The "genocide scholars" who cannot define genocide ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, September 02, 2025

The "genocide scholars" who cannot define genocide

The International Association of Genocide Scholars - of all groups - has now declared Israel guilty of genocide. But instead of expertise, what they bring is recycled propaganda.

One would think that the IAGS would have their own analysis - this is their supposed field of expertise, so they must have good reason to declare Israel guilty.

But if you read their letter, they do not do any independent analysis. They do no fact checking. They show no seriousness in their declaration.

Here's the first paragraph:

IAGS Resolution on the Situation in Gaza

Recognising that, since the horrific Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023, which itself constitutes international crimes, the government of Israel has engaged in systematic and widespread crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, including indiscriminate and deliberate attacks against the civilians and civilian infrastructure (hospitals, homes, commercial buildings, etc.) of Gaza, which, according to official UN estimates, at the date of this resolution, has killed more than 59,000 adults and children in Gaza;

The determination of genocide is not a conclusion. It is their premise.

And their proof is - everyone else says it is, so it must be!

Acknowledging that leading global international law organizations and UN bodies, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Forensic Architecture, DAWN, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, have conducted extensive investigations and issued reports concluding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza;

These scholars have outsourced their scholarship on the very subject that they claim to own!

The entire resolution includes links to sources like Al Jazeera, or links to wire services quoting Hamas institutions, to back up their statements. They cannot even give lip service to the idea that there are plenty of serious scholars who dismiss the allegations, based on a normal reading of the law.

I could not find a single research paper on their website that looked at Gaza and gave evidence of genocide. The lack of any substantive discussion, legal review, definitions, or analysis done by their own scholars is most strange when they issue a resolution of this kind.

However, the site does have one paper that discusses genocidal actions in the Gaza region. A scholar named Sara E. Brown wrote a short monograph on the IAGS site that says Hamas was guilty of genocide on October 7, 2023:

The terror attacks on October 7, 2023, will continue to reverberate across the Jewish community and broader society for years to come. This is the largest antisemitic massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. But as one scholar of genocide aptly pointed out to me, if the terrorists who crossed the fence between Gaza and Israel and perpetrated this slaughter could have killed more, they would have. Their intent was destruction, and their murderous aims were constrained only due to the limitations of their firepower and planning. They would not have paused in the midst of slaughtering, raping, and maiming to say, “we have done enough, let’s go back.” Rather, as their leadership asserts, they are committed to perpetrate the same crimes again and again. As a result, the threat of further Hamas perpetrated violence, terror, and genocide persists.

That paper recommends that "The International Association of Genocide Scholars must denounce Hamas’ genocidal violence, including the terror attack perpetrated against Israel on October 7, 2023, and Hamas’ threats of further genocidal violence."

The IAGS never did that. At the bottom of this paper, the only scholarly paper about Gaza on their site, they say, "The views expressed herein are the authors' alone and do not represent the views of IAGS as an organization."

To sum up: the IAGS website has published evidence of Hamas' genocidal aims and violence, and didn't say a word about it. It has not published any analysis whatsoever on Israel's alleged genocidal actions, and it condemned it.

It is difficult to ignore a broader trend which is apparent on the IAGS website and in academia altogether: the concept of genocide, once tightly defined around the Holocaust and similarly grave and exceptional events, is increasingly applied to modern armed conflicts, sometimes before hostilities have even ceased. Whether this is an effort to maintain academic relevance or a genuine shift in interpretive norms, the result is the same: genocide as a term risks becoming a rhetorical reflex rather than a juridical conclusion.

This is not a scholarly organization. This is a political organization whose only claim to gravitas is the phrase "genocide scholars" in their name.