260 academics at the University of Malta have issued a statement calling on all Maltese political decision-makers at national and European levels – government ministers, members of parliament, the Maltese EU Commissioner, the Maltese members of the European Parliament, and the Maltese President of the European Parliament – to respect and abide by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and in particular the injunction in that Convention to prevent any genocide, including in Gaza.
The Genocide Convention is not meant to only – or even primarily – hold people accountable after a genocide has been committed – although that is clearly also crucial. As the title implies, the Convention also obliges those with political power to do everything within their capacity to prevent genocide from occurring. Hiding behind references to ongoing international court cases, as some politicians abroad have done, is therefore deeply misleading, if not dishonest.
Preventing genocide in the case of Gaza means going beyond the recognition of a Palestinian State to:
i) Isolate the current far-right and internally unpopular Israeli government by discontinuing all intergovernmental agreements with Israel at national and European levels.
ii) Denounce in the strongest possible terms every instance of indiscriminate killing and/or deliberate targeting of Palestinian children and civilians generally.
iii) Monitor and denounce the “Gaza-fication” of the West Bank where similar processes of control and containment have been put in place, and where violence is already rampant.
iv) Considerably extend targeted sanctions against Israeli office- holders responsible for the extreme violence.
v) Push for an EU-wide ban on the export of military material to Israel with immediate effect.
vi) Draw up a peace plan where Europe offers to take up an important responsibility for peacekeeping and peacebuilding.
Political decision-makers have a legal, but just as importantly democratic and moral, obligation to act – and to act fast. We underscore that criticism of the current Israeli government policy is not antisemitism. It is an expression of the fact that a State’s right to defend itself does not mean that it can indiscriminately cause harm to a vast section of a population. We also underscore that we in no way support Hamas’s violence, including against dissident Palestinians. Crucially, Hamas’s holding of hostages is a crime. All remaining hostages should be released immediately.
“Finally, as academics of the University of Malta, we would like to call on the University Senate to unequivocally denounce the genocide taking place in Gaza and the violence against our fellow Palestinian academics, and to show its support to all academics worldwide, including Israeli and Jewish academics who are working to stop the genocide. This is an exceptional situation of violence and principled institutional voices need to be heard.”
