Anatomy of Genocide in Gaza
The Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, in partnership with the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, the African Studies Program, Georgetown University Qatar, and the Institute for the Study of International Migration, is hosting Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, for a talk titled “Anatomy of Genocide in Gaza” on October 28th at Noon in Copley Formal Lounge.
Description
By the time that the UN report “Anatomy of Genocide in Gaza” was published – after five months of military operations – Israel had destroyed Gaza. Over 30,000 Palestinians had been killed, including more than 13,000 children. Over 12,000 more were presumed dead and 71,000 injured, many with life-changing mutilations. Seventy percent of residential areas were also destroyed. Eighty percent of the whole population was forcibly displaced. Now, one year since Israel’s onslaught began, with strong U.S. support, the devastation in Gaza has significantly expanded, confirming Masha Gessen’s haunting prediction that the “Gaza ghetto is being liquidated.”
In her report, through analyzing patterns of violence, officials’ statements, and Israeli government policies in Gaza, Francesca Albanese concludes there are reasonable grounds to believe the State of Israel is guilty of the crime of genocide. One of her key findings is that Israel’s executive and military leadership have intentionally distorted jus in bello principles, subverting their protective functions, in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.
Join us for a critical and timely discussion with Francesca Albanese.
To register for the event Click Here.
Speaker
Francesca Albanese is an Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, and a Senior Advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement for the think tank Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD), where she co-founded the Global Network on the Question of Palestine (GNQP), a coalition of renowned professional and scholars engaged in/on Israel/Palestine. She has published widely on the legal situation in Israel/Palestine; her latest book, Palestinian Refugees in International Law (Oxford University Press, 2020), offers a comprehensive legal analysis of the situation of Palestinian refugees from its origins to modern-day reality. She regularly teaches and lectures on International Law and Forced Displacement in European and Arab universities, and speaks frequently at conferences and public events on the legal situation of Palestine. She worked for a decade as a human rights expert for the United Nations, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees. In these capacities, she advised the UN, governments, and civil society across the Middle East, North Africa, and the Asia Pacific, on the enforcement of human rights norms, especially for vulnerable groups including refugees and migrants. She holds a Law Degree (with honors) from the University of Pisa and an LLM in Human Rights from the University of London, SOAS.
Moderator:
Dr. Nader Hashemi is the Director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He obtained his doctorate from the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and previously was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern University and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the UCLA Global Institute. Dr. Hashemi was previously the founding Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. While there, he was also Co-Director of the Religion and International Affairs certificate program, as well as the Political Theory Initiative. His intellectual and research interests lie at the intersection of comparative politics and political theory, in particular debates on the global rise of authoritarianism, religion and democracy, secularism and its discontents, Middle East and Islamic politics, democratic and human rights struggles in non-Western societies and Islam-West relations. He is the author of Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (Oxford University Press, 2009) and co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future (Melville House, 2011), The Syria Dilemma (MIT Press, 2013), Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2017) and a four-volume study on Islam and Human Rights: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies (Routledge, 2023). He is frequently interviewed by PBS, NPR, CNN, Al Jazeera, Pacifica Radio, Alternative Radio and the BBC and his writings have appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, The Nation, Al Jazeera Online, CNN.com among other media outlets.