Allegations of genocide, a term coined by lawyer Raphael Lemkin in the 1940s to cope with the enormity of the Nazi crimes against humanity, are commonplace in the Israel-Hamas war.
Supporters of Israel point to the Hamas charter to support their claim that the militant group is hell-bent on erasing Israel from the map and that the murders and kidnappings of more than 1,000 civilians on Oct. 7 were genocidal. Pro-Palestinian protesters say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza by indiscriminately leveling entire neighborhoods, leading to more than 10,000 deaths in a matter of weeks. Legal scholars are weighing in, too. In their view, a genocide case might be made against either side. Naturally, partisans on both sides of the conflict vehemently deny having committed the “crime of crimes.”
In this episode of History As It Happens, renowned genocide scholar Dirk Moses deals with the difficulty of proving genocide based on its narrowly defined terms, which were drawn up to allow states to violently suppress internal and external threats without running afoul of international law. Genocide allegations have many purposes in public discourse, including to shock the public into action or defame an opponent, Mr. Moses said, but it is at its base a legal term. Genocide cases are rarely successfully prosecuted even after arduous, yearslong investigations.
Moreover, Mr. Moses contends that the genocide debate obscures a more common problem: the routine application of massive violence against civilians within a military logic.
“The atrocity crimes … are all driven by the same logic, the aspiration for permanent security, which is a deeply sinister and utopian aspiration. And I distinguish that from the conventional and legitimate security imperatives that any state has, that is has a right to defend its population,” said Mr. Moses, the author of “The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression.”
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