WASHINGTON — Answering questions at a Boston-area mosque last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren said she thinks international officials will determine Israel’s actions in Gaza legally constitute genocide.
“If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” the Massachusetts Democrat said of the International Court of Justice, which found in January it was “plausible” that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and continues to investigate.
The Boston Globe obtained video of Warren’s comments Friday at the Islamic Center of Boston in Wayland and they were confirmed in a transcript of the event from her office.
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Warren stressed at the mosque that she would rather talk about exactly what Israel is doing in Gaza than focus on a “labels argument, which seems to throw up a screen” in the passionate debate over the war.
“For me, it is far more important to say what Israel is doing is wrong. And it is wrong. It is wrong to starve children within a civilian population in order to try to bend to your will,” she said. “It is wrong to drop 2,000-pound bombs, in densely populated civilian areas.”
But Warren was not expressing her personal view on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, but giving her legal analysis, according to a statement from her office.
“In a Q&A, Senator Warren commented on the ongoing legal process at the International Court of Justice, not sharing her views on whether genocide is occurring in Gaza,” the statement said. “The Senator has worked with her colleagues in Congress to push for a ceasefire, for the return of hostages, for conditioning aid to Israel, for free flow of humanitarian aid in Gaza, and for movement toward a two-state solution.”
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Sakib Khan, 39, of Needham, attended the Wayland event after Friday prayers there and gave Warren credit for showing up to answer questions from a crowd that was “predisposed to heckle her for her support for Israel.” He applauded her answer to the genocide question but said now she needs to act “with the appropriate urgency” to stop it.
“She hasn’t been treating it with the appropriate urgency, and frankly I don’t think even now she’s treating it with the appropriate urgency,” Khan said, adding that he wasn’t happy that Warren’s office was attempting to qualify her answer.
“It is a straightforward answer form a legal perspective. It’s a crime just like murder or rape,” Khan said. “To now say she might have some personal view that might amount to something else I think is backtracking.”
Warren has been under pressure from progressive activists who oppose the Biden administration’s support of Israel as it responds to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas, with a small but significant number of voters in Democratic primaries around the country choosing “uncommitted” to express their displeasure with President Biden’s handling of the war.
The strike on Israel killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and Hamas took about 250 hostages, with about half of those taken still being held six months later. Israel’s military response has killed about 30,000 people, according to Gaza officials, and a humanitarian crisis continues to worsen as food aid deliveries to the war-torn region have slowed dramatically.
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The Biden administration has not said that Israel’s actions constitute genocide. But some Democrats, like Warren, have been ramping up their opposition to Israel’s conduct and threatening to take action to withhold future military aid. Biden has been putting more pressure on Israel and last week told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the situation in Gaza was unacceptable, calling for an immediate cease-fire and warning that the United States would reassess its policy toward Israel if the humanitarian conditions did not improve after seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen were killed.
In the aftermath of the deaths of the aid workers, which Israel has said was a mistaken airstrike, Warren told CNN last week that she would try to block an upcoming sale of fighter jets to Israel.
At the mosque, Warren was asked for her views as a Harvard law professor as well as her personal view, according to a transcript provided by Warren’s office. After she answered in the context of the International Court of Justice proceedings, Warren was pressed for a yes or now answer on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
She answered again in the legal context, which resulted in applause, according to the video. But Warren reiterated she wanted to focus directly on Israel’s actions.
“What I’m also trying to tell you is I’m trying to get people past a labels argument, which seems to throw up a screen, and to get them to look at the behavior on the ground,” Warren said. “Get them to look at the children, to get them to look at the moms, and the old people and people who’ve been displaced and the people who are living outside of the people who are drinking dirty water, and talk about what the role of the United States is in connection with supporting the Netanyahu government, which has put the people of Gaza in that position.”
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Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.