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Genocidal Threats Demand More Than Just Memorializing

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  • Genocidal Threats Demand More Than Just Memorializing

    Forward, NY
    May 11 2005


    Genocidal Threats Demand More Than Just Memorializing

    By Yehuda Bauer
    May 13, 2005

    The recent opening of Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of
    Europe and of Yad Vashem's new museum in Jerusalem are important and
    welcome developments. But we must go beyond our singular focus on
    memorializing the Holocaust. We must help people realize that
    genocidal violence is a threat to all people. We must demand of the
    political world - in our own interest, and the interest of the wider
    community - to finally put actions behind its pledge to "never
    forget."

    Any examination of the Holocaust must involve an examination of the
    general phenomenon of genocide. The internationally recognized legal
    definition delineated by the Genocide Convention of 1948 is
    unsatisfactory, but any attempt to change it is all but politically
    impossible. This is the definition of genocide with which we must
    work, but every effort should be made to expand our understanding of
    what it should imply.

    Political mass murder, ethnic cleansing designed to annihilate a
    group and global genocidal ideologies such as radical Islam very

    much fit the concept of genocide, in spirit if not in letter. These
    are genocidal threats, and as such they should be added to the
    convention's definition that genocide is the intent to annihilate
    ethnic, national, racial and religious groups. The genocide of the
    Jewish people - inaccurately known as the Holocaust - is, as far as
    we know, the most extreme case of genocide to date.

    Each and every genocide has targeted a specific group of people. In
    order to understand genocide, therefore, one has to deal with the
    specific group targeted. Jews were not transported to extermination
    camps because they were humans; humans were transported because they
    were Jews. The Young Turks did not randomly kill masses of humans;
    they killed Armenians. The same is true for the Tutsi in Rwanda, and
    for the ethnic Africans being murdered in Darfur by Arab Janjaweed
    militias.

    Each genocide is different, but it would be a mistake to dismiss the
    similarities. Foremost among them is the suffering of the victims.
    There is no better or worse genocide, just as there is no better or
    worse murder, no better or worse torture. There is no scale to
    measure suffering. Jews, Armenians or Poles who were martyred and
    murdered all suffered the same. Another characteristic common to all
    genocides is that the "civilized" world was unable to prevent them,
    or to make a serious effort to stop them. There are, tragically, few
    exceptions.

    The argument that the Holocaust was the most extreme form of genocide
    is based on the fact that a modern nation state committed itself to
    the total and universal annihilation of individuals belonging to a
    particular group of humans. The Nazi ideology that motivated the
    murder was unprecedented in its lack of pragmatism: The Nazis
    murdered Jewish slave workers while they produced materials essential
    for the German war effort, and killed experts whom they could have
    used. Nazi ideology related to the Jews as mythical beings - Satans
    or supposed rulers of the world that had to be destroyed - a marked
    contrast to other genocides that were motivated by economic or
    political considerations. True, Jewish property was confiscated and
    used - but that was not the reason for persecuting and murdering the
    Jews; it was the result.

    The Holocaust was not unique, because that would mean that it could
    never happen again, to anyone, Jewish or otherwise. This is simply
    not true. The Holocaust was perpetrated by humans, for human reasons,
    and anything done by humans can be repeated - not in exactly the same
    form, but in similar or parallel ways.

    >From 1900 to 1987, according to Rudolph Rummel, an estimated 169
    million civilians were murdered by governments and by other political
    bodies. Of that number, some 38 million of these victims were
    murdered in genocides as defined by the convention. Today, Darfur is
    the scene of genocide, and again the international community has, so
    far, proved itself unable to stop the killing. To be fair, more is
    now being written about genocidal threats, and more people and even
    politicians seem to care about genocide than before. Nonetheless, the
    killing continues.

    Today, genocidal threats are present everywhere. For the Jewish
    people, the main genocidal threat does not lie with European
    antisemitism, but with the radical Islamist version. It is a serious
    error to view the murderous language of radical Islamists as mere
    talk: We have learned that when people are ideologically committed to
    murderous action, they will act accordingly if given the chance.

    Therefore, Jews should be actively involved in all attempts to
    prevent genocidal murders of any kind. In most cases, including the
    radical Islamic one, it is largely from within the group that
    potential perpetrators are recruited. In the effort to combat the
    genocidal threat, then, Jews and others must seek out allies in the
    nonradical Islamic world, which still makes up the vast majority of
    Islam's 1.3 billion adherents. That means that we must view Muslims
    as brothers, as equals, as potential allies and as bearers of one of
    the great civilizations of the world - and as those who are the first
    to be threatened by the radicals in their midst.


    Yehuda Bauer is the scientific adviser to Yad Vashem, a professor of
    Holocaust studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a member of the
    Israel Academy of Science and the author of "Rethinking the
    Holocaust" (Yale University Press, 2001).
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