Two Types of Genocide
Israel and the United States
A Predictable War
Israel and Palestine are at war. Of course it is tempting for Euro-American media to depict this as a sudden, unprecedented affair — a term of which it has become quite fond in the last five to ten years. However, a simple google search on the history of the Palestinian conflict makes it apparent that this was neither sudden nor (as many Euro-American outlets have asserted) unprovoked. The violence in Palestine has occurred due to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the absurdity of the Oslo I and II accords, and the increasingly violent attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settler militias.
If the truth is to be understood, it will be understood through careful study, and it must observe the historical nature of events occurring on the ground. Some political scientists, including one who posted a recent video on the causes of this round of fighting, believe that objective models of cost-benefit analysis can explain the current round of fighting. It is silly to believe that the current round of fighting is due to a perceived advantage.
Power mechanics are much more complex than a mathematical formula of human behavior can explain. Furthermore, people have agency. Euro-American political scientists have wasted their time on this type of approach to diplomacy and war. Simpler causation might be drawn by understanding the nature of the Israeli occupation and the tactics it has and continues to use.
It is unfortunate that the Israelis were massacred. Yet our concern is not with the massacre itself, but with its causes and the causes of the declared portion of the 75-year war in Palestine. The Israeli government and its spokespeople are quick to hide the crimes of their state by cloaking it in the justification the United States has always used.
Aggravated Genocide
First, however, we must analyze the Israeli actions of the present in their current context. Israel has obliterated whole neighborhoods in Gaza. It has denied the civilian and military population electricity, food, water, and medicine. The state of Israel has murdered at least six Palestinian journalists and one Lebanese journalist. Israel has also fired white phosphorus at highly populated civilian targets, a chemical which causes victims’ skin to melt, burns through flesh into the bone, and is highly toxic even if it can be extinguished (which is nearly impossible because it ignites on contact with oxygen).
In more recent news, Israel has ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to leave their homes, with no clear answer on when or if they might be able to return. Palestinians are extremely worried that this will be a Second Nakba, and that they will never be able to return. Israel has also bombarded the Rafah border crossing into Egypt, limiting all avenues of escape.
It is reminiscent of the Siege of Leningrad, when fascist forces cut off all retreat, evacuation, and supply routes, and bombarded the city by land, air, and sea. The only resupply routes were across a frozen lake during the winter months. Palestine, however, has no open avenues of resupply, and no army to attempt a breakout. Mass starvation of the Gazan people is inevitable.
This says nothing of the lockdown under which Israel has placed the West Bank. Israeli settlers and armed forces have reportedly killed 55 civilians in the territory since the beginning of the recent bout of violence, often murdering those merely going about their daily lives. An area already swamped with protests since occupation forces raided al-Aqsa mosque, the West Bank has existed under an Apartheid regime established by the 1993 Oslo Accords.
These actions are genocidal. The occupying Israeli state has persisted in dispossessing Palestinians of their land, destroyed and damaged numerous cultural sites, and killed over 5500 Palestinian people only between 2008 (the end of the Second Intifada) and 2022. Only 251 Israelis lost their lives during the same period. The only difference between the current state of affairs in Gaza and that prior to the attack on October 7 is the speed with which Israel is murdering the Palestinians.
This is the type of genocide which is easy to see, but it is not the most dangerous form it can take. It is aggravated genocide, as it is an active, aggressive form in which the stated purpose is to obliterate a people or wipe them off a part of the earth. On the other hand, the second form we will examine is easily justified by Euro-American media.
Just as cruel, this form is much more subtle, a long-term form of genocide whose effects are less immediate. It is this form under which Palestine has existed for the last several decades, much akin to the ongoing genocide the United States has been committing against the New Afrikan people.
Systemic Genocide
In its more subtle, systemic form, genocide can appear innocuous. It seems like “standard” law enforcement. Sometimes it takes the form of mass arrests, whole populations being held without charge and without bond. In the New Afrikan community in the United States, it has taken the form of organized deprivation. While aggravated genocide is blatant, public, and easily identified, it is difficult to identify systemic genocide from the outside.
It is for this reason that the recent Israeli acts of aggravated genocide have led to calls to end the occupation of Palestine. However, the Israeli government has been conducting a systemic genocide in the West Bank against the Palestinians since it occupied the territory in 1967. Two Intifadas and countless wars later, the Israeli state continues to demolish Palestinian homes. The Palestinian conflict has arisen because Israel has forced 60,000 households from their property in the West Bank since it began the occupation.
Black Communities, Palestinian Communities
The black communities of the United States are similarly targeted for demolition, as was the case in Mill Creek Valley, St. Louis, Missouri:
The first wrecking ball smashed into the neighborhood in 1959. Two years prior, the Little Rock Nine bravely integrated Little Rock Central High School. Two years before that, Emmett Till was brutally lynched in Mississippi. It was still the height of Jim Crow, marked by violence, sometimes at the hands of local, state and federal governments. Uprooting happened across the country, whether it was because a city wanted to build new developments or expand the highway. In Mill Creek, both, unfortunately, were true. By the late 1960s, the once bustling community was unidentifiable. Some 5,600 housing units, 800 businesses and 40 churches were destroyed, spanning 54 city blocks.
— Gabrielle Hays, “In St. Louis, a neighborhood destroyed, and the children who remember”
Similarly, the Foot community in Jefferson City was leveled by “urban renewal” projects, which routed a major highway through the former black business district:
Urban renewal projects were supposed to redevelop areas that had fallen into disrepair and promote more infrastructure like roads and highways.
However, many areas deemed “blighted” were often marginalized communities that hadn’t been invested in. Some residents were promised better living circumstances, which were never fulfilled.
— Anna Watson, “The Foot named a historic legacy district”
This forced removal parallels the forced removal of the Palestinians, whose oppression by the Israeli occupation forces and their settler-colonial paramilitaries have led to similar acts of resistance. These culminated in the Intifadas, of which we may be witnessing a third. In the United States, uprisings and revolutionary efforts were harshly repressed through the use of assassinations, murders, and coercion.
Israel has similarly exercised control over the borders, water, power, food, and medical supplies. They have also established military checkpoints within the West Bank that pose substantial barriers to Palestinians moving from place to place. In the United States, some towns committed blatant expulsions, including Vienna, IL, which expelled 54 or more black inhabitants after a race riot led to the burning of their homes. Other towns merely refused to allow black people to settle there in the first place.
Why?
Euro-Americans have become very fond of the question of why Hamas could have done what it has. The answer is clear. A protracted war between the Palestinian people and the occupying Israeli government has been fought over the last six decades. During this war, Israel has committed a systemic genocide, at times reaching the aggravated form. When the tensions die down this time, Israel will continue the systemic genocide regardless of what the international community decides to do.
This is the reason Palestinians often see no end to the violence; they watch the violence unfold daily, in slow motion. It is why they are arming themselves in resistance against the state of Israel. Genocide when done subtly is still a genocide. Thus, the only possibility of entertaining “peace” between Israel and Palestine is an end to the Israeli occupation and its regime of systemic genocide.
