The Anti-Israel Left Loves the Charge of ‘Genocide’ Precisely Because It Is So Perverse

By Rich Lowry

Thursday, May 09, 2024

 

A brief statement by Representative Rashida Tlaib on the Israel incursion into Rafah mentioned the word “genocide” four times. According to the congresswoman, “Netanyahu began a ground invasion of Rafah to continue the genocide of Palestinians,” “our country is actively participating in genocide,” and the International Criminal Court should “swiftly issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials to finally hold them accountable for this genocide,” which is warranted by all “the well-documented violations of the Genocide Convention.”

 

“Genocide” is the favorite word of anti-Israel progressives; without it, they’d be rendered practically mute.

 

They clearly love how it sounds and how it feels in their mouths — the bite, the sting, and, perhaps more than anything, the outrageousness and perversity of it.

 

It is so useful for many reasons. It is, obviously, the worst crime that you can accuse someone of, which makes it a powerful swear word. And there’s an international apparatus devoted to trying to punish anyone guilty of it, so proceedings can get started against Israel — as they have been — that are extremely useful for propaganda purposes, if nothing else. But then, more profoundly, there’s the emotional satisfaction of essentially turning the Holocaust on its head and transforming the victims of a genocide into the perpetrators of one.

 

The subtext of the fervent insistence that Israel is trying to destroy the Palestinian people as such is basically, “Victims of Auschwitz, you can’t hide; we accuse you of genocide.”

 

At one level, the anti-Israel Left uses the word “genocide” as a synonym for “military campaign that we don’t support.” But even though the definition of “genocide” is quite vague, a military campaign can be harsh and destructive while still not coming close to constituting genocide.

 

The aim of the Israeli campaign is to eradicate Hamas, not the Palestinians, and Israel has tried as much as possible to provide advance warning so civilians can escape harm’s way. The problem, of course, is that Hamas hides among the population, wants more civilian casualties as fodder for its propaganda, and steals humanitarian aid.

 

The genocide charge is part of a well-worn tradition of hurling allegations at Israel meant to delegitimize the Jewish state, from the old chestnut that “Zionism is racism” to the currently fashionable notion that Israel is a “settler-colonial” state. It echoes, as well, the long, dark history of accusing Jews of being uniquely malevolent and bloodthirsty.

 

If anything, “genocide” ups the ante. The term, as everyone knows, dates from the aftermath of World War II when it was felt that a new concept was necessary to capture an event like the Holocaust. That background makes using the word against the Jews even more delicious. Since it is the belief of the anti-Zionists that Jews disgracefully exploited the Holocaust to create a Jewish state where none should exist, defining the Jews as themselves guilty of genocide serves to, as they imagine it, destroy the foundation of Israel.

 

Of course, the underlying goal here is itself eliminationist — to do away with Israel and the Jewish people’s homeland.

 

It would seem bizarre that the accusation of genocide — against Israel — sprang up in conjunction with the October 7 attack on Israel by a terror group that targeted Jews, as such, for kidnapping, rape, and murder. Except that the attack, and the genocide charge against Israel from its haters, have the same ultimate purpose.

 

“For years,” Shany Mor writes at Mosaic, “it has been blindingly obvious that the next term to be colonized for the benefit of anti-Israel activism would be genocide. After lurking at the fringes for some time, that is precisely what has happened since October 7. Not coincidentally, this rhetorical escalation was brought about by the Hamas operation, which more than any other incident in the century-long conflict over Palestine actually looked genocidal — Einsatzgruppen with GoPros.”

 

And so, for the likes of Rashida Tlaib, genocide is an irresistibly powerful rhetorical and ideological weapon and an alluring new way to libel the Jews.