#iags

Yesterday there was the news that the IAGS did a majority vote that claimed Israel does conduct a genocide in the war against Hamas in Gaza but this here is the real story behind it. Apparently the voting was chaotic and the actual majority of the scholars didn't even vote!

Here's an excerpt from the article:

The International Association of Genocide Scholars has been condemned for a controversial declaration that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, with a member of the body describing how “the process was a disaster from start to finish”.

In a step widely reported on by international media yesterday, the IAGS, widely described as “the world’s leading association of genocide scholars”, voted to recognise Israel’s conduct in Gaza as a genocide – though almost three quarters of its 500 person membership did not vote. The Association’s President, Melanie O’Brien, described the resolution as “a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide”.

However, Dr Sarah Brown, a member of the IAGS, said: “I have been a member… for over a decade and can confirm the process was a disaster from start to finish. Those of us against the resolution tried to submit our concerns for discussion but were blocked by the leadership. “We were promised a town hall, which is a common practice for controversial resolutions, but the president of the association reversed that. The association has also refused to disclose who were the authors of the resolution.” Dr Brown went on to describe how “this resolution is incorrect in its assessment of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. It includes many unsubstantiated claims, is poorly cited (using deeply biased, questionable sources), and perpetuates an intentionally distorted analyses of the Israel Hamas War.” She said: “This resolution does real harm by recklessly bandying the term ‘genocide’ to describe this war and gives fodder to the people who will read this resolution and leverage it to justify hurting Jews. “Anyone who considers themself a genocide scholar should feel embarrassed by this vote.”

Now that looks indeed a bit different from what was published yesterday, right!?

By Luke Tress

On Friday, a separate group, calling itself Scholars for Truth About Genocide, released a statement highlighting all of those critiques. The statement has so far been signed by 178 individuals and institutions, more than the number of signatories on the IAGS resolution. The IAGS has around 500 members, 129 of whom voted, and 86% of those supported the resolution.

“Genocide is the gravest offense known to humankind; to dilute its legal standards for ideological ends is a form of moral violence. It dishonors the memory of past victims, misleads the public about present atrocities, and obstructs efforts to avert future ones,” the Friday statement said.

The statement included the signees’ names and positions, unlike the IAGS resolution, which did not include specifics about the vote, such as the signatories, or the names of those who drafted the resolution. The IAGS confirmed on Thursday that it welcomed non-experts into its ranks.

The Friday response to the IAGS criticized the group for a “quieting of dissent” ahead of the vote. Before passing the resolution, the IAGS leadership had said there would be a town hall for members to discuss the measure, but later backtracked, according to emails shared with The Times of Israel. There were no internal discussions about the resolution before the vote, despite requests from some members.

lolol

Nearly 200 genocide, Holocaust and legal scholars are calling on the International Association of Genocide Scholars to retract its resolution finding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

“It is critical that we not water down the legal elements of genocide for the purpose of advancing ideological positions and bias,” the letter says. “Holocaust and genocide scholars can have legitimate concerns about Israeli conduct in Gaza without working to disparage the very legal standards that exist to protect people from these crimes.” The letter’s signatories include former U.S. Department of Justice war crime prosecutor Eli M. Rosenbaum, former Hague legal fellow Isaac Amon; the Holocaust Museum of South Florida; and the pro-Israel attorney Alan Dershowitz, as well as several Holocaust educators and survivors’ children.

The letter represents an escalation of criticism of IAGS since its widely publicized resolution announced on Monday. In a volley of op-eds and elsewhere, the critics lambasted the group’s membership and low voter turnout as suggesting a scholarly consensus that did not exist. On Thursday, IAGS responded to the criticism, writing in a lengthy statement that its membership inbox had been spammed with messages employing fake names including “Adolf Hitler” and email addresses such as “f—kiags@retards.” “The IAGS general email and members of the Executive Board have received a great deal of abusive hate mail and social media posts this week,” the statement read. “Such responses are clearly unacceptable, and create an environment of harassment, bullying, and abuse.”

The group defended itself against criticism that the resolution had only been passed by a voter turnout of 28% of its membership, writing that members had been given 30 days to vote, and that the figure was within its typical range of votes for a resolution.

Just leaving this here.

Feel free to reblog.

I wrote a response to this, but how about you watch this first and let know if you have questions?

Let’s start with the organization itself. According to O’Brien, the members of her organization “mainly consist of people who are academics, so scholarly experts, but our membership is also made up of people who come from different communities within the field of genocide prevention, education, and punishment.”

On Tuesday evening, Salo Aizenberg, a board member of Honest Reporting and contributor to NGO Monitor, tested that proposition. After exploring the IAGS website, he found that he could become a member of the organization with just a $30 contribution. “This organization that purports to be a leading organization of scholars is open to anyone who is interested,” he told The Free Press.

After Aizenberg posted about his new membership to X, others joined in on the fun. Newly minted genocide scholars now include Emperor Palpatine, the villain of the Star Wars franchise; Adolf Hitler of Gaza City; and our favorite, “Mo Cookie,” who turns out to be the Cookie Monster wearing a green scarf with the Hamas logo.

IAGS’s open membership is important because as Aizenberg learned in his research on the website, 80 of the 500 members of IAGS all claim to be based in Iraq—a country not known for universities with robust genocide scholarship. But it’s even worse than that. Only 108 out of the organization’s 500 members actually voted for the resolution. So contra O’Brien, only 21.6 percent of the IAGS supported it, not nearly 90 percent. That figure represents 108 out of the 129 people who bothered voting for the resolution at all.

What’s more: The process appears rigged from the start.