A webinar analyzing the merits of South Africa's genocide allegations against Israel from a scholarly perspective.
Thursday, October 29, 202611:00 AM - 12:00 PM (Pacific Time)Webinar
11:00 AM Pacific / 2:00 PM Eastern / 18:00 UK / 20:00 Israel
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Organized by the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Middle East Development.
About the Event
About the Speakers
David Kretzmer is professor emeritus of International and Constitutional Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was the founding academic director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights. He has been a visiting professor at leading universities in the United States, Ireland and Italy. From 1995-2002, David was a member of the Human Rights Committee that monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, serving as vice-chairperson of the Committee in 2001 and 2002.
David's main fields of research are constitutional law, human rights and the law of armed conflict. His most recent articles have been on the use of force in international law, the use of lethal force against suspected terrorists, the law of belligerent occupation, the place of the occupation of the West Bank in Israel’s constitutional order, and the connection between the constitutional regime change and the occupied territories.
David's most recent books are The Occupation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied Territories (2nd ed. together with Yael Ronen, OUP 2021) and The Law and Politics of Belligerent Occupation: The Case of the West Bank (Nomos, Institute for International Peace and Security Law, 2025).
Danny Orbach, a military and legal historian, is an associate professor of History and Asian Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research explores military history, political assassinations and coups, military adventurism, illegal orders, the dynamics of military atrocities, and the history of intelligence and espionage.
His publications include The Plots Against Hitler (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan, Fugitives: A History of Nazi Mercenaries during the Cold War, Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel–Hamas War, October 7, 2023–June 1, 2025 (with co-authors) and Punishment: Behind Japanese Military Brutality (Hurst and Oxford University Press). His work has been translated into numerous languages, including Thai, Japanese, Hebrew, French, Croatian, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, and Spanish.
He is also currently working on a new research project, Why Do Soldiers Rape – and Stop: Turning Points in Wartime Rape, 1931–1953, a comparative study of the Japanese, German, Soviet, and American armies across the wider Second World War era, from the Japanese invasion of Manchuria to the Korean War.
Professor Steven E. Zipperstein (moderator) is the Director of the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. He teaches in the Department of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He is a Visiting Professor at Tel Aviv University Law School and a member of the Adjunct Faculty at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. He serves as a Distinguished Senior Scholar at the UCLA Center for Middle East Development and as a Senior Fellow at The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation in the Netherlands. Zipperstein is the author of three peer-reviewed books, most recently The Legal Case for Palestine: A Critical Assessment (Routledge, 2024).
DISCLAIMER: The views or opinions of our guest speakers and the content of their presentations do not necessarily reflect the views of the UCLA Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Hosting speakers does not constitute an endorsement of the speaker's views or opinions.
Sponsor(s): Center for Middle East Development