Document:There's No Auschwitz in Gaza. But It's Still Genocide
| "What is happening in Gaza is not the Holocaust. There is no Auschwitz and no Treblinka there. However, it is a crime from the same family – a crime of genocide." |
Commentary by Amos Goldberg, Daniel Blatman dated 30 January 2025Subjects: Holocaust, Auschwitz, Gaza, genocide
Source: Haaretz (Link)
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The question of how to correctly define the atrocities perpetrated by Israel in the Gaza Strip has been under discussion for over a year among researchers, legal experts, political activists, journalists and others – a debate to which most Israelis are not exposed. For the tens of thousands of dead, injured and orphaned children, and the infants now freezing to death in Gaza, it makes no difference what definition is ultimately assigned to this crime by the International Court of Justice or by historians.
Mark Twain wrote that "The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice." The dangers of writing history in a biased manner are clear and highlight the need for careful and measured definitions to achieve an accurate understanding of the events taking place. Nonetheless, a meticulous comparative examination of events over the past year leads to the painful conclusion that Israel is indeed committing genocide in Gaza.
Historian Shlomo Sand argued in this paper (Haaretz Hebrew Edition, December 15, 2024) that despite the terrible atrocities and war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, they do not constitute genocide. As a supporting argument, Sand contrasted the war in Gaza with two similar events, in his opinion, in which armies of democratic countries (France and the United States, respectively) committed atrocities against civilian populations that were no less horrific than those being perpetrated in Gaza, yet their actions have not been classified as genocide: the Algerian War (1954-1962) and the Vietnam War (1965-1973).
Sand's assertion is inaccurate. Ben Kiernan, one of the world's leading genocide scholars, estimated in his 2007 book "Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur," that during the French colonial occupation of Algeria (1830-1875), between 500,000 and 1 million Algerians died from starvation, disease or deliberate killings; Kiernan views the settler colonialism in Algeria as leading to genocide, similar to the genocides caused by colonial occupation and settlement in North America and Australia. Leo Kuper, one of the first generation of genocide researchers, argued in his 1982 book "Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century" (1982) that the atrocities committed by the French in the Algerian War may be classified as "genocidal massacres." They do not, however, meet the criteria of full-fledged genocide.
Regarding the Vietnam War, Sand was even less accurate. In 1966, the Russell Tribunal, an unofficial body initiated by British philosopher Bertrand Russell, undertook to investigate, evaluate and publicise claims of war crimes committed by the US during the Vietnam War. This body included prominent intellectuals, politicians and activists, who included Jean-Paul Sartre (who chaired the tribunal), French feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir, Italian political figure Lelio Basso and Yugoslavian war hero, partisan and human-rights activist Vladimir Dedijer. This public tribunal concluded that US military actions in Vietnam constituted genocide under the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. These actions included the bombing and killing of civilians, the use of prohibited weapons, torture and abuse of prisoners of war, and the destruction of cultural and historical sites.
Just as many have protested what they see as insufficient international recognition of the atrocities committed by Hamas that started the current war, the tribunal's findings were criticized for not adequately addressing the war crimes of the Viet Cong and North Vietnam against the citizens of South Vietnam. However, recognizing the atrocities committed by the Viet Cong and Hamas does not negate the need to accurately define what the U.S. military did in Vietnam and what the Israel Defense Forces did in Gaza.
The Russell Tribunal pushed the discussion on genocide into additional avenues. Kuper argued that strategic bombings, such as the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (in 1945) and the Allied bombings of Hamburg and Dresden (in 1943 and 1945, respectively) could be considered acts of genocide because in each case, the intention was to destroy civilians. While Israel has not dropped a nuclear bomb on Gaza (despite the proposal to do so from Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu), recent actions in the Gaza war have breached barriers that Israel had previously been cautious not to cross.
An investigation by Yuval Abraham in +972 Magazine in April , later corroborated by a separate investigation by The Washington Post , revealed that the IDF was using artificial intelligence in its bombings in Gaza, leading to increased harm to innocent civilians. This machine created practically endless targets. At times the destruction of entire neighborhoods and the killing of 300 noncombatants were approved just to target one Hamas leader. This logic renders all Gazan residents legitimate targets. Indeed, according to the meticulous and impressive data collection assembled by historian Dr. Lee Mordechai on his Witnessing the War website, it can be estimated that between 60 percent and 80 percent of the casualties in Gaza are noncombatants, more than any previous ratio tolerated by the IDF and more than in any other war to date in the 21st century. De facto, this is evidence of policy that permits the execution of genocide.
However, the main difficulty in legally defining acts of mass murder as genocide is the need to prove intent. The UN Genocide Convention of 1948 requires demonstrating the existence of an "intent to destroy, in whole or in part," the group that is the victim of destruction, which can be a national, religious, ethnic, or racial community. The issue of intent was included in the convention partly due to a mutual interest of the U.S. and the USSR, which, during the Cold War, feared they might find themselves in the dock at the International Court of Justice for violent actions they had committed in the past or might commit in the future. ICJ was a relatively marginal factor in international relations throughout the Cold War. Indeed, the first time an international criminal tribunal convicted someone on the charge of committing genocide was Jean-Paul Akayesu, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in September 1998 for his rule in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.
International courts exercise great caution before determining that genocide has occurred. The appeals court that dealt with the July 1995 genocide in Srebrenica of Bosniak Muslims by Bosnian Serbs addressed the issue of the destruction of part of a group (as mentioned in the UN Convention) and ruled that the part must be distinct and defined, and its elimination must endanger the existence of the entire group. In two rulings concerning the war in the former Yugoslavia, the International Court of Justice determined that to prove "an intent to destroy," the actions and behaviors must be such that they cannot reasonably be interpreted in any other way. In other words, it is not enough that the intention to destroy is the most plausible interpretation of the actions; it must be shown that there is no other reasonable interpretation. Thus, in a 2015 ruling regarding a lawsuit filed by Croatia against Serbia in the International Court of Justice, claiming that the latter committed genocide in the war against Croatia in the 1990s, the court concluded that both sides committed acts of murder and violence during the war. Still, these did not meet the threshold required to establish that genocide had occurred. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia refrained from defining any instances of violence in that war as genocide, with the exception of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre, committed by Bosnian Serbs against Bosniak Muslims, in which 8,000 men were killed, while women and children were displaced.
Can intent be proven in the case of Gaza? Aside from the idea of using atomic weapons, Israeli politicians – among them Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant – and senior military officials have made numerous statements indicating genocidal intent, all of which have been documented: "There are no innocents in Gaza"; "We will carry out a second Nakba"; "We must destroy Amalek," and more. Still, the concept of intent, in general, is very problematic. William Schabas, one of the leading legal scholars on genocide, explains this in his important book "Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes" (2000), in which he analyzes the decisions of the special international tribunals that judged the perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda and Yugoslavia.
The proof of intent required to convict either a person or state of genocide, Schabas argues, is much more demanding and complex than that needed in a regular criminal murder trial. Particularly when it comes to a state – what can be considered an expression of the state's intent? If perpetrators carry out their actions while making statements, orders, speeches, etc., that are genocidal, it is easier to establish that intent. In the absence of such statements, the prosecution must rely on evidence from the crime itself and the determination with which the killers executed the murders, which must reflect a clear desire to destroy the victim group. The court that dealt with the genocide in Rwanda ruled that genocidal intent could be inferred from the actions themselves, "from their mass and/or systematic nature or their atrocities."
In the context of Gaza, Schabas believes that the case against Israel for genocide – which was filed in the International Court of Justice by South Africa, with 14 other countries in the process of joining – is robust, due to both the countless genocidal statements made by Israeli decision-makers, and the nature of the actions themselves. These include the systematic starvation of the Gaza population, the massive destruction of infrastructure, the ethnic cleansing of the northern Strip, the bombing of areas designated as "safe," and more.
Most instances of genocide in modern times have occurred after prolonged violent conflict between the group of perpetrators and the group of victims. For example, prior to the Ottomans' genocide of Armenians, which began in 1915, Armenians revolted against Ottoman tyranny and the suppression of their national aspirations, engaging in acts of terror against the state as early as the late 19th century. The Herero people in Southwest Africa (in what is today Namibia) rebelled against German imperial rule (which, in response, nearly exterminated them) after it implemented policies that obliterated their means of livelihood (herds of cattle). The Hutus killed the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 after long years of conflict that originated in the privileges granted by Belgian colonial rule to the Tutsis after World War I. In this context, it is essential to note that most acts of genocide are perceived by their perpetrators as acts of self-defense against their victims. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict undoubtedly falls into this category; genocide in Gaza is seen by most Israelis as a defensive war following the horrific attack by Hamas.
Genocide does not have to conform to the Nazi paradigm, which viewed every Jew as an enemy to be exterminated. Genocide is also never linear, and contradictory processes always exist within it. For instance, while Armenians were deported and massacred in vast areas of the Ottoman Empire, in major cities like Izmir and Istanbul, they were hardly affected. In certain cases, Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Nazi Final Solution, temporarily halted the extermination of Jews at specific places or times due to economic or diplomatic considerations, which allowed for a narrow window of rescue. Similarly, Israel has allowed humanitarian aid into Gaza (which is often exploited by Israel to promote local crime gangs), while simultaneously killing innocent civilians there.
Almost always, the orders to carry out mass murders are vague, elusive and open to interpretation. This was also the case with the Germans' Final Solution. British historian Ian Kershaw, in his book "Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941" (2007), explains that the assertion that there was a decision to exterminate can be misleading, as it may create the impression that there was a specific moment in which an explicit order was given to commit genocide. No extermination order was issued from the top of the pyramid (Adolf Hitler) to the bottom; instead, complex interactions that included green lights to escalate violent measures, hints of approval for murderous acts, and grassroots initiatives combined to add up to a rolling escalation. Only at a later stage did the process crystallize into a clear resolution whose impact became visible on the ground. Here, the analogy to what is happening in Gaza is also relevant.
Yaniv Kubovich reported in Haaretz in December chilling testimony about what happened along the Netzarim corridor in Gaza. Anyone who crossed an imaginary line into this "kill zone," whether they are armed or just civilians who made a wrong turn, was shot dead by Israeli forces. Arbitrary violence reigns in a place where anyone can shoot any Palestinian who passes by, and every victim, even a child, is counted as a terrorist, just as every young or elderly person murdered by the Wehrmacht in villages deep in the USSR during World War II was defined as a partisan who was deserving of death. No one gave the soldiers on the Netzarim corridor, who are killing innocent people, an explicit order to do so. But those who do (and it is certainly not all soldiers) understand that no harm will come to them. A combination of hints from above (from politicians and military officers, such as Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach) and murderous lawlessness from below – this is how genocide is carried out.
In March 2022, speaking at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that the United States views the actions of Myanmar against the country's Rohingya Muslims as genocide. Blinken explained that he chose to make this declaration at the Holocaust Museum because the lessons of the Holocaust are still relevant today. At the time, no one was scandalized that Blinken was trivializing the Shoah, or that such comparisons should not be made. This was the eighth case recognized by the U.S. as genocide, in addition to the Holocaust. The other cases are the Armenian genocide, the Holodomor famine in Ukraine in the 1930s; the Khmer Rouge's genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s; the genocides in Rwanda, Srebrenica and Darfur; and the genocide carried out by ISIS against the Yazidis a decade ago in Iraq. Just recently, on January 9, the Biden administration (again in a statement by Blinken) recognized a 10th case of genocide: that which is being committed by the Rapid Support Forces militia in the brutal civil war that has been underway in Sudan since the fall of President Omar al-Bashir in 2019.
In Myanmar, starting in 2016, some 850,000 Rohingya were expelled to Bangladesh, and about 9,000 were murdered. This means that there was no physical extermination of all Rohingya, but rather of only a small percentage of the group. Currently, a lawsuit against Myanmar is being heard by the International Court of Justice. It was submitted by The Gambia, which was joined by several other countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom. The statements by Myanmar officials about Myanmar intent to exterminate the Rohingya are weak and incidental compared to the flood of genocidal statements heard from all corridors of politics, society, media, and the military in Israel, expressing extreme dehumanisation of Palestinians, and a desire for their widespread extermination. Genocide is any action that leads to the destruction of a collective's ability to exist, not necessarily its total annihilation. It is estimated that nearly 47,000 people have been killed in Gaza and over 110,000 injured. The number of those buried under the rubble may never be known. The vast majority of the victims are noncombatants. According to the United Nations, 90 percent of Gaza's population have been displaced from their homes multiple times and are living in subhuman conditions that only increase mortality levels. The murder of children, starvation, destruction of infrastructure, including that of the health care system, destruction of most homes, including the erasure of entire neighborhoods and towns such as Jabalya and Rafah, ethnic cleansing in the northern Strip, destruction of all of Gaza's universities and most cultural institutions and mosques, destruction of government and organizational infrastructure, mass graves, destruction of infrastructure for local food production and water distribution – all these paint a clear picture of genocide. Gaza, as a human, national-collective entity, no longer exists. This is precisely what genocide looks like.
Once the war ends, we Israelis will have to look at ourselves in the mirror, in which we will see the reflection of a society that not did not protect its citizens from Hamas' murderous attack, and neglected its kidnapped sons and daughters, but also committed this act in Gaza – this genocide that will stain Jewish history from now on and forever. We will need to face the reality and understand the depth of the horror we have inflicted.
What is happening in Gaza is not the Holocaust. There is no Auschwitz and no Treblinka there. However, it is a crime from the same family – a crime of genocide.
