We must not let our passions about international bad conduct lead to mistreatment of individuals here in the U.S. whatever their countries or religions do elsewhere.
Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?
Genocide means acts committed with the intent to destroy, wholly or partially, a national, ethnic, or religious group, by killing or seriously harming members of the group or inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the group's destruction. It’s an international crime. South Africa’s formal charges mean the International Court of Justice may some day decide the genocide issue.
Hebrew University’s ProfessorAmos Goldberg, a top expert, says, “Yes, it is genocide. It is so difficult and painful to admit it, but . . .after six months of brutal war we can no longer avoid this conclusion.”
“Intent” is a key issue. Israeli officials say and do some things that evidence an intent to destroy. In U.S. law, if you intentionally act in a way that is likely to kill someone, that’s ample intent. Destroying homes, schools, hospitals, and water supplies sure sounds like creating “conditions calculated to bring about the group’s destruction.” Legally, Israel’s killing of 50,000 civilians, many women and children, is intentional.
Israel argues “self-defense.” Certainly on October 7th Hamas massacred innocent civilians who’d done nothing to deserve being beaten, raped, kidnaped, and/or massacred.
But if a dozen KKK members terrorists bombed an NAACP meeting, no one would argue that authorities could destroy the culprits’ hometown, or state, and everyone in it.
Professor Goldberg argues that “the level and pace of indiscriminate killing, destruction, mass expulsions, displacement, famine, executions, the wiping out of cultural and religious institutions, the crushing of elites (including the killing of journalists), and the sweeping dehumanization of the Palestinians — create an overall picture of genocide, of a deliberate conscious crushing of Palestinian existence in Gaza.”
Nor does perceived danger excuse genocide. Groups in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Burma have arguably committed genocide because of what Goldberg calls, “an authentic sense of self-defence.” Genocide doesn’t require the insanity and complete lack of provocation that characterized Nazi Germany’s conduct.
“Genocide” or not, killing or maiming 100,000 civilians is not conduct that the U.S. should support.
Legally, the argument might differ in a declared war between nations. Dresden, Hiroshima, and German bombing of London were ugly acts of war. However, that excuse didn’t apply to German treatment of Jews and others. Nor does it here. The whole pattern of Israeli abuses of Palestinians, including extensive violence by Israelis against West Bank residents that has amounted to usurpation of that area and rendering its population homeless, is further evidence of an intent to destroy.]
Each side can accurately claim extensive and unjustified violence perpetrated against it.
In Israel’s defense, Britain set a forest fire and walked away. By promising Arabia to eveyone during World War I and continuing its conduct during World War II, Britain (largely) created a situation where deserving folks had honest but inconsistent claims to territory, with hostilities magnified by their differing religions.
The rest of the world should likely have helped maintain peace during the last century, and perhaps should act to restore peace now; but that won’t happen. We can only hope that the better instincts of both Israelis and Palestinians, and weariness of mutual mass destruction, somehow come to the fore.
Some truths are incredibly sad. But opposing genocide – or whatever softer term you choose – ain’t anti-Semitic.
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[This column appeared Sunday, 8 December, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News
and on the newspaper's website, and will presently be posted also on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]
[This is a hard column to write, for many reasons. I have close friends who are Israeli; and they are torn by all this, suffering a mix of fear and concern, loathing for Mr. Netanyahu. (Said one friend, “Netanyahu cares only about his own interest.” ) I think they’re mortified at the mounting death toll, but wholly uncertain not only what they personally could do about this but, perhaps how Israel, even with its ideal leader, could at this point make this situation anywhere near right. I’m hearing concern for the dead, as well as fears that Israel’s conduct will ultimately endanger the country, rather than saving it.]
[I sure can’t imagine how this gets made right! I have no wisdom to offer.]
[Whether or not this is the international crime of “genocide” isn’t the main issue. However, it seems worth noting that while this may be genocide, it feels like something different and less purely evil [more justified, if such could ever be justified] than the Holocaust. The Holocaust destroyed people of a whole ethnic group for no cogent reason, with absolutely no provocation. The Middle East is different. I blame Britain, for promising Arabia to everyone for most of the 20th Century, then putting Israel and Palestine in a box they each believed they owned, and watching the inevitable violence from afar. It’s like the difference between murders: Richard Speck’s massacre of 8 student nurses in Chicago, versus a wife’s murder of her abusive husband is loading the deck unfairly, but Speck versus a man’s murder of his wife’s lover, or rapist? Still murder, but.]
[Whether Israel should have been created, whether it should have been created where it was created, are questions beyond my pay grade. However, Israel is there, and has been; and Palestine has too. Each has the right to exist. I desperately wish we could entice them to peace; but each has brutalized the other too extensively to make that emotionally appetizing to either. It’s also tragic that each side is currently being led by folks who don’t have the common interest as their top priority. Neither Netanyahu nor Hamas is improving the lot of their respective constituencies.]
[The column's first sentence deserves emphasis. We should not be harassing or hating Jewish or Muslim students for what Israel and Hamas do, nor should we mistreat in any way folks from Russia, India, or any other country for the nation's sins. That's just plain good sense and fairness: this is the United States, where all ought to be welcome; individuals have little control over their governments, and individuals in dictatorships have even less. I urge everyone who feels strongly about international events to keep this in mind. Maybe I feel strongly about it because I traveled internationally and experienced courtesy and warmth from people who loathed some of our country's worst behavior. It's also true that both Jews and Palestinians have been poorly treated by the world's "great powers." ]
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| A Day at the Beach - 1940 |
This photo moves me greatly. It shows two sisters. The younger, lying on the sand, is highly imaginative, but even her creative mind likely cannot imagine that soon she will suffer so horribly and needlessly that everyone reading this knows her name, has heard of her writing, perhaps has even seen the play named for her, of which Las Cruces had an excellent production just a few months ago.
The link to that play didn't seem to work when I posted this on Facebook: https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/2024/10/remembering-anne-frank-in-challenging.html
