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BEYOND WAR - The overwhelming weight of World opinion concurs that Israel is committing genocide. Israel’s genocidal actions include the relentless attack on Gaza’s civilian population, health infrastructure, utility services, food distribution systems, journalists, medical personnel, and residential housing. Indeed, the pictures of children and the elderly being intentionally starved by Israel are heart wrenching and evoke memories of the darkest times of mankind.
Israel once held the promise to be a modern, Western democracy that embraces secular values including human rights, democracy, and respect for human life. Israel has betrayed this promise. Through its genocidal attack on the innocents in Gaza, Israel has become recognized internationally as a pariah nation---one that lacks regard for human life and dehumanizes people for no apparent benefit. Some attribute this to the invariable conflict between a colonialist and those being colonized. Certainly, this has been the predominant fuel igniting the violence in this region for over 100 years. Settler colonialists’ countries such as the United States similarly used violence and disease as a means of eliminating indigenous people, including such historical abominations as the Trail of Tears.
But Israel’s rapid descent into depraved actions of cruelty signal something deeper. Israel has starved Gazans for months, cut off international food distribution and replaced it with a system wholly inadequate and immoral. As starving people are given small quantities of food, Israeli “soldiers” shoot men, women, and children that scramble to secure a modicum of food. Without even the pretense of a military objective being furthered, Israel has demolished civilian infrastructure and housing. These actions endanger the Israeli hostages as well as Gazans. Israeli actions not only show contempt for indigenous lives, but also for the Israeli hostages.
Israel has committed these atrocities without apparent purpose. Hamas does not offer a reason. The civilians it has targeted include a wide swath of Gazans that also oppose Hamas. The innocent men, women and children indiscriminately killed by Israel have no capacity to help or harm Hamas or Israel. They are simply human fodder to feed a hatred and cruelty that appears insatiable.
Israel has fallen into a national psychosis. Sadly, Israel is neither the first, nor undoubtedly the last political body to succumb to national insanity. Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 bore witness to a highly advanced and cultured society that descended into genocidal violence. The Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 under the “Gang of Four” forsake rational policies in favor of ideological purity, releasing mass persecution and destruction of cultural heritage. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 allowed the pursuit of a utopian agrarian collectivism to devolve into mass persecution and death to nearly two million persons. The Rwanda Genocide of 1995 saw long-standing ethnic tensions erupt into a 100-day killing spree that led to approximately 800,000 deaths. Now, Israel joins this dishonorable group through its genocide in Gaza.
Before addressing the consequences to those committing genocide, the genocide must first end. Israel shows little appetite for ending the genocide and with American complicity in protecting Israel, it has been able to continue. Eventually, Israel’s violence will be completed, and the World will have to turn to a response to Israel’s commission of the worst crimes that humanity commits. The Nuremberg Trials set the stage for the treatment of future war criminal. If we are to restore morality and underpin respect for human rights, Israeli genocidaires such as Benjamin Netanyahu must be brought before an international tribunal and tried for crimes against humanity.
Even more important than delivering justice to war criminals, we must consider how this collective derangement forms, so that we can remain vigilant in preventing future genocides. History guides that eight factors tend to coalesce to spark genocide.
Authoritarian Drift. The accumulation of power into a single leader or ruling cliques gives the leadership the opportunity to impose criminal actions. Those unaffected directly may find these actions repugnant, but nevertheless the misdeeds do not offer sufficient reason to stand in opposition. Israel has long imposed totalitarian rule over the indigenous people through apartheid and concentration camps. The Netanyahu government has amassed power in a way that allows it to overwhelm those institutions within Israel that are intended as a check on power. Israeli authoritarianism has facilitated this genocide.
Ideological Absolutism. To create ideological absolutism, the leadership advances a solitary concept that becomes elevated to exceptional importance. This ideological proposition is then treated as unquestionable truth. Thus, when crimes are committed in furtherance of that unquestionable truth, those crimes support this truth. Israel’s claim to divine right to Eretz Israel provides such ideological absolutism. When Israel removes the indigenous population, Israel is merely fulfilling an unquestionable goal of creating the Land of Israel.
Dehumanization of the “other”. Societies committing genocide identify and marginalize the group that it intends to eliminate, often portraying this group as subhuman. For over 100 years, Zionists have worked hard to dehumanize the indigenous Christian and Muslim population it seeks to eliminate. One of thousands of examples is when current Israeli leaders refer to Gazans as “animals.” Referring to Gazans as animals reinforces the idea that Gazans lack human value.
Breakdown of Taboos. Genocide becomes possible when acts that were once considered taboo become normal. At one time, Israel would provide health care to children that it injured in its attacks, and then proudly display this to the world to demonstrate its humanity. Now, Israel openly starves children and brazenly persists even when photos of children reminiscent of the Holocaust provoke millions across the world to rage in protest. Once these norms have collapsed, violence and brutality can escalate without restraint.
Social Contagion. Genocide is possible when violence spreads throughout the psyche of a society and does not remain solely with the authoritarian leadership. Ordinary citizens unite in their willingness to accept atrocities as a means of displaying loyalty. The horror of the Hamas attack on October 7 served to solidify the justification for and acceptance of violence, even if that violence is directed at those not responsible and unable to prevent such attacks. Importantly, dismantling this violence requires a societal change, not merely a change in authoritarian leadership.
Delusional Crisis. The authoritarian leaders must create a crisis it intends to solve, even if that crisis is utterly false. Crisis feeds fear, and fear legitimizes brutality and abandonment of moral boundaries. In Israel Netanyahu constantly preaches that allowing a Palestinian state or giving freedom within Israel to Palestinians constitutes and “existential threat” to Israel. The obvious truth differs. Over two million indigenous people live within the 48 boundaries peacefully. The difference is not the people, but the brutal cruelty to which those outside of the 48 boundaries are subjected.
Self-Destructive Policies. The authoritarian regimes pursue policies that undermine their safety. The tendency demonstrates a clear lack of rationality within the leadership. Israel has relied slavishly on the charity of Western governments to be protected from military and economic hardship. Yet, the Gaza Genocide has led to rebuke by every Western government, including the United States. Without such international protects, Israel truly makes itself vulnerable. Its policy of genocide will define Israel permanently and endanger the Western protections from which it has so ably benefitted.
Suppression of Dissent. Opposition voices must be silenced. Through this silence, those that might otherwise object to the inhumanity of the government’s actions will be lulled into acquiescence, believing that the lack of other community dissent has normalized the events. Israel has dissent ongoing, including by human rights groups such as B’Tselem and others. But these voices of dissent have proven ineffectual and those expressing these views have been cast as foes of Israel.
Israel’s rapid fall into psychosis endangers the people of Israel and has proven catastrophic for Gazans. Genocides often end when third parties intervene to stop the violence, as exemplified by Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and East Timor. The moral cost for observing silently as Israel commits this genocide is unbearable. Concrete actions must occur, such as international sanctions, blockade of Israeli war materials, and recognition of Palestine. The World must unite to stop this madness.
(J. George Mansour was born and raised in Missouri and has long been a student of political science and international relations. Mr. Mansour is now based in Austin Texas, where he remains an active investor in a variety of businesses.)
