Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons
Is Putin conducting genocidal acts on Ukrainians? Looks like Israel is, ironically, attempting some sort of genocide against Gazans, with Hamas trying their version of a genocidal attack against Israel on 7 October 2023. How about China’s aggression against the Uyghurs or Myanmar’s against Rohingyas?
Here is the official description:
The legal term “genocide” refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Genocide is an international crime, according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). The acts that constitute genocide fall into five categories:
· 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
· Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Although the term “genocide” is often used, its commission is rare when compared to other serious crimes that are not defined by an intent to destroy a targeted group, such as crimes against humanity and war crimes.
In other words, though it’s “commission is rare,” it sure seems like a common practice with aggressive groups. I mean, Putin has been blasting Ukrainian electric power plants and other energy infrastructure in Ukraine in the winters–just when the Ukrainian weather is as lethal as it gets. Is that a mere war crime or is it a version of genocide?
Hamas’s original Covenant called for the destruction of Israel and their 7 October 2023 attack included slaughtering young people at a music festival, elderly people in their homes–actions that seemed to blur the line between war crimes and genocide.
Netanyahu’s response has gone beyond war crimes and straight into genocidal territory, with the majority of the mortalities being Palestinian women and children. The excuse? There were militants in the building. Yeah, that’s the ticket–Hamas fighters in or nearby.
That’s sort of analogous to what a unit of cops would say if bank robbers came out of the bank with bags of money onto a busy Los Angeles sidewalk bustling with shoppers and tourists and the cops just hosed down the area with automatic rifle fire, killing two robbers and 43 innocent pedestrians. Would the citizens of LA stand for that? Do you hear American police using phrases like, Well, crime is rough and sometimes there is collateral damage. Yeah, no.
Those imaginary bank robbers are real life in combat zones and some 1,200 Israelis and 45,000 Gazans, the vast majority of whom were unarmed and just being human beings, are “collateral damage.” Hearing Israel proclaim that they are careful to not target civilians is flat-out gaslighting.
When we consider laws and crimes against them, our juries are instructed to weigh intent. Finding that a murderer had intent to kill increases the severity of the crime.
Dropping 2,000 lb. bombs on apartment buildings with full knowledge of the lethality of that act is a clear case of intent to kill anything in a wide swath of that explosion. To deny that is to operate out of the realm of reality and reason. Israel has been doing this now routinely for 458 days.
Is it a genocide on a scale of the Rwandan genocide in 1994? Hardly. That was extreme genocide, an attempt to slaughter everyone in the Tutsi ethnic group, “succeeding” in murdering nearly a million in just 100 days of a ruthless avowedly genocidal bloodbath.
Is it a genocide akin to the Nazi’s systemic project to kill every Jew in Germany, Poland, and any other country Germany could conquer, “achieving” six million deaths? Hardly.
But when we look at the definition of genocide, what Israel has done meets the criteria of at least the first three of the five elements of genocide: “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.”
What too many observers do is to only mention the genocide of which Israel is clearly guilty and fail to note the genocidal acts of Hamas. Just because Israel is more efficient and has more weapons capable of quite accurately waging devastating war with genocide mixed in does not exculpate Hamas and it should not be considered without noting the mutual genocidal intent and actions of both parties.
The ancient verity “Two wrongs do not make a right” should be applied to all acts that have any whiff of genocide. There is no excuse for any of it–not for Putin stealing Ukrainian children or bombing city blocks, not for Hamas’s terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, and not for Israel’s ongoing daily acts of genocidal barbarism against Gazans.
Yeah, and so what? What can an American do about it?
I believe the most important act we in America can do is to insist that our federal elected officials cease providing Israel with offensive weaponry. When genocide is committed by weapons stamped “Made in America,” that puts the weight of it on us.
Finding how to contact your Congress member or your Senators is quick and easy. The 119th Congress is just starting–it’s a fine time to register your opinions with your three elected federal officials.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings is Coördinator of Conflict Resolution BA/BS degree programs at Portland State University. His views, however, are not those of any institution.
