article cites me on genocide in the Israel-Hamas war”
“a distinguished genocide scholar” indeed. Well done.
Dear Dr. Shaw,
I read both your 10/15 article and this one. I found no mention of Hamas using human shields for their military attacks. It’s been quite extensively documented that Hamas used human shields and civilian infrastructures such as schools, hospitals and mosques in the past conflicts and the current one. How many destructions, if not all, were due to Hamas’ abuse of civilian infrastructures, which would vastly undermine the premise that Israel intentionally destroys civilian infrastructures as a whole or in part?
He
True, but if Israel knows that these are schools, hospitals and mosques, full of civilians, they are still targeting civilians – whoever is in a tunnel underneath.
Zionist propaganda claims that Hamas uses human shields that are Palestinian civilians. There is no credible evidence to support the claim.
In contrast, the kibbutzim of the Gaza envelope were originally military bases whose purpose was to make sure that the it would be impossible to reverse the genocide that started with the Nakba. The Israeli government later put civilians on these military bases.
This use of civilian seems to be an example of human shield for a military base. This example is a routine and standard practice of the Zionist state. The practice goes back to the mandatory period.
The Washington Post cites Martin Shaw’s earlier article that contains the following passage.
“In the terminology of genocide scholars, the war is one of asymmetrical counter-genocide. Hamas’ killings of Israeli civilians constituted a wave of “genocidal massacres,” localized mass killings whose victims were defined by their Israeli-Jewish identity; their escalated rocket attacks are a more diffuse kind of anti-civilian violence that, in the current context, serve to sustain the terror of the original attacks. The purpose of these assaults in relation to the Israeli population as a whole appears to be purely exemplary — they cannot represent a threat of total destruction because Hamas is in no position to inflict that on Israel. (The concept of the genocidal massacre, first proposed by the pioneering genocide scholar Leo Kuper 40 years ago, is a logical extension of the notion in the convention that genocide can include destroying a group “in part.”)”
The above text has no legal content, and long before the Holocaust Lemkin discussed “acts of barbarism” that he would later call genocidal acts and that included instances of massacre. In the definition of genocide, Lemkin never referred to murder of every member of a group. He explicitly rejected a requirement of such murder. Destruction is not synonymous with murder.
The legal definition of genocide includes a number of acts, any of which is a genocidal act and constitutes genocide if dolus specialis of genocide is present. Murder is not required for genocide.
While it is easy to demonstrate that the Zionist movement since the 1880s and the Zionist state since its creation have both had dolus specialis of genocide, it is much harder to demonstrate even by clear and convincing evidence that Hamas has dolus specialis of genocide.
When a native resistance movement kills an occupier, such a killing is a criminal act. Why was no member of a native resistance movement indicted for such a crime after WW2? Because the native resistance had the active defense that asserted it was defending the native group against murder or against genocide. This active defense is available to Hamas.
Martin Shaw 
“a distinguished genocide scholar” indeed. Well done.
Dear Dr. Shaw,
I read both your 10/15 article and this one. I found no mention of Hamas using human shields for their military attacks. It’s been quite extensively documented that Hamas used human shields and civilian infrastructures such as schools, hospitals and mosques in the past conflicts and the current one. How many destructions, if not all, were due to Hamas’ abuse of civilian infrastructures, which would vastly undermine the premise that Israel intentionally destroys civilian infrastructures as a whole or in part?
He
True, but if Israel knows that these are schools, hospitals and mosques, full of civilians, they are still targeting civilians – whoever is in a tunnel underneath.
Zionist propaganda claims that Hamas uses human shields that are Palestinian civilians. There is no credible evidence to support the claim.
In contrast, the kibbutzim of the Gaza envelope were originally military bases whose purpose was to make sure that the it would be impossible to reverse the genocide that started with the Nakba. The Israeli government later put civilians on these military bases.
This use of civilian seems to be an example of human shield for a military base. This example is a routine and standard practice of the Zionist state. The practice goes back to the mandatory period.
The Washington Post cites Martin Shaw’s earlier article that contains the following passage.
“In the terminology of genocide scholars, the war is one of asymmetrical counter-genocide. Hamas’ killings of Israeli civilians constituted a wave of “genocidal massacres,” localized mass killings whose victims were defined by their Israeli-Jewish identity; their escalated rocket attacks are a more diffuse kind of anti-civilian violence that, in the current context, serve to sustain the terror of the original attacks. The purpose of these assaults in relation to the Israeli population as a whole appears to be purely exemplary — they cannot represent a threat of total destruction because Hamas is in no position to inflict that on Israel. (The concept of the genocidal massacre, first proposed by the pioneering genocide scholar Leo Kuper 40 years ago, is a logical extension of the notion in the convention that genocide can include destroying a group “in part.”)”
The above text has no legal content, and long before the Holocaust Lemkin discussed “acts of barbarism” that he would later call genocidal acts and that included instances of massacre. In the definition of genocide, Lemkin never referred to murder of every member of a group. He explicitly rejected a requirement of such murder. Destruction is not synonymous with murder.
The legal definition of genocide includes a number of acts, any of which is a genocidal act and constitutes genocide if dolus specialis of genocide is present. Murder is not required for genocide.
While it is easy to demonstrate that the Zionist movement since the 1880s and the Zionist state since its creation have both had dolus specialis of genocide, it is much harder to demonstrate even by clear and convincing evidence that Hamas has dolus specialis of genocide.
When a native resistance movement kills an occupier, such a killing is a criminal act. Why was no member of a native resistance movement indicted for such a crime after WW2? Because the native resistance had the active defense that asserted it was defending the native group against murder or against genocide. This active defense is available to Hamas.