World Rues the Day It Lost the Concept of Genocide

It only took four days after the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire for the Middle East to rear its ugly head again. In a lightning raid that surprised almost everybody, Syrian rebels overran much of the country’s second largest city, Aleppo, brushing aside Syrian, Iranian and Russian defenders. The rebels quickly gained control of numerous neighborhoods in the northern Syrian city and proceeded to cut the strategic highway leading north from Damascus.

The rebels include units loyal to al Qaeda and ISIS. As soon as the rebels advanced on Aleppo, the City’s Christians fled to the protection of Kurdish neighborhoods, while the Kurds rushed reinforcements to try to stem the rebel tide.

Given the history of the Turkish-backed rebel forces, the Kurds, Christians, Yazidis and others have good reason to be afraid. These rebels have a history of massacring anyone who does not conform to their radical fundamentalist Sunni Muslim ideology, but often only after they kidnap the women and use them as sex slaves.

Should the rebels repeat their murderous ways, the international community will find itself with a legal dilemma. How do you define what the rebels are doing in sufficient terms to truly express the nature of their grotesqueness when the concept traditionally used, that of “genocide”, has been corrupted to apply to Israel’s fighting in Gaza? Is the international community seriously trying to compare the actions of Syrian Kurds, Christians and Yazidis, who fled from the rebel army fearing they all might be slaughtered, with the actions of the Gazans, who often frequently stayed in war zones knowing the Israeli army would not engage in such slaughter?

The impact of “defining genocide down” is that the world now has no way to distinguish between true genocide and the conduct of urban warfare, especially when that conduct is conducted against an enemy which purposely blurs the line between combatant and civilian. In fact, the entire concept of genocide was created to distinguish between normal warfare and the purposeful killing of a civilian population solely to destroy that population.

Had the international community simply followed normal procedures it would not face this situation. However, Israel has been involved. In the United States we have seen the concept of “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. This refers to the need of Trump’s opponents to reflexively oppose anything he proposes or represents. As the results of the most recent American election showed, this caused the Democrats to support policies – such as open borders – that are extreme and proved disastrous for them in November.

The same applies to the United Nations and its “Israel Derangement System”. During the Gaza and Lebanon wars, this blind hatred manifest itself in the accusation of genocide against Israel. This is despite the fact that, according to the UN itself, the percentage of civilians killed in Gaza is below that which is normal for modern urban warfare. https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc14904.doc.htm The International Criminal Court, a UN instrumentality, followed by breaking all precedent and issuing arrest warrants for democratic leaders by acting against Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister, notwithstanding the presence in Israel of a vibrant, independent judicial system.

Perhaps the biggest loser will be the entire system of international law and justice itself. How will it be possible to respect a system that equates the purposeful murder, torture and sexual abuse of ISIS and the like with the actions of a prime minister of a democracy conducting urban warfare in a way that results in the enemy’s population one year later being larger than it was when the war started with people who purposely massacre an entire population? The entire concept of a rules-based world, which would apply even in times of armed conflict, has been so corrupted by the actions relating to Israel that the entire system now is teetering. Is the ICC really stating that should a democracy fight ISIS the democracy cannot act against ISIS as Israel is acting against Hamas? If so then what exactly is the democracy to do?

The moral is that regardless of the intellectual and jurisprudential concepts developed by well meaning lawyers and others, if the humans charged with putting those concepts into practice are not faithful to the intellectual basis for the concept, the concept itself becomes corrupt and the results are the exact opposite of what was intended. The awful reality of the pictures the world might see coming from Syria now will test the international community as much as ever before. How sad that the blind hatred of Israel has resulted in that community forfeiting its most effective legal weapons, just at the time they are needed most.