I have been thinking about this for quite some time, and I have a few half-written blog posts addressing the G word: is the Gaza operation genocide? I learned today that calling it such may be "anti-semitic" according to the standards of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, so that could be a deterrent. However, since the guy who wrote the IHRA guidelines is opposed to the weaponization of his guidelines, maybe that shouldn't deter us.
One of the big challenges in calling something genocide is that it is supposed to require not just heaps of war crimes but proven intent. I have gotten into arguments with a friend about this. What counts as intent? Heaps of statements by those in the Israeli government but not by Netanyahu himself? Does Israel need to issue a statement that their intent is to commit genocide for us to call it genocide? And to be clear, most genocide scholars have called it genocide while most holocaust scholars have not.
Again, the crime of genocide is "“intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such.” I find this strange because it makes intent more important than the actual reality of what is being done, and what is being done in Gaza and what is starting to be done in the West Bank is the destruction of a people because of who they are. It is more than a few war crimes but an operation defined by war crimes--killing of kids and of journalists, destruction of hospitals and water facilities, and now the perfection of starvation. For me, genocide is the attempted destruction of a people in whole or in part because of their identities. How is what is going in Gaza not that? I think we can discern intent from the fact that this has been going on for some time and that the violence has been systemic. It is not an accident that the destruction has been this complete. It is not an accident that Palestinians are dying of starvation. I think we can infer intent from the patterns.
Yet, for me and for others, it has been very hard to use the G-word. Why? There are two reasons, I think, with one being far more important than the other, but both probably matter. The lesser reason is that if you call something genocide, you are obligated to do something about it. The Genocide Convention and all the discussion around it involves not just an obligation not to engage in genocide, but also not to stand by when one observes it elsewhere. I am old enough to remember when the Clinton Administration was reluctant to call the Rwanda Genocide what it was as it was happening because that would mean doing something about it less than a year after the mess in Mogadishu.
How do you stop a country from committing genocide? The efforts by countries to invoke international law have failed to stop Israel. Of course, cutting off arms shipments would be a first step that should have happened long ago. But that too would be insufficient given the commitment made by Netanyahu to stay in power to continue the war against the Palestinians. Regime change? That would seem to be the way to go, but that opens all kinds of questions that people don't want to consider. But, still, I don't think that is driving discomfort with the G-word.
The biggest problem for Jews to call it genocide is that it cuts to heart of Jewish identity. Note that one of the IHRA restrictions is comparing Israel's actions to the Nazis. Why is that? While anti-semites may do that all the time, why is it inherently anti-semitic if the behavior is similar? Because the Holocaust is so burned into Jewish identity, that Jews as victims, as survivors, is part of what it means to be Jewish. As an atheist, I don't feel my Jewish identity when it comes to religious stuff,* but I feel it when the Holocaust comes up as a topic. I have joked that I learned three things in Hebrew school (2-3 times a week, mostly afternoons after my public school education): how to read (not understand) enough Hebrew to barely get through my Bar Mitzvah, various mythologies about the creation of Israel (I cannot express how mind-blowing and nauseating it is to hear Israeli politicians refer to a second Nabka, which means they are acknowledging what was long denied--that Israel expelled the Palestinians in 1947),** and the Holocaust.
It is now fundamental to Jewish identity that genocide was done to us. Indeed, some of the discourse around the Holocaust is disturbing because it focuses on the six million Jews and not the eleven or so million victims, in an effort to make the Holocaust a uniquely Jewish experience, rather than including Roma, LGBTQ, the disabled, opposition politicians, and others. Anyhow, if being the target of genocide defines in part what it means to be a Jew, how can Jews engage in genocide? It is possible but really hard to recognize this reality, as it hurts. It feels awful, it creates much emotional conflict within oneself and with others, including family. It is far easier to label the behavior of others, such as Serbs in Bosnia, as genocide than to consider one's own people guilty of it, especially when it is key to one's identity.
And, yes, another element is that others in bad faith use the genocide word. But again, as the Superman movie reminds us (as did a series of books that have now been betrayed by their author), it is the choices we make, it is what we do that matters. What the Israeli government is doing is horrifying. The scale of destruction, of collective punishment, is appalling. What is the appropriate life for a life ratio? Yes, Hamas killed more than a thousand people in October a couple of years ago, but does that justify killing tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands? Again, collective punishment is inherently evil, it is what Nazis did to Lidice because of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.
There I go, making comparisons to Nazis. I guess that means I am anti-semitic. I don't hate Jews, but I do hate the government of Netanyahu. And there's the rub--Jews in Israel are protesting that government, so they aren't anti-semitic, are they? So, if folks on this side of the Atlantic protest the actions of the Israeli government, does that make them anti-semitic? I would think not, but the weaponization of the IHRA standards, mostly by actors of bad faith (the Trump administration and the GOP are full of anti-semites from the top down), says otherwise.
There has been plenty of real anti-semitism directed at American Jews, including members of my family. But what is not anti-semitism are accusations that Israel is engaged in genocide. Sure, that makes Jews uncomfortable, but being made uncomfortable is not a hate crime. Here's another parallel that will surely annoy people--being informed about the slavery and its legacy makes white people uncomfortable in the US but is not a hate crime and should not be driven out of classrooms. Similarly, criticism of Israel for its war crimes and, yes, for its genocidal campaign, will make Jews uncomfortable, but is not necessarily anti-semitism. That depends on the speaker and, yes, their intent.
So, yeah, what the government of Israel is doing is genocide. It does not make Hamas right or justified or good. Hamas is evil, perhaps more evil than Israel because it deliberately endangered the people they claim to represent to score points. Israel, for all of the harm it does, is doing it in the name of protecting its people, even it is mostly about keeping Netanyahu in power and out of prison. But one can think the two things at the same time--that Hamas is evil and Israel is engaging in genocide. It is awful, it is uncomfortable as hell, but it is also reality.
* I have long been a "bad Jew" not just for being an atheist but also for marrying a non-Jew. So, devout Jews can take all of what I say and throw this blog post out. But again, I feel this identity keenly when Nazis are back in fashion in the US as I know that I would be sent to the gas chambers along with those who believe.
** Israel is also central to Jewish identity, something I am reminded of as I read Sandra Fox's book on Jewish summer camps. But is it the government or the place that is central? I think making any government central to one's identity to be problematic, but that is a topic for another day. I have dodged all kinds of questions and issues, but this post is long enough. We can discuss Zionism some other day.
4 comments:
It's really something that even while admitting that Israel is committing genocide, you apparently feel compelled to justify it in a backhanded way while demonizing Palestinians: "Hamas is evil, perhaps more evil than Israel because it deliberately endangered the people they claim to represent to score points. Israel, for all of the harm it does, is doing it in the name of protecting its people..."
The positions people hold on this conflict are deeply entrenched and emotionally charged, making meaningful dialogue feel more out of reach than ever. Even as many Jews may strongly disagree with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s handling of the situation, Israeli sympathy for the Palestinian people has drastically eroded. The atrocities committed on October 7 were barbaric, and the celebrations that followed in parts of Gaza, Iran, and the occupied territories only deepened the sense of betrayal and horror.
In these areas, years of indoctrination and the dominance of extremist ideology have created a worldview that dehumanizes Israelis. In turn, Israel’s overwhelming military response has led many Palestinians—and much of the world—to view Israel’s actions as equally, if not more, barbaric. This cycle of trauma and retaliation has made it nearly impossible for either side to see the other as human, let alone as a potential partner in peace.
When this conflict is discussed outside the region, especially in the West, it forces people into binary camps: you’re expected to pick a side. As a Jew, it often feels like the world is inclined to pick the side against us. Since its inception, Israel has been disproportionately scrutinized, and Jewish people remain the most targeted group in hate crimes globally. Whatever sympathy existed for Israel after October 7 has quickly dissipated, and the global discourse feels overwhelmingly anti-Israel—something that, for many in the diaspora, feels indistinguishable from being anti-Jewish.
So yes, even if Israel is committing acts that amount to genocide, it’s understandable that this moment makes many Jews feel profoundly uneasy and defensive—and it should. But what should also trouble us is the near silence from the global community when it comes to Hamas’s actions and the broader issue of how any nation—Jewish or otherwise—could ever coexist beside a group that espouses religious terrorism.
Two things can be true at once: Israel may be committing atrocities, and yet this tragedy may also have been avoidable if the international community had taken the threat of Palestinian terrorism more seriously from the outset.
The definition of genocide leaning so heavily on intent rather than effect, is something I have a problem with. The population of Gazans has never even dipped, where the extermination of 6 million Jews had an obvious impact on the Jewish population it still hasn't even empowered 80 years later. The Canadian government acted callously towards its indigenous peoples, was that really genocide? Hamas and the PLO are committed to ridding the territory they claim of all Jews and other minorities. It's written in their founding and current charters. The rockets they launch and the Oct 7th attack was wholly indiscriminate. Is that an attempt at genocide? I might argue that it is more like an attempted genocide than the Israeli Gaza war is.
Recovered not empowered.
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