When Is It Genocide?

What It Covers

Ezra Klein interviews international law expert Philippe Sands on the legal definition of genocide, examining whether Israel's actions in Gaza meet that threshold, the historical development of genocide law by Raphael Lemkin, and the gap between legal and colloquial understandings.

Key Questions Answered

• •Lemkin's Original Conception: Raphael Lemkin designed genocide law in the 1940s to protect groups from destruction through preparatory acts like restricting education, housing, and language use, not just mass killing. His definition set a lower bar than current international courts require, encompassing systematic degradation of group identity before extermination begins.
• •Legal Intent Standard: International courts require proving the only reasonable inference from actions is intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. This 2015 standard makes genocide extremely difficult to prove when states claim dual intentions like self-defense alongside destructive acts, creating a gap between legal definitions and public understanding of genocide.
• •Gaza Death Toll Context: Over 61,000 Palestinians killed represents proportionally 250 September 11th attacks for US population size. Israel dropped over 100,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, exceeding Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined during World War Two, with 70 percent of structures severely damaged or destroyed in territory the size of Detroit.
• •Famine as Weapon: Israel blockaded aid into Gaza for eleven weeks in March, replaced hundreds of UN distribution sites with four sites run by inexperienced American contractors, creating widespread famine. Using hunger as policy constitutes a war crime and crime against humanity under international law, regardless of genocide classification, with no military justification.
• •Historical Irony: Benjamin Netanyahu and Isaac Herzog both read Philippe Sands' book on genocide law's Jewish origins. The structure of international law protecting vulnerable groups without state power, created by Jewish lawyers Lemkin and Lauterpacht after losing entire families in the Holocaust, now faces potential destruction by the Jewish state itself.