Is the Holocaust Different?

So this had me thinking a lot in class today towards the end of our discussion, and that format wasn't conducive to what I was trying to say, or I guess, how I wanted to say it (plus, it's a lot easier to articulate in writing). Today it seemed as if we really didn't think that there should be any separation between the Holocaust and other genocides/possible genocides; that we should be able to apply "genocide" a lot more freely and maybe not have the power to sit in class decades later and make gut calls about situations that we are at best marginally informed about.
As for that last notion, hopefully I make some progress towards addressing it in my first (aka real) blog post for this week, but as for the former, I think there is still something that sets the Holocaust apart.
A couple of reasons come to mind: first the fact that with the Holocaust there's no search whatsoever for a "smoking gun." You could say that the smoldering crater of Europe in 1945 was the smoking gun, but even if you didn't have that flair for the dramatic you could also point to any number of speeches by Hitler or others high in the Nazi hierarchy, or just the sheer efficacy of the operation that they ran. Even if there's not one specific, explicit order, no reasonable person could look at the abundant evidence and come to any conclusion other than that the Nazis fully intended to kill every last Jew, Roma, and "invalid," etc. As we're finding out, particularly with the Holodmor, that kind of cut-and-dry is very rare.
Further, though, especially in light of the bureaucratic anarchy that Cannibal Island describes (in which victims are killed at least as much by falling through the cracks as by the sinister movements of the instruments of governance themselves), the degree of systemization - and routinization - in the Holocaust sets it apart from the other two broad case studies we've conducted. Can't you imagine some Nazi bureaucrat getting a demerit because a train of victims was an hour late? (I remember the train scene described in Ordinary Men, but that seems the exception, not the rule, as it stuck out enough to warrant mention in that officer's diary.) Clearly that was very far from the case in Soviet Russia, and my memory of the Armenian genocide offers nothing to suggest that mass killing was so exact there either. There's something genuinely weird about the Holocaust that can't be applied the same way to the Armenian genocide or the Holodmor: all three are horrifying beyond belief - terrible warnings of what humankind is capable of - but the Holocaust (for me) stands alone among the three as, for lack of a better word, unnatural. It doesn't just push me away, it draws me in.
I think what I'm expressing is weakened by the weakness of the "Mad Nazi" model for understanding the Holocaust (and helping the rest of us sleep better), but I think that our study of the Holocaust imparted factual strength to the idea that the majority of the genocide there was precise, accurate, exact - and I don't mean to suggest that that implies a difference of degrees (which is much harder to argue, and I'm not sure I agree with), but it is a deep difference that we should be mindful of.

American Fascism

We’ve offered that American political rhetoric suggests that we have some genocidal inclinations, but our case studies show that states with genocidal tendencies usually have non-democratic governments. A question this raises is whether the United States presents a connection between genocide and authoritarianism. In her 2007 book, The End of America, Naomi Wolf argues that the United States is, indeed, on the road to authoritarianism. (Here’s her interview with Amy Goodman on the subject http://www.democracynow.org/2007/11/28/the_end_of_america_feminist_social)

Wolf argues that security steps taken by the Bush administration post 9/11 mirror steps taken by dictators to impose authoritarian regimes in the twentieth century. She studied the processes by which Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and others built dictatorships and used them to develop a “blueprint” consisting of ten steps that each “would-be” dictator took.

The blueprint begins with “invoking an internal/external threat”. Wolf notes that governments try to find a real threat which they can exaggerate and manipulate in order to justify extreme measures. In Turkey, it was the Young Turks’ wartime fear of espionage and sabotage. In the United States, it was terrorism and Islamic extremism.   

The second step is to establish a network of unaccountable prisons where torture takes place. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 essentially legalized torture in prisons like Guantanamo Bay, where the United States detains suspected terrorists and tries them outside the American legal system. An important element of these prisons is that they house people on the margins of society who are unlikely to arouse anxiety in the general population. Most Guantanamo Bay detainees have brown skin and Muslim names, making it harder for American citizens to relate to them. Wolf compares this to Nazis imprisoning Jews and Gypsies, who constituted a tiny minority of the population and so were “other” to many German citizens.

After 9/11 the US government implemented a system which allowed the government to authorize surveillance of ordinary citizens, the fourth step towards creating a closed regime. The federal government also had “watch lists” with the names of thousands of American citizens. Most were critics of the Bush administration or members of suspect citizen groups. These watch lists fulfill the seventh step in the dictator’s blueprint: going after individual citizens.

Wolf proves that governments who want to monitor and control their citizens often use the same means to do it. The steps taken by the United States government since 9/11 parallel many of those taken by twentieth century dictators who eventually committed genocide. Her argument is important because for a “democratic” nation to commit genocide it requires not only the rhetoric and moral justification for it, but also an institutional structure that allows the government to strip citizens of their basic rights. The United States’ authoritarian inclinations after 9/11 add to its genocidal potential.

Healing and the Role of Women in Genocide

I recently read an interview with the Turkish journalist, Ece Temelkuran’s about her new book Deep Mountain. The book is a history of the Armenian genocide, which Temelkuran began after her friend, Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish journalist, was shot and killed for his research on the subject. In the article Temelkuran asserts that there is a deep emotional divide between the Armenian and the Turkish peoples and says that the best way to heal this divide is to open up communication through storytelling. What struck me about this article however, was her discussion of a woman’s role in genocide and, more specifically a woman’s role in healing. Temelkuran claims that women are often left out in the writing of a national identity. She says that women’s stories are more compassionate and optimistic about humankind, which is why she ends each section of her book with a story from an Armenian woman.

Naturally, this piece got me thinking. While I’m not sure how I feel about painting any one gender in broad strokes, it is a fact that there have been very few, if any, female perpetrators in the genocides we have studied thus far. In one sense I wonder whether this means that a woman’s perspective is only as a victim. However, guilt as a perpetrator, especially in the case of the Armenian genocide seems to have enveloped entire national identities. It is in this sense that Temelkuran is able to present herself as, if not the perpetrator, than at least a member of the guilty party willing to openly discuss the conflict with others.

So much of our class time is spent discussing definitions of genocide so that we can place it in a legal context. Who can we condemn and who can we not? Who needs to be punished for these egregious acts of murder? The questions are no doubt important, people need to be held accountable for such crimes, but it doesn’t mean that it will heal divides between two distinct populations. Finding accountability is a step, but it is not the entire healing process. I absolutely agree with Temelkuran when she says that in order for any change to be brought about, dialogues need to be opened between the Turkish and Armenian communities, and really any other communities in similar situations. The question is if it is the job of women to open such dialogue or if it is the job of everyone.

Genocide, Massacres, Ethnic Cleansing... Oh My!

Imagine a country where tens of thousands of people simply disappear. Where thousands of men, women and children are arrested, usually in the dead of night, by the government’s secret police and never seen or heard from again. The lucky ones will be killed immediately, shot in the head like animals and buried in mass graves. The rest will be thrown into overcrowded prisons, where they will endure torture and humiliation before meeting their inevitable end before a firing squad. Imagine that 50,000 people per month “disappear” in this way.

I ask you, friends and comrades, the question that seems to be so vital:  Is this a genocide?

I am beginning to hate the word ‘genocide.’ I understand that ‘genocide’ – laden with emotional, political, legal and personal significance as it is – is a meaningful term, even deeply so. I understand, for example, that Turkey has a political interest in ensuring that the Armenian ‘incident’ remains merely ‘ethnic cleansing’ or ‘mass murder.’ (As much as I disagree with their refusal to take responsibility.) I recognize too that the word ‘genocide’ is extremely meaningful to the victims of historical atrocities; using the word ‘genocide’ unequivocally condemns the perpetrators responsible for their suffering.

What I do not understand is why historians feel the need to define, redefine, re-redefine and argue over their definitions of ‘genocide.’

I believe that in frantically attempting to define ‘genocide,’ historians have missed the forest for the trees. Perhaps it is time to step back and reconsider:  What is the purpose behind the study of genocide? While historians may disagree over whether the Great Terror was a ‘genocide,’ I doubt they would disagree on this fact:  Stalin’s crimes against his own people were a reprehensible, despicable atrocity and hopefully, history will never see them repeated. Personally, I believe the purpose of studying history is to use the lessons of the past to better understand the past, present, and future. Arguing about the definition of genocide does not serve this purpose. In fact, cynical as I am, I would argue that it serves no purpose other than to create a pointless hierarchy, ranking atrocities from ‘most atrocious’ to ‘least atrocious.’ The scholars certainly seem devoted to this inane practice, arguing that their ‘favorite’ genocide is “uniquely unique” and that other ‘inferior’ atrocities are merely ‘ethnic cleansing’ or ‘massacres’ that simply cannot compare. Really though, who cares? If our failure to engage in a meaningful historical discussion means something like the Great Terror happens again, will we look out onto the millions dead and be comforted knowing that it’s just another ‘massacre’? Thank God it wasn’t an actual ‘genocide’! Now that would be something to worry about!

‘Genocide’ is a powerful word and, as such, it will always be meaningful to some. For the United Nations, the definition of ‘genocide’ will determine who can be prosecuted for atrocious crimes. For countries such as Turkey, the definition will determine whether past mistakes must be acknowledged, or can be denied. And for the victims of historical atrocities, perhaps most significantly of all, attaching the word ‘genocide’ to their ordeal may have deep personal and emotional significance. As we have seen in survivor testimony, some believe that having their ordeal recognized as a ‘genocide’ is the only way to end the suffering and begin to heal. But as historians, I think our primary emphasis should not be on the ‘what’ but on the ‘why’ and the ‘how.’ Rather than asking, “what is genocide?” we should be asking:  Why is it that, in numerous instances, an entire nation seemed to believe it was justified to slaughter millions of people based on nothing but religion or skin color or being a ‘kulak’?  How did things get so bad that genocide – or massacre, ethnic cleansing, or what have you – was the solution?

Argue about what genocide is all you want, but this is the truth:  Whatever you call them, violent atrocities have occurred throughout history and across the world, suggesting that genocide – or whatever it is – is really not so unique after all. Maybe it’s time, then, to let go of our desire to hold up certain events as uniquely atrocious and “uniquely unique.” If we leave our biases and personal emotions behind, it becomes evident that these atrocities are unlikely to fit within any neat, logical definition we could ever think up. History’s great evildoers showed little concern for our petty definitions. Their violence was messy and illogical, rarely remaining confined to the clear-cut groups we insist upon, or perpetrated with the explicit intent or level of success we require. When it came to identifying a problem, you could say that Hitler and Stalin and the rest ‘knew it when they saw it.’ I think it’s safe to say that we too are capable of such insight. Our respective definitions of ‘genocide’ aside, when it comes to identifying violent, deadly historical atrocities that we would prefer not to repeat, we’re probably in agreement. Ultimately, we too ‘know it when we see it.’

Cromwell, Drogheda and Legitimate Killing in Wartime

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-big-question-was-cromwell-a-revolutionary-hero-or-a-genocidal-war-criminal-917996.html

http://www.iisresource.org/Documents/KS3_Cromwell_Ireland_Interpretation.pdf

To save space, please get the general picture of this issue from the first article above, or a more detailed picture by reading both.

In 1649, just after the English Civil Wars, anti-monarchist leader Oliver Cromwell arrived in Ireland to put down an anti-English rebellion. England had exercised colonial control over Ireland since before the Norman invasion, but the Irish had rebelled in 1641. Cromwell arrived intent on putting Ireland firmly under English control with fire and sword, but questions concerning his willingness to apply them remain. Cromwell ordered two brutal massacres, but could they qualify as genocidal considering military standards of the time? English forces certainly committed genocide against the Irish people following Cromwell’s retaking of Ireland, but should Cromwell’s massacres be lumped in with these actions?

             About the fact that England committed genocide against Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century there cannot be any doubt (please see footnotes for details). I would argue that confiscating more than half a nation’s land, executing its political and religious elites and forcing its population into a tiny fraction of its area in order to break up its national pattern for ethnic and religious reasons qualifies as genocide. That being argued, the remaining question is whether Cromwell’s massacres should be considered part of it.

            Cromwell commanded two major massacres, both after sieges: Drogheda and Wexford. Wexford is an unsure case, as Cromwell claimed his troops killed the defenders after breaking through their defenses without his knowledge while he was involved in surrender negotiations, and will therefore not be discussed.

            After arriving in Ireland in 1649, Cromwell took his forces to the Royalist-and-Irish-Coalition controlled fortified town of Drogheda. His troops besieged the town, and after his artillery made breaches in their walls Cromwell offered the defenders a chance to surrender, which they declined. Cromwell’s forces assaulted and took the town, and executed all captives, including about 2,500 soldiers and 700-800 civilians. While this behavior seems barbaric by modern standards, it was not entirely out of line with military practice at the time. (See footnote)

This does not, of course, resolve the issue of the civilians. While in medieval sieges, civilians in stormed castles would be killed or enslaved along with their armed counterparts, and the practice continued intermittently through the seventeenth century, by this time it was no longer the rule. Furthermore, Cromwell was well known to harbor strong anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiments (see footnote); does the combination of these two facts make this massacre genocidal?

I would argue yes; the irregular nature of these killings, their total lack of function aside from terror and Cromwell’s previously admitted anti-Irish bias points to their being motivated by ethnic hatred, and when taken in the context of English genocidal policy. Oliver Cromwell did liberate Britain from the autocratic yoke, but even (or especially) revolutionaries are capable of the worst crimes.

Further information:

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=4390

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwellian_conquest_of_Ireland

Footnotes:

English genocide against the Irish:

IIres.org:

 “…the whole period 1649-58, [saw] the ruthless suppression of Catholic and royalist resistance, the execution, transportation, or imprisonment of substantial numbers of Catholic clergy, and the wholesale confiscation of Catholic lands.”

“In September 1653 the English parliament set aside four counties… for the government, and ten counties… for division between the adventurers and soldiers,”

“Petty reckoned that II million of Ireland’s 20 million acres had been confiscated.”

The Independent:

“Cromwell's forces ordered Irish Catholics to move to live west of the Shannon river only. The alternative to this forced mass population transfer was clear. The Irish were told "To Hell or to Connaught!" It was the greatest act of ethnic cleansing in the British Isles since the Norman Conquest. By the end of 1656 four fifths of the Irish land was in Protestant hands. When Catholics fought back, in guerrilla groups numbering some 30,000 Cromwell's generals forcibly evicted civilians who were thought to be helping the resisters and systematically burned the area's crops and killed all livestock. Famine followed, exacerbated by bubonic plague. Three years on, a fifth of the population had died.”

Siege warfare:

From the Middle Ages onward, castles dominated European warfare. No technology existed to effectively assault such defensive works, so wars often consisted of incredibly long, drawn out and expensive sieges, often lasting years. This immense risk to and investment by attackers led to diplomacy in these situations being very simple: the defenders could surrender and leave with their lives, or wait several years and be executed en masse. Although technology advanced greatly between the 13^th and 17^th centuries, military conducted remained similar in several respects, including siege etiquette. Thus, Cromwell’s execution of Drogheda’s garrison, while monstrous, was entirely legitimate by the standards of the day.

Cromwell quotations:

Concerning the Drogheda massacre: “this is the righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood”

Referring to the current conflict in a speech to his troops: “the great work against the barbarous and bloodthirsty Irish and the rest of their adherents and confederates”

In discussing the classification of the Ukrainian Famine as a genocide or not, I’ve been thinking about the question of complicit versus explicit and the ways in which governments are often complicit in the destruction of a group of people.

Earlier this semester the Oberlin Republicans Club brought a Fox News Correspondent to campus to give a lecture. He began his talk by attacking affirmative action, asking the liberal-leaning people in the crowd if they thought people of color were less intelligent than Caucasians, and if not, why they supported affirmative action. It seemed as though this man did not have an understanding of how societies function—that governments so often are complicit in exacerbating the suffering of a group that can lead to their destruction, whether physically or culturally.

There are some who assert that an African American genocide is currently underway in the United States—that American institutions and systems (the education system and prison complex, for example) are set up to keep African Americans at a disadvantage and maintain white privilege.

While it might be a stretch to attempt to compare the Ukrainian Famine and the modern-day discrimination of African Americans in the United States, both of these examples call into question the intent of the perpetrators when determining if an event may be classified as genocide. This is something we’ve talked about extensively in class, further asking, “why does it matter?” If a significant number of people within a targeted group are killed, is it trivial to try and obtain information that is so often unattainable?     

Karadzic and Issue of Compartmentalization in Genocide Law

For this assignment, I read three articles from The New York Times website about Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the war. Captured in 2008, the defense portion of his trial began last month in The Hague. He faces charges of genocide for the killings Croats and Muslims throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina.

            What’s particularly bizarre about Karadzic is that he has been living in the capital of Serbia, Belgrade, for an unspecified (perhaps unknown) number of years. While other war criminals go to great lengths to avoid detection, such as the Nazis that fled across the globe to South America, Karadzic simply grew a large beard, changed his name to Dragan Dabic, and set up a business as a new-age healer. According to the articles, he even made a number of public appearances under his new persona.

            While it is easy to dismiss Karadzic’s disguise as the desperate bumbling of an evil man, I think it points to an important phenomenon regarding perpetrators of genocide. The defense possesses a huge body of evidence against Karadzic—in his article, Mort Rosenblum claims that Karadzic told him that he was going to kill non-Serbs in Bosnia. It seems to me, then, that this “Dragan Dabic” persona serves two functions: not only did it allow Karadzic to hide in plain sight, it allowed him to compartmentalize his role in this genocide. According to psychologist Carolin Showers, “compartmentalization is the tendency to organize positive and negative knowledge about the self into separate, uniformly valenced categories (self-aspects).” While I clearly lack enough information to actually diagnosis Karadzic (though I must say that I don’t want it), I think it’s possible that the Dabic persona constitutes a form of compartmentalization for him, allowing him to deny to himself that he is the person that committed these crimes. Indeed, he recently said as part of his defense that, “there is no indication that anyone was killed by us at Srebrenica” (Simons).

            While I’ve perhaps read too much into Karadzic’s disguise, the issue of mental health of genocides’ perpetrators presents a problem for bringing them to justice. As we read in Ordinary Men, they frequently break down; Major Trapp occasionally fell into hysterics, and Captain Hoffman’s body actually failed him, as Browning presents it, due to the mental strain of committing mass murder. As the acts that comprise genocide are so appalling that they find distort the perceptions of those that commit them, it seems to me that trying someone for genocide constitutes an issue of reconciling two different realities, more so than in other types of crimes. Moreover, it seems to me that bringing a bringing a perpetrator of genocide to justice in a psychological sense is more important than bringing them to justice in a legal sense. Even if The Hague finds him guilty, Karadzic won’t necessarily acknowledge what he did. While the condemnation of his actions by the international community certainly serves as a huge symbol, it seems to me that, until he becomes aware of what he has done, both he and his victims lack justice. 

Works Cited: 

Showers, Carolin. "Compartmentalization of positive and negative self-knowledge: keeping bad apples out of the bunch." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol 62 No. 6, June 1992. 1036-49. Via PubMed.org.

The Trail of Tears: Cultural Genocide?

I am currently taking an American history course in which we read an essay titled, "Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars," by Robert V. Remini, and while reading, I immediately identified a number of characteristics in Jackson's motivations and actions that were similar to those we've discussed in this class.

As with other genocidal leaders we have studied in this course, Jackson focused on an invented security threat and nationalism as an excuse to marginalize and deport an ethnic group, the native population of the now-southeastern United States, and gave assimilation of the group in dominant society as the only means by which they could remain. The means used to eliminate the native population were primarily deportation when discussing specifically the Indian Removal Act, but assimilation of natives also had been a part of life for quite a while. Natives assimilated not just by converting to Christianity and speaking English, but also by creating constitutions and even newspapers, both out of colonial influence.

When discussing this in a small group in my class, my group vehemently disagreed with me that deportation was genocide. One group member said, "There is a huge difference between going into someone's home and shooting them and making them move elsewhere." Even though they were aware of the problems of population exchanges and that deportations were a part of most genocides, and often killed people also, they were unmoved. The only way in which they agreed with me that this was genocidal was with regard to the cultural piece. We agreed that culture was tied to the land, particularly for natives to the land who depended upon it for their livelihood and survival and had adapted to a particular ecosystem. The conversation with them brought up a number of questions for me.

In talking about cultural genocide, how loose of a definition are people willing to create? Is all colonialism an attempt at cultural genocide? If so, what does this mean for the definition of genocide? Should this discourage us from using the term cultural genocide?

And finally, as my group in my other class argued, is deporting people from their native land cultural genocide?

Writing Her Diary

WE'VE been periodically asking all semester why we study genocide. The academic taxonomy, generally pursued by the folks we've been reading, can't help but return to notions of blame and conscience. Rather than solely categorizing for the sake of some satisfactory definition, or striving towards some illusory preventative use, genocide studies contains a recurring preoccupation with guilt.

THIS was certainly my experience in whatever minimal scholastic exposure to genocide I encountered in middle school and high school. The important thing was to understand that the victims of genocide deserve my pity, and that the perpetrators deserve my abhorrence. It's a self-congratulatory assuaging of conscience that Swedish pop group Brainbombs attack in their 1990 single, "Anne Frank".

IN one of a few scarce interviews, two of the band members, brothers Dan and Peter Råberg, respond to the accusation that the lyrics to "Anne Frank" betray some kinship with Nazism:

Dan Råberg: "I think there have existed lots of Anne Franks, but her in particular I don't believe in. I reckon a Jewish dad made it all up in order to make a shitload of money."

Peter Råberg: "Just think about it, anyone who ever went to school was plagued by that book, that's why you hate Anne Frank. I find the novel rather tedious."

Dan Råberg: "She was a little whore who fucked Nazis."

THE obsession with the pitiful nobility of Anne Frank (writing in her diary) preached in school fosters resentment, as any prescriptive emotional agenda will. Using the ostensibly knowledge-directed study of a subject to perpetuate a deluded conscience is bad enough, but, as D. Råberg points out, there's money changing hands here as well. Suffering is commodified: those who would like to indulge their morbid fetishistic curiosities without diminishing their virtuous self-images can buy Anne Frank. Like the song says, she's a "dead whore," bought posthumously to fondle my conscience.

IF there is a good reason to study genocide, it is obscured by fawning over victims and demonizing agents. Primo Levi's "Gray Zone" is a commendable alternative to the simplistic dualism which Brainbombs and I encountered in our respective primary educations. The use of that kind of a study is firstly to debunk the dualistic approach, but what does it move towards of itself?

AS Quinton said recently in class, the notion that the study of genocide can be useful in preventing future genocide is unrealistic. Disregarding that as a possible reason, maybe the study of genocide can provide a somehow relatively accurate understanding, for the sake of itself, of the general mechanisms of massively focused human action.

BUT genocide storytelling also has quite a dramatic allure, the quality that allowed Anne Frank's diary to sell so well. There may be motives at play in the study of genocide that are decidedly not noble. Turning again to pop music for wisdom, here is William Bennett of Whitehouse, writing in 2001:

"[Those] who prefer art that 'raises questions' are certainly as disgusting as those rubbered dilettantes who recognize that the answers are what you masturbate over."

Non-Genocide

When discussing genocides, we consistently reference Lemkin’s original two-part definition: genocide entails both the “destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group” and the “imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor.”  We have studied several case studies of genocide, but few instances of non-genocide – that is, when an area has all the ingredients and potential for genocide, yet genocide does not occur. Because Lemkin drew close ties between genocide and imperialism, we can analyze “non-genocide” by looking at different cases of imperialism.

For example, looking at British imperialism in India, people argue whether the British had a harmful or a beneficial effect on the Indian people. The British built excellent infrastructure that remains in use even today. They improved the state of the economy and showed Indians how to maximize their profit from their available resources. However, the British also exploited Indian workers to increase productivity and boost revenue for themselves. The workers endured terrible conditions and severe oppression. The general attitude that the British held towards Indians was one of inferiority and disgust. In an effort to assimilate them into British culture, they imposed many of their cultural norms, such as English based schools, on the native people.

Most would agree that although conditions for Indians were deplorable, British imperialism in India does not classify as genocide. Comparing cases of imperialism in which genocide did and did not occur can help scholars determine patterns of genocide and define the term. In the example of British India, we can ask ourselves where deep-seated discrimination ends and genocide, especially cultural genocide, begins. Perhaps British India is not classified as genocide because, despite the discrimination and oppression, the British did make great advancements for India. We must consider whether we can use the classification of "genocide" if the oppressors impose their “national pattern” on the oppressed, but simultaneously improve the economic status of the oppressed region.

Studying historical events where genocide potentially could have occurred is just as important as studying the instances where genocide has actually occurred. Such studies allow scholars to determine what factors contribute to genocide, and to determine the exact definition that should be employed when classifying an event as such. 

Israel's Backyard Genocide

I don't think it's difficult at all to claim that there is a genocide occurring in Israel at present. I'll point out just a few hallmarks:

Perception of threat in a subject people. Israel and its IDF completely restrict movement, trade, speech, housing, and living conditions in the occupied territories where Palestinians are allowed to live. Yet the rhetoric espoused by the Israeli government nearly always describes Palestinians as a threat, with the implication that if they were not kept occupied and imprisoned, they would seek the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people—even as a people who has no means to do so.

Expulsion of an ethnic group from an area. In 1948, by British colonial authorship, 750,000 Arabs were expelled from the mandate of Palestine in order to make room for the burgeoning Zionist project based mostly in America and Great Britain. Since then, measures to discourage Muslims from living in Israel have pushed more and more Arabs out of the borders of Israel proper. Such measures include a requirement for all Arabs to have a race-based ID on hand at all times, racial marriage restriction laws, race-based property rights, and restricted travel. Within the Palestinian occupied territories these restrictions are exacerbated.

Racial imprisonment. Over four million Palestinians are held in prison by the without charge or possibility of trial.

Policy puts subject people in harm's way. In the occupied territories there are around 800 violent deaths each year and annual avoidable under-five child deaths total around 2,500. This includes children who are born at checkpoints when their mothers are delayed or detained and cannot reach a hospital or doctor.

This is in no way a survey of the situation in Palestine, which is as multipartite as any of the situations we have looked at in this class. But to ignore the aspects of the occupation which we would certainly label genocidal in almost any other circumstance is an oversight equal to any lack of delicacy in my opinions. The situation in Israel is one confounded by a huge number of factors, certainly not least the legacy of victimhood left on European Jews (one of the main founding constituents of the original Israeli Jewish population) by the after-effects of the Holocaust—an event without which we might never have seen the creation of the state of Israel. I think these things lead to a media presence and governmental stance in the U.S. which downplays the plight of Palestinians at the hand of a racist, malicious occupier. Is this genocide? If we think of the case of the racist policies in British Australia against the aboriginal peoples of the continent and call that action genocide or at least ethnic cleansing, then I think no assessment of facts about Israel and occupied Palestine could reasonably be excluded from the category.

Why?

I’m going to base my post around a question that’s simultaneously very obvious and very difficult to answer: why genocide? This general question breaks down into two more specific (but still very general) divisions: why do we study genocide, and why is it important to have a consistent working definition of what genocide is?

I recently realized that without a coherent narrative of our past (that is, of the human experience), the life experience of a modern humanist would be similar to what it must feel like to be the main character in the movie Memento – running around in constant pursuit of something that we can’t grasp, and compensating by pursuing the inadequate short-term goals that we can, confused, incredibly fragmented, trying to make do in a fast-moving, and almost certainly incoherent world without knowing who we are or what we want. I could have made that analogy better (a lot better), but essentially to answer the question of why we study genocide we have to first figure out why we study history at all. My contention is that we study history because it gives us a sense of who we are; it grounds our individual and national and generational experiences in something that’s both comfortingly and humblingly large. Of course, we don’t have to get the history right, and in fact it’s a lot easier and comforting to imagine it the way we would like it to be – but that isn’t often the way that things actually happened. We want to be good students of history if it matters deeply to us that we get the story right. Moving on to genocide: it’s nearly impossible to form a warm, cuddly backstory for humanity and ourselves as individuals if we do justice to the ugly, atavistic violence that we display somewhat often, and genocide (as an idea, not as a narrowly defined term) is the epitome of that darker side of what we’re capable of. Thus genocide is systematically overlooked and underestimated and put in such a tight box that almost nothing fits; defining genocide narrowly and not providing terminology for near-genocides or other mass violence lets us feel better about us. In short, we study genocide because we can’t hope to understand humanity wholly without understanding why and how we occasionally kill millions of each other without military provocation.

Whether it is important that we have a term to distinguish various such acts from each other is a different question, and while that discussion seems to trump the previous one in our readings (and therefore probably in academia in general), it seems like a less important one: genocide is the epitome of what we’re capable of, and I suspect that at root much of the volume of this latter debate is an (unconscious) attempt to narrow the scope of the answer to that question through limited and limiting phraseology. In the context of why we study genocide – essentially, in terms of what we’re looking for – it matters very little whether we can apply x number of the same terms to what happened in Germany (and elsewhere) to the Jews and what happened in Ukraine under Stalin. There is some intellectual merit to be found, however, if in our comparative discussion we keep the importance of that discussion firmly in context – which many of the authors we have read struggle to achieve. That merit is to be found not in whether one atrocity is “worse” or “better” than another, but in comparing the unique political, economic, and social conditions that shaped and were then shaped by atrocities, and attempting to draw out patterns – not because conscientious current or future states will be wary of their own “red flags,” but so that we as individuals find ourselves on the right side of history if confronted with extremely subtle but extremely important choices – so that we don’t listen to everyone with a lab coat or chevrons on their sleeve or an American flag pin on their lapel.