Is/was there a genocide in Palestine?

Having commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day with Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer and some Jewish friends, after a talk at Goldsmith University last week, I feel that Palestinians have many common experiences with the survivors of the Holocaust.

The way Meyer was imprisoned in the ghetto and moved across the checkpoints could be a stereotypical image in occupied Palestine. I was personally amazed to hear Hajo Meyer himself saying that the Palestinian suffering is so close to the Holocaust and sometimes it is the same. I was amazed because I heard it not from a Palestinian, but from a Jewish man who has suffered a lot.

For a long time, it has been widely argued that genocide has never been committed in Palestine. Some media outlets close to the Palestinian viewpoint reckon there was genocide, one that is still in progress. The Israeli narrative rejects the use of this term for the Palestinian experience. Without doubt, the Germans perpetrated a heinous crime and genocide against the Jews in World War Two. This should never even be argued. Around 6 million Jews were killed across Europe in an act that can never be tolerated by humanity. It was a huge crime.

There have, however, been genocides against many other peoples such as the American Indians and the Armenians, which must also be remembered. Most of these genocides are on a smaller scale than the Holocaust, but surely the fact that genocide has occurred must be condemned no matter the scale. Indeed, this seems to be the feeling of many Holocaust survivors themselves. They believe it is crucial to recognize, condemn and fight against genocide wherever it is happening no matter whether it is a few thousand or millions.

The core question here is, have the Palestinians suffered genocide by Israel? Has Israel really ethnically cleansed Palestinians? Does the term genocide apply in the Palestinian case? Is it legally applicable? Readers can make their own judgment via this analysis.

In 1944, Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the word "genocide" by combining "geno" from the Greek word for race or tribe, with "cide" from the Latin word for killing. He proposed that genocide consists in "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves."


Is this really happening; has it happened in Palestine? More

The 'Holocaust Survivors' Holocausts