When does the Gaza attack become genocide?
The fate of Gaza is now proportionally worse than it was in Darfur during its worst period. When do we start calling what is happening genocide?
By Richard Seymour on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 - 1,688 words.
Jamie has an excellent, detailed post on ‘those “Hamas targets”‘ that keep turning out to be ambulances, hospitals, schools, etc., with detail from Physicians for Human Rights, UN OCHA, B’TSelem, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and a number of organisations and news agencies empirically refuting Israel’s claim that it targets only combatants. The list of examples, though by no means comprehensive, is nonetheless quite staggering. Norwegian volunteer doctor Mads Gilbert describes Israel’s attack as “an all-out war against the civilian population in Gaza”.
This, perhaps, is why the definition of ‘civilian’ and ‘combatant’ must be as elastic as possible. Israel is literally saying, if you follow that link, that anything is fair game in Gaza if there is the slightest connection with Hamas. Combatants are not only those doing the fighting, not only Hamas military cadre, not only members of the Hamas political organization, but anyone working in an institution that Hamas runs as the government of Gaza. As Phillipe Sands points out, the effect of this is to obliterate the category of ‘civilian’. Martin Shaw has written of this tendency of ‘degenerate war’, a process that is intimately connected with the transition from war to genocide (see his very useful War and Genocide, Polity Press, 2003, pp 23-26). In this phase of war, it has been deemed a military necessity to classify the whole population of the enemy state as an enemy.
I am not as inclined to use ‘holocaust’ metaphors as Israeli spokespersons, and there is a very sensible desire to avoid emotionally-laden words like ‘genocide’, particularly given that the justification for atrocity is often based on the invocation of such terms. Nonetheless, when the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe describes a process of genocide in Gaza, as he did last year, it is clear that there is something more to it than an emotional reaction to oppression. True, ‘only’ 550 have been directly killed in Gaza in this particular 11 day old operation, but that in itself wouldn’t be the basis for denying that a genocidal process is under way. The number is proportionally equivalent to killing 22,000 in the UK – or, if you prefer, about 3,000 in Darfur. In Darfur, the total number killed over the worst ten months of violence when it really was a ‘killing fields’ situation was 30,000. If the argument was really just about the numbers of people directly slain, the fate of Gaza is now proportionally worse than it was in Darfur during its worst period. I doubt many people will assent to that judgment.
Still, Israel is ‘only’ doing exactly what it has done in previous operations, and what it has been doing slowly in Gaza for some time: it is destroying the civilian infrastructure while preventing medical and humanitarian responses so as to make life as unbearable as possible for inhabitants. 1 million people are without electricity, a quarter of a million without water, and food shortages are sending prices through the roof. In itself, that does not constitute genocide in the conventionally understood sense – namely, a deliberate attempt to physically destroy a people or community in whole or part. Still, as Martin Shaw has pointed out elsewhere (What is Genocide?, Polity Press, 2007, pp 63-77), the proliferation of -cides to account for all the phenomena that involve attacks on civilian life (democide, urbicide, ruricide, classicide, gendercide, politicide) are a reflection of the fact that these are different aspects of genocide, rather than just lesser degrees of criminal political killing.
Genocide is not the ‘ultimate’ form of such killing – rather, it is a framework within which such killing is comprehended. If, in discussing Jenin or Gaza you have to revert to concepts such as urbicide or democide, as scholarly accounts have tended to do, that should set alarm bells ringing. If, in describing the attempt to destroy the Palestinians as a nation and a potential polity you come to use a term like ‘politicide’ (the name of a book on the topic by Baruch Kimmerling), then again the signs are that you may be talking about a dimension of genocide.
There is also an aspect of territorial expansionism in this war, which will squeeze the population of Gaza into an even tighter, more overpopulated and less viable space. The threatening phone calls and leaflets being dropped on Gaza, it is now confirmed, comprise part of an ethnic cleansing operation starting in the north of Gaza similar to that attempted in southern Lebanon in 2006. The Guardian reports that 15,000 people have responded to the threats by fleeing major urban centres such as Beit Hanoun.
The next step is surely the annexing of a sizeable portion of Gaza (or ‘the Land of Israel’ as Israeli politicians call it and any other territory they think belongs to them by right) under the rubric of creating a ‘security zone’. (It was reported as early as March last year that the Israeli government was considering an operation to secure such ends.) Israel now claims that its aim is to drive Hamas out of Gaza. Taken literally, and on Israel’s own terms, this would mean the expulsion of the greater part of the population of Gaza.
The ‘tihur’ (often translated as ‘transfer’, but closer to ‘purification’) element of Zionist thought is, as Benny Morris has written, in-built. Even if he were right to claim that there was no actual plan to expel the Palestinian Arab population, the process was ineluctable once the war for control of Palestine got under way. ‘Tihur’ has involved, since 1967, a slow-burning process of colonization, displacement, occupation, the destruction of communities, massacres and expulsion. Both settler-colonists and their backers in the Israeli army engage in routine violence to destroy Palestinian property and enclose it for the ever-expanding colonies. Often they beat and kill the Palestinians who try to resist. Sometimes, as Chris Hedges has documented, they like to bait Palestinian kids with racist insults and then gun them down.
These massacres have taken place not only in territory directly annexed by Israel, but also in occupied Lebanon during the Israeli occupation when it engaged in a vicious war against PLO guerillas. The strategy there was to take control of territory by creating a broad belt, driving civilian residents out of it, then moving the belt forward, thus driving the citizens into an increasingly small space with more and more casualties as a result. Refugee camps were frequently a target. The Rashidiyeh refugee camp which housed 9,000 people was attacked and destroyed with shelling and aerial bombardment. Those who survived, fled, and were herded on a beach to watch the final destruction. Subsequently, every teenaged and adult male was placed in blindfolds and binds, then led away to camps: little was heard of them after that.
On another, more notorious occasion, 150 Lebanese Phalangists were sent in to the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps under the control of the IDF and surrounded by IDF soldiers who prevented anyone from leaving, and slaughtered up to 3,500 Palestinians. That massacre was described as genocide at the time by the United Nations – much to the dismay of Israel’s supporters (even those supporters who denied that Israel was in any sense responsible). Between such outstanding atrocities is the regular, dull, daily grind of oppression and killing. The regular targeting of civilians for violence and killing by the IDF is extensively documented by human rights organizations. Not only that, but the occupation has been punctuated by campaigns against Palestinian culture, including attacks on journalists and academics and their respective institutions. The Israeli journalist Danny Rubinstein has described this as an attempt to expurgate the traces of an Arab national character (cited in Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel & The Palestinians, Pluto Press, 1999).
Although the public justification for such violence involves an obnoxiously self-righteous language about resisting ‘terrorism’, the ongoing concern with the ‘demographic timebomb’ and the repeated proposals for ‘transfer’ (always peaceful, always benevolent, as it was in early Zionist ideology) somewhat give the game away. The very existence of the Palestinians as a people is being treated as an existential threat to Israel. Since Israel has never shown any sign of being willing to accept a Palestinian state and live within even the 1967 boundaries, the logic of such a position is to find a way to dispose of the Palestinian residents of the occupied territories. This is not new, nor is it an artefact of the rise of Israel’s far right. Israeli leaders, both Labour and Likud, have tried to find ways to drive hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of the occupied territories. Meir Cohen once regretted Israel’s “grave mistake” in not expelling between two and three hundred thousand Palestinians from the West Bank in 1967. Yitzhak Rabin thought that the demographic problem was best solved by creating conditions that would produce “natural and voluntary” migration from the territories to Jordan, and believed that King Hussein and Arafat had to be engaged to this purpose.
Obviously, the creation of terror, immiseration, starvation and increasing confinement is one way to help bring this about. Additionally, Avigdor Lieberman’s proposals for the ‘transfer’ of Israeli Arabs is but one aspect of a generally perceived need to manage down the Arab population of Israel, including efforts to settle territories in Israel with high Arab populations such as the Negev and Galilee (there has been, since 2005, a minister charged solely with the development of these territories). As Shaw has written elsewhere, Israel is of necessity a society based on genocide, as the destruction of the Arab communities that made Israel possible “clearly fits the definition of genocide enshrined in the Genocide Convention of the same year”. Much “of its history to the present day represents the slow-motion extension and consolidation of that violent beginning.”
It isn’t that any single attack or massacre by Israel constitutes genocide. It is that the ongoing war against the entire Palestinian population, its infrastructure, its political expressions, its culture, and its life-support, contains a genocidal dynamic. The fact that this is reflected in current Israeli tactics is the reason why many are ready to take the Israeli minister fully at his word.
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Powerful article Richard, thanks. 'tihur' if that is the hebrew term is identical to the Arabic root 'thr' 'tahar' means purify and to circumcise. There is no transfer implied here as there is nowhere to go but to die. I like to think that Hamas or Fatah for that matter are the equivalent of Local Authorities here in the UK. Local borough councils are unarmed entities. This military action is like the UK national government exercising it's control over the British Army to attack a locally elected government (and those who work and/or voted for it) it doesn't like (say the BNP or some other unpalatable political party). This is the power of the state and it's military arms.
What a load of horse manure. Since I’m a working person, I can’t spend here the time needed in order to prove that I “don’t have a sister”. Your ridicules word games are a childish attempt to point at “the bad guys” doing “somethingcide”. Had Israel wish to kill as many Palestinians as possible, it wouldn’t risk foot soldiers. Rather, it would bomb their neighborhoods.
According to the UN, only 25% of Palestinian casualties are civilians. This is an unprecedented achievement in the history of warfare in populated areas.
Palestinian cries over the “massacre” in Jenin was also denied by the UN.
You believe what you whish to believe. Convenient.
I agree with Yusuf. Israel is going out of its way to avoid civilian casualties, something most countries don't bother doing anywhere near as effectively in times of armed conflict. Israel could, if it indeed was targeting civilians, bomb Gaza from the air until it was a giant parking lot, which is what Syria did when there was a radical uprising (in that case by the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization with close ties with Hamas) within its borders (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hama_massacrefor more details), as did Jordan when they dealt with a radical Palestinian uprising (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September_in_J...The Hama massacre perpetrated by Syria provides a portrait of what genocide would look like if Israel was really interested in it. The Syrians flattened most of Hama, killing up to 25,000 people, virtually all of them civilians. This is probably the fastest way to put down an armed resistance hiding amongst civilians, and it worked in Syria's case. Yet Israel takes great care to not kill civilian, as evidenced by the less than 25% civilian casualty rate. A Hama style debacle is certainly within Israel's military capability if they wanted to "cleanse" Gaza. Hamas, on the other hand, would probably wipe out all of Israel Hama Massacre style if it were capable of it.
Further, Israel has committed to a two-state solution, and a Palestinian "transfer" is no longer a prominent part of the discourse in Israel (other than perhaps amongst extremists). Israel has also demonstrated an interest in peace with Arabs many times, and has given up territory to do so in the past (the Sinnai to Egypt for example). The West Bank is currently at peace with Israel, which is consistent with the theme of building up a strong Palestinian Authority (PA) to govern the Palestinian state, particularly a PA strong and credible enough to completely displace Hamas in Gaza.
What we see here is a deliberate attempt by Israel to weaken Hamas sufficiently to enable the PA to come in and run Gaza. It is worthy of note that the PA has couched its opprobrium of Israel in the current fighting. The PA cannot openly admit that they want Israel to wipe out Hamas, but if they were really against the incursion I think we would be hearing more from them. Look for the PA and Israel to work closely together once hostilities cease, and the PA to move into Gaza en masse. Israel's best chance of peace is a PA with ruling Authority in Gaza; a Gaza ruled by Hamas makes peace impossible for obvious reasons, not least of which being a Hamas charter stating an unambiguous of goal of Jewish genocide in the area.
25%?? That's only the amount they've found out till now. It is practically impossible for the UN to give numbers right now as their workers cant exactly take notes while being bombed. The UN chief himself has admitted this upon inquiry of a reporter and also that it could be 50% or 75%.
And if bombing an area were 10,665 people live per square mile for a 139 miles with cluster munitions is "taking care not to kill civilians" to you—then you have no idea about the value of a human life. Either that or the equal value of all human lives. This is exactly the type of rhetoric leaders like Bush and Co. have used to justify their massacres.
Of course Israel could just nuke the place. But how dumb do you think Israel is? They know they can get away with their ever increasing list of broken International Laws, but they must at least put up a show for the International Media with the pretext of a "clinical" operation.
Plus that's how all you unshakable Pro-Israel supporters are. Even in the face of mass murder you have to say, "Hey, its not as bad as it could have been."
Get the rest of your facts straight too. I would tell you to read Adam's article on the facts of this war, but its pointless. As your friend who commented before so conveniently put it–"You believe what you want to believe."
~11,000 people per square mile, bombed by Israel for 139 miles, means ~1.5M people would be at risk by indiscriminate Israeli attacks. Civilian percentages aside, 500-600 people have died in the now 11 days of attacks. How can this be the result of a policy that does not discriminate between targets? Indiscriminate cluster bombing would result in thousands if not tens of thousands of dead. Read about the Hama Massacre to see what a lack of appreciation for human life really looks like, where estimates of the death toll were 7,000 to 25,000 in a similar style conflict. Can you really say that Israel is pursuing the same goal as Syria did then, the utter decimation of the entire population of a city (civilian and combatant alike)?
If they are not trying to avoid civilian casualties, please explain the low death toll as they are attacking a region tightly packed with 1.5M people? Would we not expect a death toll similar to that of the Hama Massacre (with only 350,000 residents versus the 1.5M in Gaza), or far worse?
If you could point out where my facts are incorrect that would be helpful, too.
There is some reason to think that the 25% figure cited above is no longer accurate:http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/children-make-up...
Depressing article Julian, but sadly believable. It is basically impossible for Israel to attack anything in densely packed Gaza and completely avoid killing civilians, and with 56% of the civilian population categorized at children, there will be naturally be a very high number of children casualties. The number 25% no longer looks valid, and is rising to 33%+. A terrible toll no doubt, but I think it is safe to say that Israel is not deliberately targeting children.
It is a tragedy, but one that Israel should not shoulder alone. Hamas is engaged in guerrilla warfare designed to make it difficult to distinguish between civilian and combatant, with the intent of making it politically complicated to retaliate and fight back against attacks. Hamas could limit civilian casualties by wearing clearly identifiable military garb, and moving hostilities away from schools, mosques, and children. However, Hamas knows that the current arrangement makes it easier for them to disappear into the masses, and also ensures that Israel has to kill civilians if they go after the attackers, increasing international pressure on Israel not to retaliate.
Hamas' actions make it clear that they prefer Gazan civilian casualties to direct warfare with Israel. Hamas bears direct responsibility for the civilian deaths because its military strategy is designed to endanger civilian lives.
Using cluster munitions, no matter how good the tech, on an area that densely populated is indiscriminate by its very nature.
Look, you obviously do not understand the value of innocent human lives or that of Palestianian lives.
You try to justify Israel's genocidal actions with Hama's rocket fire.
Number of Israelis killed due to rocket fire from 2001-29th December,2008—–20
Number of Palestinians killed in the last 13 days—over 700
And this is not counting all the other deaths on the two sides; an area in which Israel is again redefining the term "disproportionate".
Looking at data from B'Tselem(The Israeli Center for Human Rights in Occupied Territories) we see that 4062 Palestinians have been killed, and 1062 Israelis since September 2000.
And about 45% of the Israeli fatalities were on occupied land.
Plus how many International Laws have Israel broken year after year. Like about 50 UN conventions by now, and all sorts of humanitarian laws from the Geneva convention.
But I've come to realize that statistics don't work for a lot of the people who are like you. If you don't feel pain when seeing the images of bullet holes through 4 year old kids year after year, you will always be able find a way to justify any sort of numbers through some twisted logic.
Keep on using the word genocide some more, and it will loos all meaning. Not all bad things are genocide. Before you know it you'll have the heart dsease genocide, the car accident genocide, the cancer genocide, etc. (all of them much worse than the attack on Hamas).
Israel is actually so genocidal that it make phone calls (!) to people before bombing their hamas militant neighbor, throw leaflets from the air with instructions to leave combat areas, and actualy aborting missions that endanger civilians.
Hamas is celebrating their own casualties. The palestinian reprts on the UNRA school that was used as shelter for hamas militants, was at first "50 children", and then "40 civilians", and now I hear it is 30, some of them not civilian. So, montasir, when UN people will come back to Gaza and the facts will no longer be based solely on palestinian sources, the numbers will probably decrease, not the oposite.
As a person who tries to live and rais children under the range of these "not-so-dangerous" rockets, I can only ask you to imagine what would you would expect of your government to do had you been in the same situation.
Yusuf. My country wouldn't be in such a situation because we wouldn't make the lives of another group of people hell for years and years by imposing a siege. If we say we're getting out of someone's house, which WE had taken over, we would not keep lingering at the front door deciding when that person gets in or out.
We wouldn't build a wall like that, wouldn't stop them from trading and receiving aid (so that the only way they can get food is through tunnels), or keep them separated from their families for years, or take over their homes, or mercilessly kill their children, and just stop them from living a dignified and normal life——–all the while pretending that it is their fault that we do this.
Plus we wouldn't massacre them every now and then when they start using those tunnels to bring in weapons because they just can't bloody take it anymore. So yeah, we wouldn't be in your situation. No one would.
But you know what, all this is not what pisses me off most. What really ticks me off is that the world still sees this country as some innocent do gooder and is scared to even criticize it. Sure Darfur has it worse, but the world sees it for what it is.
Your ancestors suffered the worst atrocity in human history, that does not mean you can do whatever the hell you like time and again using the justification of self-defense.
And don't start with the UN numbers again. Israel just killed an UN worker after it had confirmed(through GPS) with the UN about the exact place their truck was going to go through. Now all UN aid has stopped. Forgive me if I think of that as pre-planned and monstrous.
But as I said before, you shout in spite of the horrific facts and stats. So no point arguing. I just hope you'll learn to open your eyes and ears, for you and your children's sake. If you want those rockets to stop flying, put out the fire don't pour on more gasoline like the US did and which is what your government is doing right now. Injustice and hate is the breeding ground of terrorism. And the last two weeks Israel has earned a lifetime's worth. Shalom.
Hamas is probably not so happy about the too low death rate of palestinian civilians. It actually was aiming for much more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0wJXf2nt4Y&fe...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00B3o0gBKJo&NR...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2G1TZKerTo&fe...
this goes on and on…
when nice people like those writing here are facing this line of thought, they sometimes find it so inconceivable, that they bend logic itself in roder to make it sound right. this is probably why the demostrations against israel these days are more emotional than those against real jenocides in africa or in other places.
It becomes a genocide when attempts to kill as many Palestinians as possible and stops messing around with guided missles and avoiding civilian casualties.