7. Plausible Genocide

October 7th Massacre & The War on Palestinian Life, 2023-Present

We are living through a period of history marked by astronomical violence systematically targeted at civilians. On October 7, 2023, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups perpetrated war crimes, massacring Israeli residents of southern towns and villages. Immediately thereafter, the Israeli government began its plausible genocide in Gaza, annihilating Palestinian life and the essential means to live in Gaza.

Many UN experts, scholars of genocide, and human rights organizations have concluded that the Israel government’s war on Palestinian life in Gaza amounts to the high crime of genocide under the Genocide Convention. They point to clear statements of genocidal intent by officials at the highest levels of Israeli political power, as well the actions and statements of Israeli soldiers on the ground. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) meanwhile has ordered the Israeli government to prevent genocide, finding that the violence it is carrying out is plausibly a genocide. The court will likely take several years to issue its final ruling. In the meantime, the slaughter continues.

As horrific as the current war on Palestinian life is, it has also sparked a global outpouring of solidarity with the cause of Palestinian liberation. From university encampments to mass street protests, from candlelit vigils to this very Sumud study group, so many people are standing up against genocidal bloodshed and for racial justice in Israel/Palestine.

Standing against violence is just as important as standing for justice. No justice, no peace. Indeed, the Israeli government’s genocidal bloodshed stems from the racial injustice and inequality inherent to Zionism as a settler-colonial, Jewish supremacist ideology. Of course, racial injustice has also motivated other crimes we’ve studied, such as Apartheid and ethnic cleansing (both of which are ongoing). Finally, racial injustice is at the heart of Israeli and U.S. denial of self-determination to the indigenous (Palestinian) people of this shared land.

How will we promote equality, justice, peace, reconciliation and de-colonization after we finally bring the genocidal bloodshed to a stop?

Plausible Genocide: October 7 & the War on Palestinian Life (2023-Present)

Quaker Testimony

Our Quaker Testimony for contemplation this week is Community. At its core, Community is a vehicle to live our authentic selves in relation to one another, while also balancing the needs of the individual and the group. Friends value the gathered community as a way to make group decisions through discernment, find and provide support to one another, and collectively seek divine will. Building community is not an easy task. It requires time, trust, vulnerability, and action to “provoke one another to love,” in the words of Friend Margaret Fell (1656). Community is forged, even and especially in a world afflicted by lies, injustice, and violence.

With love, social justice and equal opportunity at its core, community can become the “beloved community” that Dr. Martin Luther King preached of. And just as phenomena such as love and the divine are expansive and uncontainable, so too can community exceed the boundaries of a single faith community or country, to take on global proportions. The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) describes the world we seek as follows: “We seek a world free of war and the threat of war. We seek a society with equity and justice for all. We seek a community where every person’s potential may be fulfilled. We seek an earth restored.”

Quakers have not always been faithful to the testimony of Community. Indeed, Friends have excluded black and indigenous people from community and actively harmed them. This has led many black Quakers and other Friends of color to reenvision beloved community and take the lead in building it. The same calling to build beloved community on a foundation of racial justice motivates Palestinian Quakers living under Israeli Apartheid to work toward equality and reconciliation, as well as non-Palestinian Quakers to stand up in solidarity. A focus on Community is particularly important today in the midst of the Israeli government’s plausible genocide in Gaza, which has not only taken the lives of so many innocents, but also uprooted nearly two million people from their homes and neighborhoods and systematically destroyed communal institutions like universities, museums, schools, cultural centers, mosques, churches, and hospitals.

What can we learn of Community from the example set by Palestinians in their resilience and determination (sumud) to rebuild their communities in the face of the plausible genocide that seeks to take their lives and destroy their society? What does faithfulness to the Testimony of Community require of us given that the Israeli government’s ongoing plausible genocide is funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars and perpetrated with U.S. bombs?

Teach-In Slides

Feel free to pull up the slides for our session on your personal device. They will also be displayed on screen.

Films

From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza, Oscar-shortlisted film, Watermelon Pictures, 2024

American Historical Assoc. Votes Overwhelmingly for Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza, Democracy Now, January 6, 2025

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan on Doctors and the Gaza Genocide, on Useful Idiots, January 5, 2025

‘Total Moral, Ethical Failure’: Holocaust Scholar Omer Bartov on Israel’s Genocide in Gaza, Democracy Now, December 30, 2024

‘A Genocidal Project’: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah on Israel’s Destruction of Gaza Health System, Democracy Now, December 30, 2024

Christ is Still in the Rubble, Rev. Munther Isaac of the Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, December 20, 2024

Lifelines: Aid Workers in Gaza, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), December 10, 2024

Interview with Amnesty International researcher Bodour Hassan on the Genocide Israel is Committing in Gaza, Democracy Now, December 6, 2024

The Concept of Genocide and the Destruction of Gaza, with Dirk Moses, Georgetown University ACMCU, December 3, 2024

Rashid Khalidi: This genocide ‘worse than any phase of Palestinian history’, Al Jazeera UpFront, November 29, 2024

Mohammed El-Kurd, This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide, Oxford Union, November 28, 2024

Susan Abulhawa, This House Believes Israel is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide, Oxford Union, November 28, 2024

To Kill a People, Chris Hedges at UCSB, November 23, 2024

All That Remains: After losing her leg in an Israeli strike, Leyan fights for a new beginning, Al Jazeera Fault Lines documentary, November 20, 2024

Palestinian representative’s extraordinary reply to US envoy on ceasefire veto, Majed Bamyan, November 20, 2024

’A Campaign of Genocide’: Noura Erakat Speak to Ta-Nehisi Coates About Israel’s War on Gaza, Riverside Church, November 10, 2024

‘Genocide as Colonial Erasure’: U.N. Expert Francesca Albanese on Israel’s ‘Intent to Destroy’ Gaza, October 31, 2024

Anatomy of Genocide in Gaza, with Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Georgetown University, October 30, 2024