Some Reflections on Genocide

Liquidating the Ghetto
In the film The Pianist, one part of the film shows the Warsaw ghetto, which has been emptied of most of its inhabitants and now is under siege. The last holdouts continue a brave, but quixotic, resistance against the Nazi onslaught - taking pot-shots with their handguns at Wehrmacht soldiers equipped with mortars and other heavy artillery; they are no match for the German forces, and slowly, but surely, the last Jews of the Ghetto are wiped out. I'm sure the newsreel for the next day back in Berlin must have trumpeted something to the effect of 'Last Remaining Warsaw Terrorists Neutralized'.
How did that come to pass? How did the Jews allow themselves to be corralled into ghettos, which were then easily 'liquidated'? If they had only resisted initially! They could have put up some real resistance! Maybe it would have been futile, but maybe they could have at least held out until help arrived? Unfortunately, there was no help on the way, as no foreign government cared at all about the Ghetto Jews, and most were only too happy for them to perish. After the war, governments and publics feigned shock at learning what had befallen the Jews of Europe; even the German public claimed they did not know, and the sad truth is that this may have been true, but only because they, just as the rest of the world, had had their eyes closed.

Apartheid....
Fast-forward to the 1980's in South Africa. The Apartheid government has been fighting an armed insurgency with all the dirty tricks it could come up with. Blacks are restricted to Bantustan 'homelands', unless they have a permit to work in the cities. When HIV came on the scene, prostitutes in Johannesburg and elsewhere with the virus are paid to provide free sex at hostels to black miners living there; when the men return to visit their home villages for their twice-annual leave, they bring a few coins - and the virus - home to their wives. In 1995, after the regime has been forced to cede power, and after Nelson Mandela assumes the presidency, it is revealed that the previous government had been working to develop a virus that would kill only blacks. God only knows what other plans they had been working on. Why did these plans not come to fruition? How did the majority population avert genocide? Was it the tireless efforts of well-meaning Western governments? No, it was not. Quite simply, it is the steadfast refusal of the ANC and other groups to lay down and die. It is the mass mobilization of their members in demonstrations that convince the white majority that their best chance for survival in South Africa was cooperation with the blacks. Mind you, these are not peaceful demonstrations, for the most part, but might have been better characterized as part of a violent insurrection. Of course, the ANC and their brothers-in-arms are demonized as terrorists, not just in South Africa, but in the West; in fact, Nelson Mandela remains on the US terrorism watch list, and needs special permission to visit, until 2008.

...and Worse
Four weeks before Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as President of South Africa, another dark chapter in the history of the species begins. On April 6,1994, the presidents of Rwanda and of Burundi are killed when the airplane carrying them is shot down. By the next day, the Rwandan government begins to exhort the majority Hutus to exterminate the 'cockroaches', by which they mean the minority Tutsis. The massacres begin immediately, with the active participation of the Rwandan military, as well as government civil servants and even Catholic priests and other clergy; the only reliable safe-havens in the entire genocide are Muslim neighborhoods and mosques. The response from the international community is to put their fingers in their collective ears. The US is totally unwilling to get involved, due to President Clinton's fears that US casualties could reflect badly on him. Shockingly, France continues to back the Rwandan 'government', due to fears that the Tutsi would harm the status of the French language, as many of their leaders are - quel horreur - Anglophones. Over the next 100 days, a million people are slaughtered, mostly hacked to death by ordinary Hutu villagers wielding machetes imported for that very purpose a few months before. The silence from the international community is deafening.

Another Ghetto
Let us jump forward to 2008. Former US President Jimmy Carter has scorn heaped on him by Likudniks on both sides of the Atlantic for his book Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. The Israeli government and its powerful allies in the US are not amused by his factual descriptions of the situation in which Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are unable to travel freely between their villages, unable to work in Israel, and unable to travel abroad. As the year progresses, food and fuel become scarce in Gaza, due to Israel's displeasure with the government they had chosen back in January, 2006. The situation there deteriorates, with water and medical supplies running out for the 1.4 million inhabitants inside the barbed wire, mainly refugees from all over what is now Israel; the UN warns of an impending humanitarian catastrophe, with disease from lack of clean water being high on the list of concerns. The desperate population dig tunnels under the fences on the Egyptian side, through which food and other supplies, as well as small arms, are brought. Meanwhile, homemade rockets are being stockpiled by various groups within Gaza, in preparation for whatever comes next. On November the 4th, the very day of the US election, after 5 months with no rockets fired into or out of Gaza, Israeli troops launch a raid into Gaza, killing several 'resistance fighters' (a.k.a. terrrorists) who were digging a tunnel. Apparently in response, numerous rockets begin to be fired from Gaza in the general direction of Israeli towns; the rockets have no guidance, and most land in the desert; a few hit settled areas, but no-one is killed. This goes on for several weeks. However, an election is looming in Israel, and the ruling party is in trouble for seeming 'too soft' on the Palestinians; the rocket fire is a PR nightmare for them. Something must be done to hold onto power. It's a no-brainer. Killing some Palestinians always gets a few votes; launching massive airstrikes would bring in votes by the ballot-boxfull! And the surveys of the Israeli public bear this out, sadly, aside from Israeli Arabs, who are being harassed by intelligence officers and accused of being traitors for their 'disloyalty'. And the situation unfolds...


So, what can we conclude from these four examples of genocide or attempted genocide? Here are some of my conclusions:

1. Apartheid inevitably leads to genocide.
2. The international community must not ignore human rights violations and other warning signs of an impending genocide.
3. Non-violence may be an effective tactic in expelling a small occupying force, but is ineffective at stopping genocide. However, resisting extermination or deracination is often portrayed as 'terrorism', which is an effective technique to further dehumanize the victims, and thus make it more acceptable that they be slaughtered.