‘Incitement in Israel is clear, explicit and unashamed,’ says Segal

Israeli historian Raz Segal blasted Israel’s aggression against the people of Gaza on Saturday and said that it amounts to “incitement to genocide.”

Segal told Breaking Points YouTube channel that the incitement is dealt with in Article 3 of the “The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, or the Genocide Convention for short -- an international agreement that criminalizes genocide and obligates countries to pursue the enforcement of its prohibition.

“Incitement to genocide, which usually happens actually in media discourses, but also in political discourses, sometimes in public spaces in various ways,” he said. “Anyone who follows Hebrew language sources” would know about the “genocidal discourse” in Israeli media and outdoor signs as well.

“I'm talking about, you know, huge signs hanging on the bridges of the Tel Aviv Freeway right after the 7th of October, calling to flatten Gaza, to destroy Gaza, written on them directly that the ‘image of triumph would be zero people in Gaza.’ Very direct, very explicit,” he said, noting Hamas’ surprise attack that resulted in the flare-up of the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“You don't need a degree in comparative literature to interpret these signs and statements in the media discourse and in the political discourse in Israel after 7th of October. We see clear incitement to genocide, right? Clear, clear incitement to genocide.”

Segal noted the Rwanda genocide as another example.

“One of the cases that comes close to this kind of society, immersed in a genocidal discourse, perhaps, is Rwanda and the Rwanda genocide in 1994,” he said. “We had journalists, radio channels and people inciting for genocide, for the murder of Tutsis in that case.”

“In the case of Rwanda, there was also a media case where journalists indeed stood trial and were convicted for incitement to genocide. So that's another element that actually differentiates genocide from other crimes and international law,” he said.

“Incitement in Israel is clear, explicit and unashamed. Just to give a recent example, journalist Zvi Yehezkeli on Channel 13 just openly and outright said that he thinks that at the beginning, Israel made a mistake because (its) attack on Gaza should have been much more actually violent and severe, and it should have killed 100,000 Palestinians right now,” said Segal.

“And the official response of Channel 13 was that ‘We're just expressing the plurality of positions in Israeli society.’ So this is outright unashamed, right? It's very common today in Israel, and it's something I think we should all be paying attention to.”

Since a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, Israel has continued relentless attacks on the Gaza Strip, killing more than 21,000 Palestinians and injuring more than twice that number, according to Palestinian health officials.

Israeli authorities claim the Hamas attack has killed around 1,200 Israelis.

The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave's infrastructure damaged or destroyed, and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine.