Explained: What is genocide? Is Israel committing genocide against Palestinians?

War has become the new normal in the 21st century and so is the reporting and writing of articles about it. Last year, the Russia-Ukraine war started and, this year in October, the Israel-Hamas war broke out which led to thousands of deaths, including children, on both sides.

Palestinians, a section of media, and some prominent figures, have claimed that Israel is carrying out genocide in the Gaza Strip in their act of retaliation to the October 7 assault by Hamas, which according to Israeli authorities killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

A Palestinian ambassador told UN member states on Thursday (Nov 16) that the world must "wake up" to the massive violations that Israel is committing in Gaza.

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He insisted it was a "genocide".

Palestinian ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi told a gathering of UN member states in Geneva: "You should wake up in this room. This is a massacre, this is genocide, and we're seeing it on TV. It cannot continue."

Not just Israel-Hamas, in any war, it's the civilians who get caught in the crossfire, and the death of common people becomes the basis of all definitions, whether it's war crime, crimes against humanity or genocide.

But what exactly is genocide?

In simple terms, the intentional killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group is regarded as genocide.

The United Nations Genocide Convention in 1948 defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

A document by the UN mentioned that Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin first coined the word "genocide" in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. The word consists of the Greek prefix genos, which means race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, which means killing.

Lemkin used the term genocide in response to the "systematic" murder of Jews during the Holocaust, not just this, but also in reference to past instances in history of targeted actions against specific groups of people.

He then launched a campaign to have genocide recognised as an international crime and was successful as the term was codified as an independent crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). UN said that a total of 153 States (as of April 2022) have ratified the Convention.

What does ICJ say?

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has stated often that the Convention includes principles of general customary international law, which means that a nation is obligated by the premise that genocide is a crime under international law whether or not it has ratified the Genocide Convention.

"The ICJ has also stated that the prohibition of genocide is a peremptory norm of international law (or ius cogens) and consequently, no derogation from it is allowed," the UN document noted.

Watch:Israel-Hamas war: Differences in the 'axis of resistance'?

Definition of the crime of genocide

The UN document said that in the present Convention, genocide means acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

The acts include, (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

It is easier to understandthe theoretical aspect, but it is a massive challenge to prove the intention of genocide. For example, to put forward a case, one needs to prove that the perpetrator not only committed the actions, but they had the specific intent of destroying the group.

For example in the ongoing Israel war, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel's action was a reaction to what Hamas militants did on October 7. He called it retaliation with an aim to destroy Hamas, which according to Israel is a terrorist group, and free the hostages. There must be a proven intent to physically destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

However, some scholars have argued that there's intent as many Israelis referred to all Palestinians as "an enemy population" and they used words like "destroy", and "crush", for the militants.

A UN document read: "Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. It is this special intent, or dolus specialis, that makes the crime of genocide so unique."

"In addition, case law has associated intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy, even if the definition of genocide in international law does not include that element," it added.

It is now established that the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted, not randomly because of their actual or perceived association with groups protected under the Convention.

Genocide can also be committed against only a part of the group, as long as that part is identifiable and "substantial", says the UN as it further notes that the target of destruction must be the group and not its members as individuals.