{"id":55930,"date":"2025-11-03T04:29:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T12:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=55930"},"modified":"2025-11-03T04:29:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T12:29:22","slug":"is-it-a-genocide-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/03\/is-it-a-genocide-in-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Is It a Genocide in Gaza?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/bracingviews.substack.com\/\">Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s a note I sent to a colleague who asked sincerely whether \u201cgenocide\u201d was the appropriate word for Israeli actions in Gaza:<\/p>\n<p><em>For what it\u2019s 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\u2019m Catholic, retired military, with no particular axe to grind.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Yes, it\u2019s 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\u2019ll have any place to go remains to be seen.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>There is no one model of genocide, and definitions also vary. But if what\u2019s happening in Gaza isn\u2019t a genocide, I don\u2019t know what other word applies. Mass murder, perhaps? Extermination but slowly? Ethnic cleansing and mass death followed by mass expulsion?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s hard to square genocide with (the sham of) a ceasefire, isn\u2019t it? Of course, the Israeli government never intended to honor a ceasefire. It was \u201cdecrease fire\u201d so as to get back the hostages followed by \u201cincrease fire\u201d once those hostages were safe.<\/p>\n<p>When I see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/aug\/05\/wasteland-rubble-dust-graves-how-gaza-looks-from-the-sky\" rel=\"\">images of Gaza<\/a> 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\u2019 basic goal was \u201cliving space\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>Wars of annihilation are genocidal. You know it when you see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. Here\u2019s a note I sent to a colleague who asked sincerely whether \u201cgenocide\u201d was the appropriate word for Israeli actions in Gaza: For what it\u2019s worth, I taught the Holocaust as a professor of history after attending a seminar at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Also, if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-55930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"You Know It When You See It"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55930"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55950,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55930\/revisions\/55950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55930"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=55930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}