We mustn’t look away

Before the 2024 election, I posted a plea on FB to anyone who might be considering voting for Trump or sitting out the election. In that plea, I addressed the genocide taking place in Gaza, our government’s complicity in the genocide, and how things would potentially get worse under a Trump presidency. I’m not here to speculate what might be different if Kamala were currently the president. I’m here to discuss a response I received to my post, and a podcast episode that helped me crystallize my position on what is happening in Israel and Gaza. 

For context, here is a snippet of my post: “To those who are abstaining from voting for Kamala because of the Middle East and Gaza, I'll just say this. I am more horrified by what's going on than I have been by probably anything I have seen in my lifetime. I am watching in disbelief and filled with a sense of rage and hopelessness at the genocide that is taking place before my eyes. It is a genocide being carried out by a man who is desperate to stay in power, lest he face prison time on corruption charges, and so he is beholden to the far right members of his coalition. It is also a genocide that is being carried out with US weapons, which is unconscionable. October 7th was a horrifying terrorist attack and I'm devastated for the hostages and their families and the families of those who were killed, but the response has included so many war crimes that I've lost count.”

Here is the response I received: “Calling this war a genocide is an insult to REAL genocides and their victims. Bibi is many things -- almost all of them bad -- and he deserves to rot in jail -- but genocide is not one of his crimes. See, when you throw 'genocide' to the air of the world, you cast blame not only on the leadership. You are also -- and more importantly -- falsely accusing my brothers and sisters defending their country. And I will not stay silent. Sure, the people of Gaza deserve better life and prosperous future. But this phase of the conflict is something they, as a collective, brought upon themselves, much like 1945 Germans. And I'm am glad the Biden AND Kamala get it.”

My response: “I'm certainly not throwing the word genocide around lightly. I'm basing my use of that term on the internationally agreed upon definition: the crime of genocide requires that a perpetrator kill, seriously harm, or inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of a group, in whole or in part, with the intent to destroy the group as such. The University Network for Human Rights conducted a review of the facts established by independent human rights monitors, journalists, and United Nations agencies, and found that Israel’s actions in and regarding Gaza since October 7, 2023, violate the Genocide Convention.

I agree that Israel has a right to defend itself, but Hamas, not innocent Palestinians, were responsible for the terrorist attack. Many of the dead weren't even alive to vote for Hamas in 2006 and those who have protested against Hamas have been arrested, beaten, or killed. The number of innocent people who have been displaced again and again and again and bombed and starved since October 7th is staggering, not to mention that there is nothing left for people to return to.”

His final response: “The number of casualties has nothing to do with intent. Your sources are biased at best (UNHR? Go look at their track record in the region and beyond. UN agencies? I hope you don't mean UNRWA who employed active Hamas terrorists, UN Women which refused to acknowledge systematic sexual and gender-based crimes during October 7, or UNRC which has condemned Israel more than resolutions passed against Iran, Syria, North Korea, China, Cuba, and Venezuela combined).

This war is a tragedy, much like any other war. Israel has invested more efforts than any country in the history of warfare -- certainly urban warfare -- in reducing non-combatant casualties. This is also backed by hard data (ratio of 1 to 1-2 vs. 1 to 2-9 in previous conflicts, per some studies). The destruction of life and civic infrastructure is staggering, but it matches the nature of the enemy being so deeply integrated into the civic life and infrastructure, with rocket launchers in schools, command bunkers below hospitals, attack tunnels under homes and ammunition stashes under cribs. Terrible war? Definitely. Genocide? Definitely not.”

His views did not change my stance, and I’m certain mine did not change his. I don’t know if the subsequent months have done anything to shift his perspective, but I do know that MANY people and organizations who were hesitant to use the G word in November of 2024, have begun to use it now. Which brings me to The Ezra Klein Show episode, “When Is It Genocide?” If you want to listen to two people much smarter than me discuss this topic in a very nuanced way, I suggest you just stop reading and go listen to the episode. But if you don’t like podcasts or don’t have an hour and 45 minutes at your disposal, here are my takeaways and how they relate to the above exchange. It’s about a 10 minute read from here.

In the episode, Klein interviews Philippe Sands, a lawyer who specializes in genocide cases and teaches at Harvard Law and University College London. But before he begins their discussion, Klein lays out the key facts since October 7, 2023:

-There are a little over 2 million Gazans; the death toll there is equivalent to 2,500 9/11s

-Gaza is the size of Detroit; Israel has dropped over 100,000 tons of explosives there

-70% of all structures, including homes, schools, and hospitals have been damaged or destroyed

-Intentional blockade of food and aid for months, resulting in famine, people dying of hunger, people being shot at aid distribution sites because they are desperate for food

-Israel refuses to let journalists or independent inspectors in

Which brings Klein to ask, “Almost two years after Oct. 7, what is the point of this siege?” It certainly can’t be to get the Israeli hostages back. They are being bombed and starved alongside the Gazans. Many Israeli ex-security officers signed onto a letter stating that Hamas is no longer a strategic threat to Israel. So why does this war continue? Why does the Israeli military continue to block aid and starve the people of Gaza?

Klein explains that the reason he has avoided using the word genocide is because “there is an imprecision at its heart.” The imprecision stems from the gap between the legal definition of the word and the colloquial understanding of the word. Him and Sands spend much of their time discussing the history of the creation of the legal concept of genocide and the ways in which it has been litigated since its inception. Klein acknowledges that the power of the word genocide is rooted in the Holocaust (not the legal definition of the word), and he worries that, “If Israel becomes widely seen not just as the state born of a genocide but a state that then perpetrated one, it will forever transform the meaning of the Jewish state.” He’s talking about that transformation as if it’s something that might happen in the future, but I think we’ve crossed the rubicon already.  

I should insert a caveat here that both Klein and Sands are Jewish. They begin their conversation with a discussion about Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer (also Jewish) responsible for coining the term and the legal concept of genocide. Fun fact: Lemkin was fluent in 9 languages and could read in 14. He was interested in creating international laws that protected groups of people from other people or from states that would harm them. During the early 1900s before the concept of human rights law even existed, Lemkin spent years researching mass atrocities. He barely escaped Europe during WWII, fleeing to the US, but he lost 49 family members to the Holocaust. During his time in Europe and even after he fled in 1939, he collected Nazi decrees and ordinances and analyzed them for underlying objectives and intentions. He discovered a pattern of behavior that involved identifying people by their affiliation with a group and then placing restrictions on their employment, where they could live, access to education, ability to use their language, etc. Eventually you get to the camps and the extermination, but Lemkin considered every part of that process a genocide.

After discussing Lemkin, Klein and Sands shift to another man, Hersch Lauterpacht, an important figure in the development of international human rights law. Both Lauterpacht and Lemkin assisted at the Nuremberg Trial, but from different perspectives—Lauterpacht argued on behalf of individual rights and Lemkin on behalf of group rights. I’m not going to go into detail here, but Nuremberg was the first time leaders of a nation were being tried at an international level, so there were literally no international crimes on the books with which to charge the perpetrators. Ultimately, the statute that was created included war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. Genocide was mentioned in the indictment as a subhead of war crimes, but it did not make it into the statute. The main focus of the trial was the crime of waging an illegal war, not the extermination of entire groups of people. Obviously, inventing a crime and then charging people retroactively has its issues, but that’s a whole other can of worms that I’m not going to open here. Another not so fun fact: many Southern senators were worried about the inclusion of genocide because they thought it would be invoked against the US for the extermination of the Native Americans and the widespread lynchings that took place in the south. I can’t even begin….

Lemkin was devastated that genocide was not included in the statute or the judgement at Nuremberg, but he continued lobbying and finally succeeded in 1948 when the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was born. That definition is more strict and has a higher bar than Lemkin conceived of: “Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Lemkin wasn’t interested in proving intent; his focus was on actions and consequences.

Klein and Sands delve into the legal definition of genocide, how it has changed over time, and the gap that exists between the legal definition and the definition that most people think of when they think of genocide. They discuss the semantics of it all and the breakdown of intent and when and how that is provable. But ultimately, what stuck with me after listening to the episode, is that the debate that asks is it a genocide or is it “simply” a war crime or a crime against humanity, isn’t useful. Sands talks about how in popular understanding, genocide is the crime of all crimes, but in international law, genocide isn’t the crime of all crimes. The argument about the hierarchy between genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity takes away from the horrors being committed and allows perpetrators to claim that what’s happening isn’t so bad because it’s not a genocide. 

At one point Sands says, “I’m not focused on whether it’s [Gaza] a war crime or a crime against humanity or a genocide, which is a distraction from the real issue. It is utterly appalling and unjustifiable, and it should not be happening. And these debates about whether to characterize something as X or Y or Z are not helpful because they distract us from the horror that is happening and that is unfolding before our own eyes.” I agree. It shouldn’t matter what we label atrocities or whether or not the intention was to destroy a group of people. Is the group being destroyed? Are the horrors persisting? Then whatever you want to call it, people and governments should be doing everything they can to stop it. 

I applaud the young people in Israel who are burning their draft orders, who refuse to be complicit in what is happening to the Palestinians. I wish we were seeing more defections from the IDF. I wish more American politicians would stop accepting money from AIPAC and vote to stop sending arms to Israel. We should be sanctioning Bibi and the members of his cabinet who conflate Hamas with the Palestinians. Other nations should be doing the same. I am happy to see nations like Ireland, France, Spain, and the UK announcing their recognition of Palestinian statehood, but that’s not enough. The people running the Israeli government are homicidal maniacs committing terroristic acts behind the guise of self-defense. They should be isolated and taken to their knees until they capitulate. 

Which brings me back to the response I got on my FB post. The thing that struck me about his comment was his anger that using the term genocide meant that I was impugning his brothers and sisters for defending their country. But I guess I don’t see the distinction between calling it a genocide or a war crime or a crime against humanity. If you are a member of a military, voluntary or not, and the leadership of your country is asking you to commit atrocities, and you commit those atrocities, you are complicit. You can’t hide behind the notion of, “I was just following orders.” That’s how we got the Holocaust. At one point in the episode, Klein says, “watching a structure of law built by Jews in their moment of absolute weakness and vulnerability destroyed by them in some way as they have become stronger and more state bound — it’s a historical tragedy, irony, strangeness that’s almost too much to bear.”

I agree. But it’s happening. And we know what the consequences are when people look away. 

Anyways, here are some cute pictures of baby cows I’m taking care of if you made it all the way through that.