It’s not often I feel ashamed to be Irish. But today I do. For the Irish government is plotting something so slippery it boggles the mind. It says it will intervene in South Africa’s cranky, failing legal case against Israel and call for a ‘broader’ definition of genocide. It is worried that a ‘narrow interpretation of what constitutes genocide’ is letting Israel get away with murder. Strip away the legalese, prick the Dublin elite’s outsized view of itself as the plucky saviour of Palestine, and what we have here is a government calling for the laws of war to be tweaked in order that the world’s only Jewish nation might finally get its comeuppance.
It was Micheál Martin, Ireland’s Tánaiste (deputy prime minister), who unveiled the ruse to stitch up Israel by redefining the word ‘genocide’. Ireland, he said, will file an intervention at the International Court of Justice in the Hague later this month to shake up South Africa’s ‘case against Israel under the Genocide Convention’. We will ask, he said, that the ICJ ‘broaden its interpretation of what constitutes the commission of a genocide’. Right now, he moaned, a ‘very narrow interpretation’ holds sway and this is effectively granting ‘immunity’ to murderous states like Israel. Shorter version: Can’t prove Israel is committing genocide? No problem, just change the meaning of genocide!
The brazenness of Ireland’s meddling, the cynicism of it, is astonishing. Under the Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as acts of mass killing or destruction that are committed with the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’. The reason South Africa’s case against Israel is stalling is because there is no proof of ‘genocidal intent’ on Israel’s part. The only thing Israel is ‘intent’ on destroying is Hamas – not a ‘racial group’ but an army of anti-Semites that raped and murdered more than a thousand Jews on 7 October and which longs to rape and murder more. Those of us who have not partaken of the Kool-Aid of Israelophobia know this – that Israel’s ‘intent’ is to defeat a foe, not erase a people.
Intent is central to the crime of genocide. As Chatham House reminds us, even ‘a particularly bloody war, in which many war crimes are being committed and many civilians killed’, does not amount to ‘the crime of genocide if there is no genocidal intent’. This is obvious to all but the most ferociously Israelophobic, those folk who spend every waking minute wailing ‘Genocide!’ at the Jewish State. The Vietnam War, the Congo wars of the 1990s, the Syrian civil war – these were wars in which hundreds of thousands perished, whose horrors dwarf those of Gaza’s, whose crimes are almost unimaginable. But they were not genocides because none of the parties intended to destroy a people. Genocide is not war – it’s genocide.
It seems Ireland is looking for a way around this intellectual annoyance, around humanity’s pesky insistence on maintaining a moral distinction between the tragedy of war and the crime of genocide. ‘Ireland’s view’ of genocide is ‘broader’ than the ICJ’s, says Micheál Martin, with incalculable pomposity. Our definition of genocide, he says, is one that ‘prioritises the protection of civilian life’. His self-regarding prattle is not only imperious and deluded – it is opaque, too. Intentionally so, I would say. To speak of ‘genocide’ in the same breath as threats to ‘civilian life’ dilutes the calamity of genocide to an unforgiving degree. Is everyone who threatens ‘civilian life’ a genocidaire? A school shooter? A nutter with a knife? It is preposterous. And dangerous.
It seems Ireland wants to ‘liberate’ the ICJ from its quaint attachment to the morally reasoned belief that genocide requires genocidal intent. And it isn’t alone. Last week, Amnesty International ‘concluded’, like a kangaroo court of the most conceited people you can imagine, that ‘Israel is commiting genocide’. And in its report making this accusation – an accusation it never made against Saudi Arabia over Yemen, or America over Iraq, or Turkey over Kurdistan – it moaned that there is too often an ‘overly cramped interpretation’ of the crime of genocide. Such narrow interpretations can ‘effectively preclude a finding of genocide in a context of armed conflict’, it said.
They really want to find Israel guilty of genocide, hey? Even if it means entirely redefining genocide. Even if it means setting fire to decades of jurisprudence on this gravest of crimes. Even if it means sacrificing truth itself. No price is too high, it seems, in the zealous crusade to single out the Jewish nation as the most genocidal nation. UN loon Francesca Albanese says Israel is guilty of ‘domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide and… ecocide’. This is religious gibberish, a speaking in tongues designed not to prove any case against Israel but simply to tar it with the suffix of ‘cide’ in order that people might think, ‘Wow, it’s just like Nazi Germany’. Albanese says sometimes the crime of genocide can involve ‘no killing at all’. I’m calling it: these people are insane.
To redefine genocide because you want to see Israelis in the slammer is a very serious matter. It will potentially lead to Israelis being found guilty of a crime they have not committed. Watering down the requirement of genocidal intent for Israel’s war on Hamas would entail Israelis being accused of genocide when all they’ve done is fight a war. Worse, applying a looser definition of genocide to Israel’s actions than was applied to, say, Sudan’s recent wars or the butchery in Syria under Assad is the living, breathing definition of bias. To judge Israel not only by a different moral standard but also by a different legal standard is, in my view, undiluted bigotry. People will fume if you call it anti-Semitism, but can they give another explanation for this twisting of conventions and changing of rules in order that the Jewish nation might be found guilty of the crime once infamously inflicted on the Jews themselves? I’m all ears.
Back to Ireland. What drives the Irish elites’ curious animosity for Israel? Why do Dublin liberals and leftists fume against the Jewish State even more noisily and ridiculously than other chattering classes in Europe? It seems to me that having switched from the Catholic religion to the woke religion, Ireland is apt indeed to fall under the spell of Israelophobia. For both these religions have issues with Jews. The former had a tendency to see them as Christ killers, the latter paints them as Palestine killers. The one feared their spilling of Christian blood, the other obsesses over their ‘letting’ of Palestinian blood. Ireland should leave Israel to defeat the anti-Semites that wish to destroy it, and turn its mirror of judgement back on itself.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
The brazenness of Ireland’s meddling, the cynicism of it, is astonishing. Under the Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as acts of mass killing or destruction that are committed with the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’. The reason South Africa’s case against Israel is stalling is because there is no proof of ‘genocidal intent’ on Israel’s part. The only thing Israel is ‘intent’ on destroying is Hamas – not a ‘racial group’ but an army of anti-Semites that raped and murdered more than a thousand Jews on 7 October and which longs to rape and murder more. Those of us who have not partaken of the Kool-Aid of Israelophobia know this – that Israel’s ‘intent’ is to defeat a foe, not erase a people.
Intent is central to the crime of genocide. As Chatham House reminds us, even ‘a particularly bloody war, in which many war crimes are being committed and many civilians killed’, does not amount to ‘the crime of genocide if there is no genocidal intent’. This is obvious to all but the most ferociously Israelophobic, those folk who spend every waking minute wailing ‘Genocide!’ at the Jewish State. The Vietnam War, the Congo wars of the 1990s, the Syrian civil war – these were wars in which hundreds of thousands perished, whose horrors dwarf those of Gaza’s, whose crimes are almost unimaginable. But they were not genocides because none of the parties intended to destroy a people. Genocide is not war – it’s genocide.
It seems Ireland is looking for a way around this intellectual annoyance, around humanity’s pesky insistence on maintaining a moral distinction between the tragedy of war and the crime of genocide. ‘Ireland’s view’ of genocide is ‘broader’ than the ICJ’s, says Micheál Martin, with incalculable pomposity. Our definition of genocide, he says, is one that ‘prioritises the protection of civilian life’. His self-regarding prattle is not only imperious and deluded – it is opaque, too. Intentionally so, I would say. To speak of ‘genocide’ in the same breath as threats to ‘civilian life’ dilutes the calamity of genocide to an unforgiving degree. Is everyone who threatens ‘civilian life’ a genocidaire? A school shooter? A nutter with a knife? It is preposterous. And dangerous.
It seems Ireland wants to ‘liberate’ the ICJ from its quaint attachment to the morally reasoned belief that genocide requires genocidal intent. And it isn’t alone. Last week, Amnesty International ‘concluded’, like a kangaroo court of the most conceited people you can imagine, that ‘Israel is commiting genocide’. And in its report making this accusation – an accusation it never made against Saudi Arabia over Yemen, or America over Iraq, or Turkey over Kurdistan – it moaned that there is too often an ‘overly cramped interpretation’ of the crime of genocide. Such narrow interpretations can ‘effectively preclude a finding of genocide in a context of armed conflict’, it said.
They really want to find Israel guilty of genocide, hey? Even if it means entirely redefining genocide. Even if it means setting fire to decades of jurisprudence on this gravest of crimes. Even if it means sacrificing truth itself. No price is too high, it seems, in the zealous crusade to single out the Jewish nation as the most genocidal nation. UN loon Francesca Albanese says Israel is guilty of ‘domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide and… ecocide’. This is religious gibberish, a speaking in tongues designed not to prove any case against Israel but simply to tar it with the suffix of ‘cide’ in order that people might think, ‘Wow, it’s just like Nazi Germany’. Albanese says sometimes the crime of genocide can involve ‘no killing at all’. I’m calling it: these people are insane.
To redefine genocide because you want to see Israelis in the slammer is a very serious matter. It will potentially lead to Israelis being found guilty of a crime they have not committed. Watering down the requirement of genocidal intent for Israel’s war on Hamas would entail Israelis being accused of genocide when all they’ve done is fight a war. Worse, applying a looser definition of genocide to Israel’s actions than was applied to, say, Sudan’s recent wars or the butchery in Syria under Assad is the living, breathing definition of bias. To judge Israel not only by a different moral standard but also by a different legal standard is, in my view, undiluted bigotry. People will fume if you call it anti-Semitism, but can they give another explanation for this twisting of conventions and changing of rules in order that the Jewish nation might be found guilty of the crime once infamously inflicted on the Jews themselves? I’m all ears.
Back to Ireland. What drives the Irish elites’ curious animosity for Israel? Why do Dublin liberals and leftists fume against the Jewish State even more noisily and ridiculously than other chattering classes in Europe? It seems to me that having switched from the Catholic religion to the woke religion, Ireland is apt indeed to fall under the spell of Israelophobia. For both these religions have issues with Jews. The former had a tendency to see them as Christ killers, the latter paints them as Palestine killers. The one feared their spilling of Christian blood, the other obsesses over their ‘letting’ of Palestinian blood. Ireland should leave Israel to defeat the anti-Semites that wish to destroy it, and turn its mirror of judgement back on itself.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and blogs regularly on Spiked where this article was sourced.
2 comments:
"Under the Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as acts of mass killing or destruction that are committed with the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’."
What's the issue here, then? When one considers the entire history of the state of israel, both before and after 1948, but particularly post October 7th 2023, this definition fits Jewish attitudes and actions vis a vis Arabs within the area Jews desire to be Greater Israel to a tee.
To pretend that Zionist Jews have not always intended to thoroughly neutralise the presence of the Arab obstacle by fair or foul means (mostly foul) is disingenuous at best.
Brendan and all the other Zionist zealots are free to crave a Jewish ethnostate in the Levant, but they aren't entitled to their own facts as to what this outcome entails and what Jews have been up to in the region for 100 years.
I. C Clearly...your view point rather overlooks the many Arab's who live peacefully within Isreal.
Competing claims to the land that composes Isreal is one thing to suggest that existing equals waging a genocide on Arabs contesting your right to be there is a bit of a stretch.
I also find it hard to identify the saintly from the sinners in these conflicts as it seems to heavily depend on your viewpoint and the time frame you are using.
Perhaps if people were less binary in their view points things might improve.
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