Geneva: War Rules Good, Genocide Rules Mud

Lots of folks are saying that Israel is committing genocide. Genocide is a new word. For centuries, we had homicide for killing anyone. We had matricide and patricide for killing parents, infanticide for infants. But no word for genocide.

In the 1930s, a man named Rafael Lemkin became deeply interested in the attempt by the Ottoman Turks during WWI to totally exterminate the Armenians.

Later in his life, in 1944 Lemkin was employed by the US War Department to write a book on Nazi atrocities called Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In that book, he introduced the concept of genocide. He wrote (emphasis mine):

“By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing)…. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”

Note that according to Lemkin, genocide means the killing or attempted killing of an entire race or tribe.

Not causing them mental harm. Not even causing them physical harm. Not being mean to them, not destroying their homes.

Wiping them out. Killing them.

Lemkin went on to fight tirelessly to get the word enshrined in international law. His efforts finally bore fruit in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 9 December 1948.

Unfortunately, however, the definition of genocide in the Convention is so vague as to be totally meaningless.

Hear me out. I know the Convention on Genocide is Holy Writ, so what I’m saying is heresy. Let me invite you to come along while I make my meaning clear.

Let’s start with the definition:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Now, given that definition, here’s a thought experiment.

Suppose that Israel were able to use some invention to locate and kill every member of Hamas via small localized explosions. I don’t know how, call it a secret frequency that makes a cell phone explode next to the Hamas member’s head. He’s killed instantly, nobody else is harmed.

So no destroyed buildings. No aerial bombings. Not one civilian killed. Just small controlled explosions until Hamas is gone.

No citizens displaced. No crying children. None of that. Just after thousands and thousands of small explosions, Hamas from the billionaire leaders down to the 15-year-old bomb carriers would all have died instantly.

So here’s the reason for my thought experiment of an imaginary war. Read the definition of genocide again, and assuming that the Hamas war was over on the basis outlined above, every Hamas terrorist dead, every hostage returned alive or dead, virtually no civilian deaths, no cities destroyed …

… under the definition of the Convention on Genocide, would Israel’s actions be genocidal?

…

… sadly, I submit that the answer is “Yes“.

Why?

The definition says the protected groups are “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

And Hamas is a fundamentalist Islamic religious movement. They consider themselves orthodox Muslims, because they follow (“religiously” to coin a phrase) the understandings and ways of the original Islam as lived and practiced by the Prophet.

You know, the original good times of Islam like when the Prophet got his guys together, attacked a local Jewish village named Banu Qurayza, and defeated it. Then he lined up every remaining Jewish male and killed any of them who had pubic hair. Of course, the Jewish wealth was war booty for him and his men.

Then he divided up the Jewish women among his men, keeping one or two for himself. The men, of course, being obedient Muslims, asked the Prophet if it was ok to have sex with (aka rape) the female Jewish prisoners of war.

Well, at the time of the Banu Qurayza attack the Koran was still being revealed to the Prophet a bit at a time. So he told his guys “Let me sleep on it.” And in the morning, hey, good news, another verse of the Koran had been revealed to him.

O Prophet! surely We have made lawful to you [for sex] your wives whom you have given their dowries, and those whom your right hand possesses [slaves] out of those whom Allah has given to you as prisoners of war …

Qur’an 33:50

So the Prophet’s men were really happy. They had defeated Jews in battle, killed defenseless Jewish prisoners, taken the Jewish goods, and now Allah had said that they could keep the captured women as sex slaves to rape at will forever. What’s not to like?

I mean, has there ever been an army with a better recruiting slogan? And as a result of this recruiting, here are all of the previously Christian or Druze or Jewish or “pagan” areas that Muslims took over by the sword in their endless quest for a global Caliphate…

(Puts me in mind of the joke:

What’s the difference between a good Muslim and a bad Muslim.

• A bad Muslim wants to kill you.
• A good Muslim wants a bad Muslim to kill you.

And yes, there are good Muslims, I jest, forget your outrage, it’s wasted. I’ve known good Muslims. There are even great Muslims.

But they are not observant orthodox Muslims—they have to carefully look away from parts of the Koran and fail to notice the actions of the orthodox Jihadists … but I digress.)

The point is, Hamas is an Islamic religious group. Hamas fighters are deeply religious Muslims whose wish is to emulate the actions of the Prophet himself—kill Jews, take their goods, and keep their women as sex slaves. They are one of the far too numerous overtly violent Jihadist Muslim sects.

And in the imaginary Hamas war I described above, Israel acted with specific intent and succeeded in destroying in whole or in part a religious group, and that is absolutely genocide under the Holy Writ Of Geneva … sorry, no getting around it.

So that’s the first problem—the definition of the protected classes is obviously too wide because it includes Hamas, ISIS, Boko Haram, Islamic Jihad, and other Islamic proponents of using violence to impose a global Caliphate by force. Destroying them in whole or in part is simple self-preservation. It has nothing to do with genocide.

I note that Lemkin’s definition of genocide says “the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group“. Nothing about either religion or race. Preferable.

The next problem is in the term “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national etc. …”. What does “destroy in part” mean? Half? A quarter? Ten percent? One percent?

The next problem is the use of vague, undefined terms. My favorite non-definition was that it is “genocide” to try to destroy a group by causing “mental harm to members of the group“. Dear heavens, every snowflake group can claim “Ooooh, bad Jooz are committing genocide by causing my noble people mental harm” …

Next, in every war of any size, civilians have gone hungry. Power has gone out. Water has been dirty. Thousands of civilians have died as “collateral damage”. Sickness has abounded. Roads are impassible. Housing is short. As General Sherman observed, “War is hell.”

But under the Geneva Holy Writ definition, that’s easily seen as “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

For me, a law needs to have what I call “bright-line distinctions”. It needs to be clear when you are or are not breaking the law. For example, take the old line is “My freedom to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose”. That’s a bright line, it’s clear when I transgress.

But at where is the bright line for when I am or am not “causing mental harm” to “part of a group”? And what is the definition of “mental harm”? Calling them bad names? Asking them to move out of Gaza City before the IDF moved into the city?

Bottom line?

The Geneva Convention on Genocide is so inclusive of protected groups and so vague as to prohibited actions that it can be misused by bad actors to accuse any army of “genocide”. And we’ve just seen that in action at the International Court of Justice.

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With that as prologue, for me, all these bogus claims of Israeli “genocide” are in part an attempt to divert people’s attention from the real Middle East genocide.

I’m tired of all the pussy-footing around an ugly reality. Below is the unspoken truth about genocide in the Middle East, the ugly fact about genocide that far too many otherwise good people are steadfastly ignoring.

The Palestinians have a repeatedly stated goal of killing every single Jew in Israel—and they have been trying over and over for 75 years to do exactly that.

And that, dear friends, is the very definition of genocide.

It began with the war that the Palestinians started on the very day Israel was created, when the Palestinians firmly believed that they would win, kill all the Jews, take all of the Jews’ land and belongings, and use the women as sex slaves.

Sound familiar?

When against all odds that didn’t work and the Palestinians lost the war, they began a string of endless wars with the same object in mind—killing all the Jews.

In more modern times, both the PLO and Hamas have the same genocidal message baked into their charters—the extermination of the Jews. They make no attempt to hide it.

And the Palestinian people and their leaders are clearly in favor of genocide—it’s taught in their schools, they repeat the genocidal “From the river to the sea” chant endlessly, they send suicide murderers into shopping malls, they fire numberless missiles randomly into Israeli civilian areas, and they pay welfare to the families of the suicide murderers.

All of those are the deliberate targeting of Jewish civilians, the exact genocidal crime that Israel is falsely accused of.

Finally, Hamas started the current war to the death on October 7th by repeating the Prophet’s ancient Banu Qurayza plan—kill the Jews, steal their goods, rape the women and take them as sex slaves … and then sealed the deal by promising to repeat it over and over until every Jew in Israel is dead.

Can you say “genocide”?

The reality is, the Israelis have enough firepower to turn Gaza into glassy slag and kill every living thing. But they haven’t done that and never will. Instead, they are doing their utmost to prevent civilian casualties. Yes, there have been occasional errors and transgressions by young men in the heat of war. It’s war, the fog is everywhere.

But to me, the Israeli restraint in the face of the endless genocidal actions of the Palestinians, and in the face of the fact that Hamas is holding infants hostage and keeping female captives as sex slaves, is quite remarkable—in their place I would not, could not, be so restrained.

So please, don’t give me any BS about Israeli genocide. Anyone who opens their eyes can see that it is the Palestinians who have engaged in a violent murderous genocidal agenda for as long as both countries have existed.

Unfortunately, “anyone who opens their eyes” clearly doesn’t include the majority of the supporters of the 75-year ongoing Palestinian genocide … can’t have everything, I guess.

For them, here’s the TL;DR version.

My very best wishes to all, in the hope that Hamas will take pity on the Palestinians people, recognize military reality, surrender, release the hostages, and end this destructive war. Otherwise, Hamas will be forcing Israel to invade Rafah instead of simply taking it over. Israel can no more end the war by a ceasefire without control of Rafah than the Allies could have stopped at the outskirts of Berlin.

Hamas declared a war to the death. Unless they wise up and surrender, it will only end when they are dead.

Sadly,

w.