Rethinking Cultural Genocide Under International Law with Emphasis on the Palestinian Issue

The study attempts to answer whether strategies of social and cultural “destruction” should be considered “genocide” under international law in the absence of systematic killing, or at least widespread physical attack. Given that at the moment cultural genocide is not within the scope of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, this study makes it clear that physical or biological acts are not the only ways to annihilate a group. It is possible to wipe out a human group without actually killing its members, i.e. by destroying its language and religious institutions and objects, restricting traditional practices, persecuting its clerics and intellectuals, in short, by destroying its cultural heritage. There have been many cases of cultural genocide throughout contemporary history, for example by Israeli government against Palestinians. To ignore this means to deny the protection of fundamental human rights of those who need it the most.