Facts Matter Chris Gavaler
“Genocide” has a legal definition that was unanimously adopted by the United Nations in 1948. It means “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (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.”
The U.S. and the other 40 founding nations also wrote and signed the Genocide Convention, establishing how the crime would be prevented and punished and obligating themselves to international cooperation and enforcement. In 1988, President Reagan also signed a bipartisan bill introduced by Sen. Joe Biden and passed with unanimous congressional consent that adopted the U.N.’s definition of genocide into the U.S. legal code.
Today a total of 153 nations have joined the treaty, including Israel in 1949.
Following the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack that killed 1,200 people, Israel launched a military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
The 141-square-mile area is less than a quarter the size of Rockbridge. Including Lexington and Buena Vista, our population is about 36,000. Gaza has over 2 million people, almost half children. The Gaza population was only 80,000 in 1948. The civilian concentration is the direct and intended result of decades of forced displacements and blockades.
By December 2023, human rights monitors reported that Israel’s military campaign had killed 30,000 people, including more than 11,000 children, the vast majority through indiscriminate bombing.
Following treaty procedures, South Africa accused Israel of violating the Genocide Convention, and the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to “enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” U.N. experts added: “Israel cannot continue to bombard, displace, and starve the population of Gaza, while allowing its officials to dehumanise Palestinians through statements that may amount to genocidal incitement.”
Israel ignored the orders, as witnessed by multiple human watch organizations, which reported worsening conditions due to “acts of collective punishment that amount to war crimes and include the use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war.” In March 2024, the Court repeated and expanded its emergency orders, and in May it demanded an immediate halt to Israel’s military campaign. Israel refused.
By July 2025, Israel had doubled the Gaza death toll to over 60,000, roughly a third children. Where Germany dropped 18,000 tons of explosives on London during World War II, Israel had dropped 100,000 tons on the Gaza Strip – an area less than a quarter of London’s size.
That July a U.N. investigative commission found that Israeli security forces had “committed crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including extermination, torture, rape, sexual violence and other inhumane acts, inhuman treatment, forcible transfer, persecution based on gender and starvation as a method of warfare.”
In September 2025, the U.N. commission concluded that “Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have committed and are continuing to commit [acts] of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” that Israel authorities, including Prime Minister Netanyahu “have incited the commission of genocide,” that their statements are “direct evidence of genocidal intent,” and that “the State of Israel bears responsibility for … the commission of genocide … against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
The 15-member U.N. Security Council drafted a resolution, responding to the “catastrophic humanitarian situation” with a demand for an immediate ceasefire and “unconditional lifting of all restrictions” on humanitarian aid. The U.S. was the lone veto. The U.S. had also vetoed five earlier resolutions demanding humanitarian ceasefires. The following week, the U.N. General Assembly passed a similar resolution with a 149-nation majority. Only 12 nations voted no. They included the U.S. and Israel.
As of June 2026, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported over 73,000 deaths, including 1,000 since the October 2025 ceasefire. Over 173,200 people have been wounded. 90% of the Gaza Strip has been leveled by bombing. The roughly 2 million displaced Gazans suffer widespread malnutrition while concentrated in tent cities without sanitation, clean water, electricity, or medical care. The estimated death count does not include the thousands of bodies still buried under rubble or the continuing deaths caused by untreated disease.
Israel continues to block humanitarian aid.
Last month a U.N. commission further concluded that Israel committed genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes by targeting Palestinian children. According to the report, Israeli authorities and security forces “deliberately carried out acts inflicting death and severe bodily and mental harm on hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children,” including after the ceasefire.
The Israel government calls the report, like it calls all condemnations of its military actions in Gaza, antisemitic libel.
However, applying the 1948 Genocide Convention, Palestinians are unquestionably an “ethnical” group, and Israel has committed acts “with intent to destroy” by “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The U.S. government has aided and continues to aid this genocide.
(If you would like to learn more about Palestine, 50 Ways is hosting a series of Teach-Ins at the Rockbridge Library. For more information, write to 50waysrockbridge@ gmail.com.)
