As the US-backed Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign enters its fifth month, major demonstrations drawing tens of thousands of people took place in the United States over the weekend.
After seeing the sign they held up in Illinois, I’m confused now how the word genocide should be used. It says “Israeli genocide in Palestine”, which brings to mind the Armenian genocide (Armenians were the victims) and Nazi genocide (Nazis were the perpetrators). Can the word genocide be used to refer to both the victims and perpetrators of genocide?
Hard to say, I suspect people decide on a case by case basis, though I myself often hear the term genocide used after the group targeted or the location. The genocide in Germany and its occupied territories during World War II was uniquely historically bad to warrant its own terminology (hence “Holocaust” in many instances).
Most genocides actually don’t have as high a percentage of people killed as the Holocaust did, the Armenian and Greek genocides by Turkey during WW1 are actually more historically representative in that significantly more of the population are displaced, assaulted, and/or culturally destroyed than outright killed. The Holocaust combined the typical traits of genocide with a truly monstrous murder-industrial complex.
This is also why the Gaza genocide is particularly worrying, because unlike many other historical genocides (and none are acceptable), the people of Gaza are boxed in to a very small space, told to migrate to different parts of it, and then attacked in the places they move to. There is no escape for them, and this situation was entirely manufactured by Israel. Whatever the official death toll is at this moment, the real death toll might never be known and is likely significantly higher.
The thing with the Palestinian genocide is that the Israelis were
killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, but doing it so slowly as to not arouse a response. I mean, it was happening before the current war, especially the “inflicting on the group conditions of life” part. It’s truly sick.
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After seeing the sign they held up in Illinois, I’m confused now how the word genocide should be used. It says “Israeli genocide in Palestine”, which brings to mind the Armenian genocide (Armenians were the victims) and Nazi genocide (Nazis were the perpetrators). Can the word genocide be used to refer to both the victims and perpetrators of genocide?
Hard to say, I suspect people decide on a case by case basis, though I myself often hear the term genocide used after the group targeted or the location. The genocide in Germany and its occupied territories during World War II was uniquely historically bad to warrant its own terminology (hence “Holocaust” in many instances).
Most genocides actually don’t have as high a percentage of people killed as the Holocaust did, the Armenian and Greek genocides by Turkey during WW1 are actually more historically representative in that significantly more of the population are displaced, assaulted, and/or culturally destroyed than outright killed. The Holocaust combined the typical traits of genocide with a truly monstrous murder-industrial complex.
This is also why the Gaza genocide is particularly worrying, because unlike many other historical genocides (and none are acceptable), the people of Gaza are boxed in to a very small space, told to migrate to different parts of it, and then attacked in the places they move to. There is no escape for them, and this situation was entirely manufactured by Israel. Whatever the official death toll is at this moment, the real death toll might never be known and is likely significantly higher.
Actually in that context Holocaust only refers to the Jewish victims of genocide. To not erase the 5 million other vuctims it’s necessary to use the term Nazi genocide.
The thing with the Palestinian genocide is that the Israelis were
with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, but doing it so slowly as to not arouse a response. I mean, it was happening before the current war, especially the “inflicting on the group conditions of life” part. It’s truly sick.