Why Military Support for Israel is not Support for Genocide

Join the Department of Politics, Governance, and Economics for a talk and moderated Q&A on the context and conduct of the ongoing wars in the Middle East.

In the past year, calls have grown globally to end military assistance to Israel on the grounds that support for Israel is support for “genocide.” Whether in legal cases filed before international tribunals or red paint defacing American University’s Glover Gate, the wars that began on October 7, 2023 are increasingly presented as an Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people.

In this public lecture, PGE Professor will place Israel’s ongoing wars in the broader context of efforts to establish nation-states out of the complex ethnic and religious tapestries of former imperial territories over the past century. Viewed alongside other national projects emerging in the wake of the Ottoman, Habsburg, Romanov, and German Empires, the Jewish national project (Zionism) has been an outlier in its avoidance of mass killing of civilians as a nation-building strategy—even during times of war. Contrary to claims made against Israel with the International Court of Justice, Darden argues that this continues to be the case in the current conflict.

Evaluating the question of whether Israel and/or other parties to the conflict are pursuing a genocidal strategy in their struggle for national sovereignty in the region, Darden argues for a “revealed intentions” approach to assessing genocidal intent, whereby intentions are assessed based on the behavioral choices actors have made in light of the constraints imposed by their capabilities and resources. While the Israeli government has the coercive and organizational capability to commit genocide, they have chosen not to do so. In contrast, while Hamas’ coercive and organizational capacity to commit genocide is much more limited, the choices the Hamas government of Gaza has made in how to use its more limited resources, and the organization’s conduct during the war, both reflect genocidal intent. In this sense, military support for Israel and the reduction of the organizational and military capability of Hamas (and Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran—actors which also share genocidal intent) is likely necessary for the prevention of genocide of Israelis rather than a facilitating factor in raising the civilian death toll among Palestinians in Gaza.

Host or Publisher School of International Service