Genocide is the wrong word and the distinction matters

Raphael Lemkin authored the term ‘genocide’ to define and describe the most egregious crime: the erasure of a human group because of who they are as such. 

This is the key requirement that renders the term ‘genocide’ different from other war crimes. It is a particular form of mass killing that Lemkin wanted segregated for special attention and careful definition. Its clarity lies in its simplicity. 

Armenians, Jews, Tutsi, Yazidis were all targeted for extermination because of who they were. These were genocides. 

If all mass killings were encompassed within the term genocide, it would render the term meaningless. War crimes, massacres, mass killings, crimes against humanity are defined separately.  In the case of genocide, intention is key.  

Israel's target in Gaza has always been Hamas. The proof that this is not genocide is in Israel’s actions and lack of intent to target Palestinians because of who they are. 

Genocidaires (those who commit genocide) do not notify their intended victims to relocate to ‘areas of safety’ (successfully or otherwise). Genocidaires actively drive their targeted group to their death through deliberately planned methods designed to lead to the demise of the intended group. 

Lists of intended victims are often drawn up, victims are sent instructions to arrive at a collection point or their houses are marked or they are systematically hunted down - every single one without exception is the aim – identified, rounded up or evicted from their homes, before being forcibly marched into the desert without food or water or to collection points – where they can be routinely or systematically worked to death, clubbed, beaten, macheted, summarily shot, hanged or gassed.  

Death is always the objective: every man, women and child of the identified group.  

There is no evidence of this systematic, intended mass murder in relation to Gaza.  The deaths and destruction are a result of Israel’s efforts at defending itself against Hamas, together with the intent to release the hostages kidnapped in the Oct 7 attack.  

At any time since Oct 8, Hamas has had the ability to protect the citizenry under its governance by handing the hostages back and surrendering. That remains the case. today.

Genocidaires do not typically provide any means for the intended victim group to survive: no humanitarian zones or corridors, no provision of food, water, shelter, sanitation or medical care.  

The few survival options for victims of genocide are abusive. Some Armenians were offered the opportunity to convert to Islam. Hundreds of others became sex slaves - this was also the case with Yazidi women and girls under Isis. Jews held in some camps were given meagre rations to provide forced labour. But in each case the removal of the entire population was the intention.  

Israel has had ample opportunity to commit genocide in Gaza. It could easily have rounded up all the Palestinians up into one region and blitzed it.  

 An Israeli elimination of Palestinians, if this was the intent, would also necessarily include the erasure of those living in the West Bank and the two million living within Israel. 

 If Israel had intended genocide, it would have to be one of the most incompetent genocidaires in all history. 

Most, except those of us who study it, have forgotten the lessons of WWII. As a genocide historian, I know what genocide looks like. 

Genocide has not happened in Gaza. Genocide is not happening in Gaza. 

In Gaza, Israel is fighting Hamas, a globally recognised terrorist organisation which is still holding Israeli hostages after the murders, rapes, and widespread attacks on civilians of October 7. 

For two decades Hamas has overseen the education of Gazan civilians, disseminating hate for Jews, jihadist ideology, weapons training and the virtue and value of martyrdom and death over the preservation of life. Hamas claims more than 60,000 deaths in Gaza. These figures are unreliable and include an unknown number of Hamas fighters.  

The loss of human life, in particular non-combatants, is always tragic. But civilian deaths in times of war have happened before and will happen again. Calling it genocide won’t ever make it so, no matter the anguish. 

The deaths in the present conflict will stop when Hamas has been eliminated and the hostages have been released or their bodies recovered.  

That has been the only Israeli intent from the beginning.