Genocide: A Sacred Word Hijacked
Growing up as Jews we always knew exactly what the word ‘genocide’ meant. It was in our blood. Our family members experienced some of the worst horrors any human could possibly imagine.
We heard personal stories that would make any humane person cringe in horror.
The word genocide has been ingrained in the Jewish vernacular for decades but it didn’t just appear out of thin air.
It was coined during World War II by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin.
As a young linguistics student during the Armenian ‘massacres’ he began searching for a word to describe the crime of trying to erase an entire people. But no word existed.
No language had a way to capture such grotesque and unprecedented atrocities.
He continued his mission by studying law, determined to understand why there were laws against killing one person but none against wiping out an entire people.
Then came the Holocaust, the most unspeakable type of evil. It was, as Churchill once said, “a crime without a name.”
Lemkin finally gave it a voice by combining the Greek genos (race, tribe, or people) with the Latin -cide (to kill) to form the word genocide.
For decades, it has been a carefully used term appearing mostly in history books, courts and through survivor testimonials. But lately, the word has become a household name, one that’s been tossed around like a tennis ball.
For the last 2 years, starting just hours after the worst attack on Jews since The Holocaust, we’ve been told that Israel is committing a genocide. Yes, immediately after thousands of Israeli men, women, children and BABIES were slaughtered in ways so brutal that they completely defy comprehension.
And this is when the word lost its essence. Completely.
Whether you agree or disagree with Israel’s policies, to conflate a complex, nuanced and widely misunderstood conflict between a designated terrorist organization and a country under assault from every angle as a genocide is to strip the word of its meaning.
It’s reckless, misleading, and an insult to the very reason the word genocide was coined in the first place.
Yes, Israel is not blameless and there have been far too many tragic deaths in Gaza, both devastating and impossible to ignore. That being said, multiple things can be true at the same time.
Let’s not forget a critical fact though… Hamas intentionally puts their citizens in harm’s way for the sole purpose of making Israel appear to be as evil as possible.
They don’t have bomb shelters or safe places for people to stay protected.
Why? Because they spent all their money building tunnels and war zones under hospitals and now deliberately use them to maximize the number of civilian casualties. Sick, right?
The word genocide has been completely maimed and twisted by Hamas propaganda and amplified unapologetically by the media. Sorry NYT, but retractions buried deep on page 22 don’t undo the harm the salacious images and headlines have already caused.
The fact checkers have fallen asleep at the wheel. Editorial standards are widely being questioned.
Wake up! Stop being complicit in a distortion that will have damaging and lasting consequences that will harm not only the Jewish people, but all mankind.
Jews are being hunted and attacked across the globe and the world just turns a blind eye. Nothing to see here, move along.
We can’t even go to concerts or onstage without being turned into a spectacle of shame and humiliation.
Let me be crystal clear: Israel could have easily wiped the entire Gaza strip off the map in one day if their intent was to commit a genocide. And everybody knows it.
Meanwhile, there are actual genocides taking place right before our very eyes. The Congo is facing atrocities so unimaginable that the death toll has climbed into the millions.
But, no Jews, no news.
We are all exhausted.
We can’t even have a peaceful event without hiring more security than a Taylor Swift concert and have to hide the time and location until the last millisecond so we can’t be found.
What other group has to take such extreme measures to stay safe?
Never again is NOW.