Christian Post
July 22 2014
Holocaust Professor Rejects Accusations of Israel Committing
‘Genocide’ Against Palestinians
By Stoyan Zaimov , Christian Post Reporter
A Holocaust Studies professor has rejected accusations by some world
leaders that Israel is committing “genocide” against Palestinians in
Gaza during the ongoing military conflict.
“It seems as if every time Israel defends itself, somebody points an
accusing finger and yells ‘Genocide!’ Raphael Lemkin, who coined that
term 70 years ago this autumn, would have been appalled by such abuse
of his life’s work,” Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman
Institute for Holocaust Studies, wrote in a JNS.org article on Monday.
“For the term ‘genocide’ to have any meaning, it must be used strictly
in situations that indisputably warrant such a determination,
according to the legal definition. Applying it or withholding it based
on political considerations will render the term useless,” he added.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made such accusations
during a meeting of Islamic scholars in Istanbul, AFP reported last
week.
“This is not the first time we have been confronted by such
situations,” Erdogan said.
“Since (the creation of the state of Israel) in 1948 we have been
witnessing this attempt at systematic genocide every day and every
month. But above all we are witnessing this attempt at systematic
genocide every Ramadan.”
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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has also reportedly
accused Israel of committing genocide, and the PA’s newspaper has
called the current war “Israel’s Holocaust.”
Over 500 Palestinians have been killed in the two-week long conflict
between Israel’s army and militant group Hamas.
Israel’s government has said that it had no choice but to carry out a
ground invasion into Gaza, which began late last week, in order to
directly confront terrorist tunnels and the constant rockets being
fired from Hamas into Israel.
“We’re sad for every civilian casualty. They’re not intended. This is
the difference between us. The Hamas deliberately targets civilians
and deliberately hides behind civilians. They embed their rocketeers,
their rocket caches, their – their other weaponry from where – which
they fire – which they use to fire on us in civilian areas,” Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview on Sunday.
“What choice do we have? We have to protect ourselves. So we try to
target the rocketeers. We do. And all civilian casualties are
unintended by us, but intended by Hamas. They want to pile up as many
civilian dead as they can, because somebody said they use – it’s
gruesome. They use telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause.
They want the more dead the better.”
The U.N. and a number of world leaders have called for a ceasefire in
Gaza. Hamas rejected an Egyptian-brokered truce last week, saying that
it wants further border restrictions to be lifted.
As for the accusations of genocide, Medoff reminded readers of the
history of the word, and noted cases where use of the term would be
appropriate, such as the mass killings of one million Armenians
between 1914 and 1918 by the Ottoman Empire, now present-day Turkey;
as well as Nazi Germany’s holocaust of close to six million Jewish
people between 1941 and 1945.
“In December 1948, Lemkin’s campaign was crowned with success when the
United Nations adopted the Genocide Convention. It defined genocide as
‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical [sic], racial or religious group, as such,'” Medoff
wrote.
“Obviously, no reasonable person can believe Israel’s actions in Gaza
fit that definition. Then again, the world is filled with unreasonable
people.”
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