I've been watching and reading about the recent McCarthyesque hearings on Capitol Hill regarding antisemitism on college campuses. Lots of cynical performative political posturing going on there, but that's par for the course. The most egregrious thing is the intentional conflation of "anti-Israel" (aka "anti-Zionism") with anti-Jewish (ake antisemitic). They aren't the same thing. I know (and know of) lots of Jewish folks who are very critical of Israel and Zionism.

Anyway, all this has prompted me to express an opinion, if anyone cares. So here goes...

Webster's Dictionary defines "genocide" as "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group."

According to the United Nations, genocide incorporates any of the following acts committed by a nation/state or organization with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:

--Killing members of the group.

--Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.

--Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

--Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.

--Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The word genocide was first coined in 1944 to describe what the Nazis were systematically doing to European Jews. It derives from the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. 

Sadly, there are instances all through history, from ancient to modern times, of genocides being committed all over the world. In addition to the Holocaust, we can look at many instances that occurred as part of European colonialism of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, South America, North America, Australia, etc. We see it in the current genocide of the Muslim Rohingya people by the military of Myanmar. We saw it in the Islamic State's massacres, mass rapes, and forced conversions to Islam of the Yazidi people. We saw it in Rwanda against the Tutsi and Twa people by the Hutus. We saw it in Bosnia, and East Timor, and Cambodia, and Guatemala, and Chechnya, and Syria, and Albania, and Armenia. And on it goes...

The recent film Killers of the Flower Moon documented the systematic killing of Osage Indians by a group of whites in Oklahoma in the early 1900's in order to gain control of the mineral rights on Osage land. That too, was genocide.

If one studies the history of modern-day Israel/Palestine one can see that it is rooted in European colonialism and the systematic displacement of the indigenous population by a largely immigrant and militarily more powerful population. That is a form of genocide. There are plenty of parallels to what European settlers did to the indigenous peoples of North and South America. Furthermore, the disproportionate and systematic displacement, isolation, incarceration and killing of Palestinian civilians (in Gaza, in the Occupied Territories, etc.) is within the scope of genocide. So many of the conflicts and wars and genocides that we've witnessed in the 20th and 21st centuries have their roots in European colonialism.

Hamas is a despicable, murderous, evil, cynical, terrorist organization that would commit genocide against Israeli Jews if they could, as they made clear on October 7th, 2023. But it doesn't justify the wholesale slaughter by Israel's military of 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7th, the vast majority of whom were not Hamas operatives. Hamas does not represent the majority of Palestinians, just as the Netanyahu regime of Israel does not represent the majority of Jews in the world. One can speak out against the actions of Hamas without hating Palestinians, and one can speak out against the actions of the Israeli government (and illegal settlers) without hating Jews. Many Palestinians speak out against Hamas. Many Jews speak out against Israel. 

For whatever it's worth, I'm against genocide wherever and whenever it occurs, and I agree with those, Jewish and non-Jewish, who think that indications of genocidal acts and policies by the Israeli government should be thoroughly investigated. Investigating possible war crimes committed by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians, and how those fit into the bigger charge of genocide, should not be a controversial thing or open to accusations of antisemitism. 

And, of course, it does not preclude Hamas and other terrorist organizations from being likewise investigated and held to account for their crimes.

One other thing worth pointing out, to try to bring this full circle, is that something seems to have eluded the comprehension of some pundits, like the ones conducting those congressional hearings: According to the Encylopedia Britannica, Semite was a "name given in the 19th century to a member of any people who speak one of the Semitic languages, a family of languages spoken primarily in parts of western Asia and Africa. The term therefore came to include Arabs, Akkadians, Canaanites, Hebrews, some Ethiopians (including the Amhara and the Tigrayans), and Aramaean tribes." The Encyclopedia Britannica goes on to explain that "by 2500 BCE Semitic-speaking peoples had already become widely dispersed throughout western Asia. In Phoenicia they became seafarers. In Mesopotamia they blended with the civilization of Sumer. The Hebrews settled with other Semitic-speaking peoples in Palestine." What this means is that in November of 2023, when three Palestinian exchange students--graduates of the Ramallah Friends School (a Quaker school in Israel/Palestine)--were shot near the University of Vermont by a white man because they were wearing keffiyehs (traditional Palestinian scarves), that was an antisemitic hate crime. My point in bringing this incident up is to try to hightlight, again, that Republican's concern about what they call "antisemitism" is really a smokescreen for their support of a right-wing Israeli government that has engaged in, it seems, war crimes and genocide. That unwavering, unquestioning support, which seeks silence any dissent, is based upon a set of fundamentalist evangelical Christian beliefs about Israel, as well as a set of shared values with militaristic right-wing governments.