Sneaky Redefinition of the Term “Genocide”
The term has lost much of it’s meaning, which is a loss and danger to the world
The word was coined in 1944 near the end of WWII. The term first appeared in “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe:”
As that author pointed out, a new term was needed to represent the Nazis’ actions. The Holocaust was a unique event, going far beyond what people knew as “war” — and war was even more brutal in those days. Until the Geneva Convention and other treaties, nations engaged in “total war” with almost no mercy or restrictions.
Total war included the use of: carpet bombing, chemical weapons, rocket attacks on London, systematic rape as with Chinese and other “comfort women,” and horrible PoW conditions. But even total war did not reach the level of systematic, purposeless, despotic annihilation of an entire people.
Today, many seek to lower the standard for what constitutes genocide, and expand the term to match some particular political cause.
Primarily the false accusation is leveled at Israelis, right now, which adds another dimension since Jews were the original victims motivating the creation of the term. (More on the particular offensiveness of accusing Jews of genocide below…)
What genocide always and actually meant
Rather than get swept up into the spin or misinformation machine, we can consider the distinguishing traits of the genocides that gave rise to the term. Principally the genocides against Armenian, Jewish, and Rwandan Tutsi people. Here are key attributes:
- Focus on civilians — Genocides are not incidental killings of civilians for a military purpose. Civilians are explicitly targeted.
- No military purpose — The purpose is to eliminate an entire people, not win a war, or achieve some security objective.
- Brutal and personal — Genocides are face-to-face. Rwandans were hacked apart in the streets. Jews were vivisected and executed in camps by guards.
- Different from typical war-fighting. Even in older, more brutal days where entire cities were bombed (Dresden, Hiroshima, etc.) systematized, militarily purposeless killing in genocides was completely different.
- Large percentages of an entire people wiped out — There are fewer Jews alive today than in 1939. Similarly, about half of Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire will killed by the Turks during WW I.
- Intent to finish the job — Either globally or in the area available to the genocidal actor, the intent is to kill, convert, or destroy everyone as quickly as possible, toward permanent eradication of a people.
- Offensive vs defensive in nature — Genocidal aggressors are not defending themselves.
- Based in populist hate — Genocides are a tool of despots, where an out-group is used as a common enemy to take over a country, and consolidate power. Hitler motivated Germans with hatred of Jews, and the Young Turks used Islamist intolerance to build their movement.
- Million(s) killed — The Holocaust killed six million Jews, and also LGBQ, Roman, mentally challenged people as well. The Armenian and Rwandan genocides both killed about a million people.
All these criteria help show the current politicization, and often irrationality in recent use of the term.
The war in Gaza, in particular, meets none of these criteria: About 1% of Gazan civilians were killed, the goal is to attack a military/terror force, it is a defensive war after a horrendous attack by Hamas, far fewer were killed than in nearby wars, and if Israel intended to kill all the Gazans, we would see 100x as many casualties.
The error would be laughable if it was not terrifying that the “woke” Intersectional Left, in alliance with jihadist and Islamist political activists, can now seemingly cancel entire countries rather than only individuals or corporations.
Redefining words to twist meaning
This Intersectional Left (or “woke” people, if you will) have a particular penchant for redefining words, and then insisting that everyone use their new definitions.
Racism no longer means actually disliking Black people. Equity now means adherence to a rather rigid view that all difference stems from power and oppression. The words male and female have also been redefined for political purposes in confusing ways that create more conflict than clarification. (Note: I think everyone should live as whatever gender identity they want and be fully respected. This article is only about when we need new words for new concepts, vs trying to redefine words without consensus which confuses the matter.)
“Genocide” is now on this list. The Israel/Hamas war is pretty much indistinguishable from any other intense war. In fact, the 20,000 civilians killed in Gaza is only about 5–10% of the casualties seen in either Yemen or Syria, which are right around the corner in the region. (There is also “precision war” where very wealthy countries like the U.S. kill far fewer people, but smaller countries with less resources unfortunately lack the budget and vast stores of precision weapons needed to do this.)
Why the accusation is different against Israel
Accusing Israel of genocide is also a political distortion to make the Palestinian/Hamas case, but is also an attempt to undermine the reasons for Israel’s very existence.
It’s also just plain mean. There is so much trauma and history for all Jews, including Jewish Israelis, around genocide that the more hateful anti-Israel propagandists surely enjoy throwing the term around, and accusing Jewish people themselves of this crime.
In addition to being darkly satisfying to anti-semites, false accusations of genocide helps undermine Israel’s right to exist. One (of many) arguments that have to be made for Israel’s security needs and continued existence is that Jews are uniquely and ubiquitously targeted for extermination. The Nazi Holocaust was the worst mass killing in history, and the sheer duration and pervasiveness of anti-Jewish oppression throughout the centuries is also remarkable, and motivated many Jews to leave their homes and find refuge, and a new country, in Israel.
(Note: the Holocaust/extermination argument is one of the weaker arguments for Israel’s safety and continued existence. Legally, Israel can and should exist because it was formed in the same ways as other countries — through immigration, refugee inflows, wars and border shifts in prior centuries — and just as the U.S. France, Poland, Russia and other non-Jewish countries are not targeted for annihilation, Israel should not be either.)
Why devaluing the term “genocide” is dangerous
For the same reasons that the term “genocide” was important to create in 1945, it is important to understand and distinguish genocide from typical war-fighting today.
In 1944, we needed to talk about what the Nazis did, and to realize the Turks did the same to the Armenians 20 years earlier, and to intellectually prepare for the slaughter that would occur in Rwanda decades later.
We still need this word. If every, typical war is a “genocide,” then nothing is a genocide. We are eroding our ability to draw a line between war, which regrettably does still occur, and horrible, unprovoked, civilian-focused mass murder of millions, without military benefit, which is completely different.
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There is so much confusion about the genocide accusations, that I hope you will share this article on social media and with others, so they can consider a new perspective, and clarify their own thinkign.
