STAFF EDITORIAL: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

— Why The Commonwealth Times is changing its style guide.

The Commonwealth Times Staff

The Commonwealth Times has published over 20 articles discussing the devastation of Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces, and the dozens of student protests at VCU that followed. None of them directly referred to the conflict as a “genocide.”

The Associated Press stylebook — the most widely-used set of guidelines for journalists — instructs the events that have occurred since Oct. 7, 2023 should be appropriately referred to as the “Israel-Hamas War.” 

We, the staff of The CT, believe the standard verbiage recommended by the AP is inadequate, and our continued use of it would be misleading to readers. 

The term “genocide” was first used in 1944 by Polish-Jewish jurist and Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin, according to the Holocaust Museum. Lemkin — appalled by the lack-of-term for the Armenian Genocide that occurred decades prior — spent his life petitioning for an international law to describe and prevent the destruction of groups.

“Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group,” Lemkin wrote. 

Lemkin’s work availed at the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. The United Nations adopted a definition for the term, though it strayed from Lemkin’s original outline.

Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:

1. A mental element: the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”; and
2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:

1. Killing members of the group
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Lemkin died before the UN gave the world’s first ever genocide conviction with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1998. 

According to international law at the time, no genocide occurred in the world throughout the half-century between — not in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Bosnia or anywhere else — but history tells us that was not the case.

The criminal tribunal for Rwanda was established through resolution 995 of the UN Security Council — which is primarily responsible for international peace and security. The resolution only passed because it was not vetoed by one of the five permanent members of the council established at its founding: Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The five permanent members were chosen as members of the Allied Powers during WWII — not for their moral clarity. Permanent members can veto any resolution against their national interest. 

Vetos by the U.S. and other members of the council undermine sovereign nations’ “Responsibility to Protect,” which stipulates a duty of collective action by the international community “when a particular state is clearly either unwilling or unable to fulfil its responsibility to protect or is itself the actual perpetrator of crimes or atrocities.”

The many eliminationist statements by Israeli leaders and the vast, open destruction of life, land and property in Gaza has led many scholars to determine a genocide is occuring. Over 60,000 people in Gaza have been verifiably killed throughout the “war,” and Israeli intelligence suggests 83% of them were civilians, according to +972 Magazine, a news outlet by Israeli and Palestinian journalists. The evidence amounting to mass-killing in the region is irrefutable.

What has occurred in Gaza over the last 22 months is perhaps the most recorded genocide in history — with videos of the ongoing bloodshed unavoidable across social media platforms. 

Institutions are often late to accurately describe genocide when it occurs. 

As a newspaper, we have discussed: “When is it an appropriate time to refer to something as a Genocide? When the AP stylebook deems so? When the United Nations — often governed by the perpetrators of the crime — serves a conviction? Or years later, after the genocide has already occurred, and it is too late for our reporting to make an impact?”

The Commonwealth Times is a newspaper of record, but also a newspaper of change. It exists in conversation with the conventions of traditional reporting, but is also written by students of a world they have the power to shape — by students pursuing timely, challenging analysis often not provided elsewhere.

As a student-led news source, we must prioritize not only record-keeping, but also strive to ensure that the many horrors of that record are not repeated. That is why we believe breaking with the AP Stylebook is necessary.

The CT is changing its style guide to refer to the “Israel-Hamas War” as the “genocide in Gaza,” and will not hesitate in its commitment to truth in the future. 

Editor’s Note: Staff editorials by The Commonwealth Times are written and edited by all members of staff. The content of editorials is voted on by staff members and must be unanimously agreed-upon ahead of publication.