Genocide
Maybe we need a better term
I was raised just after the 2nd world war and the Holocaust was a vivid cultural memory. Genocide was the Holocaust - the rounding up of Jews and killing them enmasse in ovens and gas chambers.
When I was in high school I had many Jewish friends and I'm sure they all had relatives who died in the Holocaust but we didn't talk about it. But during the 7 day war in 1967 we were all cheering for Israel. Not just my Jewish friends but everyone.
I would have loved to have been a member of a communal group like a kibbutz.
I remember at that time being vaguely aware of Palestinians being displaced from their orchards. The idea was that the Jews knew how to make the desert bloom rather than be satisfied with mere olive orchards.
And that justified the displacement.
It wasn't until quite a while after that I realized just what that displacement meant.
I didn't realize the injustice involved and the rage that was caused among Palestinians.
That rage became apparent when Palestinians attacked the Israeli team, commando style, at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
I'm an amateur looking at this. I have read the news avidly for 60 years now and many many books and articles so I've built up an image of what went on then that I think is pretty accurate but is also at odds with my ideas in high school.
I didn't realize then that Zionism had been promoting the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine since before WW1. They could see the anti-semitism coming in Europe even then. I think Zionists thought - Palestine is the only place on Earth that we have any claim to - we lived there 2000 years ago and are in diaspora now and need to return
Of course - in the meantime Palestine had been occupied by other people.
The early Zionists worked by buying up land. Seems normal. But - they were buying the rights to the land from a headman who then went to live in Monaco leaving the villagers in the lurch. And the purchasers were not individuals - rather they were big organizations set up for the purpose of taking over Palestine as a Jewish homeland..
(An exercise for the reader - imagine that the Zionists had set their sights on Idaho as their homeland - there is nobody there but Indians and Americans - but I digress.:-)
Israel is now at war with Hamas after Hamas' horrific attack of a music festival on Oct 7. Over 1000 people were brutally murdered in that attack and hundreds of hostages were taken. That's bad by any measure. Israel has responded with bombing attacks on one of the most densely populated places on earth. Over 23000 Palestinians are dead and counting.
Israel is being charged with genocide. Israel is denying that and saying that they have a right to defend themselves.
Let's recall that the Holocaust forms the popular image of genocide. Six million people died by execution. Many millions more fled Europe to escape it. All of the Jews in Germany were affected. Most of the Jews in Europe were I'd say. I know that Jewish people don't like it much when every catastrophe is a 'holocaust' - it sort of trivializes the word.
The death toll in Gaza is small compared to the Holocaust.
And to be honest, it looks to me like Hamas was using Palestinian civilians as a huge human shield from which they could strike at Israel with impunity.
The situation in Palestine is nothing like the Holocaust. The Jews in Germany were not bombing anybody. It can be seen as a war.
We have a new term now; ethnic cleansing.
My memory only goes back 60 years but and I was just reading the news, but in that time I read about North Ireland, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, the Rohingya . . . all examples of ethnic cleansing. And these are distinct from the many wars that went on in the same period. We might call the Holocaust an extreme example of ethnic cleansing.
What distinguishes a genocide is an active attempt by one group to literally kill off members of another group because of their membership. The Holocaust is an extreme example.
Israel, under the Zionists, didn't round up the Palestinians and execute them. Instead they made life impossible and walled them off from their land and cooped them up in Gaza. That was ethnic cleansing but not quite a genocide. It certainly did set up a situation ready to explode.
Now the Zionists are encouraging the Palestinians to leave. Who knows where they would go?
That could turn into a genocide without the mass murder ovens by destroying the Palestinians as a people. Is more warfare the best way forward?
With warfare it's kind of like "full speed ahead - we gotta win - consequences be damned". But then the consequences always rear up behind you and bite. People fighting wars also have the conviction that they have the power to prevail. That belligerent conviction blinds people - they get into a mood of; you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Somehow we need to find a way to start considering the consequences. It would help a lot if we started paying more attention to the problems under our noses and solving them in a mutually beneficial way without the illusory sense of power that war presents.
It's like - C'mon people. Can't we all find a way to get along?
What do you think?