The official definition of genocide, as determined by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner on December 9, 1948, reads:
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide 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 Iran-backed, officially designated terrorist group Hamas -- along with other groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad -- on October 7, 2023, committed genocide in Israel.
Jews were murdered because they were the Jews. Israelis were murdered because they were Israelis. People were murdered because they were presumed to be the Jews or Israeli sympathizers with Jews. The decision to invade, murder, torture and kidnap was made by the Hamas leadership and reportedly "managed and planned" by Iran's Quds Force.
Hamas terrorists and Gazan civilians massacred approximately 1,200 people in southern Israel. Near the Gaza border, at the Supernova music festival alone, at least 260 people were murdered, with some women raped before being tortured and slaughtered.
Captured Hamas members, under interrogation, said about their actions in Israeli communities:
- "The plan was to go from home to home, from room to room, to throw grenades and kill everyone, including women and children"; "Hamas ordered us to crush their heads and cut them off, [and] to cut their legs";
- "Hamas's orders were to kill young men" and to "kidnap the elderly, women and children".
Many of those hostages, taken against Article 34 of Geneva IV, are still in the hands of Hamas.
One of the Hamas terrorists (according to the laws of war, they are called "combatants"), called his parents after having murdered 10 Jews in Kibbutz Mefalsim near the Gaza border: "Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!... Mom, your son is a hero!"
There are many reports like that. Their genocidal aim, clear to the Hamas terrorists, was to murder Jews; others, such as Asians and Muslims, were also murdered. What is illuminating is how easily the civilized world, in this instance, accepted that as well as the abduction of 250 hostages. Those who slaughter and take hostages should be the subject of disgrace and condemnation. Instead, frequently, they were celebrated.
Israel, of necessity, responded to this massacre. Israel's goals, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called by Andrew Roberts "the Churchill of the Middle East," are "returning hostages from Gaza, eliminating Hamas' military and governing capabilities, ensuring that Gaza will not constitute a threat against Israel and also returning displaced Israeli residents securely to their homes in both the south and the north."
Israel's goal is not to destroy the Palestinians, Arabs or Gazan civilians. Unfortunately, there are innocent victims in every war. If Hamas chooses to fight in dense urban areas, among its own civilians, there will be even more civilian casualties. Israel, which always goes out of its out of its way to prevent civilian casualties among its opponents, is always nevertheless blamed for them -- by Hamas, by European officials, and by the "progressive" and often racist media (the "genocide" libel).
"Israel Implemented More Measures to Prevent Civilian Casualties Than Any Other Nation in History," wrote the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, John Spencer; and, "Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare: Why Will No One Admit it?"
To minimize casualties in its reaction to October 7, the Israeli military sent approximately 15 million text messages, 12 million recorded phone messages and made more than 40,000 personal phone calls to residents of Gaza, informing them when and where to evacuate from areas in which they might be endangered.
By contrast, Hamas was broadcasting from mosques with orders for Gazans to stay put; blocking roads leading to safety (here and here), and even shooting its own citizens to keep them from fleeing (here, here and here).
The situation of displaced Gazans -- temporary evacuations are allowed by Geneva IV, Article 49 -- is certainly unfortunate; however, the main problem is the aggressive nature of Iran's and Hamas's totalitarian regimes. That is what has led to the October 7 massacre and is the seminal reason for the war and the Gazan casualties.
It is, in fact, Iran and Hamas that should be on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Moreover, in the Hamas covenants, there is no room for an Israel or for any "Zionist project".
The result of literal, systematic and historical interpretations of the Hamas Covenants of both 1988 and 2017 leads one to conclude that Iran and Hamas want to murder Jews and wipe Israel off the map.
Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization, openly states that it wants to replace Israel with a new Arab, Islamist state. "Hamas's genocidal intentions," The Atlantic points out, "were never a secret."
The opening section of the 1988 Hamas Covenant reads:
"'Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it' (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory)."
Article 7 reads:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem)".
Article 11 reads:
"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that.... As for the real ownership of the land and the land itself, it should be consecrated for Moslem generations till Judgement Day."
Article 13 reads:
"Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement."
Article 15 reads:
"...Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem.... It is necessary to instill the spirit of Jihad in the heart of the nation so that they would confront the enemies and join the ranks of the fighters.... It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.
The 1988 Hamas Covenant was never cancelled or repudiated. Speaking in Gaza City, Mahmoud al Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas, said in 2017 that the political policy document announced in Qatar by Hamas's outgoing chief Khaled Mashaal "did not contradict its founding covenant, published in 1988":
GAZA (Reuters) - One of Hamas's most senior officials said on Wednesday a document published by the Islamist Palestinian group last week was not a substitute for its founding charter, which advocates Israel's destruction.
Speaking in Gaza City, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a regular critic of Israel, said the political policy document announced in Qatar on May 1 by Hamas's outgoing chief Khaled Meshaal did not contradict its founding covenant, published in 1988.
"The pledge Hamas made before God was to liberate all of Palestine," Zahar said on Wednesday. "The charter is the core of (Hamas's) position and the mechanism of this position is the document."
"When people say that Hamas has accepted the 1967 borders, like others, it is an offense to us," he said.
"We have reaffirmed the unchanging constant principles that we do not recognize Israel; we do not recognize the land occupied in 1948 as belonging to Israel and we do not recognize that the people who came here (Jews) own this land.
"Therefore, there is no contradiction between what we said in the document and the pledge we have made to God in our (original) charter," Zahar added.
Regrettably, the new 2017 Hamas Charter, which claims to have revised the 1988 Charter, did not.
Article 1 states:
"Its [Hamas's] goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project. Its frame of reference is Islam, which determines its principles, objectives and means.
Article 2 makes it clear that the idea is to destroy the State of Israel and replace it with a new Arab state:
"Palestine, which extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras al-Naqurah in the north to Umm al-Rashrash in the south, is an integral territorial unit. It is the land and the home of the Palestinian people. The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people from their land and the establishment of the Zionist entity therein do not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their entire land and do not entrench any rights therein for the usurping Zionist entity".
Article 20 states:
"Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
Article 22 continues:
"Hamas rejects all the agreements, initiatives and settlement projects that are aimed at undermining the Palestinian cause and the rights of our Palestinian people. In this regard, any stance, initiative or political programme must not in any way violate these rights and should not contravene them or contradict them."
Article 23 states:
"Resistance and jihad for the liberation of Palestine will remain a legitimate right, a duty and an honour for all the sons and daughters of our people and our Ummah.
The result of a legal interpretation of these documents is, sadly, that Hamas has a genocidal intent towards Israelis and Israeli Jews. Iran's Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei, trying to walk back a poster that called for a "final solution," claimed, "I want Israel destroyed, not all Jews."
Iran and Hamas have both repeatedly announced that they would like to destroy Israel as a state. Hamas, while openly asserting that it is a jihadist organization, plays a game of being a victim. Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of another Hamas co-founder, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, denounced the terrorist organization in an address at the UN on November 20, 2023:
"Today I can speak on the authority of [myself, having once been] a Palestinian child, someone who grew up in that culture...We're talking about a religious group that does not believe in political borders and wants to annihilate an entire race in order to build an Islamic state. I don't know what else can be said about this – and I don't know why it is not obvious to everybody.
"I was born at the heart of Hamas leadership... and I know them very well. They don't care for the Palestinian people... Hamas is not a national movement. Hamas is a religious movement with a goal to establish an Islamic state... They don't care for nationalism. Actually, they are against nationalism. But that's my understanding that they are using the Palestinian cause only to achieve their goals, so the long-term goal... [is] transforming the Middle East and the world into an Islamic state.... Iran is the real master in this picture.... Hamas does not serve the Palestinian people, Hamas serves Iran. Those are the masters of Hamas. So their lie about nationalism, that they are a national movement... They are using Palestinian people as a human shield."
A later report said of Yousef:
"The son of a Hamas founder said the terrorist group is even more dangerous than ISIS on Monday, adding that the mainstream media is afraid to call it a genocidal religious movement for fear of igniting a full-on religious war."
Yousef remarked in a Fox News interview:
"Hamas is a religious movement, and they are a raging religious movement against Israel. The mainstream media cannot say this because they are afraid to ignite a religious war. And what I say, it already is. They want to annihilate the Jewish people because they are Jewish people, because they are a Jewish state."
Dawid Bunikowski holds a PhD from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland (2009), and resides in North Karelia, eastern Finland. He was granted the academic title of Docent by the University of Lapland (Finland) on the request of the Arctic Centre (2022). He has published internationally, and been invited to lecture at European and non-European universities.
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