Body of ‘experts’ accusing Israel of genocide admits its members include activists and artists

The Guardian quoted the president of IAGS, Melanie O’Brien, who declared the resolution was a “definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on the ground in Gaza is genocide.”

Shortly after the body’s conclusion had circulated around the world, Honest Reporting board member Salo Aizenberg discovered the group’s open membership model, which allows virtually anyone to join its ranks – including activists and artists – by paying dues of $30 and up.

Once Aizenberg exposed that any person, real or not, can pay to become a member of IAGS, and that no evidence of academic credentials was required, a pile-on ensued in which many online activists began joining.

In response to a deluge of new members, IAGS took down its membership sign-up page, but not before the supposed body of experts was joined by new members such as “Emperor Palpatine”, “Adolf Hitler”, and “Mo Cookie”.

The full list of IAGS membership was also removed from public view, but its online archive was recovered by activists. The list includes several dozen alleged scholars hailing from Iraq, numerous from Bangladesh, and many others from Muslim-majority countries.

Aizenberg said he found “at least 80 members hailing from Iraq. Who voted for the Gaza resolution? We don’t now – the 100 or so votes were never disclosed. Could it have been dominated by this bloc? Hard to say.”

He went on, “When an organisation with no standards, no transparency, and no accountability makes sweeping pronouncements about “genocide”, it isn’t scholarship – it’s politics masquerading as scholarship.”

In a statement shared on Thursday on its website, IAGS said criticism directed at them for having a large portion of their members from Iraq and the Middle East amounted to “racist attacks”. IAGS said its values “attempts to include and champion minority voices/global majority voices that may not ‘look like’ what we expect ‘expertise’ to be.”

“IAGS values its diverse membership from around the world, and rejects this racist framing of our diverse membership as a negative aspect of our association,” the body said.

It continued, “IAGS membership is designed to be open to all who are committed to working on issues pertaining to genocide from a variety of disciplines and perspectives. We aim to be inclusive and democratic by keeping the door open to artists, advocates, independent scholars, indigenous scholars, global majority scholars, marginalised communities, and survivors. The goal is to include the voices of those who may not have PhDs, official institutional affiliation, or the financial means to access “conventional” education that often privileges the Global North forms of expertise. It is intended to circumvent any ivory tower privilege or gate keeping.” 

The IAGS Executive Board further said that it temporarily removed its sign-up page due to being subject to “a campaign of spam” with people using “offensive fake names and email addresses (including of genocide perpetrators such as ‘Adolf Hitler’.” It claimed members of its Executive Board have been subject to abusive hate mail and social media posts, causing “great stress and anxiety to members” and that it removed the list of its members from public view online for their own protection.

Critics though further pointed out that IAGS’s membership purportedly surged in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, from around 150 members before October 7 to over 500 afterwards.

Even before a wave of new sign-ups flooded the association this week – many using fake or satirical names – long-standing members had already voiced criticism of the resolution.

Dr Sara E Brown, a published academic and IAGS member for over a decade, claimed dissenting voices were blocked and promised town-hall-style discussions were cancelled. She said the vote on whether Israel was guilty of genocide was “a disaster from start to finish. Those of us against the resolution tried to submit our concerns for discussion but were blocked by leadership.”

Brown, a two-tern member of the IAGS advisory board, added that the association “refused to disclose” the authors of the resolution, and that the resolution itself is flawed and includes “many unsubstantiated claims, is poorly cited (using deeply biased, questionable sources) and perpetuates an internationally distorted analyses of the Israel Hamas war.”

She went on, “Anyone who considers themselves a genocide scholar should feel embarrassed by this vote.”

Another long-time member, Grant Arthur Gochin, accused IAGS of engaging in propaganda warfare. Writing in a Times of Israel blog, Gochin said IAGS “is not an exclusive body of scholars but a group susceptible to manipulation by activists. This resolution, backed by just 100 votes at a cost of roughly $12,500 in membership fees, represents one of the cheapest and most effective propaganda tactics in the eighth front against Israel – the media and propaganda war. This cynical exploitation of IAGS’s name has proven devastatingly successful while obliterating the organisation’s credibility.”

Writing in The Jewish Chronicle, international law experts Andrew Tucker and Alessandro Spinillo stated:

"This association’s statement never defines the legal concept it purports to apply, makes no serious attempt to analyse the complexity of the situation in Gaza on the ground, and fails to apply the relevant law to the relevant facts. These are the essential steps of judicial reasoning that any group of scholars must undertake before issuing a “declaration” on whether a state is complying with the law – let alone before levelling as grave a charge as genocide. Worse still, these scholars get even the most basic facts and legal concepts flatly wrong.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry referred to the report as “Hamas lies”, poorly researched and an “embarrassment to the legal profession”.

Hamas, meanwhile, welcomed the resolution on September 1, saying it serves as “new legal documentation” that reinforces claims of genocide.