In a volley of op-eds and elsewhere, the critics lambasted the group’s membership and low voter turnout as suggesting a scholarly consensus that did not exist.

By Grace Gilson, JTA

Nearly 200 genocide, Holocaust and legal scholars are calling on the International Association of Genocide Scholars to retract its resolution finding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

In a letter finalized on Friday, the scholars charge the association with “critical errors” in its resolution, including failing to consider Hamas’ role in the deaths in Gaza and whether any explanation other than an intent to harm an entire group can explain the crisis there.

“It is critical that we not water down the legal elements of genocide for the purpose of advancing ideological positions and bias,” the letter says.

“Holocaust and genocide scholars can have legitimate concerns about Israeli conduct in Gaza without working to disparage the very legal standards that exist to protect people from these crimes.”

The letter’s signatories include former U.S. Department of Justice war crime prosecutor Eli M. Rosenbaum, former Hague legal fellow Isaac Amon; the Holocaust Museum of South Florida; and the pro-Israel attorney Alan Dershowitz, as well as several Holocaust educators and survivors’ children.

The letter represents an escalation of criticism of IAGS since its widely publicized resolution announced on Monday.

In a volley of op-eds and elsewhere, the critics lambasted the group’s membership and low voter turnout as suggesting a scholarly consensus that did not exist.

On Thursday, IAGS responded to the criticism, writing in a lengthy statement that its membership inbox had been spammed with messages employing fake names including “Adolf Hitler” and email addresses such as “f—kiags@retards.”

“The IAGS general email and members of the Executive Board have received a great deal of abusive hate mail and social media posts this week,” the statement read.

“Such responses are clearly unacceptable, and create an environment of harassment, bullying, and abuse.”

Accusations that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza have long been launched against the country over its nearly two-year war in the enclave, and have gained traction even among some of Israel’s staunchest supporters in recent months as Israel has continued its offensive following the end of a ceasefire earlier this year.

Israel rejects the allegation and condemned the IAGS resolution as an “embarrassment to the legal profession and to any academic standard.”

The group defended itself against criticism that the resolution had only been passed by a voter turnout of 28% of its membership, writing that members had been given 30 days to vote, and that the figure was within its typical range of votes for a resolution.

IAGS also responded to critics who had scrutinized the group’s members, writing that the inclusion of “artists, community scholars, NGOs, survivors, and others” was intended to “build a community of different populations.”

Members of IAGS who have received backlash include Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur, whom Israel and the Trump administration have accused of “virulent antisemitism and support for terrorism.”

“If we err, it’s on the side of inclusivity,” the statement read. “No system is perfect, but ours reflects our value of inclusion. The fact that this very democratic, inclusive policy is being exploited and criticised by trolls demonstrates their ignorance at the structures of scholarly organizations, and flies in the face of IAGS’ values (which attempts to include and champion minority voices/global majority voices that may not “look like” what we expect “expertise” to be).”

The letter calling on IAGS to retract its resolution said the association had fundamentally distorted a definition firmly established in international law in order to reach an ideological conclusion

“To persist in such distortion is to forsake the most elementary standards of law and scholarship,” the letter says. “It reduces the Association to farce, erodes the integrity of genocide studies, and undermines the very meaning of the crime itself.”

The post Hundreds of scholars call on genocide scholars group to retract declaration of genocide in Gaza appeared first on World Israel News.

To become an active IAGS member, one needs only to fill out a biographical form and pay a membership fee—$125 for a year, $210 for two years, or $1,200 for a lifetime.

By Collin Anderson, The Washington Free Free Beacon

When the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) passed a resolution declaring that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, mainstream media outlets from the New York Times to the Washington Post to Reuters described the association as a “leading” academic voice on the topic.

“On Monday,” the Times wrote, “the International Association of Genocide Scholars, a leading group of academic experts on the topic, declared that Israel’s policies and actions in Gaza met the legal definition of genocide.”

So what exactly is the IAGS? Though the association’s title indicates that the IAGS is composed of genocide scholars, its members actually include a swath of “academic scholars, human rights activists, students, museum and memorial professionals, policymakers, educators, anthropologists, independent scholars, sociologists, artists, political scientists, economists, historians, international law scholars, psychologists, and literature and film scholars,” according to its website.

Those who don’t fit one of those 17 titles need not be discouraged. To become an active IAGS member, one needs only to fill out a biographical form and pay a membership fee—$125 for a year, $210 for two years, or $1,200 for a lifetime.

Doing so provides access to the association’s internal Listserv, newsletter, job listing notifications, calls for papers, and biennial conferences.

It also unlocks the ability to “nominate individuals for and receive IAGS institutional awards” and join the “IAGS Women’s Caucus and the Indigenous People’s Caucus.”

The association’s bylaws, meanwhile, state that members must only “be current in their dues” to be considered in good standing—and propose resolutions on genocide.

The IAGS executive board then determines “whether or not the proposed resolution will be submitted to the IAGS membership for a vote.” Voting is conducted via email.

Passing a resolution is not onerous, either. The permissive membership and resolution proposal policies are important because of the association’s low bar for passing resolutions.

“For a proposed resolution to pass,” IAGS bylaws state, “voting must have been undertaken by a quorum of more than 20% of paid up IAGS members at the time of the vote.”

The association says it represents “600 members from all continents.” Only 129 of those members, or roughly 22 percent, voted on the Gaza resolution, according to Sara Brown, a longtime IAGS member who served on its advisory board.

The IAGS told the Post that 86 percent of respondents voted in favor of the resolution. That amounts to roughly 110 yes votes reflecting just 18 percent of the group’s total membership.

None of that context made its way into mainstream media coverage of the vote. The Times described the IAGS as “a leading group of academic experts on the topic,” while the Post called it “the oldest and largest association of genocide scholars.”

The Post also touted the fact that a “large majority—86 percent—of members who voted on the resolution approved it” without noting that less than 30 percent of members actually voted.

While it’s unclear who exactly voted on the resolution, there’s reason to believe that at least some of the respondents were not “genocide scholars.”

An archived version of the association’s public directory lists the first 10 IAGS members as of August 2024. Several have little to no online footprint, including an affiliation with a university of any sort.

Salo Aizenberg, an independent scholar who has contributed to the Times of Israel and Tablet magazine, registered as an IAGS member one day after the association released its Gaza report.

He reviewed the Listserv and found that 80 members, or roughly 13 percent of the association’s “scholars,” were Iraqi.

“I’ve been getting to know some of my fellow genocide scholars,” he wrote on X. “Seems that Iraq is a center of knowledge in this field with 80 listed scholars of ~600.”

In doing so, Aizenberg inspired a wave of individuals to join the IAGS, including some using names like Mo Cookie and Sheev Palpatine.

The IAGS responded by purging its new members and taking down its public member directory.

But the association does not appear to have scrutinized new members prior to the release of its Gaza report. I

ts bylaws require the executive board to conduct periodical reviews ensuring all members are “current in their dues” but do not require them to prove their scholarly qualifications.

The page that used to lead to the IAGS public member directory.

Brown, the longtime IAGS member and genocide scholar who holds the first Ph.D. in comparative genocide studies from Clark University, told the Washington Free Beacon that, as a member of the association’s advisory committee, she was never asked to vet any new members.

“To renew your membership, to become a member, it’s a pretty transparent process,” Brown said. “As long as you’ve paid your dues, you can vote.”

“It is not guaranteed that they are, in fact, experts by way of being, you know, practitioners engaged in the field, or scholars engaged in scholarly discourse, and research,” she continued. “How many are actual scholars, and how many are activists?”

The IAGS did not respond to a request for comment on the Gaza resolution vote, its vetting process, and its decision to take down its online directory and prevent new members from registering.

The post Inside the ‘leading scholars’ association’ that declared a genocide in Gaza. It includes human rights activists, psychologists, museum professionals, and lots of Iraqis. appeared first on World Israel News.