What Genocide Is, and What it Isn't

My colleague over at the Peace in the Middle East blog, Charles Lenchner, posted an excellent piece last week about use of the Holocaust in protests against the assault on Gaza, which I am more than a little remiss for not mentioning sooner.

Check out Charles' post for pointed list of reasons why "using Nazism and the Holocaust to Support Palestine is a Grave Error." Here, I'd like to talk a bit about what genocide is, and what it isn't, and why calling something "genocide" when it isn't will get you no where.

As I argue in a previous post, genocide is the systematic attempt to destroy a defined group of people. In my opinion, two elements are absolutely essential to identifying a genocide:

1. The motivation of the perpetrator: It is the explicit desire to completely exterminate a set population that separates genocide from other forms of mass killing
2. The physical destruction of the population: That is, the death of all of the groups members, or enough of them that the population as defined will not survive for long. Ethnocide, "cultural genocide," etc, are all separate phenomena.

Why the obsession with definitions? Isn't it all just semantics? No, actually---if you want to get at the root cause of a problem to fully understand, and hopefully even resolve, the structural dynamics that motivate violence, you need an accurate view of what something is, and what it isn't. To use another of my facetious analogies, if I take my car into the mechanics and insist that my transmission is shot, but won't listen to them tell me that it's actually a problem with my radiator, no amount of arguing will change the fact that my car is still broken.

As I wrote before, this is not to say that non-genocidal mass killing isn't bad, or isn't as bad---it's just a categorically different phenomenon.

Yet accusations of genocide are often tossed around in hostile settings, not because they may be true, but because they are sensational---they stir up anger and resentment, which can then be manipulated to the benefit of those making the accusation. Genocide is widely recognized as one of the worst abuses known to man, but using the term to get attention not only cheapens the memory of the millions who've died at the hands of truly genocidal regimes, it only serves to further radicalize and alienate one's own cause.

The manner in which civilians are caught in the middle on all sides of the conflict in the Middle East is an atrocity, but I have yet to see anything that shows that Israel has set out to systematically wipe out the Palestinian people from the face of the planet.

I agree with Charles's point that the use of Holocaust imagery is counter-productive to the Palestinian cause:

"The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has spread, and now includes many other groups. The Lebanese, for example, who paid an enormous price as a consequence of the Nakba. Or the Jordanians, whose demographics were drastically altered. By using Holocaust imagery and language, you are conveying that the opposition isn't merely Israel, or the Zionists, but all Jews. This has the effect of portraying your side as anti-Semitic, thus strengthening Israel's case. It also helps unite Jews in active or passive support of the Israeli PR effort."

I also agree that taking the tragedy of the Holocaust and "turning it around as verbal barbs" aimed at the Jewish population is tasteless, and at the end of the day, will do nothing to help the situation.

There is plenty here to protest. Protesting the right points will get you much farther than the misguided abuse of the memory of 6 million perished.

(And lastly, as a bit of an aside, and to throw myself completely into the intersection of Controversial Avenue and Political Quagmire Boulevard, I strongly disagree with those who refer to abortion as genocide.)

[Photo by Charles Lenchner.]