#Genocide is a specific act of intentionally ERADICATING an entire group | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sethshead · 4 months

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If “genocide” means any horrible action by one group against another, then it loses its specific moral and legal meaning. It becomes just another word that partisans use against one another. I’m pro-Palestine, therefore I call this a genocide; you’re pro-Israel, therefore you deny it. That represents a terrible loss for the rule of law, and the persecuted minorities that are the targets of actual genocide. No one who cares about minority rights, indigenous rights, or human rights should be cavalier in the use of this term. Finally, it does not aid the cause of Palestinians to level this charge. The genocide charge enflames hatred against Israel, and in turn exacerbates Israelis’ sense of being alone and isolated in a world of antisemites who will say anything against them. All that supports the extremists on Israel’s right wing. This is not to suggest that solidarity with Palestine means supporting the Israeli action — that would be ridiculous. It is simply to say that all of us — left, right, and center; sympathetic to one side or the other or both — need to be careful with language and contribute to some eventual resolution, or at least mitigation, of this conflict. Painting the enemy in terms of good and evil does a disservice not merely to the “other side” but to the very prospect of coexistence between two peoples with complex and interwoven histories.

War is not genocide. Even the war crime of intentionally targeting civilians is not genocide. Genocide is a crime against humanity that encompasses the intentional extermination of an entire people. It is a major charge, a capital one. It is rare, too: in the 20th Century we see the Herero, Armenian, Holocaust, Rwandan, and possibly Bosnian genocides. The crimes of Stalin's regime against the Kalmyks, the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Muslim world, the violence of India's partition, and more recently the ethnocide against the Uighur and Russian plans to eradicate Ukrainian distinctive identity, don't reach this high plateau. If your definition of "genocide" is so broad that it can be applied to the experience of German under allied bombs in World War II, then your definition is functionally useless save as an emotionally weighted, manipulative cudgel.

Which is exactly what the misuse of "genocide" is intended to do. Just as Mahmoud Abbas's doctoral dissertation minimized the Holocaust and placed blame for it on Zionists, pro-Palestinians use the charge in order to trivialize Jewish trauma and reduce it to and unfortunate and exaggerated consequence of any conflict. They want to eliminate one of the central reasons Israel exists: as a safe haven for a globally persecuted minority. After all, they deny that life was at all difficult for Jews as dhimam under the burdens and limitations of Muslim world. They need to portray Jews as historically privileged, not as victims, in order to make the case for Israel's elimination, an act that few can seriously deny would be accompanied by another genocide, given the acts and words of the most powerful and popular (not to mention well funded) Palestinian political party and military force.

So you see, those who misuse "genocide" don't want coexistence between two peoples with complex and interwoven histories. They want Jews put back in our place. They believe all the conspiracy theories about our power and influence, our plans for world domination and conquest from the Nile to the Euphrates, and want to strip us of our pride, our confidence, our self-determination, our autonomy, and our freedom. There is no compromise or accommodation with the people who use this language. They are lost causes to be ignored. We must defend ourselves and our interests, deaf to their distortions of language and history. They do not wish us well, and we are under no obligation to negate ourselves for their sake.

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