An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg

US Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the chairman of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, has called on the State Department to declare Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7 an act of genocide.

In a letter sent on Thursday to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack, McCaul described the legal requirements for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. He also listed evidence from Hamas itself to argue that the Palestinian terrorist group’s slaughter of more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, during its invasion of Israel met those requirements.

“Documents recovered from the Hamas death squads demonstrate that the assault was meticulously planned to devastate kibbutzim, schools, and youth centers, and to ‘kill as many people as possible,'” the letter says. “Hamas thus plainly intended to destroy ‘a substantial part’ of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Under such circumstances, the requisite intent for these atrocity crimes ‘is the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question.'”

McCaul said that Hamas’ atrocities, which resulted in the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, could rightly be compared to the “Einsatzgruppen” death squads of Nazi Germany, several of whose leaders were tried and executed after World War II.

“Following its deployment of mobile death squads to Israel, the name of Hamas will echo with Einsatzgruppen through the ages, as the essence of evil,” McCaul writes. “And like [Einsatzgruppe D commander] Otto Ohlendorf at Nuremberg, Hamas and its members must similarly be held accountable for these atrocities. At such times, the United States should answer the ‘plea of humanity to law.’ A formal determination by the State Department is a crucial reply toward that end.”

Under the 2018 Elie Wiesel Act, the executive branch of the US government is required to report to Congress about efforts to prevent atrocity crimes, including genocide. However, there is no formal US government process for determining whether an act of genocide has occurred.

Previous such determinations have been made with or without a request from Congress and have been made regarding both state and non-state groups, as with the US determination that ISIS had committed genocide against the Yazidis in areas it controlled in Iraq and Syria in 2016.