This talk places the current Israeli military action in Gaza within its historical context and adopts a mass atrocity prevention lens in order to assess the growing accussations from numerous states and international bodies accusing Israel of war crimes, crimes against humanity, mass atrocity, and even genocide against Gaza's Palestian population as demonstrated by South Africa's current case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).  This talk discusses South Africa's case against Israel in the ICJ by referencing the United Nations Genocide Convention and the UN Doctrine of R2P (the Responsibility to Protect) adopted in 1948 & 2005 respectively. Both the Genocide Convention and R2P were ratified as an attempt to help prevent mass atrocity and genocide in the wake of the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide.

About the Speaker

Kent F. Schull, Ph.D. is an associate professor at Binghamton University. He is a two-time Fulbright scholar to Turkey. His publications include "Prisons in the Late Ottoman Empire: Microcosms of Modernity" (EUP, 2014), three co-edited volumes: "Living in the Ottoman Realm: Sultans, Subjects, and Elites" (IUP, 2016); "Law and Legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire & Republic of Turkey" (IUP, 2016); and "Subjects of Ottoman International Law" (IUP, 2020); and numerous journal articles and book chapters. He is also book series editor for "Edinburgh Studies on the Ottoman Empire" (Edinburgh University Press) and the former editor of the "Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association" from 2013-18. 

His research and teaching interests include the social and cultural history of the Ottoman Empire and modern Middle East, criminal justice, Middle East Diaspora Studies, Israeli and Palestinian History, missiology and forced migration in the MENA region.