Genocide

Genocide  (Violence)
the destruction of a people.

A Genocide is the action of destroying a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group.

Rios Montt

Only one former head of state has ever to have been convicted in his own country for genocide - Guatemalan General Rios Montt, who was convicted on 10 May 2013. On 8 July 2015, however, a Guatemalan court stated that since Montt is "mentally incompetent to stand trial", his current trial must be abandoned.

Genocide in Gaza

On 29 October 2024, the Green Party of England and Wales posted on Facebook:

Israel has voted to ban UNRWA, the UN's relief agency, from the country, effectively blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

How much more evidence is needed before the UK government, and others, act on this genocide?

Labour in denial

Labour's Keir Starmer and David Lammy are engaging in genocide denialism

On 16 November 2024, Research Fellow at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University in the Netherlands, Dr Richard McNeil-Willson posted on X:

"Keir Starmer and David Lammy are engaging in genocide denialism by refusing to recognise the genocide in Gaza, and genocide revisionism by undermining its legal definition.

“It’s done as a political calculation from the Labour Government…

“What is of course part of the political calculation is that genocide denialism as seen by the Government is seen as better than having to deal with the implications of accepting the term genocide.”

Great to talk with @BrawnJourno and be featured on the front page of the @ScotNational to discuss this.

 

Examples

Page name	Start	End	Perpetrators	Description
"The Holocaust"	1941	1945		In its capitalized form "The Holocaust" refers in the Western world to the treatment of the Jewish populations of Germany and German occupied territories during WW2 (1939-45). Its use in this format stems from about the mid-1960's (i.e. more than 20 years after the events it claims to define). It does not appear in histories or documents before that time.
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War	7 October 2023		Israel/Defense Forces Hamas	Hamas attack on dozens of illegal Israeli settlements in Southern Israel provoking mass retaliatory killings by Israel. Corporate media call it the Israeli "9-11", while critics of Israel refer to "10-7" as a staged, military operation in order to manufacture consent for a disproportionate response.
Armenia/Genocide	1914	1923
Canada/Genocide				A very dark chapter of Canada's history which was chanced upon and the determinedly exposed by Rev. Kevin Annett. For well over a century, Native Canadians were abused, infected with smallpox or TB, forcibly sterilised and sometimes flat out murdered in a climate of impunity. The Canadian government issued a formal apology for the episode in 2008, though it also announced that while some compensation payments would be made, the genocide would go unpunished.
Cultural genocide				the destruction of a culture.
Dehumanisation
Ethnic cleansing
Israeli–Lebanese conflict
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Nakba Day				Palestinian commemoration of the 1948 ethnic cleansing
Rwandan Genocide	7 April 1994	15 July 1994
Srebrenica Massacre	11 July 1995	13 July 1995
Uyghur Tribunal	August 2020			Uyghur Tribunal in the UK

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Eugenics	“You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of Blanketts, as well as to try every other Method that can serve to Extirpate this Excerable Race. I should be very glad (if) your scheme for hunting them down by Dogs could take effect ... I would rather chuse the liberty to kill any savage that may come in our way, than to be perpetually doubtful whether they are Friends or Foes ...”	Jeffrey Amherst
Madison Grant	“A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit—in other words social failures—would solve the whole question in one hundred years, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him, or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.”	Madison Grant	1916
Yuval Harari	“In the twenty-first century, those who ride the train of progress will acquire divine abilities of creation and destruction, while those left behind will face extinction.”	Yuval Harari	2015
Ayo Kimathi	“The most important issues facing African people on this planet is our survival and the critical thing that exists in this universe, that threatens the survival of African people is no virus, is no lack of information, the critical problem that exists on this planet is a system development and maintained by whites, Europeans, with the ultimate design and end to be the genocide of African people, and this means all black people.”	Ayo Kimathi	2 April 2010
Obedience	“Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”	Howard Zinn
Athanasius Schneider	“[...] and we dont know, maybe history will show us, what is still behind this vaccine campaign, world campaign. What is behind the, the principle reason, or aim, maybe we will know this after some time. Some people say, with some proofs, that it could be, it is probable, that one of the main aims behind this global vaccine campaign is to reduce the world population. A kind of population control. I would not exclude this. [...]”	Athanasius Schneider	November 2021

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:A year late, the Guardian finally permits us to use the term 'genocide'	blog post	8 November 2024	Jonathan Cook	In running an opinion piece that suggests it may now be acceptable to use the term genocide about Gaza, The Guardian has admitted it has been, even according to Omer Bartov – its own resident genocide expert – complicit in obscuring that genocide for a half a year.
Document:Biden’s pier for Gaza is a hollow gesture that will change almost nothing	blog post	8 March 2024	Jonathan Cook	President Biden needs to look like Gaza’s saviour when Democrats are deciding who they are voting for. He and the Democratic party are betting voters are dumb enough to fall for this charade. Please don’t prove them right.
Document:ICC prosecutor says world leaders 'threatened' him over Israel arrest warrants	Article	5 September 2024	News Desk	“Target Israel, and we will target you,” US Senators, led by Tom Cotton, warned in the letter. “Such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis, and, if carried out, will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution.” Senators Mitch McConnell (minority leader), Rick Scott, Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio also signed the letter.
Document:Only a failing US empire would be so blind as to cheer Netanyahu and his genocide	Article	26 July 2024	Jonathan Cook	Members of the US Congress roared “USA!” to their satrap from Israel, just as Roman senators once roared “Glory!” to generals whose victories they assumed would continue forever. Every empire falls. Its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become.
Document:Police escalate the British state's war on independent journalism	blog post	17 October 2024	Jonathan Cook	"This isn't about terrorism, except by the British state. Even the name of the 'counter-terrorism' raid is performative: 'Operation Incessantness'. The message the state wants to send is that it will not rest till it has us all behind bars."
Document:Pulling no punches at yesterday's rally for Palestine in Bath	Speech	17 November 2024	Jonathan Cook	"From their own mouths, Lammy and Starmer have told us who they are. They are genocide deniers. They are enablers of genocide. They are conspirators in genocide, just like those who preceded them in the British government."
Document:Returning the Sausages	Article	24 September 2024	Mike Small	"Keir Starmer’s speech to conference was one of the most stage-managed and vapid addresses I’ve ever seen. It’s not enough to have hollowed out his party, the idea of being a protestor – or having values – or even using accurate language to describe the horrors going on in Gaza must be banned and mocked."
Document:Simply No Red Lines At All	blog post	11 October 2024	Craig Murray	I am simply unable to begin to understand, on a personal basis, the politicians who can condone, support and in fact participate in what Israel is doing. It is simply beyond me. Every time I worry that public interest is faltering and people have become inured to genocide, the Israelis manage to do soemthing still more outrageous. Thankfully social media makes it very hard to hide this.
Document:Starmer’s purges of Labour have mutated into the arrest of Palestine supporters	blog post	30 August 2024	Jonathan Cook	Britain’s authoritarian new prime minister is expanding the scope of already draconian laws to redefine his critics as ‘supporters’ of terrorism. Starmer wants to be judge, jury and executioner. We must not let him get away with it.
Document:The Israeli Terrorist State	blog post	31 July 2024	Craig Murray	"For me it is now axiomatic that there is no two state solution and that apartheid Israel must be completely dismantled as an entity. I believe that more and more people around the entire globe believe that now. "And if we have to dismantle our own political and media classes to get there, so be it."
Document:The Presence of Evil	blog post	25 July 2024	Craig Murray	Netanyahu’s slanderous attacks on the institutions of international law were applauded to the rafters by America’s political leaders. The whole world was watching, and took note. The Zionist project per se is evil. To steal another people’s land and subject them to long and progressive genocide is about as evil a deed as can be imagined.
Document:The arrest of journalist Richard Medhurst and the fight to defend democratic rights	Article	27 August 2024	Robert Stevens	Now, in a move that would have been agreed to by PM Keir Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Labour has pioneered the use of an amendment to the Terrorism Act passed by the Tories to once again attempt to silence and criminalise a journalist and political activist. The same course is being pursued by governments throughout the world.
Document:The new alliance between anti-vaxxers and the far right is a deadly threat	Article	1 August 2021	Paul Mason	"Though they claim to be “peaceful”......by setting themselves up as the victims of genocide, the anti-vaxxers give themselves permission to threaten violence.....Those behind the “crime” are said to include governments and the World Economic Forum (WEF)" because the real fascists are the ones that oppose oppressive government mandates and forced injections.
Document:UK police raid home, seize devices of EI’s Asa Winstanley	Article	17 October 2024	Ali Abunimah	"On 17 October 2024, British counterterrorism police raided the home and seized several electronic devices belonging to The Electronic Intifada’s associate editor Asa Winstanley. The letter handed to Winstanley by police refers to the raid on his home as being part of 'Operation Incessantness', perhaps indicative of a broad and ongoing crackdown against critics of Israel’s British-backed crimes."
Document:US says Israel may have breached international law with American weapons in Gaza	commentary	11 May 2024	Jonathan Cook	"If that sounds like extreme linguistic, legal and moral gymnastics in defence of continuing US complicity in genocide, it's because that is exactly what it is."
Document:Watch the West continue to make a mockery of international law	blog post	19 July 2024	Jonathan Cook	The World Court concludes that the Palestinians are owed massive reparations. At a bare minimum, western governments must recognise the state of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel until it withdraws from the occupied territories.
Document:Why We Need to Remember Srebrenica	article	3 December 2015	Zarah Sultana	Zarah Sultana, then a student at the University of Birmingham, wrote an article about her trip to Srebrenica
Document:You can’t arm a genocidal state into moderation. So why does the West keep trying?	Article	4 September 2024	Jonathan Cook	Western politicians and media are never going to admit that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. The moment they do, the veil of illusions fostered for decades about Israel - designed to conceal the West’s complicity in Israeli crimes - would be torn away. In committing a genocide, a state crosses a threshold. It cannot be armed into moderation. Nor can it be reasoned into peacemaking. It must be aggressively isolated and sanctioned.
Stop the Worsening Undercount of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza	Article	5 March 2024	Ralph Nader	From accounts of people on the ground, videos and photographs of deadly episode after episode, plus the resultant mortalities from blocking or smashing the crucial necessities of life, a more likely estimate, in my appraisal, is that at least 200,000 Palestinians must have perished by now and the toll is accelerating by the hour.

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