265 - Genocide: The Intentional Destruction of a People

Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza

Across the globe there are bloodlands where mass killings constitute genocide. Sudan is a clear horror story, as is Ukraine. Gaza is another multidimensional human tragedy where genocidal accusations have been made.

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide outlaws the “intentional” extirpation of a people. “Intent” is critical and needs to be established.  Sanctioned by the Convention are “the intent to destroy… a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group….” or “deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction….”

Nazis sought to eliminate 6 million Jews throughout Europe. Hutu in Rwanda slaughtered 800,000 Tutsi in 1994. Serbs were intent on eliminating Bosnian Muslims and Albanian Muslims as the Republic of Yugoslavia disintegrated. Burmese attacked Muslim Rohingya, forcing them to die or flee into Bangladesh. China seeks to Sinicize Muslim Uyghurs, denying them their mosques and their Indigenous religious practices.

In this century, genocide was first practiced harshly in Sudan between 2003 and 2006.  Camel-riding vigilantes and the Arab-dominated army of Sudan both mercilessly attacked mostly defenseless African agriculturalists in Darfur, the nation’s westernmost province. The Arabs slaughtered 300,000 Margalit, Zaghawa, and Fur tribespersons and forced another 2 million to flee across the border into Chad. President Omar al-Bashir is accused of fostering this modern genocide; in 2010 the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted him for pursuing the crime of genocide.

A genocidal repeat is underway now, with some of the same Arab leaders (minus Bashir, who is in a Sudanese jail) pursuing the same African peoples, killing them, and again sending thousands out of Darfur to Chad.  Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, led the vigilante Janjaweed in the 2000s. Now he and his brother are ousting Africans in southern Darfur. But he and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), successor to the Janjaweed, are also battling for control of Darfur – a province the size of Spain or one-quarter of the United States – against the regular Sudanese army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.  (In the 2000s, Burhan led the national army against Africans in Darfur.)

El-Fasher is the capital of central Darfur. A city now of 1.5 million people, it has been fortified by the regular army but is now besieged by the RSF. African refugees within and outside its walls are being killed systematically by the RSF and by crossfire between the contending parties. Genocide continues just as a wider war for control of all of Sudan rages from the Red Sea south to South Sudan, north to Egypt, and west into Darfur. The RSF seems to be gaining ground against the regular army, but all of Sudan – Africa’s third largest country – is in flames.

Already 9 million Sudanese have become internally displaced or actual refugees. As in Darfur, there are the killings of innocents and the catastrophic fleeing and starving of civilians.  Along with Gaza, Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and possibly Myanmar, no greater humanitarian crises exist across the globe. Yet too few are paying attention.

There is immense needless suffering in both Gaza and Ukraine. But, unlike Sudan, it is harder to argue – as the ICC suggests – that Israel’s intent has been genocidal. Certainly, Hamas’ Oct 7 massacre was part of a genocidal impulse. But is the response?

It is easier to make a case the Putin is exacerbating genocide in Ukraine. After all, he seems intent on destroying everything Ukrainian, human and physical, that stands in the way of his annexing Ukraine (more than its people) to the Russia that more and more pretends to be a Soviet re-make.  The ICC has indicted Putin for kidnapping Ukrainian children and transporting them into Russia. The 1948 Convention specifically prohibits “forcibly transferring children….” But that is but a small part of what Putin is intent on doing to make Ukrainians Russian and seeking to eliminate the peoples who insist that there is a Ukraine and they are Ukrainians, not Russians.

Israel has bombed and battled in Gaza to eliminate dastardly Hamas. The collateral damage of its campaigns up and down the Strip have caused mayhem and 16,000 or so civilian non-Hamas deaths that have aroused the enmity of the Muslim world, dismayed American students (Muslim and other), upset the White House, and given Israel needless losses in the important struggles for legitimacy and global public support.  Indeed, Israel has so far neither obliterated Hamas nor maintained its original (October) status of victim.  In other words, Israel is losing when it should be winning.

Almost without doubt, Israel has violated provisions of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols outlawing barbarity in war as well as the Rome Statute of 1998 that established the ICC. So do almost all like Putin who attack or intervene against weaker countries violate those conventions. In Ukraine, Putin is targeting civilians in a manner explicitly banned in 1949 and again in 1977.

But it is a longer stretch to say that Israel’s “intent” is or has been genocidal with regard to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip or the Palestinians of the West Bank.  It is no doubt easily demonstrated that Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the most extreme members of Israel’s current cabinet, really do have genocidal tendencies; they do want Arabs gone from Judea and Samaria.  They want more than ethnic cleansing (what the Sudanese are about), and they individually should be cited for propelling Israel toward genocide.  But the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) itself is motivated more by an all-out defense of the realm. Its mission is to eliminate Hamas, not civilians in the Gaza Strip. Tragically, not following American guidelines, the IDF has acted imprecisely, without the surgical methods that Washington urged it to use.  The result of this failure as been unwarranted deaths and accusations of genocide and a massive loss of support – especially in American electoral year. What should have been a straightforward military pursuit of Hamas, not an indiscriminate bombing of Gazans, has turned into a massive destruction of infrastructure,  the flattening of hospitals, and excessive deaths of non-combatants.

“Deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction…” is a genocidal act under Article II of the Convention. Those are words cited by the International Court of Justice. But, according to the Genocide Convention, there must be both motivation and intent.  Israel will argue that it still has no “intent” even though the results of its bombing are clear.

Starvation has accompanied the Israeli attempted conquest. That need not be genocide, but human suffering certainly compounds Israel’s losses of legitimacy.  Its refusal to create a viable Palestinian state, or even to police Gaza and prevent the theft of relief supplies, only exacerbates the claim of genocide even though the fit is imperfect.

If Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu broke with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir he could be ousted. But he could also save himself and his legacy and give Israel a chance to restore real statehood to Palestine and humanitarian relief to Gaza. It is not “stopping” non-existent genocidal acts that should be Netanyahu and Israel’s immediate goal. Rather, it is crafting a strategy that gains support in Washington and around the world, helps to restore the legitimacy of Israel’s struggle to exist, and begins to reduce the likelihood of a wider war in the Middle East.   Netanyahu (or a successor) can do that.

Such a serious policy shift, with a commitment to a new Palestine, would also enable the West to focus much more securely on the battle against Putin. At present, the disaster in Gaza only helps Putin and enables his more accurately designated pursuit of genocide.