The president of the US-based liberal Zionist advocacy group J Street has said that he has been convinced that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
“Until now, I have tried to deflect and defend when challenged to call this genocide,” Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote in a newsletter published on Substack on Sunday. “I have, however, been persuaded rationally by legal and scholarly arguments that international courts will one day find that Israel has broken the international genocide convention.”
Ben-Ami said that he likely wouldn’t use the term to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza but that he would no longer argue against those who do. His newsletter came a few days after he appeared on “Pod Save America” and argued against the idea that Israel was committing genocide.
“The personal pain of my own family from a crime that I believe has no parallel – and my association of the word genocide exclusively with that event – means I am unlikely to use the term myself,” he said. “But I cannot and will not argue any more against those using the term. I simply won’t defend the indefensible.”
Ben-Ami said that Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel and the fact that Israelis are still being held captive in Gaza don’t justify Israel’s actions.
“Yet none of that provides any rationale for what Israel is doing now in Gaza,” he wrote. “Denying food and basic necessities of life to civilians. Soldiers shooting at civilians trying to get food. Destruction of the entire infrastructure of Gaza. Forcing the population into intolerably small areas. Hoping to create the conditions under which an entire population will be forcibly displaced.”
Ben-Ami’s comments come as more and more people, including prominent Israelis, are calling Israel’s brutal military campaign a genocide. Two leading Israeli human rights groups also recently issued reports that said Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza.
