Orion Kim, Contributing Photographer

On Tuesday evening, prominent political scientist and activist Norman Finkelstein gave his affirmative speech on the resolution “The state of Israel is responsible for genocide.” 

Finkelstein, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, has gained traction due to his controversial views, including his firm stance that the tragedy of the Holocaust is often abused to justify the moral atrocities committed by the Israeli state. 

At the end of the three-hour-long event, attendees voted 66-22 in favor of the resolution, with the two abstained voters being met with unanimous hissing. 

Finkelstein began his speech by challenging the technical definitions of genocide, which he claimed can often get caught up between crimes against humanity, acts of genocide and full-fledged genocide. Instead, he read aloud the Oxford Dictionary definition of “genocide” twice. 

Next, Finkelstein moved to establish his sources, mostly citing reports from humanitarian and professional organizations such as UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Health Organization. He pointed out that there is very little disagreement between sources. 

“There’s really no controversy about what’s going on in Gaza,” he said. 

Throughout his speech, Finkelstein pointed to the underestimation of civilian death tolls by 42 percent according to a Lancet study and statements from the Israeli government, which he claimed only clarify that Israel is committing genocide.

“By every major metric, Israel is in a class of its own by a wide margin in the 21st century, and in some metrics back to WWII,” he said. 

In support of his argument, he listed examples including the disproportionate number of children killed, the monthly death toll of civilians, the starvation in Gaza, the targeting of hospitals and killing of civilians on safe evacuation routes. 

As he approached the end of his speech, the audience began reacting to many of his statements, notably when he stated that Israel was not waging a war of self-defense but a genocide. 

“Israel’s response is not disproportionate, I would argue it is proportionate to its goal of destroying the civilian population of Gaza,” Finkelstein said. 

After heavy desk-tapping signaling agreement and sparse hissing indicating disdain, the YPU moved to questions. 

Finkelstein spent most of his time discussing a question posed by an attendee about his stance on solutions. He rebutted by saying that potential solutions are irrelevant, as no situation should ever permit genocide. 

“I don’t see the pertinence of asking my personal opinion on where I stand on one-state, two-state, or even 10-state solutions,” he said. 

To a follow-up question regarding what a proportionate reaction and initiation of self-defense to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks would look like, he responded by sharing several instances where Hamas was prepared to accept a two-state solution or attempt diplomacy but was rejected by Israel. 

For the final portion of the event, the YPU invited three members to give negative rebuttals and two to speak in the affirmative. 

Speaking in the negative, Joshua Danziger ’28 delivered the first speech, a direct response to Finkelstein’s arguments, presenting records of Hamas members bragging about the number of lives they took during the Oct. 7 attacks and arguing that Israel did supply aid to Gazans, but Hamas intercepted them. 

“One must ask why are there civilian deaths in Gaza in this war? In its attempt to weaken Israel, Hamas’ strategy is to maximize the deaths of innocent Gazans to make them look bad,” said Danziger, who is also an opinion columnist at the News. 

While Danziger acknowledged that Israel made mistakes, he remained firm in his stance that Israel has the right to defend itself.

The other two speeches in the negative had starkly different argumentative approaches. Kai-Shan Kwek-Rupp ’28 and Avi Rao ’27 both labeled Israel’s disproportionate responses to Oct. 7 as reprehensible but noted the importance of calling the responses by their proper names. 

“The indiscriminate death of 64,000 civilians as collateral damage in the pursuit of national security is a deep moral failure, but it is not genocide,” Kwek-Rupp said. 

In the affirmative, both speakers delved into entirely different structural arguments than Finkelstein. Hari Manchi ’28 placed the Israel-Hamas war in the context of historical treatment of Native populations by the U.S. and other examples of Western imperialism, expressing his regret that nothing has changed. 

Hassaan Qadir’s ’26 speech investigated the role economic factors have on nation-states and how both Israel and Hamas are driven by monetary forces. 

“The current pattern of attempting to create a Palestinian state will only lead to giving Israel more options to continue their genocide,” he said. 

Instead, Qadir said that Palestinians must try to build an economic foundation through Israeli society and that it is perhaps possible for Palestinians and Israelis to live harmoniously in the distant future. 

In support of Finkelstein and the resolution, several students also wore keffiyehs. 

After the final student speaker, Finkelstein gave closing remarks, addressing the importance of harping on the precise meaning of the word genocide. 

“We make these distinctions because they refer back to a scale of morality and because they register different degrees of moral degradation,” he said. 

The YPU is the oldest collegiate debate society in the U.S., founded in 1934.