When I see the word “genocide” in a headline, I read it with a particular sense of responsibility. Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish lawyer who coined the term and fought to establish it as a crime under international law, was my relative. His name gives me no special authority to decide a legal case. It does give me a responsibility to insist that a word created to protect human beings remain anchored in evidence and law.
That is why Navi Pillay’s appeal to defend international justice deserves a serious response. In an Oct. 12 interview with the Associated Press, the newly named Nobel Peace Prize winner urged support for the international legal system. She also chaired the UN commission that concluded Israel committed genocide in Gaza, a conclusion Israel rejects.
I agree that international law needs defending. But defending it requires scrutiny of those who invoke its authority. A Nobel Prize cannot settle a disputed legal conclusion. Neither can a government’s denial.
Raphael Lemkin helped name the destruction of human groups and build a framework to prevent and punish it. The Genocide Convention adopted in 1948 protects national, ethnic, racial and religious groups. Its protections belong to everyone.
That universality depends on precision. Genocide requires evidence of prohibited acts committed with the intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or in part, as such. The definition encompasses more than killing. It includes serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately imposed conditions of life calculated to bring about a group’s physical destruction, among other acts.
Intent essential for crime of genocide to apply
Intent is essential. It can be established through evidence of conduct and circumstances; perpetrators need not leave a written confession. But devastation alone does not automatically establish the particular intent genocide requires. Nor does a declared military objective automatically disprove it.
Pillay’s commission says it found that intent. A serious challenge to its conclusion must engage its evidence and reasoning. The questions are how the evidence establishes an intent to destroy Palestinians as a group, how competing explanations were assessed, and how statements by officials were connected to decisions and conduct.
These questions go to the basis of a grave conclusion. Asking them is part of taking international law seriously.
The distinction between a commission’s finding and a court’s judgment also matters. An investigative report can document atrocities and contribute important evidence. It is not the same as a judicial determination. The world deserves to know who reached a conclusion, how it reached it, and on what standard.
That distinction does not mean the world must wait for a final judgment before recognizing danger or acting to prevent atrocities. A convention dedicated to prevention cannot become an instruction to intervene only after the destruction is complete.
For Jewish readers, this debate reaches far beyond legal terminology. The Holocaust gives it a particular resonance for Jews, but the convention’s protection was never intended to belong to us alone.
An accusation against a government must not become an accusation against a people
Our history also makes us alert to the danger of collective blame. An accusation against a government must not become an accusation against a people. Jews everywhere must not be made collectively answerable for Israel’s conduct. Palestinians must not be made collectively answerable for Hamas.
That principle obliges us to look directly at Palestinian suffering. A child’s death does not become less terrible because its legal classification is disputed. Families deprived of food, shelter, or medical care do not have to win a terminology debate before their lives matter.
Protecting civilians, allowing and facilitating humanitarian relief, and investigating alleged crimes cannot wait for agreement on a label.
Challenging a genocide accusation does not require declaring every military action lawful. Recognizing civilian suffering does not require accepting every accusation made in its name. War crimes and crimes against humanity are grave crimes in their own right. Genocide is not a measure of whose suffering matters most.
There is danger in both directions. Using the term carelessly can turn it into an instrument of political condemnation. Refusing to consider it when the evidence warrants consideration can abandon people the convention was designed to protect.
A faithful defense of Lemkin’s legacy must confront both. The same discipline must apply whether the accused is an enemy, an ally, or our own government.
I want institutions that investigate allegations rigorously, explain their reasoning clearly and apply standards consistently, including when doing so angers powerful governments. I also want institutions whose conclusions can be questioned without every critic being branded an enemy of international justice.
Public confidence must be earned through evidence, fairness and a willingness to answer difficult questions. Governments cannot claim immunity from that scrutiny. International institutions cannot claim immunity from it, either.
Pillay is right that international law needs defenders. Those defenders should insist that no country is above scrutiny and no institution is beyond it.
My relative helped give the world a word it desperately needed. Our responsibility is to honor both the word and the obligation it created: to recognize genocide when the evidence establishes it, to resist using the accusation as a substitute for evidence, and to protect civilians whether or not that legal threshold is met.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.