Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
Here’s a note I sent to a colleague who asked sincerely whether “genocide” was the appropriate word for Israeli actions in Gaza:
For what it’s worth, I taught the Holocaust as a professor of history after attending a seminar at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Also, if it means anything, I’m Catholic, retired military, with no particular axe to grind.
Yes, it’s a genocide in Gaza. A holocaust in slow motion. Heck, Israeli leaders have freely confessed their goal is a final solution to the Gaza question, mainly by killing many Palestinians while forcing the rest to leave. (Whether they’ll have any place to go remains to be seen.)
There is no one model of genocide, and definitions also vary. But if what’s happening in Gaza isn’t a genocide, I don’t know what other word applies. Mass murder, perhaps? Extermination but slowly? Ethnic cleansing and mass death followed by mass expulsion?
It’s hard to square genocide with (the sham of) a ceasefire, isn’t it? Of course, the Israeli government never intended to honor a ceasefire. It was “decrease fire” so as to get back the hostages followed by “increase fire” once those hostages were safe.
When I see images of Gaza today, what comes to mind is Stalingrad in World War II. Near-total destruction as Nazi Germany waged its war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. The Nazis’ basic goal was “living space” in the east, the enslavement of the Slavic peoples, and the extermination of Jews, Roma and Sinti peoples (gypsies), and anyone else judged to be a threat to the Third Reich.
Wars of annihilation are genocidal. You know it when you see it.
