Genocidal name-calling unhelpful amid crisis in West Asia

Mukesh Kapila

Ex-UN Resident & Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan

MY daughters were squabbling. Suddenly, the youngest one screamed, “Help! Genocide,” as the stronger sibling pinned her down. It was 1994 and she had understood the word’s shock value from constant TV coverage of the Rwanda massacres. Her cry for help worked as instant parental intervention separated the belligerents.

My domestic story is not intended to trivialise genocide. It is to emphasise the importance of heeding desperate voices. Thus it was that India intervened in 1971 in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) after three million people were slaughtered by the Pakistan military. Hindus were targeted; their ethnic and religious persecution is considered a genocide by international jurists.

The occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza is now screaming for help, with tens of thousands killed or wounded and 80 per cent of the population displaced. Despite the ongoing truce, over two million Gazans face hunger, thirst and disease.

Are they victims of an Israeli genocide? It’s a charge levelled worldwide in media and given credence by some academics and politicians. They argue that the extreme human impact of the harsh Israeli war tactics is tantamount to genocide.

Is that a valid argument? The 1948 UN Genocide Convention was adopted after the Nazi Holocaust claimed the lives of six million Jews during World War II. It covers acts intended to destroy, in whole or part, a “national, ethnical, racial or religious” group through killings, bodily and mental harms, restrictions causing deadly consequences, or ethno-demographic manipulation through rape, preventing births and transferring children.

Crucially, genocide is not determined by quantitative or qualitative thresholds of suffering. Thus, the destructive ferocity of the Israeli action in Gaza cannot, by itself, be designated as genocidal. Israel claims that Hamas hides among civilians and fights from tunnels below public infrastructure such as hospitals. That cancels their legal protection and makes them military targets.

Conversely, Israel is accused of not doing enough to protect civilians and, therefore, committing war crimes, even if it asserts military necessity to fight in a way that minimises its own casualties. War crimes are abhorrent but not automatically genocidal.

In 1971, threatened Bengali Hindus fled to India. But Israel’s and Egypt’s closed borders stop Gazans from fleeing to safety and reduce humanitarian provision. Israel argues that this is needed to stop Hamas fighters fleeing or capturing aid. But the disproportionate impact on civilians is a collective punishment that violates humanitarian law. But it is not, per se, genocidal.

To qualify as genocidal, an act requires proving the intent to eliminate a specific group — as the Ottomans tried against Armenians, Nazis against European Jews, Pakistanis against Bangladeshi Hindus, Rwandan Hutu against Tutsi, Khmer Rouge against Cambodians, Afghans against Hazaras, Sudan against Darfuris, Islamic State against Yazidi, Myanmar against Rohingya or Ethiopia against Tigray. China’s elimination of the Uyghurs’ culture and religion reflects a variant of genocide where destroying a people’s sense of identity is more effective than crude slaughter.

However, proving intent, as required under the Genocide Convention, is legally difficult. It is possible when sufficient evidence is left behind as, for example, by the Nazis, the Rwandan Hutu authorities or the Pakistani military.

So, what is Israel’s intent? It cannot be the elimination of identity when 21 per cent of its own population is Arab. If it is the elimination of Gazans, we would not expect it to send warning messages to civilians to exit military operation areas; nor to accept evacuation routes — however imperfect — or agree to humanitarian ceasefire and relief provision, however little. This is contrary to the observation that genocidaires are dedicated to speedily completing their evil projects — without pause or pressure.

That is because the genocidal mindset is pathologically uncaring of humanity — even on its own side. The Israeli mindset shows an obsession with survival — to the point that it exchanges multiple Palestinian prisoners to get one of their own back. Jewish fears, driven by experience, drive Israel to mistreat and incarcerate Palestinians and deprive them of their legitimate statehood. That is misguided, unjust and deplorable, but not genocidal.

Admittedly, a strand of extremist Israeli politics expounds violent hate against Palestinians. That echoes the dehumanising language heard in proven genocidal contexts. But there is nothing to suggest that this is a formalised Israeli state policy as opposed to the blood-curdling rhetoric that is a common war tactic — for example, in Russia’s vilification of Ukrainians as neo-Nazis.

The Hamas atrocity of October 7 killed around 1,200 people; about 10,000 were injured and nearly 240 abducted, mostly Jews. Was such identity-targeted barbarism a genocidal act? Perhaps so, if taken in the context of the stated intent of Hamas and its allies, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, to ‘eliminate’ Israel. That translates, de facto, into the eradication of Jews as a group. Although Palestinian bitterness is understandable after many frustrated decades, no cause — however just — excuses flirtation with genocidal thinking.

The Palestinian and Israeli hurts are both very real. Therefore, cries of genocide must be understood as desperate pleas. Humanity dictates that we listen, empathise and help, but emotional contention that labels either or both sides as genocidal is unhelpful. It may, perversely, increase future genocide risk. Wild accusations also have grave consequences by fuelling anti-Semitism and Islamophobia to generate more hate and insecurity in our polarised world.

Most importantly, history teaches us that wherever genocidal evil transpires, subsequent peace first requires going down a bloody road of war, as we know from World War II, and India found while liberating Bangladesh in 1971. The implication of invoking genocide in the Israel-Palestine equation is to suggest more horror ahead, regardless of who is alleged to be causing or opposing it. So, decent people wishing peace through Arab-Jewish co-existence must be careful with dangerous words like genocide. The suffering of people in West Asia is awful enough without using words that may cost more lives.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.