This interview is part of The Reconstruct, a weekly newsletter from Sojourners. In a world where so much needs to change, Mitchell Atencio and Josiah R. Daniels interview people who have faith in a new future and are working toward repair. Subscribe here.
As an editor and journalist, it’s my job to have words for the news of the day. But now and then, the news of the day has a way of robbing me of all my words. This is especially the case when the news of the day revolves around an injustice that is actively harming our world and humanity. What truly leaves me wordless is when we, as people, know that something catastrophic is happening, but we seek to minimize or ignore it. How do I change that? Is there a perfect combination of words and data to prevent that?
A specific example is Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. I’m not sure what else has to be said at this point to help people realize that a genocide is happening right before our very eyes, and it is likely to expand beyond Gaza into the occupied territory of the West Bank. One of Israel’s leading human rights organizations—B’Tselem—is desperately trying to raise the alarm about this very fact.
On July 28, B’Tselem released an 88-page report titled “Our Genocide,” which meticulously details how Israel is taking intentional actions to destroy Palestinian society and commit genocide in the Gaza Strip. The report relies on reputable news sources, scholars, sociological analysis, and first-hand accounts to convey the reality that Israel is committing genocide.
In August, I spoke with B’Tselem spokesperson Yair Dvir about the report and the deteriorating situation in Palestine. B’Tselem is an organization comprised of Palestinians and Israelis who work together to document Israel’s violations against Palestinians. The organization was founded in 1989, and its name is a reference to Genesis 1:27—which says that in the beginning, humanity was created in God’s image. “Every human being has the right to live in honor, equality, and justice,” Dvir told Sojourners.
My hope is that people will read the report. But also, while reading the report, I couldn’t stop thinking about something that the writer and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote about anti-Black racism, which I think applies here: “You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.” Whatever you or anyone else thinks about the data, research, accounts, and words contained in B’Tselem’s report, the visceral reality is that there is a genocide happening in our world right now.
In my interview with Dvir, we spoke about this reality and what B’Tselem hopes the report will accomplish.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Josiah R. Daniels, Sojourners: Who are you, and what do you do?
Yair Dvir: B’Tselem is a human rights organization. We are a team of Palestinians and Israelis who work together, struggling against the occupation and the violations of Israel against Palestinians.
We have field research all around the West Bank, and Palestinians who live in different areas, and also in Gaza. We used to have a few workers from Gaza, but at the beginning of this attack, this genocide, we managed to help them and their families escape to Egypt. But they continue to work with us from Egypt, with their connections with the people inside Gaza.
So, they still bring the testimonies for us. So what B’Tselem does in general is document the violations of human rights. We [do this through] deep research and we try to promote our understanding and framing of what is happening.
B’Tselem is a Hebrew word, and it means that God creates humans in the shape of himself. Every human being has the right to live in honor, equality, and justice.
What role do you think religious people have to play when it comes to advocating for human rights and an end to the genocide?
For me personally, I'm coming from a Jewish background. For half of my life, I was religious. So for me, I see a connection between the deep ideas of religion, spirituality, and human rights.
Unfortunately, we are witnessing around the world, but also particularly in this region, that religion becomes a tool of racism, a political tool of violence and control. But of course, in Israel or Palestine, you can also find Muslims, Christians, or Jews who are working together with Palestinians for justice.
B’Tselem’s 88-page report is titled “Our Genocide.” What are some of the major findings, and what do you hope the report will accomplish?
What we are witnessing is a systematic and intentional attack by Israel against the population in Gaza. When you are looking at the starvation of 2 million people, mass displacement of 2 million people, bombing every day, the demolitions of whole cities—this attack is directed against the population itself. The definition of genocide is actually not only about killing every individual, but it’s about a systematic and intentional attempt to destroy a group. This is exactly what Israel is doing.
In the report, we cite many statements of Israeli officials, policy makers, and the army. We had many genocidal statements. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that this war is against Amalek. Every person that knows the Bible knows exactly what that means [Editor's note: Netanyahu was referencing a passage in Deuteronomy, which says that the Israelites must completely eliminate the Amalekites from the land]. And the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, said that all this discourse about innocent civilians is false, and that all Gazans are responsible.
For 22 months, Israel has been demolishing and totally disrupting the society and the infrastructure, the conditions that allow people or groups to live. Just two days ago, we heard them declare again—this is not something new, but it became even more official—that they are going to occupy the whole Strip, in order to transfer the population.
But at the same time, their propaganda to the world or even inside the Israeli society says, “No, we are fighting against Hamas. It’s only about self-defense.” But if you look at the whole system, it’s directed against the population. The goal is to ethnically cleanse the whole Gaza Strip, and to build Jewish settlements there. And so, we understand that it’s very important to name it what it is: This is genocide.
In our report, we call on the Israeli society to open their eyes, to stop being subjected to the propaganda, and to understand that it’s not about the hostages, it’s not about self-defense. It’s about a very clear goal of our government.
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We also call on the international community watching this genocide for 22 months. But at the end of the day, the leaders of the world continue to not do anything. I would also say that they are even participating and supporting Israel in many ways. We call on them to stop and to take action.
Considering that, as a result of the United States’ support, Israel ostensibly has immunity from pressures that the international community might try and exert, what other means available under international law does the international community have when it comes to intervening on behalf of Palestinians?
When a regime is starving 2 million people, you cannot continue to look at it and continue to deal with it like it is a legitimate regime.
B’Tselem still functions under this regime. So we have our limits of what we can say and cannot say. I don’t think the international community needs our ideas of what to do. The tools are there. It’s not about finding new tools. It’s about taking the courage and making the right decision to use them.
I think the thing that I sometimes struggle with is what else can be done at this point to intervene. Especially considering that my country, which is the most powerful country in the world, is aiding and abetting this genocide.
I think it’s a question that every person asks, or should ask, in the face of genocide. Because genocide is not only a problem of Palestinians and Israelis, it’s a problem for humanity. So, I think every person in the world needs to ask, “What can I do?” It’s a big question. And to be honest, being here as a Jewish Israeli who sees what’s happening in front of my eyes for almost two years, even though I am working for B’Tselem and involved in many different activist initiatives, I’ll speak with my Palestinian friends from the West Bank and sometimes I feel very powerless against this big machine of killing and violence.
So, if I’m understanding correctly, the report isn’t necessarily interested in arguing that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the narrowly defined legal definition of genocide. The main purpose of the report is to analyze how Israel’s actions can be classified as genocide from a historical and sociopolitical perspective. Is that right?
We need to understand that the genocide itself was there even before the war. Genocide is a real phenomenon on the ground. It happened in North America and Australia hundreds of years ago, and it’s still ongoing in a way.
So, I think the discourse that is interested only in the narrow legal definition of genocide—which is very important discourse because justice should be done—it’s something that cannot stop [genocide] while it’s happening.
Look at what Israel is doing and you understand that Israel is trying to destroy the whole population. It’s nothing about a war. What we try to do in this report is to take back the discourse to the basic thing itself.
For Mondoweiss, Sonia Boulos asked the following line of questions after reading the report: “Why continue to circle around the issue rather than confront it directly and unequivocally? Why not align with the efforts of Amnesty International and other legal scholars who argue—at length and with rigor—that within the existing legal framework, Israel’s actions unequivocally demonstrate an intent to destroy?” How might B’Tselem respond to that line of questioning?
We show, in many ways, the statements and the actions on the ground and the connection between them show a very clear intent of Israel to commit this genocide. But at the same time, we chose in our reports to not come into this ground of the legal. Not because we don’t agree with it. We totally agree with it. But because we don’t want to fall into this conversation that has been going on for a while. And this conversation should continue but, in a way, it is stuck. Because people who think it is genocide [from a legal perspective] have thought it’s genocide for a long time. And people who keep saying there is no intent have been saying that for a long time.
We intentionally try to say, “OK, this legal definition is very important. But the genocide is happening now.”
One of the things that stood out to me in the report is the first-hand accounts of Palestinians suffering under the occupation.
We believe that in an unjust system, you must listen to the victims themselves. You need to get on the ground to meet the people and to hear their perspective on what is happening. The people hold a very big and maybe the most crucial part of the truth itself. If you are looking at the occupation from the eyes of Israel or Israeli scholars, you will misunderstand what’s really happening.
So if you look at B’Tselem’s website, we have thousands of testimonies over the decades. This is maybe the main part of our work. To collect testimonies of Palestinians from the West Bank, from Gaza, [from those who have] been released from Israeli prisons or been subjected to settler violence or army violence. This is what helps us to deeply understand the system.
One of the things the report emphasizes is how the genocidal tactics being used in Gaza are spilling over to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Why was it important to emphasize that in the report?
When I am thinking about the importance of this report, it’s that it says there is a genocide in Gaza, but as I said before, many other organizations—Palestinian organizations and international organizations—already said this before, and it’s good that they said this before now.
But when I'm thinking about the importance of this report, it is [not only] about what is happening in the last two years in Gaza, but trying to ask and answer another question which is: How did we arrive at this point where a regime becomes a genocidal regime and a society becomes a genocidal society?
When you look at this system that has been, for decades, actively engineering demographics and [engaging] in apartheid practices and dehumanization, this is a foundation that, when a trigger like October 7 arrives, can lead to a genocide. When you look at what is happening in the West Bank since October 2023, you see an increase in the violence of Israel against Palestinians. Not only the system of Israel, like the army, but also the settlers. Israel, at the end of the day, has one goal: Jewish supremacy.
But in order to do that, you have to engineer the demographics, and if you cannot, then you transfer or kill Palestinians. Israel has been in this process for many years. It didn’t start with this government. But now we’re seeing a new chapter. When the practice of genocide becomes a legitimate tool is when a regime becomes a genocidal regime.
We already see, for example, the use of airstrikes in the West Bank and the demolitions of neighborhoods. 40,000 Palestinians have already been expelled by the Israeli army. We must try to stop the genocide in Gaza, but we must also look at it from a distance and understand that the Israeli regime and many parts of Israeli society arrived at a point in their mindsets that there is only one solution to create a sense of security: the ethnic cleansing of as many Palestinians as possible.
“Genocide is not only a problem of Palestinians and Israelis. it’s a problem for humanity.”
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