IS ISRAEL GUILTY OF GENOCIDE OR ETHNIC CLEANSING OR BOTH?

The end game, according to the plan, isa permanently divided Gaza Strip, with Israel in indefinite control of the north until a new Palestinian administration could take over at some undefined time in the future.

- JOHN DOBSON

Israel is acting out the logic of genocide and not obeying the laws of war." Not my words, but those of the distinguished Israeli political scientist, Norman Finkelstein, speaking on the "India Global Left" YouTube channel last week. Debating Israel's reaction to the October 7th slaughter of innocent Israelis by Hamas, he claimed "what Israel decided to do on October 8th was 'no more mowing of the lawn," the metaphor used by Israel against Palestinian militants in Gaza to carry out short, sharp military operations to maintain a certain level of control over the Strip without committing to a long-term political solution.

Instead of mowing the lawn, Finkelstein believes that Israel decided on October 8th to once and for all "solve the Gaza problem." He was convinced that the genocidal statements made by Israeli leaders immediately after Hamas's atrocities, although later played down, are in fact currently unfolding in Gaza.

A MOVEMENT Finkelstein is a well know critic of Israel and its ruling class, calling the country a "Jewish supremacist state committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people". In one of his many books he even compares the plight of the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation with the horrors of the Nazis. This is strong stuff, especially as his own parents were Jewish Holocaust survivors. His mother was born in Poland and lived in the Warsaw Ghetto before being sent to the notorious Majdanek extermination camp near the ancient city of Lublin.

Finkelstein's father also survived the Ghetto and Auschwitz, meeting his bride-to-be in a displaced persons camp in Austria after the war before settling in the United States.

The pressure building against Israel at the International Court of Justice appears to be supporting Finkelstein.