The “Let’s Keep The World Clean” placard with the figure of someone throwing the Israeli flag into a dustbin finally made its way to Trafalgar Square last weekend. It was only a matter of time. We have arrived at the point at which protesters accusing Israel of genocide are simultaneously calling for genocide against Israel. If only there was some example from recent history to help them understand what genocide really means.
On Question Time last week, an audience member compared Israel’s war in Gaza to the Holocaust (equating Israel to the Nazis is one of the recognised definitions of antisemitism, according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, of which the UK is a member). The word "genocide" is everywhere now, propagated by the pro-Palestinian activists, or anti-Israeli activists or antisemites, depending on who you talk to. It’s unjustifiable and insidious. Most of all it’s dangerous.
As ever, Guardian columnist and author Owen Jones has positioned himself on “the right side of history”. Jones, for whom the world is so without nuance he would make a one-eyed Manichean blush, repeatedly pushes the word genocide without committing to it fully. Even the way this lexicographical coup is framed is sneaky. The discussions of Jones and others of similar opinion revolve around phrases such as “Is this genocide?” or “Many people are likening it to genocide” or “What’s been said by Israelis ‘sounds’ genocidal”. Let’s stop dancing around the issue and employ Jones’s unequivocal approach: this is irresponsible nonsense.
To drip-drip an insinuation that Israel and its people (and by extension Jews) have genocidal intent is reckless
On his MSNBC show the British journalist Mehdi Hasan featured quotes from Israeli generals and politicians saying Israel was fighting human “animals” (referring to Hamas). As with Jones, he attempted to come at this sideways by saying it “sounded genocidal” to various experts on genocide. Hasan, of course, should know all about the dangers of inflammatory rhetoric having famously been filmed making a speech in 2009 in which he described non-Muslims as “animals” and “cattle”. I’m sure his views have evolved, but does that mean his language was “genocidal” too? And who knew there were so many genocide experts?
There are some thoroughly unpleasant people on the right of Israeli politics. A junior minister from the Otzma Yehudit party was suspended for saying dropping a nuclear weapon on Gaza was an option. Even Benjamin Netanyahu said the minister’s views were “not based in reality”. Generals are going to say things like “unleash hell”. That is the horrible way language says everything and nothing in wartime. By the moral standards set by those calling this war genocide, there would never be any situation in which armed conflict was a justified if deeply regrettable last option. That every analysis of this war has to be parenthesised with a declaration that you are definitely against the killing of all innocent civilians shows how reductive our discourse has become.
Israel’s attacks are causing the death and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and peaceful protests against them should be allowed to continue. While the hostages remain in Hamas’s hands Israel’s options are tragically limited. Whether Israel bears some responsibility for the long-term causes of war is a valid question. But to drip-drip an insinuation that Israel and its people (and by extension Jews) have genocidal intent is sheer recklessness. The connection between this language and how non-Jews perceive Jews is there. Denying it only makes you look stupid or deceitful.
Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are actually and explicitly genocidal. Hamas has terrorised Palestinians in Gaza for 17 years (they have not held an election since taking power in 2006). The only talk of genocide in its true form — wiping a race from the face of the Earth — comes from Israel’s opponents and the frivolous dupes that privilege them in western cities. These tend to be the same groups who suggest Jews “weaponise” the Holocaust. So now Jewish people aren’t even allowed to suffer an actual genocide without it being declared invalid. That may, in the end, be the grisly motive behind all this. Accusing the victims of genocide of being guilty of genocide themselves is a way to undermine a primary reason for the existence of Israel.
Opponents of Israel’s conduct can’t have it both ways when it comes to the misuse of this word. They can’t falsely accuse Israel of being genocidal then start clutching their pearls when the evidence of antisemitism in the streets and in schools is put in front of them. Parroting genocide is making a direct contribution not only to the daily anxiety of Jewish people in Britain but to their illegitimacy as citizens of our society. This is on you, genocide experts, whoever you are.
