I can see why people, especially Jews, might be offended by calling the situation in Gaza a "genocide." The word was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to describe the systematic slaughter of Jews by the Nazis, a crime of unparalleled brutality. The word picks out the very worst thing that humans have ever done to one another and was devised specifically to refer to murderous antisemitism.
The Israeli action in Gaza isn’t the Holocaust. First, the Holocaust was entirely unprovoked: it responded to fictions and lies of the caliber of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The threat that the Nazis purported to detect toward "Germany" or "Western Civilization" was a mere invention. But there's no denying the provocation of October 7, 2023, when 1200 Israelis, most of them civilians, were killed, and 250 taken hostage.
Now, the Gaza health ministry says, plausibly, that 60,000 people have died in Israel's response. 60,000 is one percent of the Holocaust's six million Jewish victims. On the other hand, the 1200 victims of October 7 makes just two percent of that same 60,000, and I'm not sure what to do with the absolute numbers. We’re talking about degrees of monstrousness that are in some sense beyond quantification.
At any rate, to accuse Israel of committing genocide is the most emotionally and cognitively fraught, complex, and weighty accusation. Israel emerged out of the Holocaust as a place of shelter from genocide, a place to recover from one of the worst historical traumas people ever inflicted on one another. Israel is conceived as the opposite of genocide: a treatment for genocide, a place to heal and recover, a home for the homeless. And no people can know better than Israelis what genocide is.
However, I want to make the following claim, itself overburdened by the weight of too much history: the slaughter in Gaza is an echo of the Holocaust. The slaughter in Gaza is in some sense at some distance caused by the Holocaust. And the lesson I want to draw is that war and violence ramify through history in ways that can’t be predicted. When a nation goes to war, or when one people goes to slaughtering another, it echoes through generations. We’re still playing out and paying forward the traumas of our ancestors.
It seems likely, though it’s somewhat complex to document, that people who are abused are more likely to be abusers than those who haven’t. If true, that would be understandable. Abusive violence is likely to seem relatively normal to its victims; the possibility that one could commit such acts must occur. And the sense of having been victimized might make for a guarded and aggressive person, a person who resolves never again to be a victim. In many ways, we might think of that resolution as admirable and essential to survival. It seems better, psychologically and practically, than responding to being abused passively, or coming to regard oneself as fundamentally a victim. Perhaps this is Israel's condition: mobilized by abuse, hyper-vigilant.
There’s also research suggesting that traumatic experiences can be passed along through generations, not only through teaching and socialization but through physiological “epigenetic” effects. Some of the studies documenting this look specifically at the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, whose ancestors were traumatized. One possible manifestation of this is to be constantly braced for more trauma, with a disposition to a violent or disproportionate response to perceived and actual threats. Or again, hypervigilance.
Many people came out of the Holocaust era saying, “never again.” But they meant different things. Governments and international bodies meant that they would never permit another genocide (their record on this hasn’t been excellent). But to many Jews, “never again” meant “never again will we be victimized.” Or, putting it in a more pejorative way: “never again, to us." This strikes one as admirable, or necessary, a matter of pride and self-defense for a victimized and still-vulnerable people. But it can twist you toward terror as well: never again will we be victims, even if we must become perpetrators.
As soon as the Israeli government absorbed the events of October 7, it started connecting them to the Holocaust. Relentlessly, Israelis compared Hamas to the Nazis. Economy minister Nir Barkat gave this typical formulation: "We remember what happened to the six million Jews killed by Nazis and we won't let that happen again." As many Israelis, official and not, said, "This is a war for the existence of the Jewish people." The “existence of the whole people” seems to be at stake, now, even in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. But the instant, almost autonomic response that the existence of a people is at stake comes from the Holocaust experience.
If seeing Gaza as the Holocaust ignores the fact that it has, so far, one percent as many victims, thinking of Hamas as the Nazis after 1200 deaths (.02 percent of the six million) is even more disproportionate. In either case, one envisions what would happen if it was permitted to continue. Or rather, it’s impossible for people traumatized to this degree not to interpret each of these events as catastrophic. And they need to interpret them that way, because 1200 victims can bloom into 60,000 and even six million very quickly, as the world stands by helplessly. The traumatized and abusive responses are meant to prevent much worse outcomes, as everyone envisions the total destruction of their own people and culture. But the traumatized and abusive responses also amount to crimes against humanity.
One could suppose that the Israel's actions in Gaza—destroying the place and damaging every person there who manages to survive—will have similar ramifications. It will echo down the decades, though we can’t know just how. It will certainly leave a lot of people thinking this: to survive we must be ready to kill.
—Crispin Sartwell's podcast "Peace Now! Great American Pacifists" is available on Apple podcasts and YouTube.