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Understanding �the genocide

Educational resources produced by UCU (UoN branch) and Nottingham Camp for the Liberation of Palestine

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Ongoing genocide

  • Since October 2023, Israeli forces have carried out mass killings, decimation of basic infrastructure, and forcible displacement on a huge scale, with ethnic cleansing added to the list of official war objectives (B’Tselem, 2025).
  • As of July 2025, the current onslaught has resulted in:
    • 70,300 Palestinian people killed; 30% of casualties are children;
    • 99% of the population forcibly displaced at least once;
    • 4,700 Palestinians detained/forcibly disappeared, with treatment in Israeli detention including rape, electric shocks, urinating on detainees, and wilful killing under torture;
    • 100% of hospitals and 90% of schools and universities in Gaza destroyed or damaged (Euromed, 2025).
  • Mass starvation and ‘man-made famine’ – including blocking international aid and shooting civilians seeking food – are among methods used by Israel, according to Human Rights Watch and World Health Organisation.
  • September 2025: UN Commission finds Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.
  • UN Special Rapporteur: ‘After denying Palestinian self-determination for decades, Israel is now imperilling the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine’ (OHCHR, 2025b, p. 2).

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Educational resources produced by UCU (UoN branch) and Nottingham Camp for the Liberation of Palestine

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This did not begin in 2023

  • Creation of State of Israel in 1948 involved the Nakba (‘catastophe’ in Arabic) – i.e., the forced displacement of 800,000 Palestinians from their homes and creation of massive refugee population (today numbering more than 8 million)(Pappe 2006)
  • Since 1967, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been subjected to brutal military occupation. This has included land and property seizures, home demolitions and forced evictions, and a lethal architecture of control and repression. Through this occupation Israel maintains economic domination of Palestine, characterised by deliberate impoverishment and the exploitation of Palestinians’ labour. (Amnesty 2022)
  • Palestinian citizens of Israel make up 20% of Israel’s population and face more than 65 laws which discriminate against them due to their Palestinian descent
  • While Israeli forces ‘withdrew’ from Gaza in the mid-2000s they instituted seige conditions – systematically limiting food, materials, and travel, while subjecting the population to routine aerial bombardment.
    • Gaza becomes world’s biggest ‘open air prison’ (Human Rights Watch 2022)
  • Palestinians have resisted this occupation and ethnic cleansing. This struggle has included nonviolent civil resistance (e.g. the First Intifada) and armed struggle; in all cases, it has been met with extreme violence by Israeli forces. (Abunimah 2014)
  • The UK government continues to enable, normalise and profit from Israeli apartheid and genocide through their extensive arms & trade deals and diplomatic ties; UK universities invest nearly £500m in and hold ties with complicit companies and institutions, e.g. construction companies involved in home demolitions.

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What is Zionism?

  • Zionism is not the same as Judaism or Jewishness; many Jewish people are anti-Zionist and the majority of Zionists worldwide are not Jewish.
  • Zionism is a project/ideology which advocates for Israel’s maintenance as an ethno-state (a state with racial criteria for citizenship) in the region of historic Palestine; it is often described as a form of settler-colonialism (Lentin, 2020).
  • Settler-colonialism: a type of colonialism in which the indigenous peoples of a colonised region are displaced by settlers/colonisers who (attempt to) permanently form a society there that excludes or subordinates its former inhabitants.
  • While there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ model, settler-colonial regimes are strongly associated with apartheid and genocide:
    • Apartheid: a system of racist segregation that keeps an indigenous population in a subordinate position compared with a settler population (as in Apartheid South Africa or French colonial Algeria).
    • Genocide: policies that attempt to eliminate a social group or society and their way of life, through means including direct killing, deprivation of resources, forced sterilisation, forced migration, and/or forced assimilation (as perpetrated against Native, Indigenous, and First Nations peoples in the Americas).
  • ‘The 76 year long occupation of Palestine by Israel is a direct product of western colonialism... finding its roots in the British Mandate over Palestine [1920-48].’ (NCLP, 2024)

Educational resources produced by UCU (UoN branch) and Nottingham Camp for the Liberation of Palestine

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Discuss

  1. Pick something you’ve just heard about Palestine that you found surprising or shocking in some way. Why did you have this reaction? If you weren’t surprised or shocked by anything, reflect on why that might be. 
  2. Think about your academic subject (e.g. medicine, engineering, politics, literature). What do you know about the situation of students, academics, and practitioners in your field in Palestine (and/or in other sites of colonial violence)? How do you imagine their experiences compare with your own, and those you expect to have?
  3. ‘Only a decade after Irgun’s [an armed Zionist militia group’s] first attack on Palestinians, the 1948 Nakba took place, killing 15,000 Palestinians and displacing two thirds of the Palestinian population... This process has been described by Israeli historian Ilan Pappé as an “incremental genocide”, in which the crime is committed in “waves”. Facing little to no international backlash to these ‘waves’ has enabled both the expansion and refinement of Israel’s crimes against Palestine...’ (NCLP 2024, p. 22). What does this history mean to you?
  4. ‘Prior to October 7th, 2023 had already been deemed the deadliest year on record for Palestinians since 1948.’ (NCLP 2024, p. 21) Why do you think it matters when we start telling the story of current events from? Can you think of other cases where this makes a difference?

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Educational resources produced by UCU (UoN branch) and Nottingham Camp for the Liberation of Palestine

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Learn more

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Educational resources produced by UCU (UoN branch) and Nottingham Camp for the Liberation of Palestine

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Learn more

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Educational resources produced by UCU (UoN branch) and Nottingham Camp for the Liberation of Palestine