Tag: Martin Shaw

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Israel, Palestine, and the Poetics of Genocide by Mark LeVine and Eric Cheyfitz on Jadaliyya

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

For these reasons, we feel it is important to raise awareness about the expanding scholarly understanding of genocide precisely because such discussions can and should ultimately lead to similar discussions in the relevant international tribunals. The idea of establishing a scale of genocidal behavior (not to be confused with incitement, conspiracy, or intent to commit genocide) that would include the experiences of groups such as West Papuans and Palestinians, and in the process also reintegrate concepts like cultural and political genocide (originally termed “politicide”) into the matrix of legal meanings is worthy of study by scholars and advocates. Such an approach would seem to make room for the concepts of incipient (Shaw), incremental (Pappé), or slow motion (Anderson) genocides discussed here to become part of the legal discussion as the term evolves.

However, in the current legal environment, we believe it would be very difficult to prove that the Israeli government has intended or conspired to commit genocide during the occupation (whether incremental or concentrated). (Others have reached the opposite conclusion, including, most recently, an analysis published by the Center for Constitutional Rights titled “The Genocide of the Palestinian People: An International Law and Human Rights Perspective.”)

Continue reading at http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/26480/israel-palestine-and-the-poetics-of-genocide

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Israel Charny’s Attack on the Journal of Genocide Research and its Authors: A Response by Amos Goldberg, Thomas J. Kehoe, A. Dirk Moses, Raz Segal, Martin Shaw, and Gerhard Wolf

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Obviously, Charny’s main concern, reflecting his commitment to the State of Israel, is with Shaw’s application of the idea of genocide to Palestine. Shaw pointed out that “none of the ‘revisionist’ historians who now dominate the field doubts that deliberate Israeli policies made a substantial contribution to the destruction of the larger part of historical Arab society in Palestine.”
Shaw argued that this was true whether the 1948 removal was the result of Israel’s taking advantage of the “opportunity” to remove it, as Morris continues to argue, or also of extensive “pre-planning,” as Ilan Pappe’s more recent research suggests.41 In this light, Shaw proposed that, within the framework of a broad Lemkinian concept (in terms of which “ethnic cleansing” can be considered genocide), there is “prima facie a strong case for considering the [1948] events partially within a genocide framework.”

Continue reading at https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1436&context=gsp

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Pro-Israel Groups Smear the Movement for Black Lives for its Solidarity With Palestine by Sarah Lazare

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

In fact, growing numbers of global leaders and legal scholars have embraced the term “genocide” following Israel’s 51-day military assault on Gaza during the summer of 2014 that killed more than 2,100 residents and wounded over than 11,000. Among them is the late Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Martin Shaw, a leading expert on genocide from Roehampton University, has argued that the campaign of ethnic cleansing waged in 1948 by the Zionist movement to establish the state of Israel did indeed fit the definition of genocide.

Continue reading at http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/pro-israel-groups-smear-movement-black-lives-its-solidarity-palestine

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Genocide scholars pull out of Israel conference by Ali Abunimah

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

The vice-president of the International Network of Genocide Scholars has pulled out of the group’s conference at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, following appeals by Palestine solidarity campaigners. BDS South Africa, an organization supporting the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israel, has announced that University of Cape Town professor Mohamed Adhikari had informed it that he has withdrawn his presentation from the conference. The British genocide scholar Martin Shaw has also announced he is pulling out of the conference, which begins Sunday. Earlier this week, South Africa’s Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation also withdrew from the conference, citing concerns about Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights… At least 270 academics from 19 different countries heeded that call and signed their names to a letter urging conference organizers “to act in a principled way” and relocate the event to another country.

Continue reading at https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/genocide-scholars-pull-out-israel-conference

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Why I’m not discussing genocide in Jerusalem by Martin Shaw

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Thus far, I am sympathetic to the ambitions for this conference. Its programme is impressive. My absence, however, is not accidental. It is one thing to avoid political commitments, as INOGS has managed to do up to now. It is another, when holding an event in a site of conflict, to accept the position advocated by one side and to reject the position adopted by the other. Whether INOGS likes it or not, the academic boycott of Israel is part of this conflict.

Continue reading at https://martinshaw.org/2016/06/24/why-im-not-discussing-genocide-in-jerusalem/

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Against the proposed Europe-wide legal ban on genocide denial by Martin Shaw

The report is considerably motivated by the desire to stem (indeed ban) anti-semitism. However we know that contemporary European anti-semitism, while rooted in jihadist ideology as well as historic legacies, is hugely stimulated by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, as the big spike following last summer’s Israeli atrocities in Gaza showed. Israel has instrumentalised the Holocaust while simultaneously banning commemoration of the Nakba. Netanyahu is now shamelessly instrumentalising the recent genocidal mini-massacre of Jews in Paris. I argue that to weaken anti-semitism, rather than reinforcing these Israeli narratives by banning Holocaust denial, it is necessary to seek a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians and to challenge Israeli ideology. Recognition of the Nakba could be a powerful step in that direction. The European Council on Toleration and Reconciliation would have done better to focus on.this alternative agenda.

Continue reading at http://martinshaw.org/2015/01/28/against-the-proposed-europe-wide-legal-ban-on-genocide-denial/

TAKE ACTION now and write a letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. Make sure to post a copy of the letter in our comments as well, so we can publish it.
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Let’s Talk About Genocide: Inferring Israel’s Genocidal Intent by Tali Shapiro

Contrary to the analysis of the Dugard report, both Ryan and Shaw’s arguments point to the conclusion that the additional “several reasonable conclusions”available, actually allow us to infer genocidal intent from the factual circumstances, rather than not:

the ICTR recognized that— since, absent extraordinary circumstances or a confession, direct evidence of genocidal intent will very rarely if ever be available— courts must rely on inferences from the surrounding factual circumstances in order to determine whether a defendant acted with the requisite genocidal intent. [Ryan, p. 151]

Factual Circumstances: A Roadmap to Genocide

Ryan goes on to list “four key factors… that courts look to when engaging in this highly-contextual analysis” [p.152]:

1. statements indicating genocidal intent;

2. the scale of the atrocities committed;

3. systematic targeting of the protected group; and

4. evidence suggesting that commission of the genocidal actus reus was consciously planned.

Continue reading at http://pulsemedia.org/2014/11/13/lets-talk-about-genocide-inferring-israels-genocidal-intent/

TAKE ACTION now and write a letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. Make sure to post a copy of the letter in our comments as well, so we can publish it.