Interestingly, it was Israeli leaders and their allies in Washington who first introduced the term “genocide” to the Gaza conflict. Following the October 7 Hamas attacks, Hamas repeatedly made references to the Holocaust.
Many Holocaust and genocide scholars and centers have similarly condemned Hamas. This included a group of more than 150 Holocaust scholars who signed a statement released in November condemning Hamas’s “atrocities…” [which] It inevitably reminds us of the mindset and modus operandi of the perpetrators of the pogroms that paved the way for the final solution. ”
In response, another group of more than 50 Holocaust and genocide scholars released a statement on December 9 condemning Hamas but also calling out the “genocidal risk in Israel’s attack on Gaza.” Also added a warning.
Accompanying and following these efforts was an endless stream of media interventions, marking increased polarization and politicization. Many prominent intellectuals, from German “leftist” philosopher Jürgen Habermas and French intellectual activist Bernard-Henri Lévy, to American political theorist Michael Walzer and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. joined this fight.
In response to this public division of opinion among scholars, Genocide Research, the field’s leading and oldest periodical, published “Israel-Palestine: Atrocity Crimes and the Holocaust.” A forum will be held on the theme of “The Crisis of Genocide Research”. We invited a small number of leading figures in the field to propose contributions, with the aim of bringing more restraint and thoughtfulness to the debate. I was one of the academics asked to participate.
Like all fields of social science, Holocaust and genocide studies have a paradoxical relationship to their subject matter. As a “science,” we need to distance ourselves sufficiently from it in order to gain “objectivity” and authority. But to achieve relevance and impact, you also need to be fully engaged. Another dilemma stems from the subfield of Holocaust studies, which insists on its specificity and uniqueness. Acceptance of these characteristics prevents us from drawing lessons about prevention and “never again” determination.
These two contradictions converged in the current Gaza conflagration, as academics so easily abandoned their ivory towers of authority for partisanship. The unique significance of the Holocaust was affirmed, while condemnation of Hamas’s October 7 attack as a repeat of it was also rejected. It was also used as a symbol of self-declaration by Holocaust survivors to protect Israel from indiscriminate retaliation in the Gaza Strip and accusations labeling Israel’s actions as genocidal.
The challenge for forum participants was to write sufficiently nonpartisanly to project authority while remaining relevant to address the questions of the day. With this challenge in mind, the organizers invited scholars representing a wide range of positions.
In a short critical review of this debate, I focus on just two points. One is the important question of whether Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, and the other is the extent to which the initiative has relegitimized (or undermined) the field of Holocaust and genocide studies. I mean. In this discussion.
Regarding the first question, Martin Shaw acknowledged the genocidal consequences of Israel’s massive bombing of Gaza in his first intervention, “The Inevitable Carnage”, and argued that this “represented a strategic choice rather than a tactical mistake.” “There is,” he said. In this sense, the term “genocide” remains important and cannot be replaced by “alternative”. But Shaw added that Hamas is deliberately provoking Israeli acts of genocide and is therefore complicit in it. In this sense, Hamas is also guilty of carrying out the genocide on October 7 and of luring Israel into its own genocide against the Gaza population.
Zoe Samzi, in her article “We are fighting the Nazis: Gaza’s genocidal acts since October 7,” says that Israel has committed “almost every act outlined in Article 2.” concludes. [of the Genocide Convention] …which explains the more general “destruction of the national pattern of oppressed groups.” ” The authors critically address a number of points that appear to alleviate the situation, such as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) targeting systems. She added that “the use of algorithmic logic is not necessarily illegal because it operates within an international legal system of ‘genocidal statecraft’ constructed during colonial times.” Due to Israel’s de facto “legal immunity,” Samzi argues, “the issue of genocide in Palestine goes beyond the scope of the Genocide Convention.”
Mark Levine, in his book Gaza 2023: Words Matter, Lives Matter, agrees with Shaw that the term “genocide” is unavoidable in this context. He wrote that Israel recognized early in the conflict that it was “about to commit genocide in Gaza.” Using Dark Moses’ concept of “permanent security” as an alternative to genocide, and using terms such as “murder,” genocidal war, and social death, he made the decision to commit genocide. I’m trying to declare it publicly. But whatever terminology is used, he argues, “it is clear that this time the state of Israel has eliminated all remaining vestiges.” [if ever there was one] It’s about moral invincibility. ”
Levine’s key insight is that this genocidal trajectory is rooted in the fact that “the entire reality of Israel since 1948…was premised on a preventive securitization tantamount to a perpetual state of war.” . The trigger was not the Hamas attack, but the trauma it had caused, and called for “the final annihilation of the perceived source of the insult.” The “crime of genocide” comes in light of growing calls for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians trapped in Gaza by extremists under Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime. [becomes] Legitimate”.
In a ‘world without civilians’, Elise Semerdjian blames the entire Gaza population for the October 7 attack, as part of a broader phenomenon of modern warfare in which the targeting of civilians is increasingly prevalent. This article discusses Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s October 13th statement that he said: Gaza is the setting for the “first AI war” and has also become a “laboratory of lethal capitalism” where weapons are field-tested against Palestinians in order to “earn higher dollars in the market.” But these “sophisticated” bombs destroyed entire neighborhoods “as crudely as Syrian barrel bombs.”
However, given the scale of destruction of civilian infrastructure, the distinction between targeted “humanitarian” bombing and indiscriminate bombing in Gaza, as in Syria and Chechnya, appears to have all but disappeared. By emphasizing further aspects of settler-colonial “slow genocide” and its “exclusionist logic against natives,” Palestine offers a prime example of how slow violence can act as a nuclear weapon. becomes.
Ur Umit Ungor opens his contribution, “Screams, Silence, and Mass Violence in Israel/Palestine” by asking why the mass violence perpetrated by Israel is more important than the far more genocidal violence in neighboring Syria. I’m starting with the question: does it get more attention (and anger)? Or why the conflict in Gaza is more focused than similar conflicts in Darfur, China, Armenia, etc. Many inconclusive answers have been given and refuted, but there are also subtle hints that perhaps Israel is being held to a higher standard.
Ungor also suggested that the October 7 attack could fall into the category of “subaltern genocide,” in which subaltern violence creates feelings of humiliation, fear and resentment among stronger factions. , resulting in disproportionate revenge. At the same time, he added that the current Israeli onslaught on Gaza is “devastating entire communities” and that its aim is to “make Gaza uninhabitable and an unimaginable future.” The racist logic underlying the dynamics of this genocide, sustained by “militaristic self-aggrandizement and racist slurs”, will persist beyond the current war, Jungor concludes. There is.
In “Gaza as Laboratory 2.0,” Shmuel Lederman writes that Gaza has not only become a laboratory for experimenting with Israeli weapons and security technology, but has also destroyed human dignity through multiple humiliations. It is claimed that it has become a laboratory for pulverizing. From October 7th, it further became a “laboratory of genocidal violence.” Liederman deliberately avoided calling Israel’s actions genocide, saying Israel’s intention was to suppress Hamas as a military and political power and to discourage Palestinians in Gaza from supporting Hamas again. He argued that the goal was to inflict enough pain to deter the people – even though he acknowledged that the insults visited upon the people had emboldened them – “extremism.” His nuanced analysis acknowledges that Hamas has multiple objectives and fears that prompted its attacks, a literal manifestation of the colonial “boomerang effect.”
Finally, my own intervention, “The Futility of Post-Gaza Genocide Research,” begins by refuting the “subaltern genocide” theory in general and the Gaza case in particular, arguing that genocide is almost always perpetrated by the state. It points to near-consensus in the field. . A garrison state like Israel cannot be threatened by an impoverished and besieged enclave like Gaza. In contrast, the genocidal intentions and consequences of Israeli military attacks are becoming more and more indisputable by the day.
If you value human life, you cannot commit such indiscriminate acts of destruction. Some authors have begun to describe the Nakba and its aftermath as a “slow genocide,” while others have linked the Nakba to settler-colonial genocide. Also noteworthy is the fact that the issue is rarely approached through the prism of genocide.
The paper concludes that genocide research is under threat because its normative assumptions are under attack. “The sector supports firm solidarity against mass atrocities, regardless of the identity of the perpetrators or their excuses, and presupposes firm international solidarity in this regard. Or lack of both threatens its cohesiveness and leaves it without an audience. That is not only a crisis for the field, but a disaster for humanity.”
This leads to the second crux of the discussion: the “crisis” of the field of Holocaust and genocide studies. As Samji and Shaw remind us, this debate was sparked by inconsistent scholarly responses to the Gaza war that were “caught in competing historical and sociolegal interpretations of the very concept of genocide.” It was.
Because the Holocaust is an example of genocide, this overshadows the field’s purpose of explaining genocidal atrocities worldwide. In this sense, Samzi argues that the epistemological differences that challenge conservative, Holocaust-centered interpretations of genocide “represent an outdated disciplinary approach to the so-called ‘Palestinian question.'”
Most interventions are based on the Dark Moses concept of “permanent security,” about how unstable regimes seek “absolute security” through protection from current and future real or imagined threats. is referring to. Perhaps “enduring anxiety” is a better term, and it corresponds to what I call “hyper-securitization.” Moses hopes his term will replace “genocide.”
No matter how you look at it, Israel appears to be perpetually and desperately seeking the illusory perfect security of “creating a separation barrier…” [that] “The Israelis could pretend that the Palestinians were living in some other, faraway universe,” Leben points out, but at times they tried to exterminate the Palestinians.
Overall, the forum expressed mixed concerns about the health of the field, but the point was made that what Israel is doing in Gaza is certainly “genocide,” if not outright genocide. They were almost in agreement. In my opinion, if an act is so outrageous that people debate whether it is genocide or not, then it is evil enough to be condemned and harmful enough that its prevention is urgently sought after. It is.
I also believe that increasing polarization and partisanship in this area, with “major democracies” simultaneously taking on the roles of participants and deniers, is a very serious blow to genocide prevention efforts as a whole. I support my claim.
The forum was convened before South Africa filed a lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on December 29, alleging genocide in Gaza. Nevertheless, several contributors referred to it. The outcome may require modification of some claims and expectations regarding Israel’s legal immunity, or about restrictions that make the UN Genocide Convention unenforceable.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.