LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The world's leading association of scholars who study genocide has declared that Israel's actions in Gaza meet that legal definition. In a detailed three-page resolution, the International Association of Genocide Scholars lists a range of actions from the mass displacement of Palestinians to what it calls systematic, indiscriminate and deliberate attacks on civilians, on homes, on hospitals in Gaza that it says demonstrates genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The resolution, which also called the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, on Israel an international crime, prompted an immediate condemnation from Israel. To discuss all this, we're joined by a member of the association's executive board, Emily Sample. Good morning, Emily, and welcome to the program.
EMILY SAMPLE: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
FADEL: So Israel's war has been going on for nearly two years. If you could, just briefly walk me through, what prompted your association to vote that the legal criteria for genocide, which really hinges on intent, has been met?
SAMPLE: So at this point, it has been several months of evidence-based gathering. And one of the things that is pivotal to our membership's resolution is that this is a membership-based authorship. So the executive board itself didn't author this, nor did we push this through our membership. This is entirely based on the authors who come to the resolutions committee with a resolution in hand. And that goes through our executive board, our advisory board and the resolutions committee and then goes out to the membership for a vote. So it was less that the association itself had delayed and rather that this is when we had members submit a resolution.
FADEL: Does this resolution reflect the majority of the organization's genocide scholars?
SAMPLE: I do believe it does. At this point, the resolution itself is put to a vote for our full voting membership, which is approximately 500 people. And for all of our resolutions, we require a quorum of 20% of our membership to vote on that. And so for most of our resolutions, including this one, that is about how many people vote. So this does represent a majority of that voting population.
FADEL: So you mean between 20% and 30% of the voting population?
SAMPLE: Yes.
FADEL: OK. And what was it specifically that convinced members that the definition had been met?
SAMPLE: One of the things about this resolution is that we allowed all of our members to come to their own scholarly choice on whether or not they believed this threshold had been met. So the resolution puts forward, as you noted, a huge amount of evidence and is heavily cited. But it was each of our members' individual scholarly acumen and analysis that allowed them to choose whether to vote to pass this resolution or not. Any member in our group is allowed to put forward a resolution, and no other resolution has been put forward.
FADEL: Now, Israel has rejected this resolution. In a post on X, Israel's foreign ministry called it, quote, "an embarrassment to the legal profession and to any academic standard." It added that, quote, "for the first time, genocide scholars accuse the very victim of genocide, despite Hamas' attempted genocide against the Jewish people, murdering 1,200 people," a reference to the October 7 attack. What is the association's response to these statements?
SAMPLE: Well, as you noted, this resolution does open with recognizing the Hamas-led attack is itself an international crime. No member has put forward a resolution recognizing that. So it's not that that has been ignored but rather that we are waiting for our membership to come forward on that, and that this is really focused on our membership being able to show that they have put forward their research, their own analysis and that they feel that this is a genocidal attack. And that is ultimately what they want to share with the world.
FADEL: Emily Sample is an executive board member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Thank you for your time.
SAMPLE: Thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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