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A Textbook Case of Genocide

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Summary

Raz Segal, writing in Jewish Currents on October 13, 2023, argues that Israel’s assault on Gaza, begun after Hamas’s October 7 attack, is “a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes” (A Textbook Case of Genocide, line 70): the Genocide Convention’s intent element is, he argues, loudly proclaimed in Yoav Gallant’s October 9 “complete siege” order and its “human animals” language, three of the Convention’s five acts are being perpetrated, and the campaign to displace Gazans is another chapter in the Nakba.

What the file is

  • An Analysis article in Jewish Currents, published October 13, 2023 as displayed in the text copy (line 54) and in the original HTML’s structured data (datePublished 2023-10-13), downloaded from https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide (access basis: publisher-free). The original is the HTML page; the text copy supplied with it (about 1,596 words, lines 1-182) is a plain-text rendering of that page, with no page markers, so locators are line numbers.
  • The article itself runs lines 68-80: six paragraphs and a Correction. The rest of the text copy is the page frame: navigation and controls (lines 1-67, with the title, standfirst, byline and photo caption at lines 49-58), then a letter-to-the-editor link, a donation appeal, the author’s biography, listings for other pieces, newsletter signups and the magazine footing (lines 82-182).
  • Text quality: the article’s prose is clean and complete in both copies. The page date “October 11, 2026” at line 41 and the ”© 2026” footing at line 158 belong to the page as captured, not to the 2023 piece (see Open questions).

Section by section

  • Opening — the evacuation order (line 68): on Friday Israel ordered the population of northern Gaza to evacuate south, warning it would intensify its attack on the upper half; more than a million people, half of them children, were fleeing amid airstrikes in a walled enclave with no safe destination. Segal quotes Palestinian journalist Ruwaida Kamal Amer writing that day from Gaza and the UN’s warning, and gives the week’s toll as he states it: more than 1,800 Palestinians killed, thousands injured, more than 400,000 displaced within the Strip. Netanyahu promised that day that what had been seen was “only the beginning.”
  • Thesis — a chapter in the Nakba, and genocide (line 70): the campaign to displace Gazans, and potentially expel them into Egypt, is another chapter in the Nakba, in which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in the 1948 war. Segal states his standing as a scholar of genocide and lists his earlier subjects — settler colonialism and Jewish supremacy in Israel, distortion of the Holocaust to boost the Israeli arms industry, weaponization of antisemitism accusations, and the racist regime of Israeli apartheid — and frames the moment as following Hamas’s attack on Saturday and “the mass murder of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians”.
  • Intent (line 72): the Convention definition and Gallant’s October 9 declaration are given in full (see Key passages). Segal argues Western leaders reinforced the rhetoric: Joe Biden’s “an act of sheer evil” and Ursula von der Leyen’s “ancient evil” for Hamas’s attack — which Segal himself calls a war crime under international law. The absolutism of “evil”, he argues, elides distinctions between Hamas militants and Gazan civilians and occludes colonization and occupation.
  • Acts (line 74): three of the Convention’s five acts are being perpetrated (quoted in Key passages). The Israeli Air Force, by its own account, had dropped more than 6,000 bombs; Human Rights Watch had confirmed phosphorous bombs among the weapons. Gallant’s “act accordingly” means, Segal argues, not targeting individual Hamas militants but deadly violence against Palestinians in Gaza “as such”. The 16-year siege — “the longest in modern history, in clear violation of international humanitarian law” — had been intensified to a “complete siege”, indexing a plan of systematic destruction by killing, starving, cutting off water and bombing hospitals.
  • Public genocidal language (line 76): a Channel 14 interviewee’s call to “turn Gaza to Dresden”, a Channel 12 report on Israelis calling to “dance on what used to be Gaza”, omnipresent calls to “erase” and “flatten” Gaza on Israeli social media, and a “Zero Gazans” banner on a bridge in Tel Aviv.
  • Explicitness, the Herero and Nama precedent, and the closing charge (line 78): perpetrators usually do not state intent so clearly; the exception Segal gives is German colonial genocide in southwest Africa — Lothar von Trotha’s 1904 “extermination order”, justified as a “race war”, after which by 1908 the authorities had murdered 10,000 Nama and 65,000 Herero, 80% of the population, achieving their stated goal of “destroying the Herero” (see Herero and Nama Genocide). Gallant’s orders were no less explicit: “Israel’s goal is to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza.” The world watching is derelict in its responsibility to prevent it.
  • Correction (line 80): the piece’s earlier Afghanistan comparison is corrected — the US dropped more than 7,000 bombs on Afghanistan in both 2018 and 2019; at publication Israel had dropped an estimated 6,000 bombs on Gaza in less than a week.

Key passages

  • “But the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.” (line 70)
  • The Convention definition as Segal quotes it: “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such” (line 72)
  • Gallant, quoted by Segal: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.” (line 72)
  • The three acts: “1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” (line 74)
  • “Indeed, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed.” (line 78)
  • “Israel’s goal is to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza.” (line 78)

Evidence the work relies on

  • The December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, for both the intent definition and the list of five acts, three of which Segal says are being perpetrated (lines 72, 74).
  • Gallant’s October 9, 2023 statement, quoted in full, as the proclaimed intent; Netanyahu’s “only the beginning” promise the same day as the piece (lines 68, 72).
  • Statements by Biden and von der Leyen, each quoted in a short phrase, as Western reinforcement of dehumanizing rhetoric (line 72).
  • Ruwaida Kamal Amer, quoted writing from Gaza that day, and the UN’s warning, quoted in short phrases, for conditions under the evacuation order (line 68).
  • The Israeli Air Force’s own account, as Segal presents it, for the figure of more than 6,000 bombs dropped; Human Rights Watch’s confirmation, as Segal presents it, that the weapons included phosphorous bombs (line 74).
  • Israeli broadcast and social-media items as Segal presents them: the Channel 14 interviewee, the Channel 12 report, social-media verbs and the Tel Aviv banner (line 76).
  • The Herero and Nama genocide of 1904-1908, with von Trotha’s order and the death figures Segal gives, as the historical exception to perpetrators’ usual silence about intent (line 78).
  • No footnotes, bibliography or links are given in the text copy for any of these; each item is presented in Segal’s own prose.

Analysis

  • Method: a short legal-rhetorical argument, not a documented report. Segal takes the Convention’s two elements in order — intent first, then acts — and builds the intent case almost entirely from stated language: one ministerial order, two Western leaders’ phrases, and a sample of broadcast, social-media and street language. The acts case rests on the bombing scale, the phosphorous confirmation and the siege, each in a single sentence.
  • Perspective: Segal writes explicitly as a scholar of genocide whose earlier work, listed in the piece, already treated Israeli violence against Palestinians through settler colonialism, Jewish supremacy and apartheid; the Nakba framing places October 2023 inside that longer account rather than treating it as a new question.
  • Limits, on the piece’s own terms: it is dated October 13, 2023, six days into the assault, and its figures are those of that week; it names only three of the Convention’s five acts and does not discuss the other two; it gives no source for its tolls or the Herero and Nama figures, its bomb figure being the Air Force’s own account as Segal reports it; and its one self-correction, on the Afghanistan comparison, is recorded in the piece itself. Whether its legal conclusion holds is contested by other ingested sources; see How it relates to other sources.

People, organizations, places and events

Raz Segal, Ruwaida Kamal Amer, Yoav Gallant, Benjamin Netanyahu, Joe Biden, Ursula von der Leyen, Lothar von Trotha, Jewish Currents, Human Rights Watch, Hamas, Gaza, Khan Younis, Herero and Nama Genocide, Gaza Siege, Nakba

Concepts

Genocide, Genocide Convention, Nakba, Settler Colonialism, Apartheid

How it relates to other sources

Open questions

  • The text copy’s page frame is dated October 11, 2026 (line 41) and its footing ”© 2026” (line 158), while the piece is dated October 13, 2023 (line 54) and the original HTML’s structured data gives datePublished 2023-10-13 and dateModified 2025-08-17; the frame dates are the capture’s, held here rather than reconciled.
  • One sentence in the Acts paragraph is a fragment as printed: “This turn of phrase that explicitly indexes a plan to bring the siege to its final destination of systematic destruction of Palestinians and Palestinian society in Gaza, by killing them, starving them, cutting off their water supplies, and bombing their hospitals.” (line 74). It is recorded as printed, not completed.
  • The piece attributes its bomb figure to the Israeli Air Force: “The Israeli Air Force, by its own account, has so far dropped more than 6,000 bombs on Gaza” (line 74), and the Correction repeats the figure as an estimated 6,000 (line 80). Its other figures are given without naming a source in the piece: the week’s tolls (more than 1,800 killed, more than 400,000 displaced), the Nakba’s estimated 750,000, and the Herero (65,000, 80%) and Nama (10,000) figures; they stand as Segal’s figures, as of October 13, 2023 where the piece dates them.
  • The piece says the Convention lists five acts and names three as being perpetrated; it does not name the remaining two.

Coverage

lines 1-182 of 182, read in full.

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