5 thoughts about the word and the spectacle of “genocide” and Israel and Gaza — minus what genocide means, defined in 1948 by the United Nations, as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

— Pushing back against widespread claims in the media that ethnic Sudanese Arab forces committed genocide against Black Africans in Darfur, Mahmood Mamdani, a scholar of African Studies at Columbia University almost twenty years ago in 2007 had us consider here that the scale of violence in that region was the (natural?) result of historically complex, back and forth conflict.  About the politics of genocide, his words continue to resonate. “It seems that genocide has become a label to be stuck on your worst enemy, a perverse version of the Nobel Prize, part of a rhetorical arsenal that helps you vilify your adversaries while ensuring impunity for your allies.” Omer Bartov, again writing now here at the NYT, cites Mamdani’s essay to make the same point. “Nations, politicians and military personnel suspected of, indicted on a charge of or found guilty of genocide are seen as beyond the pale of humanity and may compromise or lose their right to remain members of the international community.”

–As a mediated event in the public sphere, the word “genocide” creates a moral circus and spectacle carried by big blaring headlines at NYT, New York Review of Books, the Guardian, New York Magazine. The word  is circulated across the internet and compressed into memes. Moral outrage in the face of collective trauma is leveraged into moral theater. “CRIME OF THE CENTURY” “I’M A GENOCIDE SCHOLAR. I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT.” Against this grain,Palestinian peace activist and Hamas critic Howidy Hamza writing here at Twitter responds to Alon Mizrachi –an a/z Israeli living in London?—comparing aid tents in Gaza to gas chambers, “No, Alon — that’s not criticism, it’s a blood-stained metaphor that confuses moral outrage with moral clarity. There’s plenty to be said about these centers, and not all of it is reassuring. But invoking gas chambers doesn’t deepen the critique — it collapses it into noise.”

–A cover image for the Omer Bartov op-ed at the NYT directly transposes Holocaust memory onto the war in Gaza, reflecting the combination of Genocide Spectacle and Holocaust Spectacle that marks the current discourse about the Jewish State:

–The right word. Debates about “the genocide” force those of us who care about Israel to defend the indefensible. What’s clear is the scale of death and destruction. Also clear are the politics. Israel would not be facing ethical and legal challenges in the public sphere, not to this degree, without Netanyahu and Kahanist Religious Right conducting a terrible Forever War with Hamas, unable and unwilling to conclude its part in a system of regional and international agreements and alliances. The good-faith bystander struggles for the right words to convey moral shock and political opposition, words that can match the complete and unpr4cedented scale of violence, death, and destruction in Isreal on October 7, in Gaza, and also the West Bank. Hachkhadah, hashmadah, hachravah, kilyon are Hebrew words connoting obliteration and complete destruction that convey something of that scale. For many months, a year ago, it has become increasingly clear that the war in Gaza is no longer a war of defense. The Israeli press, including establishment voices here, regularly reports that the fighting is simply listless, that military brass in Israel concede that there are no more military objectives. Without a recognizable military mission, nothing comes anything close to justifying this scale of destruction and death. But the war against Hamas in Gaza still might not meet the bar of genocide. A crime against humanity, tevach is the Hebrew word for massacre and slaughter, associated with butchering animals.

–Folding this discussion back to Mahmood Mandani’s statement about the political rhetoric of the word genocide. Sari Nusseibeh, says in an interview here at Die Zeit. “The words used in a political conflict serve less to describe reality. They are primarily instruments in this conflict; they are weapons and instruments of power. Those who speak of genocide or apartheid do so to establish legal and symbolic power. This applies to most of the terms used on both sides. I don’t need the word genocide, and I’m sure you don’t either. Nobody really needs it to see the horror, do they? The horror of what’s being done. You know, you can use any word you want for that” (Google Translate).