The ghosts of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor sleep lightly. Awakened whenever the call of genocide is made against innocents slaughtered and destroyed because of their race, religion or ethnicity.
The spectres of millions murdered by the Nazis were again summoned into our collective minds on October 7. When the massacre in Israel by Hamas terrorists resulted in more Jewish people being killed in any one day since the Holocaust.
In one moment, genocide of the Jewish people past and present linked hands in horrifying unity. For make no mistake, what happened on October 7 was genocide – as defined by the1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Since the intention was to wipe out people purely because of their ethnic background. Indeed the word itself was first coined by the Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, who had narrowly avoided becoming a victim of the Holocaust having fled Europe when the Nazis invaded Poland.
So how ironic that Israel`s Dublin-based diplomats are now packing their bags because of the Irish Government’s determination to accuse the Jewish state of genocide. Dublin’s politicians are fortifying its bias and determination to do so by asking the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to broaden its definition of genocide – claiming Israel has engaged in the “collective punishment” of people in Gaza.
A classic case of if the cap doesn’t fit then change the cap.
The move by the Irish government overlooks overwhelming evidence that Israel’s campaign in Gaza is anything but genocide. Routinely Israel is lauded by military experts for the humane way in which it is fighting the war. For example, if the determination was to kill for the sake of killing, why drop leaflets warning innocent people to take cover?
But such is the sustained bias against Israel and appetite for summoning accusations of genocide that the devil is NOT in the detail. But rather in a willingness to ignore it.
Shamefully, Ireland is not the only serial offender when it comes to weaponising the term genocide for its own political gain.
A recent report by Amnesty International – which has form in demonising Israel – claimed to have evidence that Israel is “committing genocide” in Gaza. Not only was it roundly condemned by leading voices including lawyers and world leaders but, tellingly, Amnesty International’s own branch in Israel emphatically denied the claim that genocide has occurred in Gaza.
It remains unconscionable that Israel’s attempts to protect its citizens and secure the release of hostages, whilst trying to avoid loss of innocent life – a terrible but not unexpected cost in fighting war – is labelled as genocide.
How did we get to this gross subversion of facts? The answer can only lie in the double standards and unvarnished hatred which has given rise to so much Jew hatred and naked antisemitism.
And it is why every sinew must be strained to reclaim the correct meaning of the word genocide – be it through public education, legal framework and a commitment to distinguishing what constitutes crimes against humanity and lamentable but unavoidable acts of war.
For in stripping the word genocide of its true meaning and disregarding the essence of the evil which motivates such horrors we not only rob the word of its uniqueness. We provide a lazy way for terrorists who prosecute genocide to use it as a convenient tool which justifies the horrors they unleash.
Israel’s war is not with the Palestinian people. Otherwise it would surely have flattened Gaza within days of the October 7 attack. Why risk putting infantry in vulnerable positions on the ground or establishing humanitarian corridors? Everything Israel does is to defend its positions and free its hostages – in fact it is precisely because Hamas knew how much Jewish people prize the sanctity of human life that they kidnapped Israelis on October 7. They knew the collateral value.
We should never be unmoved by the plight of innocent Palestinians who have been caught in a steel armlock by Hamas as they secrete themselves in densely populated civilian areas. We all want the bombing to stop, the hostages to be released and Gaza to have the future it deserves. But in allowing the liberal and incorrect use of the word genocide, be it from countries such as Ireland and South Africa, activists on hate marches, or even so-called accomplished commentators across our air waves – of which I`ve met a number – we simply deepen the issue and give succour to the terrorists. Never forget Hamas’s founding charter showed that its raison d’etre is the killing of the Jewish people. In other words, genocide.
The ghosts of the Holocaust will remain restless if we look dilute genocide from its true meaning, leaving them to die another death. But this time at the hands of those who weaponise words as much as deeds.
