Genocide awaits our acknowledgement

By the reckoning of many, Israel is committing genocide against the people of the Gaza strip, and has been since October 2023. It is doing so by means of starvation, brought on by a combination of blockade and the destruction of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. Tens of thousands have also died directly in the fighting itself. International courts will weigh in on whether the word “genocide” technically applies, but regardless, the results of the most recent IDF operations are described as “a catastrophe, a nightmare, as hell on Earth… and worse”.

Israel has bulldozed Gazan farms and cemeteries, restricted delivery of food and medicine, systematically attacked water infrastructure, bombed 80% of the territory’s schools and all its universities, and reduced almost all hospitals to ruins. It has forced around 1.7 million Gazans from their homes into arbitrarily-designed “humanitarian” zones with no actual provisions for their safety or basic needs, or for their future return. The IDF has killed over 200 aid workers in Gaza since the war began, at least some apparently targetted by precision weapons, but elsewhere has used hundreds of bombs so powerful they essentially cannot avoid killing civilians en masse. There are allegations of torture by Israeli forces against Palestinians and the discovery of mass graves.

Israel and its defenders^[1]One can defend Israel at different levels, without defending specific actions of its government or military. One can and should defend Jewish people (alongside all people), regardless of anything … Continue reading respond to these reports about as well as any proud nation would: by diverting the blame and accusing critics themselves of prejudice and hypocrisy. They demand that critics instead turn their attention to the brutality of Israel’s enemies. Supporters of Palestinians in the West have fallen into their own well-worn rut, in the form of flag waving, chants and the occupation of space for visibility, far from the war. The media and the authorities see the protests as a spectacle, and respond with corporate paternalism: either they are to be tolerated for the sake of the appearance of free speech, or they are to be shut down for the sake of the appearance of safety. And the protests themselves become the story, because they’re right here, and the… other thing is over there.

Our collective reaction to genocide has trouble keeping the focus on the thing itself. Even when we’re trying to talk about it, we can’t for long before we drift and stumble into meta-discussions about people and groups who aren’t directly involved, and the rules and expectations around them. Even genocide—even the worst type of crime we have a name for—becomes little more than an entry point into the merry-go-round of familiar, daily politics, for those of us who are comfortably far enough away from it.

There’s lots of context, but the context gets in the way too. The Palestinians should have a state, yes, and be in control of their own borders and institutions^[2]All people must be able to claim some national citizenship, as a necessary—if not always sufficient—part of guaranteeing their fundamental rights. A Palestinian state seems the most … Continue reading. But this is an argument that has gone on for decades. It doesn’t rise to the challenge of conveying the full horror of the immediate humanitarian crisis. Phrases like “intifada” and “from the river to the sea” are abstract, in-group rallying cries that mean nothing to the uninitiated. We should be talking about events on the ground. Mass starvation is beyond flag waving.

Many of Israel’s defenders seem preoccupied by the task of identifying antisemites and “Hamas supporters”, labels that are occasionally justified, but which are also thrown around with absurd carelessness and disingenuity. There certainly does exist visceral fear and anger after the atrocity of 7 October 2023, in which Hamas militants killed more than a thousand Israelis, predominantly civilians, and wounded thousands more, and of course took even more as hostages. I find the sheer inhumanity of that attack difficult to comprehend.

And yet, the brutality of the Israeli Defence Force’s response outweighs it by orders of magnitude, and has not been visited narrowly upon just Hamas itself, but on the broad swathe of already-struggling humanity in Gaza: millions of people who had nothing to do with the attack on Israel. There is no moral calculus that can justify this. The attempts to justify it ignore or grossly distort what the IDF is actually doing to Gaza and Gazans, focusing only on the trigger event, as if, because Hamas tore down the rules of morality, the IDF’s own actions require no examination whatsoever. But morality never disappears, no matter the violation. There is no justice in bulldozing, bombing, herding and starving the neighbours of terrorists. Hamas’s use of hostages, and whatever other dirty tactics may be at hand, may well prove its malevolence, but that culpability doesn’t somehow flow out into the people around them. You don’t get moral carte blanch for any reason, no matter how deep your wounds.

Israel cannot claim to be acting in self defence. It can defend itself, but this isn’t it. The term “self defence” has benign connotations because it specifically refers to doing no more harm than your immediate safety demands. The idea that it also encompasses the annihilation of one’s enemies is Orwellian, and reflects unconstrained power, not any fundamental right^[3]What of the Allies’ absolute victory in World War II against the Axis powers? But the Axis presented a true, existential threat to many Allied nations, and even then the Allies don’t … Continue reading. Actual self defence is proportionate, cognisant of shared rights, and accountable.

Nor does Israel get to claim it had no choice. There were choices made since long before the Hamas attack, and choices made long after it. Politicians have always exercised choice, and a military force with weapons as numerous and deadly as the IDF’s always has choice. Many people might have been spared, had some of those choices been different.

I know of nobody who could possibly support the attack by Hamas, though if Hamas can commit such crimes in the first place, I must acknowledge that we live in a world where some people do hold such disturbing and deranged points of view. But only slightly less deranged is the presumption that every critic of Israel supports terrorism until proven otherwise. This view is cult-like in its misreading of human nature. Who presides over such ideological accounting? Who decides what level of proof is acceptable? This is not how rational discussion works.

It is okay to point out genocide. It’s okay for that to be the only thing you want to talk about. You shouldn’t need to be seen to be morally or ideologically pure to do so. You don’t need to align yourself with any nationalistic agenda to do so. It is there.

The recent statement by ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan (on both the Hamas attack and Israel’s response) is worth reviewing.