Q&A: Moral Genocide
Moral Genocide
Question
Shmuel Lederman and other genocide researchers argue that Israel is carrying out genocide against the people of Gaza.
Here he shares the main points:
https://x.com/shmulikled/status/1922965511379321174
From a superficial reading and understanding, I get the impression that their definitions of genocide hold water, and that there is no substantive dispute about the facts.
On the other hand, it is clear to me that Israel is acting properly, and that if the Hamas leaders had surrendered, the lives of thousands would have been spared.
My questions, then, are:
How would you define genocide?
Is moral genocide possible?
And finally: have we found any instance in history of moral genocide? If not, that would seem to be some indication of the immorality of the Gazan genocide
Answer
I did not read the article itself, only the presentation of it on Twitter.
Genocide researchers are not qualified to determine what is moral and what is not. At most, they can characterize different events and classify them into groups according to their features. To determine whether some event is moral or not, one has to discuss ethical principles, not the history of genocides.
The definition of the term genocide depends on your outlook, and it is not really that important. What matters is not whether we are committing genocide, but whether what we are doing is moral or not. The basic principle of genocide in the moral sense (that is, immoral genocide) is the decision to destroy a group simply because of what it is. It seems to me that this more or less captures the issue, and everything else is garnish. That of course does not apply in Gaza in any sense whatsoever, even if all the residents of Gaza were to die. Their killing is not being done merely because they are Gazans, but because they threaten us and this is the only way we have to remove the threat. Therefore, by definition, this is not genocide. That is all. Not very complicated. The number of people killed is not a decisive measure in any sense (it may perhaps be a necessary condition, without which there is no genocide, but it is far from sufficient).
It is obviously true that if the Hamas leaders had surrendered, everything would have been resolved. But that is not the relevant explanation. The killing is not of Hamas members but of uninvolved people, that is, of the population as a whole. The justification is that Hamas represents them and acts in their name (and was also elected by them and enjoys their support). I have written about this quite a bit here on the site.