A group of pro-Israel lawyers have succeed in getting references to genocide removed from the publicity for a Palestine-related art exhibition. This is the latest in a long series of interventions by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) and other organisations that have often disrupted cultural events in Britain.

The exhibition, "Unbroken Threads: Creative Resistance for Palestine", features 23 works curated by the Royal College of Art Palestine Society. It is due to take place this coming Saturday and Sunday as part of the London Design Festival.

The original publicity had three sentences mentioning genocide:

• "This exhibition dives into Palestinian culture and heritage, highlighting its resilience amidst genocide and displacement." 
• "The work proposes Palestine as an urgent touchstone of our times as artists and creative practitioners, reflecting on both the challenge and urgency of producing work within the context of the ongoing genocide."
• "The aim of the exhibition is to highlight Palestinian culture and heritage, bringing to light its endurance amidst the violence of displacement, colonialism and genocide."

In the first sentence "genocide" has now been replaced by "war". In the second sentence "genocide" has been replaced by "conflict", and in the third sentence it has been removed atogether.

These changes follow a letter from UKLFI to Ben Evans, director of the London Design Festival.

UKLFI maintains there is no evidence of genocide in Gaza. Earlier this year it became embroiled in a spat with other lawyers about an order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and whether or not the court had said there was a risk of genocide. UKLFI claimed it hadn’t.

The dispute began in April when more than 1,000 lawyers signed an open letter to the prime minister giving their view of Britain’s obligations regarding Gaza  –  including a legal duty to prevent genocide by “all means reasonably available”. Among the signatories were 14 retired judges, including four former Justices of the Supreme Court. Their letter described the ICJ’s order as having concluded there was “a plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza.

UKLFI retaliated with a letter signed by a second group of more than 1,000 lawyers, claiming the ICJ’s ruling had been misunderstood. The court had not found that there was a plausible risk of genocide but that Palestinians in Gaza had a plausible right to be protected from genocide, UKLFI’s letter said.

The senders of the original letter denounced this as “empty wordplay on the most serious of issues”. In a statement endorsed by three former Supreme Court judges and four former Appeal Court judges they said:

“The Court’s unambiguous conclusion (at §74) was that there was a ‘real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice will be caused to the rights found by the Court to be plausible’, i.e. the rights of Palestinians to be protected from violations of the Genocide Convention. In simple terms: a plausible risk of genocide.”

Elaborating on “at least six flaws in UKLFI’s analysis”, the statement argued that there would have been no need for the ICJ to produce 29 pages of legal reasoning if the purpose was merely to establish that Palestinians had the right to be protected from genocide: “That right is not simply plausible; it is obvious and inviolable. Nobody could seriously suggest otherwise.”

UKLFI's Legal Director, Natasha Hausdorff, later told a parliamentary committee: “It is very important to understand why the allegations of genocide are being advanced. It is not because there is any currency to the allegations  –  any real evidence to base them on.”