Genocide is a notoriously incoherent term in the social sciences. Usually taking the Holocaust as a (tacit) referent, social-scientists and international lawyers attempt to refine the specific historical event--the shoah--into an abstract concept: genocide, characterized by a given set of traits, some imaginary: the intention to wipe out the entirety of a people, for example. Few other mass-murders share enough specific traits, in turn, to meet the ostensibly social-scientific criteria laid out. Thereupon the word just deteriorates into a particularly compelling word for mass-murder, at best. At worst, it merely becomes one more piece of political rhetoric, meaning, "those people over there are murderers."
At a talk on Wednesday, I called the Cast Lead operation a probe, a test, to see if Israel would be permitted to carry out genocide. One questioner commented that this position was "alarmist." He proceeded to call the Cast Lead operation a "warning." The point isn't totally without merit, but I disagree. The logic of counter-insurgency creates a situation wherein a "warning" to a resistance group to stop resisting, particularly one carried out with a massive number of civilian casualties, can easily become something far worse--"genocide." A "warning" to stop resisting to a people under occupation is like a "warning" to stop breathing. It's not gonna fly. As John Dugard has written, "As long as there is occupation, there will be terrorism," true enough, so long as we recall that terrorism = resistance when there are no other options.
Dugard knows this: "Acts of terror against military occupation must be seen in historical context...This is why every effort should be made to bring the occupation to a speedy end. Until this is done, peace cannot be expected, and violence will continue.” This stuff is well-known. The conversation brought to mind Eqbal Ahmad's comments on counter-insurgency. Reading his unsurpassed dissection of liberal-technocratic ideology and the mind-set of counter-insurgency, it's hard not to be struck by linear parallels with Israeli policy in Gaza:
If the population is to the guerrilla what water is to fish, the ultimate weapon of degenerate but powerful incumbents is to drain the water...The policy may not be genocidal in intent; its goal appears to be attrition...For the people and country under assault, the [consequences] are total...The bombing and burning of villages are often justified on the ground that the affected villagers will blame the Vietcong Hamas for "exposing" them to government reprisals; it is believed that the enemy thus loses popular support.
There are some differences: Zionism, with marginal exceptions, denies Palestinian nationalism, and at its core cannot simply "leave" Gaza and the West Bank without changing its ideology, without changing itself and the society it justifies. Failing that, it descends into madness--calls for killing or expelling Palestinians come from all corners of Israeli society, wavering between Morris-style "humanist-liberal" ethnic-cleansing, or at its darkest congealing into a self-consciously genocidal ideology. Ahmad has the appropriate comment on this front, too:
When the world is not watching, when the fear of diplomatic sanctions and the threat of a widened war are absent, a foreign power trapped in counterguerrilla operations is likely to make the final and only move that may "win"--it starts to commit genocide.
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Don’t forget however that Hamas are also acting as the morality police: http://antonyloewenstein.com/2009/07/28/hope-live...