News & Events

Join us for our Let's Talk Research event with Ramez Hayek on 'Zionism’s Genocidal Logic: An Ideological Engine of Destruction'

When: 1pm-2pm Tuesday, 28 October 2025

Where: Seminar Room, Irish Centre for Human Rights, University of Galway

About the speaker

Ramez Hayek is a Palestinian PhD researcher and both Hardiman and Research Ireland Scholar at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, where his work focuses on the legal and historical dimensions of genocide in the Palestinian context since 1948, and he's supervised by Professor Shane Darcy. He holds two Master's degrees: one in Human Rights Law from the Central European University, and another in Peace Operations, Humanitarian Law, and Conflict from the University of Galway.

In his professional capacity, Ramez serves as a research assistant to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. He was also the lead researcher for the Palestinian Archive at Mnemonic, where he leads efforts to archive, investigate, and memorialize digital information documenting human rights violations and international crimes in Palestine. His experience also spans several key roles in human rights advocacy and legal research, having worked with renowned organizations such as UNICEF, PEN America, SWEDO, and Amnesty International.

Title: Zionism’s Genocidal Logic: An Ideological Engine of Destruction

What if the violence in Gaza is not an “episode,” but the latest expression of an ideology that demands the unmaking of a people? Discussion of genocide must begin by interrogating Zionism—an ideology shaping Israeli policy since 1948 and, since the nineteenth century, seeking Jewish demographic dominance and territorial control. This presentation holds that questions of who orders air-strikes in Gaza or who holds the Israeli prime minister’s office are secondary. Deeper inquiry asks whether Zionism, as the constitutive logic of the Israeli state, operates as a structure of destruction whose cumulative effect satisfies the Genocide Convention’s prohibition on the intent to “destroy, in whole or in part,” a protected group. Shifting discourse from incidents to ideology animating them sharpens the legal lens. It argues that Zionism is not "only" a doctrine of dispossession but an eliminatory project whose pursuit of Jewish supremacy—concealed in the language of a Jewish State—inevitably produces violence, whether accelerated or incremental through tightening occupation and apartheid policies. It rejects the assumption that ending mass violence depends on replacing the government or the departure of leaders such as Benjamin Netanyahu; if the machinery is structural, only dismantling or fundamentally transforming that structure can halt the destruction it perpetuates.