Silence on Gaza is costing lives

Ireland has introduced legislation to prohibit trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. According to Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Harris, “Ireland is speaking up and speaking out against the genocidal activity in Gaza.”

In response, Rep. Brad Schneider, an Illinois Democrat, has asserted, “Ireland can be a constructive voice drawing on its history of bridging divides rather than stoking division and undermining trans-Atlantic relationships.”

Notably, prominent Israeli Holocaust and genocide scholars Amos Goldberg, Omer Bartov, Daniel Blatman, Raz Segal and Shmuel Lederman have all concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. According to Goldberg: “What is happening in Gaza is genocide because the level and pace of indiscriminate killing, destruction, mass expulsions, displacement, famine, executions, the wiping out of cultural and religious institutions … and the sweeping dehumanization of the Palestinians — create an overall picture of genocide, of a deliberate conscious crushing of Palestinian existence in Gaza.”

Other genocide experts who have reached this determination include Martin Shaw, author of the book “What is Genocide? “; Melanie O’Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars; and Dirk Moses, senior editor of the Journal of Genocide Research.

When nations ignore the clear assessments of these scholars, they abandon both moral responsibility and international law. The cost of this silence is measured in human lives.

Terry Hansen

Milwaukee