No comment.
In reality things are, unfortunately, complicated.
A central reason why genocide is so special is because it could call for UN intervention. Therefore, the UN definition is of some importance, which goes as follows:
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 groupNotice that according to the UN, the murder of political groups is not considered genocide. The Genocide convention was signed in 1948, and Stalin was not too keen on not being kept from killing political opponents. You could of course still argue political mass violence to be genocide, it just isn’t according to the convention.
There are perhaps two more interesting points that stand out. One is that the likelihood of success is not observed: merely the intention. The lunatic in the US killing a Palestinian child and wounding his mother was genocidal, as his intention was to kill Palestinians in order to rid them off the earth. It doesn’t so much matter that one mentally deranged person with a knife is unlikely to have much success in the task.
Intent causes a further problem, which is of course why the UN is not going to intervene in Israel: It’s very easy to hide your intentions. There are certainly members of Hamas who speak (or spoke) openly of removing the nation of Israel off the face of the earth, and you could therefore relatively easily label their actions as genocidal before the ICC if necessary.
With Israel it is, of course, more complicated. They are certainly using collective punishment, murdering civilians and children at an extremely high rate. However, they will insist that the intention is not to destroy the national group that is Palestinians: Most of them will argue that that the intention is to fight off Hamas, and that civilian casualties are just an unfortunate side effect of any war, even if just. Some lunatics will claim that they cannot kill off Palestinians as a nationality because Palestine never existed in the first place. The latter group would likely be less successful in the Hague.
If Israel can reasonably claim that their intention is not to destroy a group of people according to the convention, they will always be able to claim it is not a genocide and be at least technically correct.
There are two main implications as far as I’m concerned:
- The UN will stand by and do nothing as civilians are murdered, just like it always does.
- Legally, genocide is not a particularly fruitful term to throw about when discussing an ongoing conflict. Targeting civilians in murderous massacres is always deplorable. Endlessly arguing whether or not it formally fits the definition of genocide matters when the UN is considering intervention, but it is hardly relevant when considering whether or not war crimes are okay. These actions are despicable and should be forcefully protested, independently of whether they can be proven to meet the high bar of genocide.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the UN basically just a collective entity of the majority of the world’s nations and not its own body? The same issues came up with Russia’s invasion and how the UN couldn’t do anything. The UN is more of a neutral place to talk out disagreements than a police force. I agree with everything you say, but wherever I see “UN” it needs to be “United Nations”, as in the rest of the world…and how “we” are all just shrugging our shoulders and saying there’s technically nothing we can do about people dying.
Exactly. Everyone complains that UN doesn’t act as world police, but we collectively created it so that it couldn’t be world police.
In defence of the UN, the UN schools in Gaza are rare sites of hope in normal times and invaluable lifesavers these days. And I have friends in the UN who were working their ass off trying to improve the situation even before the war broke out, and who I’m currently trying to convince to get some sleep between turns. The fact that the UN cannot work as a world police (except under exceptional circumstances and sadly so far strictly theoretically) doesn’t mean it does not have an important role to play.
It’s incredibly flawed, but it’s what we got, and at least it’s something.
Yeah, definitely. It’s far better to have an admittedly weak UN that still tries to and often succeeds in being an influence for good in the world than to not have it at all. Thanks for your insights you’re able to bring into this thread.
Pretty much. Russia could veto intervention in Ukraine as they are permanent members of the Security Council, together with China, France, the UK, and the US. In practice it’s incredibly rare for these five to agree on anything in international politics enough for the UN to be anything more than a lame duck.
Boiling down your statement: it’s only genocide, if it’s politically opportune to call it that.
Kind of. It’s a rare opening for the use of legitimate force against a sovereign state, but it’s extremely hard to use.
Technically, if something meets the definition it would still be genocide even if the Security Council didn’t recognize it as such. In practice however, members of the Security Council can always claim the intention to be lacking, rendering it for all intents and purposes limited to political opportunity.
Of course, I’m speaking from a international law/politics perspective. This doesn’t falsify the dictionary definition; the word itself simply comes from latin gens, a group of people from a common ancestor, and cide, killing. Using it in that way normal conversation is not at all wrong.
It will, however, land you in frustrating discussions with people who will insist on the UN definition, and who are trained to only use the word genocide when they believe they can truly support it in the strictest sense. Which is why, depending on audience, it’s often easier to speak of war crimes and the murdering of civilians. Which should be equally powerful as long as you’re not actively making a case for the UN to intervene. And if you are making that case, you should absolutely be aware of the UN definition and its challenges.
The genocide/not genocide discussion risks becoming a distraction, and a lot of bad guys could score an apparent point by experts in the field having to confess that they cannot safely qualify their murdering of civilians as genocide. It doesn’t make the actions any less deplorable; it’s merely why you’re not going to see a lot of commentators use the word “genocide” about ongoing situations.
The UN definition renders it a word that is almost impossible to use, but in turn it’s the only concept in international law (at least that I can think of) that opens for the legitimate use of force against a sovereign state outside of war. So there are pros and cons.
The problem is the same as with “theory”: you use the colloquial definition to name things, then try and enforce the consequences of the technical definition.
openly of removing the nation of Israel off the face of the earth, and you could therefore relatively easily label their actions as genocidal
“Israel” is a national entity ruled over by a state - calling for the destruction of a classical liberal nation state (never mind a colonialist-settler project masquerading as one) isn’t genocide in any shape or form. You might as well argue that people calling for the abolition of the Apartheid-state were “calling for genocide.”
Legally, genocide is not a particularly fruitful term
Not everything is about legality - we all know who writes the laws and for whose benefit they are written.
There are some common misconceptions about dictionary definitions, including 1) that they’re prescriptive and 2) that they’re complete. In reality, at least for English, dictionaries are descriptive, meaning they attempt to describe how words are commonly used (where “commonly used” is a non-exact metric whose meaning is decided by the group compiling the dictionary); and they’re incomplete in a number of ways. A dictionary provides a starting point for understanding words we don’t know or are unfamiliar with, but there’s a reason people go to school for years to study specific subjects in depth–a depth that’s lacking in the dictionary definition.
It goes both ways. The dictionary is perceived to be an arbiter of truth in defining words. Language is what we perceived or to be. If most people agree that the definition is correct, it is.
Very topical. You know… with what’s happening to gamers around the world 😔
I’m more of a Oxford dictionary man myself
Sorry sweetie, it’s only genocide if the other side does it ;)
This goes for quite a few words these days.
I’m an etymonline person
