Gaza and Genocide

“Genocide” has a legal definition that was unanimously adopted by the United Nations in 1948. It means “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” The U.S. and the other 40 founding nations also wrote and signed the Genocide Convention, establishing how the crime would be prevented and punished and obligating themselves to international cooperation and enforcement. In 1988, President Reagan also signed a bipartisan bill introduced by Senator Joe Biden and passed with unanimous congressional consent that adopted the U.N.’s…