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The rising death toll in Gaza is tragic. But Holocaust scholars should know: It is not genocide.
(JTA) — Up in Broome County, New York, beneath a simple marker in a family plot in Hale Eddy Cemetery, I believe the Rev. Dr. Franklin Hamlin Littell is turning in his grave.
Littell, the son of a Methodist minister who also became one, was a towering figure in the study of the Holocaust and genocide. In postwar West Germany, he spent almost a decade as chief Protestant religious adviser to the High Commission on Germany, assigned to denazification. In 1958 at Emory University in Atlanta, he initiated the first U.S. graduate seminar on the Holocaust. Eighteen years later in Philadelphia, as chair of Temple University’s religion department, he started the world’s first doctoral program in Holocaust studies. And in 1998 at Stockton University in Pomona, New Jersey, he and his wife, Marcia Sachs Littell, established the first interdisciplinary master’s program in Holocaust and genocide studies.
My late mother, Halina Wind Preston, a Jewish educator who survived 14 months hiding from the Nazis in the sewers of Lviv, was a frequent attendee at an annual Holocaust scholars’ conference cofounded by Littell. I knew Littell, who died in 2009, and at his invitation in 2000 I traveled from Atlanta, where I was a senior editor at CNN.com, to speak on “Professional Ethics After Auschwitz” at the 30th conference in Philadelphia.
So I can imagine Littell’s revulsion if he knew that the word “genocide” was being misused against Israel by scholars and activists — including an Israeli historian who now directs the Stockton program he started.
As Israel retaliates in the wake of the bloody rampage of Oct. 7 — in which Hamas killed 1,500 Israelis, including 260 people at a music festival and hundreds of civilians in nearby communities, and took more than 200 hostages — Raz Segal, the Israeli historian who directs the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies program at Stockton University, has been attracting worldwide attention by blaming the victims.
On Oct. 18, at a vigil on the University of Pennsylvania campus, Segal called President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel “support for Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.” On Oct. 13, Jewish Currents published “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” in which Segal wrote that “Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed” and that “Israel’s goal is to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza.”
Segal is far from a lone voice accusing Israel of genocide. At Penn, a student group that organized a rally Oct. 16 said it “unequivocally stands with Palestine in the face of ongoing genocide committed by the Israeli government, which has been assisted by other Western allies like the United States.” On Oct. 24 in Washington, D.C., students at George Washington University projected the message “Divestment from Zionist Genocide Now” onto a library facade.
And on Tuesday, Craig Mokhiber, director in the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights, resigned, citing Israel for a “textbook case of genocide.”
Littell understood that “genocide” was coined in 1944 by a Polish Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin to denote “the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.” Lemkin wrote that genocide is intended “to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. ”
Historian Michael Berenbaum, distinguished professor of Jewish studies at American Jewish University in Los Angeles, said that Israel has no greater ambition than to coexist with the Palestinians as peaceful neighbors and that Littell would be appalled at the suggestion that Israel was committing genocide in its attempts to root out the fighters and sever the leadership of a group that killed and kidnapped Israelis.
“I knew and worked with and deeply respected Franklin Littell for the last 40 years of his life,” Berenbaum, who was a visiting distinguished professor at Stockton under Littell, told me. “These statements would be anathema to his values.”
Richard Libowitz, coauthor with Marcia Sachs Littell and Dennis B. Klein of “The Genocidal Mind,” agreed that the Israeli incursion does not constitute genocide.
Israel “has never advocated nor sought the total annihilation of an Arab population, whether in Israel proper, the West Bank or Gaza,” said Libowitz, who received a Ph.D. in religion under Franklin Littell at Temple and is retired from the faculties of Temple and St. Joseph’s University.
Indeed, since Israel’s founding in 1948, the Palestinian population in what now includes Israel, the West Bank and Gaza has risen from 1.4 million to 6.6 million, including 1.6 million Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Libowitz acknowledged the ferocity of the Israeli military strikes on Gaza in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, as the Palestinian death toll as reported by the Hamas-run health ministry rose above 9,000.
“Civilian casualties in Gaza — especially the death of children — are tragic,” said Libowitz. “Hamas carried out the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust and the outrage should be understood. Israel intends to destroy Hamas, but Magen David Adom [the Israeli Red Cross] personnel treated wounded terrorists after their attack. Gazans were warned to flee the northern part of the strip. This is human tragedy, but it is not genocide.”
He added: “The stated aim of Hamas — to wipe Israel from the Earth — is certainly a genocidal intent.”
Polly Zavadivker, an assistant professor of history at the University of Delaware, told me that Segal’s statements on genocide “threaten future attempts to identify, prevent, and prosecute that crime. It is equally damaging to the legitimacy of Holocaust and Genocide Studies as a field when such false claims are presented in the guise of scholarly expertise.”
Zavadivker, who teaches courses in antisemitism, the Holocaust, and comparative genocide, said that an accusation that Israel is committing genocide “renders the word meaningless.”
In 1973, after working on it for four years, Franklin Littell and 17 other Christian theologians released a 14-point statement on Israel. The statement, which appeared as an appendix in Littell’s book, seems strikingly relevant 50 years later.
“The charge is sometimes made that Israel is belligerently expansionistic as a result of its military triumphs in the Six-Day War,” it said in part. “Visitors to Israel, however, can easily discover that the overriding concern of the majority of Israelis is peace, not more territory. Israel’s anxiety about national defense reflects the age-old human yearning for security, the anxiety of a people whose history has been a saga of frightful persecution, climaxed by the Holocaust of six million men, women, and children.
“Against such a tormented background, is it surprising that the Jewish people should want to defend themselves?” they continued. “Criticism that would use the failure of Israel to live up to the highest moral standards as an excuse to deny its right to exist … would be a double standard, one not applied to any other nation on earth.”
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The post The rising death toll in Gaza is tragic. But Holocaust scholars should know: It is not genocide. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Says Iran Must Give Up Dream of Nuclear Weapon or Face Harsh Response
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
President Donald Trump said on Monday he believes Iran is intentionally delaying a nuclear deal with the United States and that it must abandon any drive for a nuclear weapon or face a possible military strike on Tehran’s atomic facilities.
“I think they’re tapping us along,” Trump told reporters after US special envoy Steve Witkoff met in Oman on Saturday with a senior Iranian official.
Both Iran and the United States said on Saturday that they held “positive” and “constructive” talks in Oman. A second round is scheduled for Saturday, and a source briefed on the planning said the meeting was likely to be held in Rome.
The source, speaking to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, said the discussions are aimed at exploring what is possible, including a broad framework of what a potential deal would look like.
“Iran has to get rid of the concept of a nuclear weapon. They cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
Asked if US options for a response include a military strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, Trump said: “Of course it does.”
Trump said the Iranians need to move fast to avoid a harsh response because “they’re fairly close” to developing a nuclear weapon.
The US and Iran held indirect talks during former President Joe Biden’s term but they made little, if any progress. The last known direct negotiations between the two governments were under then-President Barack Obama, who spearheaded the 2015 international nuclear deal that Trump later abandoned.
The post Trump Says Iran Must Give Up Dream of Nuclear Weapon or Face Harsh Response first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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No Breakthrough in Gaza Talks, Egyptian and Palestinian Sources Say
Families and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas gather to demand a deal that will bring back all the hostages held in Gaza, outside a meeting between hostage representatives and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem, Jan. 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The latest round of talks in Cairo to restore the defunct Gaza ceasefire and free Israeli hostages ended with no apparent breakthrough, Palestinian and Egyptian sources said on Monday.
The sources said Hamas had stuck to its position that any agreement must lead to an end to the war in Gaza.
Israel, which restarted its military campaign in Gaza last month after a ceasefire agreed in January unraveled, has said it will not end the war until Hamas is stamped out. The terrorist group has ruled out any proposal that it lay down its arms.
But despite that fundamental disagreement, the sources said a Hamas delegation led by the group’s Gaza Chief Khalil Al-Hayya had shown some flexibility over how many hostages it could free in return for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel should a truce be extended.
An Egyptian source told Reuters the latest proposal to extend the truce would see Hamas free an increased number of hostages. Israeli minister Zeev Elkin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, told Army Radio on Monday that Israel was seeking the release of around 10 hostages, raised from previous Hamas consent to free five.
Hamas has asked for more time to respond to the latest proposal, the Egyptian source said.
“Hamas has no problem, but it wants guarantees Israel agrees to begin the talks on the second phase of the ceasefire agreement” leading to an end to the war, the Egyptian source said.
AIRSTRIKES
Hamas terrorists freed 33 Israeli hostages in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees during the six-week first phase of the ceasefire which began in January. But the second phase, which was meant to begin at the start of March and lead to the end of the war, was never launched.
Meanwhile, 59 Israeli hostages remain in the hands of the terrorists. Israel believes up to 24 of them are alive.
Palestinians say the wave of Israeli attacks since the collapse of the ceasefire has been among the deadliest and most intense of the war, hitting an exhausted population surviving in the enclave’s ruins.
In Jabalia, a community on Gaza’s northern edge, rescue workers in orange vests were trying to smash through concrete with a sledgehammer to recover bodies buried underneath a building that collapsed in an Israeli strike.
Feet and a hand of one person could be seen under a concrete slab. Men carried a body wrapped in a blanket. Workers at the scene said as many as 25 people had been killed.
The Israeli military said it had struck there against terrorists planning an ambush.
In Khan Younis in the south, a camp of makeshift tents had been shredded into piles of debris by an airstrike. Families had returned to poke through the rubbish in search of belongings.
“We used to live in houses. They were destroyed. Now, our tents have been destroyed too. We don’t know where to stay,” said Ismail al-Raqab, who returned to the area after his family fled the raid before dawn.
EGYPT’S SISI MEETS QATARI EMIR
The leaders of the two Arab countries that have led the ceasefire mediation efforts, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, met in Doha on Sunday. The Egyptian source said Sisi had called for additional international guarantees for a truce agreement, beyond those provided by Egypt and Qatar themselves.
US President Donald Trump, who has backed Israel’s decision to resume its campaign and called for the Palestinian population of Gaza to leave the territory, said last week that progress was being made in returning the hostages.
The post No Breakthrough in Gaza Talks, Egyptian and Palestinian Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iranian Foreign Minister to Visit Moscow Ahead of Second Iran-US Meeting
FILE PHOTO: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi speaks as he meets with his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein, in Baghdad, Iraq October 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Saad/File Photo
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will visit Russia this week ahead of a planned second round of talks between Tehran and Washington aimed at resolving Iran’s decades-long nuclear stand-off with the West.
Araqchi and US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff held talks in Oman on Saturday, during which Omani envoy Badr al-Busaidi shuttled between the two delegations sitting in different rooms at his palace in Muscat.
Both sides described the talks in Oman as “positive,” although a senior Iranian official told Reuters the meeting “was only aimed at setting the terms of possible future negotiations.”
Italian news agency ANSA reported that Italy had agreed to host the talks’ second round, and Iraq’s state news agency said Araqchi told his Iraqi counterpart that talks would be held “soon” in the Italian capital under Omani mediation.
Tehran has approached the talks warily, doubting the likelihood of an agreement and suspicious of Trump, who has threatened to bomb Iran if there is no deal.
Washington aims to halt Tehran’s sensitive uranium enrichment work – regarded by the United States, Israel and European powers as a path to nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is solely for civilian energy production.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Araqchi will “discuss the latest developments related to the Muscat talks” with Russian officials.
Moscow, a party to Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact, has supported Tehran’s right to have a civilian nuclear program.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on vital state matters, distrusts the United States, and Trump in particular.
But Khamenei has been forced to engage with Washington in search of a nuclear deal due to fears that public anger at home over economic hardship could erupt into mass protests and endanger the existence of the clerical establishment, four Iranian officials told Reuters in March.
Tehran’s concerns were exacerbated by Trump’s speedy revival of his “maximum pressure” campaign when he returned to the White House in January.
During his first term, Trump ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic regime.
Since 2019, Iran has far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on uranium enrichment, producing stocks at a high level of fissile purity, well above what Western powers say is justifiable for a civilian energy program and close to that required for nuclear warheads.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has raised the alarm regarding Iran’s growing stock of 60% enriched uranium, and reported no real progress on resolving long-running issues, including the unexplained presence of uranium traces at undeclared sites.
IAEA head Rafael Grossi will visit Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian media reported, in an attempt to narrow gaps between Tehran and the agency over unresolved issues.
“Continued engagement and cooperation with the agency is essential at a time when diplomatic solutions are urgently needed,” Grossi said on X on Monday.
The post Iranian Foreign Minister to Visit Moscow Ahead of Second Iran-US Meeting first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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