Defining genocide: how a rift over Gaza sparked a crisis among scholars
New reports by human rights groups use the term to describe Israel’s offensive. The debate has fueled a brutal division among those who study mass violence
Hasnain says:
“For Üngör, a former student articulated the question at the heart of the debate in an email she sent him early in the war: “Do you only study genocide or do you also want to prevent it?”
It’s a dilemma many scholars of mass violence have been grappling with. Herf, the retired historian, said that for those studying the Holocaust there was a “moral impulse – and that was to see that it never happened again”. He cited fears of Iran and a second, nuclear Holocaust.
Hirsch, the scholar of memory, believes that naming genocide implicates a response.
“Genocide prevention is a responsibility,” she said, citing Philip Gourevitch’s well known book about the Rwandan genocide, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. The book’s title implicitly calls out those watching as a genocide unfolds.
“Now, we’re watching on our iPhones, and still people are holding back.””
Posted on 2024-12-21T00:49:11+0000