On Genocide

When I speak with my Israeli friends, I have no issue calling what our government, our country, our society is doing in Gaza a genocide.

I try to use the word sparingly, knowing it will raise tones, close hearts, plug ears – but also shake cores. It has its place, and when applied at the right time, in the right place, can help people wake from their stupor. More importantly, it is the right word to use: we are committing a genocide, and to stop it, we must acknowledge it.

But in English, in conversations with internationals, I find my system resisting the word. When I hear it used by outsiders, my immediate reaction is to try and explain, soften, excuse. “It’s complicated.”

I am familiar enough with my reaction at this point to hold off on acting upon it, but it is, nonetheless, there.

So why this discrepancy? Why do I call a duck a duck internally, but hold off on avian identification with friends abroad?

I recently saw a video uploaded by one of the participants in the Sumud Flotilla – apparently an American, part of a “veterans for Palestine” group. In it, he spoke about Israel’s motivations for the current campaign in Gaza City, explaining how Israel’s military campaign doesn’t meet the definition of a military operation because of lack of clear definitions of mission, arena, and so on. He then went on to mention the hostages – and then quickly corrected himself. “Not hostages – prisoners of war, all of them.”

As if the Hamas campaign on October 7th met any kind of criteria for conventional warfare, as if its stated goals were not genocidal, as if the treatment of the hostages is beholden to any kind of accepted humanitarian standard, as if the Red Cross had been permitted to visit them and ensure their safety, as prisoners of war are entitled to.

But more importantly – while some of the hostages are, indeed, soldiers, and can be seen as legitimate military targets – some of the hostages, like Alon Ohel, are civilians. Young Israeli men who were not involved with military operations in any way at the time of their capture. The Sumud activist’s claim, however, is that they are all legitimate targets, because Israelis all serve in the military.

When I hear Israelis repeat the mantra “there are no uninvolved civilians in Gaza,” I want to throw up, because the inference there is genocidal. Kill them all.

But the pro-Palestinian voices I hear make an equally genocidal claim regarding Israelis, and in this discourse, admitting that Israel is committing a genocide is, essentially, conceding that Israel must be wiped off the map. That me and my family should have our homes seized, and – in the best case scenario, our lives uprooted, left to fend for ourselves in a hostile world, anywhere but in the land where our home is.

The mirroring of fascist Israeli fantasies regarding the displacement of Palestinians is more than uncanny, and just as Palestinians are – rightfully – unwilling to entertain them as a possibility, so am I equally unwilling to entertain or cooperate with my own expulsion, dehumanization and disinheritance.

When pro-Palestinians, immediately following Oct. 7th, either celebrated the massacre, denied it, conspiratorially blamed it on Israeli forces, or held some convoluted stance incorporating all three approaches, when they now refer to civilian hostages taken by a murderous, rapist terror organization as “prisoners of war,” and when their reaction to Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing is a hope for a counter-genocide, a counter ethnic-cleansing, counter dehumanization (Chris Martin’s reaction to finding out two of his concert goers were Israelis, stating that “I’m treating you as equal humans on Earth regardless of where you come from or don’t come from,” as if that isn’t a given, as if that needed to be stated when it comes to Israelis, as if that was a charitable action) – well, if it comes down to a survivalist “it’s either me or them,” I will choose myself, and learn to live with the consequences, and if the point of acknowledging Israel’s genocide is going to be the justification of my own harm, it’s going to be difficult for me to simply accept it.

Of course, the people benefitting from this binary are exactly those whom I consider my enemies: Hamas and Netanyahu’s Kahanist regime.

So to my international friends, and to my Israeli friends, and to my Palestinian friends, I ask and beg of you: reject the binary. Reject ethnic cleansing and genocide. The only way out, and the only way to the truth is through the acceptance and legitimization of us all, Israelis and Palestinians alike. The genocide must stop – but it cannot be stopped via the means of another genocide; only postponed, shifted, morphed. Pro-Palestinians and Pro-Israelis may find it difficult to locate partners on the other side, but the Pro-Peace, Pro-Humanity camp is all encompassing, and the only real way to truly stop the violence for good.