The world’s biggest academic association of genocide scholars has passed a resolution saying the legal criteria have been met to establish that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, its president said on Monday.

Eighty-six per cent of those who voted among the 500-member International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) backed the resolution declaring Israel’s “policies and actions in Gaza” had met the legal definition set out in Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on genocide.

Israel launched its devastating assault on the Gaza Strip in October 2023, after fighters from Hamas attacked Israeli communities, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages. Since then, Israel’s military action has killed 63,000 people, damaged or destroyed most buildings in the territory and forced nearly all its residents to flee their homes at least once.

A global hunger monitor relied on by the United Nations says parts of the territory are now suffering a man-made famine, which Israel also denies.

The three-page resolution calls on Israel to “immediately cease all acts that constitute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity against Palestinians in Gaza, including deliberate attacks against and killing of civilians including children; starvation; deprivation of humanitarian aid, water, fuel, and other items essential to the survival of the population; sexual and reproductive violence; and forced displacement of the population”.

It also states that the Hamas attack on Israel, which precipitated the fighting, constituted international crimes.

“This is a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide,” the association’s president, Melanie O’Brien, a professor of international law at the University of Western Australia who specialises in genocide, told Reuters.

“There is no justification for the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, not even self-defence,” she added.

Israel’s foreign ministry called the statement disgraceful and “entirely based on Hamas’ campaign of lies”. Israel has in the past strongly denied that its actions in Gaza amount to genocide and claims they are justified as self-defence. It is fighting a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague that accuses it of genocide.

Convention adopted in wake of holocaust

The 1948 UN Genocide Convention, adopted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”. It requires all countries to act to prevent and stop genocide.

Since the genocide scholars’ association was founded in 1994, it has passed nine resolutions recognising historic or ongoing episodes as genocides.

The IAGS publishes a journal and holds regular international conferences of scholars studying genocide, and is considered the largest academic group in the field. Another group, the International Network of Genocide Scholars, also holds conferences and publishes a journal, but does not issue similar resolutions.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, head of the Gaza government media office, welcomed the resolution’s “prestigious scholarly stance”, which he said “places a legal and moral obligation on the international community to take urgent action to stop the crime, protect civilians, and hold the leaders of the occupation accountable”.

Sergey Vasiliev, a professor of international law at the Open University in the Netherlands who is not a member of the association, told Reuters the resolution showed that “this legal assessment has become mainstream within academia, particularly in the field of genocide studies”.

Several international rights groups and some Israeli NGOs have already accused Israel of committing genocide.

Last week, hundreds of UN staff at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk wrote to ask him to explicitly describe the Gaza conflict as an unfolding genocide, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters.