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125 Genocide Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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Genocide is a horrific crime that has plagued humanity for centuries. It involves the deliberate and systematic extermination of a specific group of people based on their ethnicity, religion, nationality, or other defining characteristics. Genocide is considered one of the most heinous crimes against humanity and has left a lasting impact on the world.

If you are tasked with writing an essay on genocide, it can be a challenging and emotional topic to tackle. To help you get started, here are 125 genocide essay topic ideas and examples that you can use as inspiration for your writing:

The Armenian Genocide: A systematic extermination of the Armenian population by the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

The Holocaust: The mass murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime during World War II.

The Rwandan Genocide: The brutal killing of over 800,000 Tutsi people by the Hutu majority in Rwanda in 1994.

Genocide in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge regime's killing of over two million people in Cambodia in the 1970s.

The Darfur Genocide: The ongoing conflict in Darfur, Sudan, which has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

The Bosnian Genocide: The ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims by Serbian forces during the Bosnian War in the 1990s.

Genocide in Myanmar: The persecution and killing of Rohingya Muslims by the Myanmar military.

Genocide in North Korea: The brutal treatment of political prisoners and dissidents in North Korean concentration camps.

The Native American Genocide: The mass killing and forced relocation of Native American tribes by European colonizers in the Americas.

The Genocide of the Pontic Greeks: The extermination of the Pontic Greek population by the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century.

The Yazidi Genocide: The targeted killing and enslavement of Yazidi people by ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Genocide in East Timor: The Indonesian military's killing of thousands of East Timorese people during the occupation of the country.

The Genocide of the Herero and Nama people: The extermination of the Herero and Nama tribes by German colonial forces in Namibia in the early 20th century.

Genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo: The ongoing conflict in the DRC, which has resulted in the deaths of millions of people.

The Genocide of the Circassian people: The forced deportation and killing of Circassian people by the Russian Empire in the 19th century.

Genocide in South Sudan: The civil war in South Sudan, which has resulted in widespread violence and displacement of civilians.

The Genocide of the Assyrian people: The killing and forced displacement of Assyrian Christians by ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

Genocide in Guatemala: The killing of indigenous Mayan people by the Guatemalan government during the country's civil war.

The Genocide of the Kurds: The persecution and killing of Kurdish people by various governments in the Middle East.

Genocide in Sri Lanka: The killing of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan government during the country's civil war.

The Genocide of the Alawites: The targeted killing of Alawite people by extremist groups in Syria.

Genocide in Nigeria: The killing and displacement of civilians by Boko Haram and other extremist groups in Nigeria.

The Genocide of the Romani people: The persecution and killing of Romani people by the Nazis during World War II.

Genocide in Chechnya: The Russian military's killing of Chechen civilians during the Chechen Wars.

The Genocide of the Uyghur people: The persecution and forced assimilation of Uyghur Muslims by the Chinese government.

Genocide in Burundi: The ethnic violence in Burundi, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people.

The Genocide of the Hmong people: The killing and forced displacement of Hmong people by the Laotian government.

Genocide in Zimbabwe: The killing and displacement of civilians by the Zimbabwean government during the country's political crisis.

The Genocide of the Rohingya people: The persecution and killing of Rohingya Muslims by the Burmese military.

Genocide in Yemen: The ongoing conflict in Yemen, which has resulted in widespread violence and humanitarian crisis.

The Genocide of the Hazara people: The targeted killing of Hazara people by extremist groups in Afghanistan.

Genocide in Mali: The ethnic violence in Mali, which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people.

The Genocide of the Yazidi people: The targeted killing and enslavement of Yazidi people by ISIS in Iraq and Syria

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What is Genocide?

“Genocide” is an internationally recognized crime. The term has a specific legal definition. It refers to acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.

The word “genocide” was created by the Polish-Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin. He coined it to help describe early 20th century attempts to destroy entire nations and ethnic groups, including the Holocaust.

The chief prosecutors of the International Military Tribunal (1945–1946) used the term “genocide” in their indictment of Nazi leaders. But “genocide” was not recognized as an international crime until 1948.

Since 1948, the term “genocide” has often been used. However, “genocide” according to the legal definition—which includes an intent to destroy a targeted group—is rarely committed compared to other serious crimes, such as crimes against humanity and war crimes.

[caption=556ca753-b5ba-4be3-a493-ca4356a756bc] - [credit=556ca753-b5ba-4be3-a493-ca4356a756bc]

The legal term “ genocide ” refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Genocide is an international crime, according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). The acts that constitute genocide fall into five categories:

Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Although the term “genocide” is often used, its commission is rare when compared to other serious crimes that are not defined by an intent to destroy a targeted group, such as crimes against humanity and war crimes .

Origin of the Term “Genocide”

The word “genocide” did not exist prior to World War II. It is a specific term coined in 1942 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) and first used in print in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe . In his book, Lemkin analyzed Nazi policies of systematic persecution and mass murder during World War II. His analysis included descriptions of the destruction of European Jews, which today is referred to as the Holocaust . He formed the word genocide by combining geno- , from the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide , from the Latin word for killing. Lemkin defined “genocide” as "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."

Early Use of the Term “Genocide” in the International Military Tribunal

In 1945, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) was held in Nuremberg, Germany. During the trial, 24 high-ranking Nazi officials were charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes , among other crimes, as defined by the Nuremberg Charter .

The word “genocide” was used in the indictment as a way to describe Nazi crimes of the Holocaust. It was not, however, a legal term at this time .

Genocide as an International Crime

After the Holocaust , the word “genocide” was established as a legal term for a specifically defined international crime.

On December 9, 1948, the United Nations approved a written agreement known as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The adoption of this convention was in no small part due to the tireless efforts of Raphael Lemkin. By the end of the 1950s, over 65 UN member states had signed it. As of April 2022, 153 states have ratified the convention (meaning they have agreed to follow its terms).

The convention established genocide as an international crime. The obligation to prevent and punish is binding on all states, even those that have not ratified the convention. Preventing and punishing genocide remain ongoing challenges that states, institutions, and individuals continue to face.

Critical Thinking Questions

Genocide was recognized as an international crime in 1948. Since then, what events have been legally determined to constitute genocide?

Why would the label of genocide be resisted or denied by non-involved countries?

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Introduction

Defining genocide: the Nürnberg Charter and the genocide convention

Criticisms of the genocide convention.

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genocide , the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity , nationality , religion, or race . The term, derived from the Greek genos (“race,” “tribe,” or “nation”) and the Latin cide (“killing”), was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born jurist who served as an adviser to the U.S. Department of War during World War II .

Although the term itself is of recent origin, genocide arguably has been practiced throughout history (though some observers have restricted its occurrence to a very few cases). According to Thucydides , for example, the people of Melos were slaughtered after refusing to surrender to the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War . Indeed, in ancient times it was common for victors in war to massacre all the men of a conquered population . The massacre of Cathari during the Albigensian Crusade in the 13th century is sometimes cited as the first modern case of genocide, though medieval scholars generally have resisted this characterization. Twentieth-century events often cited as genocide include the 1915 Armenian massacre by the Turkish-led Ottoman Empire , the nearly complete extermination of European Jews , Roma (Gypsies), and other groups by Nazi Germany during World War II , the killing of some three million Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and the killing of Tutsi by Hutu in Rwanda in the 1990s.

In his work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (1944), Lemkin noted that a key component of genocide was the

criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group. The acts are directed against groups as such, and individuals are selected for destruction only because they belong to these groups.

In contemporary international law the crime of genocide is part of the broader category of “crimes against humanity,” which were defined by the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (Nürnberg Charter). The charter granted the tribunal jurisdiction to indict and try the leaders of the Nazi regime for inhumane acts committed against civilians, as well as for acts of persecution on political, racial, or religious grounds; in so doing, it also contributed to the international criminalization of other forms of abusive conduct. The momentum created by the Nürnberg trials and the ensuing revelations of Nazi atrocities led to the passage by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly of Resolution 96-I (December 1946), which made the crime of genocide punishable under international law, and of Resolution 260-III (December 1948), which approved the text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide , the first UN human rights treaty . The convention, which entered into force in 1951, has been ratified by more than 130 countries. Although the United States played a major role in drafting the convention and was an original signatory, the U.S. Senate did not ratify it until 1988.

Article 2 of the convention defines genocide as

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

In addition to the commission of genocide, the convention also made conspiracy , incitement, attempt, and complicity in genocide punishable under international law.

Although the convention has enjoyed near unanimous international support and although the prohibition of genocide has become, according to the International Court of Justice , a peremptory norm ( jus cogens [Latin: “compelling law”]) of international law, the convention has often been criticized for excluding political and social groups from the list of possible victims of genocide. The so-called “ intentionality clause” of the convention’s definition of genocide—the part that mentions the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”—also is problematic . Two of the most common objections are that such intent can be difficult to establish and that the attempt to assign such intent to individuals makes little sense in modern societies, where violence can result as much from anonymous social and economic forces as from individual choices.

In support of the first objection, some scholars have noted that governments do not openly admit to committing genocidal acts—a fact that is borne out in history. The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein , for example, portrayed its use of chemical warfare against the Kurds in the 1980s as an effort to reestablish law and order, and the Ottoman and successive Turkish governments asserted that the Armenians killed in the massacres were casualties of war. Even Germany’s Nazi regime did not publicize its extermination of Jews and other groups. In response, defenders of the intentionality clause have argued that “a pattern of purposeful action” leading to the destruction of a significant part of the targeted group is enough to establish genocidal intent, irrespective of the reasons the perpetrator regime offers for its actions.

Supporters of the second objection have argued that an approach that focuses solely on intent ignores the “structural violence” of social systems in which vast political and economic disparities can lead to the total marginalization and even extermination of particular groups. Defenders of the intentionality clause respond that it is necessary for differentiating genocide from other forms of mass killings and for devising effective strategies to prevent genocide.

The debates between supporters and opponents of the genocide convention have important policy implications , which can be seen in the discussion of the connection between war crimes and genocide. The two concepts differ principally in how the targeted group is defined and identified. Whereas the targeted group in the case of war crimes is identified by its status as an enemy, the targeted group in the case of genocide is identified by its racial, national, ethnic, or religious characteristics. The chief indication that the targeting is based on enemy status as opposed to racial, ethnic, or religious identity is primarily the behaviour of the group’s opponent once the conflict has ended. If the attacks against the targeted group cease, then the (probable) commission of war crimes is the issue at stake. If the attacks persist, however, the commission of genocide can legitimately be alleged . The importance attributed to post-conflict conduct reflects the realization that genocide can and does take place during wartime, usually under cover of war-related activities. The distinction between war crimes and genocide is of the utmost importance in any discussion of preventive action. In cases of war crimes, the termination of conflict would suffice , and no additional measures of protection would be necessary. In cases of genocide, the termination of conflict would necessitate the adoption of protective measures to ensure the group’s survival.

Although many of the criticisms of the genocide convention are well-founded, they should not obscure its strengths. The genocide convention was the first legal instrument to disentangle the most heinous of crimes against humanity from the “war-nexus” requirement, which had limited the jurisdiction of the Nürnberg tribunal to cases in which a crime against humanity was committed in conjunction with a crime against interstate peace. Instead, the convention declared that genocide is an international crime “whether committed in time of peace or in time of war.” Moreover, the convention was the first UN legal instrument to stipulate that individuals can incur international criminal responsibility whether or not they act on behalf of a state. The convention can also serve, in accordance with Article 8, as the legal basis of enforcement measures ordered by the Security Council (the only UN organ that can authorize the use of force).

The History of the Genocide in the Rwandan Essay

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Introduction

History of the genocide, hutu government, international community, works cited.

The Rwanda genocide that occurred in 1994 led to the loss of about 800,000 lives of the Tutsi community. The assassination of the president Juvenal Habyarimana triggered the genocide where the Hutu militia together with the Rwandan military organized systematic attacks on the Tutsi who were the minority ethnic group in Rwanda.

The Rwandan genocide was quite strange because it was a speedy mass killing, which led to the loss of about 800,000 lives in just 100 days. The United States of America president at that time Bill Clinton during his visit to Rwanda apologized and told the Tutsi that he felt like other people “…who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror” (Power Para. 7).

The Rwanda genocide becomes the extreme genocide that occurred in the 20 th century. This essay explores the history of the genocide, the reasoning of the Hutu government and establishes why the international community did not intervene.

Hutu and Tutsi are the two tribes of Rwanda who have always been political enemies, fighting for power since independence in 1952. Belgians who colonized Rwanda favored Tutsi while they neglected the Hutu, but after independence, Hutu begun to enjoy the privileges of the government. “…independence ushered in three decades of Hutu rule, under which Tutsi were systematically discriminated against and periodically subjected to waves of killing and ethnic cleansing” (Power Para. 17).

Many Tutsi went to exile in the neighboring countries and formed rebels who constantly attacked the Hutu government. In 1990, Tutsi formed the Rwanda Patriotic Front, which attacked the Hutu government leading to the Rwandan civil war.

The Rwandan civil war led to the signing of the Arusha Accord that compelled the Rwandan government, which Hutu dominated, to form a government of national unity by incorporating marginalized Tutsi and the Hutu who were in opposition. For the realization of peace, the deployment United Nation peacekeepers helped in demilitarization of the civilians for Tutsi and Hutu to live in harmony.

Hutu thought that the Tutsi and the Belgians wanted to enslave them again as during colonization and they vowed never to agree with the terms of the Arusha Accord. By 1993, “Hutu extremists rejected these terms and set out to terrorize Tutsi and those Hutu politicians supportive of the peace process …thousands Rwandans were killed, and some 9,000 were detained while guns, grenades, and machetes began arriving by the planeload” (Power Para. 18).

Subsequent periodic attacks on Tutsi set the stage for the genocide in 1994. Then, there was evident militarization of Hutu in readiness to exterminate the Tutsi and Belgian peacekeepers, who the Hutu perceived as their enemies.

The assassination of the Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana triggered systematic mass killings of Tutsi by the Hutu military where they killed about 800,000 Tutsi in about 100 days. Though many diplomats perceived it as civil war, they alter discovered albeit late, that genocide had occurred. Now the genocide is a great scar in the land of Rwanda.

Hutu government emerged after independence in 1952. Prior to the independence, the Tutsi enjoyed much privilege from the colonial government because they cooperated with the Belgians in undermining the Hutu struggles for independence. Therefore, the Hutu government reasoned that Tutsi were their enemies and they fought them both politically and by use of military.

Democracy was difficult to achieve because political parties and Tutsi were defiant to the Hutu government and it perceived them as dissidents. The enmity of the Hutu and the Tutsi became feasible when the Hutu government in three decades consecutively discriminated against the Tutsi tribe leading to their exile.

“In 1990 a group of armed exiles, mainly Tutsi, who had been clustered on the Ugandan border, invaded Rwanda…next several years the rebels, known as the Rwandan Patriotic Front gained ground against Hutu government forces” (Power Para. 16). After the Rwandan civil war, the Hutu government realized that the Tutsi were a great threat to their government and their existence, hence devised ways to exterminate them.

The Hutu government also perceived the signing of the Arusha Accord that led to the formation of government of national unity as a scheme to overthrow them out of government.

The Arusha Accord was just a paper as the then United Nations assistant executive; Beardsley confessed that, “we flew to Rwanda with a Michelin road map, a copy of the Arusha agreement, and that was it … under the impression that the situation was quite straightforward; there was one cohesive government side and one cohesive rebel side” (Power Para. 21).

The Hutu extremists in the government rejected the implementation of the Arusha Accord and did not implement it to the letter. Consequently, anyone who was supporting the Arusha Accord became an enemy to the Hutu government.

The Hutu government reasoned that Tutsi, opposition leaders and foreign diplomats wanted to overthrow them from the government, thus organized systematic mass killings as a way of defending their its rule. The assassination of their president was a clear indication of a scheme to overthrow the government.

The international community did not intervene in the Rwanda genocide because of the bureaucracies in their policies. For instance, the United States foreign policy did not provide for Bill Clinton to intervene the occurrence of Rwanda genocide. George Bush in 2000 issued his statement concerning Rwanda that, “I don’t like genocide, but I would not commit our troops … genocide could happen again tomorrow and we wouldn’t respond to any differently” (Power Para. 40).

The foreign policies of the United States are full of bureaucracies and that is why it took long for them to respond but with apologies that could not help. They did not consider Rwanda genocide as a humanitarian crisis, thus, they kept quiet while 8000 lives are lost per day.

There were slow responses from the international community because the situation of Rwanda was a combination of civil war and genocide. Power argues that, “it is true that the precise nature and extent of the slaughter was obscured by the civil war, the withdrawal of U.S. diplomatic sources, some confused press reporting, and the lies of the Rwandan government” (Para. 26).

Other nations relied on the United Nations and the United States of America but they all kept quiet leaving them to rely on confusing news from the Rwandan government and the media. If the international community could have intervened, it could be justified as a humanitarian war because it could have saved many lives

The Rwandan genocide is a shocking experience to the world because it depicts how human lives can be lost in such an inhuman way. The situation of Rwanda became much worse as the international community never responded effectively to save the situation.

The international community never imagined that mass killings of that extent would occur as many thought that what was happening was just a normal civil war. Thus, ethnical politics of Rwanda and the international community are responsible for the occurrence and the extent of the genocide.

Power, Samantha. “ Bystanders to Genocide. ” The Atlantic Monthly 288. 2001. Web.

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What is Genocide?

The legal term “genocide” refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Genocide is an international crime, according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). The acts that constitute genocide fall into five categories:

Killing members of the group

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Raphael Lemkin, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, coined the word genocide in 1944 and made it his mission to compel nations to prevent it from occurring in the future. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of United Nations

Origin of the Term Genocide

Genocide as an International Crime

After the Holocaust, the word “genocide” was established as a legal term for a specifically defined international crime.

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Find information on historical cases of genocide and other atrocities.

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"The tale of what happened during those dark days in Rwanda must be told again and again and again, not out of a morbid desire for gruesome tales, but out of a concern that the innocent dead should continuously sear the memories of the living. Only then can 'never again' cease to be an empty cry."

This drawing was done by a child survivor as part of post-genocide trauma therapy. It is one of many such haunting pictures in . Edited by Richard A. Salem. Published by Friendship Press in conjunction with Conflict Management Initiatives (CMI), the book is available from CMI at .

Genocide Defined

Genocide is generally defined as the intentional extermination of a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group. Compared with war crimes and crimes against humanity, genocide is generally regarded as the most offensive crime. At worst, genocide pits neighbor against neighbor, or even husband against wife. Unlike war, where the attack is general and the object is often the control of a geographical or political region, genocide attacks an individual's identity, and the object is control -- or complete elimination -- of a group of people.

The history of genocide in the 20th century includes:

the 1915 genocide of Armenians by Turks;
the attempted extermination of European Jews by Nazis during World War II;
the widespread genocide in Cambodia during the 1970s;
the "ethnic cleansing"[1] in Kosovo by Serbs during the 1990s;
the killing of Tutsis by Rwandan Hutus in 1994.[2]

Since 1948, the United Nations has defined genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such."[3] Actions included in this definition are:

Killing members of a group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group;
Deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Notice that in the U.N. definition, murder is not the only way to destroy a group. For example, the recent Australian practice of forcibly removing biracial Aborigine children from their parents could be classified as genocide, since the goal of this practice was to assimilate the children into mainstream Australian culture, and thus slowly erode the Aborigine culture and population.[4]

This drawing was done by a child survivor as part of post-genocide trauma therapy, and appears in . (See the first drawing in this essay for bibliographic information)

Causes of Genocide

The underlying causes of conflicts that result in acts of genocide often have deep historical roots. Stereotypes and prejudices can develop over centuries. Ethnic and cultural distinctions often result in the formation of "in-group" and "out-group" thinking, where members of different races, religions, or cultures view each other as separate, alien, and "different." Identity groups are formed from such thinking.

In many regions, members of different identity groups, for mutual advantage, develop conflict prevention methods. Yet where resources are limited, or where pressures are placed on societies because of political or economic instability, relations may degrade. This can lead one group to become convinced that many of its problems are the fault of another group, and that all of those problems would be resolved if only the other group no longer existed. Guy Burgess has named this irrational and potentially dangerous idea the " into-the-sea" frame . Coexistence and power sharing are not considered to be viable options, and the more powerful group instead desires to exterminate the other (i.e., drive the other side "into the sea"). Often there is a "coherent and vicious elite" led by a majority-supported dictator who incites genocidal movements. Such movements find expression more readily when powerful political entities are made up of a common ethnicity and when minorities are marginalized.

"Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?"

Responding to Acts of Genocide

Genocide, like any morally relevant action, can be supported, denounced, or viewed with apathy. One's moral convictions will result in varying responses to genocidal acts. Perpetrators of genocide often feel completely justified in their actions, and may draw on local cultural or political values to curry favor. This can lead to a response of support, thereby furthering the criminal acts. Others, while not participating in the acts directly, may support them by financial or political means.

Still other groups may attempt to take a neutral, apathetic stance. International law and historical precedent, however, has made it extremely dangerous for relevant parties to attempt to merely stand by. An example of such behavior was the Swiss policy of neutrality in World War II.. In the mid-1990s Swiss banks were held accountable for servicing the financial interests of Nazi party members and for failing to settle accounts with Holocaust victims or their surviving family members. It would seem that parties that are in a position to oppose acts of genocide, but fail to do so, can expect punitive repercussions.

The international community, following international law , sometimes attempts to stop genocide before it happens, or while it is in process. Often, however, the ability to do anything effective is minimal. Another approach is punishment after-the-fact, which is supposed to not only extract retribution or justice, but also act as a deterrent against future genocidal acts. Whether the deterrence effect is real, however, is unclear.

Preventing acts of genocide has become an important topic in peace research. Preventing genocide implies understanding how genocidal motivations begin and how groups become powerful enough to impose their plans on their victims. This involves the ability to recognize how ethnic and political values mesh in potentially dangerous ways and how elite organizers of genocide obtain state power. In addition to developing working theories of how genocidal acts begin and progress, prevention also necessitates the ability to detect signs of genocidal schemes and respond to them as early as possible. Government investigation agencies (such as the FBI and Interpol), the United Nations, and independent human rights organizations (such as Amnesty International), utilize some early detection methods. Attempts to prevent genocide usually involve preventive diplomacy and violence prevention . Dealt with elsewhere in depth, suffice it to say here that this involves both Track I and Track II diplomatic efforts to diffuse tensions and try to encourage the parties to negotiate at least a settlement , if not a resolution of their differences -- enough to prevent widespread violence.

Sanctions are also sometimes used as deterrents or punishments for unacceptable behavior. For example, economic, financial and military sanctions were imposed against the Yugoslav Federation to try to end their support of the Serb's "ethnic cleansing," a euphemism for genocide. Military intervention may also be called upon, as was the case with U.N. peacekeeping forces and later NATO forces acting in Bosnia in the 1990s.

International law also supports after-the-fact prosecution of war criminals. International law was the force behind the Nuremberg trials of Nazi officers in the late 1940's and, in more modern times, the trial of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosavic at The Hague. The International Criminal Court (ICC), established in 2002, is intended to make such prosecution more effective. Though adherence to the ICC Statute (the Rome Statute) varies from country to country,[5] 139 countries signed the initial statute and the 60-country ratification minimum required for the ICC to enter into force was reached on April 11, 2002. Both the United States and Russia have refused to accept the jurisdiction of the ICC, however, leading to questions about how effective the court can be without their participation.

Problems with Punishment

In actuality, all forms of punishment face difficult challenges. Many question the effectiveness, and the ethicality, of economic sanctions , especially since sanctions can easily affect an entire nation's economy, arguably punishing innocent citizens for the crimes of their government or of a powerful faction. Legal punishment for genocidal acts can be frustrated by an inability to find the individuals responsible. Also complicating the matter is the fact that the number of people who committed the crimes is often so large as to make a trial huge, costly, and impractical. Military action also presents the challenges of how to engage, when to intervene, and how long to stay when hostilities have subsided, in addition to the delay from the time when military action is deemed necessary and when (if at all) it is approved by the international community.

Threat of punishment can also prolong a conflict. If one side fears prosecution if they end the conflict, they may continue, even though they realize that they cannot win. One answer to this fear is offering amnesty to all sides, as was done in South Africa with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Here the belief was that reconciliation and stability would be much more easy to achieve if people testified about their heinous actions, but then were forgiven, instead of prosecuted. This, many argue, has allowed that intractable conflict to be transformed much more effectively than it might have been, had whites been threatened with prosecution for crimes against humanity or other violations of international law.

The Aftermath of Genocide

Acts of genocide cause people to flee dangerous areas, becoming refugees or internally displaced people (IDPs). Great numbers of refugees fleeing to neighboring countries can be a social, political, and economic burden on those countries. Refugees often encounter discrimination in new countries, and may have no choice but to live in refugee camps, not knowing when or if they will return home. When they do return, they don't know if they will find their homes and possessions intact. This is but one of myriad problems faced by individuals, communities, and societies after a genocide ends.

Once the acts of genocide come under control, and accountability for the crimes is being enforced, the processes of peacebuilding , reconciliation , and healing must begin. Victim groups will, understandably, have a great deal of hatred for their oppressors. Relations between enemy ethnic groups must improve; otherwise retaliatory violence is essentially assured. Efforts to forge new relations between groups and to empower the victim group are justified. Realistically, though, true reconciliation will likely take a long time, as the crimes are horrible enough to make them nearly unforgivable.

The greatest challenge following genocide is rebuilding a society, since a conflict that at one time might have been resolved may now have become intractable. The rebuilt society must have a power-sharing form of government in order to prevent future inequalities that could lead to violent retaliation. Preventing a cycle of hatred and violence becomes the central challenge.

However, sharing power with one's past enemy, especially following such a horrible crime as genocide, may not be possible. Peace is often tenuous in these situations, as is the case today in Rwanda and Cambodia .

[1] Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism for genocide. Ethnic cleansing means "the purging, by mass expulsion or killing, of one ethnic or religious group by another" according to the Oxford English Dictionary "ethnic cleansing" avaliable at http://www.oed.com/ . The term is derived from the Serbian and Croatian etniko ienje and was first used in the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia, especially to describe the actions taken by the Serbian government against ethnic Albanian Muslims living in Kosovo. The Serb government wished to have a Serbia for Serbs and tried to rid its southern region, Kosovo, of non-Serbs.

[2] Some moderate Hutus were also victims of mass killings in 1994.

[3] United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

[4] Decoust, MichPle. "Australia 's Forgotten Dreamtime." [on-line] ( Le Monde diplomatique , October 2000) Available from http://mondediplo.com/2000/10/14abos . Accessed 28 January 2002.

[5] Notably, the United States and China have not ratified the Rome Statute, each having political objections to certain aspects of the treaty. Negotiation efforts between the ICC and countries yet to ratify its power continue. For up-to-date information on such efforts, see http://www.iccnow.org/countryinfo.html

Use the following to cite this article: McMorran, Chris and Norman Schultz. "Genocide ." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: August 2003 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/war-crimes-genocide >.

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Century Of Genocide: Critical Essays And Eyewitness Accounts

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To help the reader learn about the similarities and differences among the various cases, each case is structured around specific leading questions. In every chapter authors address: Who committed the genocide? How was the genocide committed? Why was the genocide committed? Who were the victims? What were the outstanding historical forces? What was the long-range impact? What were the responses? How do scholars interpret this genocide? How does learning about this genocide contribute to the field of study?

While the material in each chapter is based on sterling scholarship and wide-ranging expertise of the authors, eyewitness accounts give voice to the victims. This book is an attempt to provoke the reader into understanding that learning about genocide is important and that we all have a responsibility not to become immune to acts of genocide, especially in the interdependent world in which we live today.

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Genocide: the power and problems of a concept

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Cecilia Ducci, Genocide: the power and problems of a concept, International Affairs , Volume 98, Issue 5, September 2022, Pages 1786–1787, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiac170

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Andrea Graziosi and Frank Sysyn's Genocide: the power and problems of a concept explores the inherent tensions surrounding the definition of this crime and makes a significant contribution to the study of genocide. As the introduction points out, genocide presents an intrinsic ‘friction between a legal and thus basically rigid concept, and the multifaceted realities explored by research in fields such as history, anthropology, law, area studies, gender studies, and the history of ideas’ (p. 3). The book aims to ‘contribute to a more nuanced understanding’ of genocide and shed light on the challenges and inner contradictions of this crime (p. 3). To do so, the contributors review the history of genocide in the twentieth century with a variety of chapters that may be of interest to a broad audience studying genocide, history, sociology and International Relations (IR).

In the first chapter, Anton Weiss-Wendt critically assesses the drafting of the Genocide Convention. Highlighting the competing interests of great powers, Weiss-Wendt argues that ‘it was meant to be a dead letter’ (p. 23). Annette F. Timm then denounces the exclusion of sexual violence from commemorations and education regarding genocide, in particular the Holocaust, as a form of silencing. Ronald Grigor Suny's chapter stands out as he criticizes the widespread trend of condensing all types of mass violence into the category of genocide. Instead, he proposes the categorization of violence into ‘exemplary’, ‘excisionary or exterminationist’ and ‘residual’, arguing that ‘genocide and genocidal are distinct’ ideas (p. 89). Norman M. Naimark's and Graziosi's chapters are somewhat complementary with their shared focus on Soviet famines of the 1930s, such as the Holodomor in Ukraine. This way, the book sheds light on the use of starvation as a tool of genocide.

In a similar vein, Douglas Irvin-Erickson references Raphael Lemkin's 1953 speech about the Ukrainian genocide (pp. 145–6). Despite calling the Genocide Convention ‘a product of post-World War II geopolitics’, Irvin-Erickson actually warns against broadening the scope of genocide to avoid watering down its meaning under international law (p. 149). Caroline Fournet analyses the problems of genocide from another perspective, focusing on the French reluctance to apply the Genocide Convention, while Michelle Tusan describes genocide as a process which should account for the ‘experience beyond the moment of atrocity’ (p. 216). Finally, Scott Straus ends the book with a thought-provoking point about the one-sided framing of the Rwanda case, claiming that public attention has neglected to consider the non-genocidal crimes that were committed before, during and after the Rwandan genocide. By exploring other types of violence in the Rwandan context, Straus ultimately contends that, given its status, the exclusive focus on genocide can divert public attention from other forms of mass violence (p. 245).

Given the wide array of scholars that contributed to the volume, the book builds on what seems to be an inner contradiction. On the one hand, it calls for the extension of the category of genocide to accommodate the ever-changing and diverse realities of violence. On the other hand, it highlights how the emphasis on genocide reinforces the perception that other forms of non-genocidal violence (that do not reach the threshold of genocide) are perceived as ‘less worthy of sustained attention’ (p. 240). It is therefore unclear where the book stands on this issue: should the definition be broadened to encompass cases that are not legally and historically considered full-fledged genocides? Or should the problem be countered by stressing the existence and relevance of other mass atrocities, such as crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and war crimes? The book accurately illustrates how the geopolitical interests that led to the current definition of genocide have inevitably raised the well-known debates over whether we should stick to a narrow conceptualization or adopt a broader understanding of this crime. On this note, it would have been worth emphasizing that these discussions fundamentally stem from the superior status attributed to genocide, which has been acquired over time from both a legal and a socio-historical perspective. A brief overview of the jurisprudence on genocide in the first few chapters could have stressed this point.

To conclude, the book makes a valuable contribution to the current understanding of genocide and its numerous contradictions. It provides empirical examples of the discussions regarding its definition over the years and goes a step further by bringing to the fore the oft-neglected concept of ‘transformative genocides’ (p. 7). The contributors also usefully unpack the motivations and the narratives that sustain this phenomenon. The book deals with the limitations of the concept of genocide from different perspectives and through several case-studies in a skilful way. Overall, it has significant implications for further studies on the politicization of genocide.

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Adolf Hitler’s Role in the Holocaust: a Historical Analysis

One of the most terrible incidents in human history is the part played by Adolf Hitler in the Holocaust. Six million Jews and millions of others were killed in this systematic state-sponsored persecution that serves as a sobering warning about the perils of totalitarian governments and unbridled hatred. The massive Nazi apparatus under Hitler's leadership his strategic choices and his ideological convictions all played significant roles in the planning of this massacre. Adolf Hitler who was born in Austria in […]

When did the Holocaust End? Examining the Conclusion of a Dark Era and its Lasting Impact on World History

The Holocaust stands as a profound testament to both the darkest capabilities of human nature and the extraordinary resilience inherent in the human spirit. As World War II neared its end, the relentless machinery of the Nazi genocide continued unabated, despite the shifting tides of battle. The encroachment of Allied forces into Nazi-occupied lands brought with it a sliver of hope in a period overshadowed by immense darkness. The liberation of the concentration camps underscored the resilience of the human […]

Teaching Guides

New resistance, agency, and empowerment.

The Resistance, Agency, and Empowerment teaching unit explores the concept, forms, and examples of resistance through which students learn about genocide. Examining individual and collective actions in response to the Armenian Genocide and its denial as it was being carried out and over the course of more than a century thereafter, the unit highlights the long, continuing legacy of genocide and the value of individual choice and cooperation in affecting positive change. (more…)

NEW! Armenian Life in the Ottoman Empire Before 1915

Life under the Ottoman Empire had its own unique challenges and opportunities for Armenians, as is evident through this collection of pictures, courtesy of the Project Save Armenian Photo Archives, Inc. This lesson focuses on analyzing primary sources (more…)

New! “Bird Letters” Lesson & Activity

Understanding other cultures means exploring their languages, beliefs, art, traditions. Central to the Armenian identity is the unique language and alphabet, a deeply held religious faith, and their unique expression of these two components in “illuminated manuscripts” (handwritten books decorated with elaborate designs or miniature pictures.) These ancient texts are still revered by Armenians… (more…)

Stages of Genocide: A Toolkit for Educators

Studying genocide is a critical part of a student’s understanding of both history and of current events. The Stages of Genocide Toolkit is designed to help teachers cover the topic in a meaningful and incisive way, introducing students to the phenomenon of genocide itself and then examining it through multiple case studies. (more…)

Operation Nemesis: Using a murder trial to teach about the Armenian Genocide

Soghomon Tehlirian, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, assassinated Talaat Pasha, the primary architect of the Armenian Genocide, in Berlin in 1921. Although there was no doubt Tehlirian committed the murder, the jury found him not guilty, after hearing 2 days of testimony about the genocide planned and executed by Talaat Pasha. The trial helped motivate Raphael Lemkin to coin the word “genocide.”

(more…)

Survivor Objects: the Zeytun Gospels

The Zeytun Gospels, an 800-year-old manuscript, survived the Armenian Genocide. Understanding the life of an object like the Zeytun Gospels illuminates the devastation of genocide. It also shows how justice, even in small doses, can be found amidst the ruins left by genocide. (more…)

Human Rights and Genocide: A Case Study of the First Modern Genocide of the 20th Century

This comprehensive teacher’s manual focuses on the Armenian Genocide of 1915 during which 1.5 million Armenians, half of the Armenian population, were systematically annihilated. It includes a 1-day, 2-day, and 10-day unit with all the materials teachers will need, including more than two dozen overheads, interactive classroom exercises and more. Discussions include a wide range of topics related to the Armenian Genocide: the history of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, primary source documents, witness and survivor memoirs, maps and political-economic timelines, and the problem of denial. (more…)

Two Day Lesson on the Armenian Genocide

This is a compressed version of The Genocide Education Project’s ten-day curriculum found in Human Rights and Genocide: A Case Study of the First Modern Genocide of the 20th Century . It is to be completed in two fifty-minute class periods, with 2 homework assignments, one before and another between the lessons. The lesson includes the definition of genocide, historical background on the Armenian case, a review of other major genocides, a short national TV news piece, and readings from survivor testimonies.

Finding a New Life: The Armenians of Watertown

Finding a New Life: The Armenians of Watertown is an introductory unit providing a background to the history of the Armenian Genocide, the effects of the genocide on subsequent generations in Watertown, and universalizes the experience for other groups who have found safe haven in Watertown. Finding a New Life illustrates the continued pain and damage that genocide brings and the fortitude of those searching for the truth.

Deli Sarkis: The Scars He Carried

This lesson plan is accompanies readings from the book Deli Sarkis: The Scars He Carried by Ellen Sarkisian Chesnut. The lesson was created by Frank Perez, World History teacher at San Benito High School in Hollister, CA. (more…)

THE PROMISE lesson plan: Concepts of Resistance

“Our revenge will be to survive,” says the character Ana to Michael in the feature film, The Promise . This lesson introduces students to the efforts by genocide victim populations to respond to the violence against them. Using the feature film, The Promise , students are guided through readings, discussions, and exercises about the Armenian Genocide and the different forms resistance can take.

The Other Side of Home

GenEd has created a discussion guide to accompany this compelling 40-minute documentary which explores a Turkish woman’s discovery of her hidden Armenian heritage and the legacy of genocide denial. “The Other Side of Home” is now available to view through public library online streaming services, Kanopy, Hoopla, and Overdrive, using your public library card number (If you don’t have a card, many libraries now accept online library card applications.)

THE PROMISE: film study guide

The film, The Promise, released in 2017, is the first major Hollywood dramatic feature recounting the history of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, perpetrated by the Turkish government. The film provides a unique educational opportunity to understand the greatest atrocity and human rights crisis of WWI. It also opens a window onto the German and American presence in the (more…)

Memorializing Genocide: A Tulip Garden

How should genocide be remembered? This lesson and activity begins with a classroom discussion about how communities remember major historical events, including human rights atrocities. Students also learn the allegorical story of Armenian botanist JJ Manissadjian, who studied and catalogued a rare, wild tulip found in the Armenian homeland in pre-WWI Ottoman Empire. The tulip became extinct in the wild, but was cultivated later from seeds Manissadjian had sent to Europe. Manissadjian was imprisoned during the Armenian Genocide, but escaped and immigrated to Europe and the United States. The tulip story is symbolic of the fate of Armenians.

Ten Stages of Genocide

This teaching guide is based on genocide scholar Dr. Gregory H. Stanton’s work “Ten Stages of Genocide” (an update of his previous “Eight Stages of Genocide,” 1996.) The progression of stages is a formula for how genocide is prepared, carried out, and produces long-lasting repercussions. Beginning with prejudice, genocide develops over time, involving the cooperation of a large number of people and the state; This lesson helps students understand genocide as a process that can be corrected and prevented.

Educator’s Guide for “Like Water for Stone” Novel

Like Water on Stone by Dana Walrath is fictional account of the Armenian genocide. This novel in verse recounts the flight to America of three Armenian children after the Ottoman Turks confiscate their family’s flour mill and murder their parents. For sixty-three days the children travel on foot, above the tree line of the Caucasus Mountains and through the Syrian Desert, to reach refuge in Aleppo, Syria. Taken in by a sympathetic Arab shopkeeper, the children disguise themselves as Arabs to avoid being forcibly relocated to the Deir el-Zor concentration camp, where starvation and barbarity led to certain death. After three years in hiding, the children finally receive a letter and boat tickets to America from their keri (maternal uncle).

The book’s Educator’s Guide was created for Random House by Judith Turner, a longtime educator at Terrace Community Middle School in Tampa, Florida. It includes pre-reading activities, discussion and activity prompts and a list of Common Core Standards correlations.

They Shall Not Perish: The Story of Near East Relief

They Shall Not Perish: The Story of Near East Relief is a 32-page curriculum booklet on America’s response to the Armenian Genocide, through the work of the Near East Relief foundation. NER workers courageously bore witness to the genocide and fed, clothed, and provided medical treatment to thousands of refugees. Near East Relief is credited with saving over one million lives between 1915 and 1930, including 132,000 orphan children, in what was the largest international humanitarian effort up until that time.

An Armenian Journey: From Despair to Hope in Rhode Island

A curriculum resource guide and video documentary created by The Genocide Education Project in cooperation with the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. The Armenian Journey: From Despair to Hope in Rhode Island provides a background to the history of the Armenian Genocide, the effects of the Genocide on subsequent generations, and universalizes the experience for other groups who have found safe haven in the United States. The video and resource guide illustrates and elucidates the continued pain that the enormous crime of genocide and its denial brings, as well as the fortitude of those searching for truth. (more…)

The New York Times and the Armenian Genocide

A Lesson Plan based on The Armenian Genocide – News Accounts from the American Press, 1915-1922

This curriculum extracts articles from the book, “The Armenian Genocide: News Accounts from the American Press,” compiled by Richard Kloian (available from GenEd and can be ordered for $25 by emailing). Including 200 New York Times articles, other journalistic accounts, U.S. Ambassador Morgenthau’s personal account of the genocide, survivor accounts, telegrams from the genocide perpetrator, photographs, and more, the book presents a compelling chronicle of the systematic deportations and massacres of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, perpetrated by the Turkish governing authorities between 1915 and 1922.

iwitness Photo Activity

The i w itness photo documentary project was begun by artists Ara Oshagan and Levon Parian in 1995, when they began photographing and later interviewing survivors of the Armenian Genocide.

The photographs were first exhibited at the Downey Museum of Art in southern California in 1999, and later featured in the LA Times Sunday Magazine and many other venues. During the centennial commemoration of the Armenian Genocide in 2015, the exhibit was re-made into a large-scale public art installation on three levels at the Music Center and Grand Park in Downtown Los Angeles.

i witness provides an ideal vehicle for middle-high school students to explore first-person testimonies of the Armenian Genocide through an artistic, interpretive lens.

Exhibit installation images by Ara Oshagan, Levon Parian, Vahagn Thomassian, Narineh Mirzaeian | www.iwitness1915.org

Genocide and the Human Voice: Nicole’s Journey

This interactive online classroom provides students a background to the history of the Armenian Genocide and the effects of the denial of the Genocide on subsequent generations. Nicole’s real life journey to the village of her grandmother, now in Eastern Turkey, illustrates the continued pain that genocide brings and the fortitude of those searching for truth. (more…)

Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization: The Genocide of the Armenians

FROM FACING HISTORY AND OURSELVES:

Facing History’s resource book, Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization: The Genocide of the Armenians, combines the latest scholarship on the Armenian Genocide with an interdisciplinary approach to history, enabling students and teachers to make the essential connections between history and their own lives. By concentrating on the choices that individuals, groups, and nations made before, during, and after the genocide, readers have the opportunity to consider the dilemmas faced by the international community in the face of massive human rights violations. (more…)

The Armenians: Shadows of a Forgotten Genocide

Published by the Holocaust Resource Center and Archives, Bayside, New York for its 1999 Armenian Genocide exhibit, this 23-page booklet includes a brief history on the Armenian Genocide, news coverage, maps, the continuing Turkish government denial, and discussion questions.

Contact The Genocide Education Project for the booklet.

The Armenian Genocide, 1915 – 1923: A Handbook for Students and Teachers

Prepared by the Armenian Cultural Foundation

About the Author: Simon Payaslian holds a Ph.D. In political science (Wayne State University, 1992) and is a Teaching Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

This handbook provides both a historical perspective of the Genocide and an overview of international and national constraints in preventing the genocides that followed, highlighting the world’s inability to deal appropriately with the perpetrators of the Armenian Tragedy.

This book also provides teachers with maps, graphs, and eyewitness accounts as well as valuable teaching aids such as the worksheets, discussion and essay topics to maximize the student’s understanding of how the unspeakable can occur and recur even in contemporary times.

Model Curriculum For Human Rights and Genocide

Published for the California State Board of Education by the California Department of Education ISBN 0-8011-0725-3

This Model Curriculum for Human Rights and Genocide, which serves as a guide for classroom teachers, supports the curriculum and instruction described in the framework. Pages 1-5 of this document contain a model that can be used by developers of curriculum. This section provides the philosophical bases for including studies on human rights and genocide in the curriculum, identifies places in the history-social science courses where learnings can be included, and poses questions that will engage students in critical thinking on this topic. (more…)

Teaching the Armenian Genocide: Resources for Teachers, Students and Educators

Published by the Armenian Genocide Resource Center (AGRC) of Northern California

This resource guide lists books, teaching guides, research reports, monographs, archival documents, bibliographies, photographs, websites, videos, and maps available on the Armenian Genocide.

Confronting Genocide: Never Again?

FROM THE CHOICES PROGRAM:

Overview of the Unit – The genocides of the twentieth century elicited feelings of horror and revulsion throughout the world. Yet both the international community and the United States have struggled to respond to this recurring problem. (more…)

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Article contents

Genocide and american indian history.

Jeffrey Ostler Jeffrey Ostler Department of History, University of Oregon
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.3
Published online: 02 March 2015

The issue of genocide and American Indian history has been contentious. Many writers see the massive depopulation of the indigenous population of the Americas after 1492 as a clear-cut case of the genocide. Other writers, however, contend that European and U.S. actions toward Indians were deplorable but were rarely if ever genocidal. To a significant extent, disagreements about the pervasiveness of genocide in the history of the post-Columbian Western Hemisphere, in general, and U.S. history, in particular, pivot on definitions of genocide. Conservative definitions emphasize intentional actions and policies of governments that result in very large population losses, usually from direct killing. More liberal definitions call for less stringent criteria for intent, focusing more on outcomes. They do not necessarily require direct sanction by state authorities; rather, they identify societal forces and actors. They also allow for several intersecting forces of destruction, including dispossession and disease. Because debates about genocide easily devolve into quarrels about definitions, an open-ended approach to the question of genocide that explores several phases and events provides the possibility of moving beyond the present stalemate. However one resolves the question of genocide in American Indian history, it is important to recognize that European and U.S. settler colonial projects unleashed massively destructive forces on Native peoples and communities. These include violence resulting directly from settler expansion, intertribal violence (frequently aggravated by colonial intrusions), enslavement, disease, alcohol, loss of land and resources, forced removals, and assaults on tribal religion, culture, and language. The configuration and impact of these forces varied considerably in different times and places according to the goals of particular colonial projects and the capacities of colonial societies and institutions to pursue them. The capacity of Native people and communities to directly resist, blunt, or evade colonial invasions proved equally important.

Native Americans
American Indians
colonialism
imperialism
Indian removal
ethnic cleansing
Indian reservations
assimilation

The title of this essay, by suggesting that genocide is a part of American Indian history, is likely to evoke diametrically opposed responses. Did the actions and policies of Europeans and U.S. Americans toward Indians qualify as genocide or not? Academics, students, citizens, in short, almost everyone has an opinion on the subject. Some are certain that the answer to the question is yes, that the massive depopulation of indigenous America after 1492 was a clear-cut case of genocide. Others, however, are equally certain that the answer is no, namely that European and U.S. American actions and policies toward Indians were (at least sometimes) deplorable but cannot be labeled as genocidal.

This essay begins with the premise that the issue of genocide in American Indian history is far too complex to yield a simple yes-or-no answer. The relevant history, after all, is a long one (more than five hundred years) involving hundreds of indigenous nations and several European and neo-European empires and imperial nation-states. While it would be absurd to reduce this history to any single category, genocide included, it would be reasonable to predict that genocide was a part of this history. With this in mind, the essay invites readers to resist a tendency toward a quick or easy resolution of the question of genocide in American Indian history and to engage in an open-ended exploration. The object is not a definitive answer but a clarification of the issues.

More than many debates, those about genocide often center on definitions. Because of this fact, readers might expect an essay on genocide to begin by discussing various definitions of the term (and related terms such as ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide) and proceed either to argue for one definition as authoritative or to propose a new one. This approach, however, would work against my objective of facilitating an open-ended exploration of the issue, and so a formal discussion of definitions will be deferred to the historiographical section at the end of this essay, though, as the essay develops, it will pause periodically to consider how specific events or phases might or might not be regarded as genocidal depending on definitions that have been or could be applied to them. As will become apparent, debates about whether or not specific cases and phases qualify as genocide typically center on these issues: the intentions of historical actors (including but not limited to governments), the extent of depopulation of particular groups, and the causes of their depopulation.

Virgin Soil Epidemics and Native Depopulation

Discussions about genocide in the Americas often begin with the moment of initial contact between Europeans and Native people and emphasize the catastrophic impact of European diseases (especially smallpox and measles) for which Indians had no acquired immunity. Until the 1960s, scholars lacked an appreciation for the massive loss of life from what Alfred Crosby termed “virgin soil epidemics,” and so they drastically understated the size of the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere population. A standard estimate was 8 million for the entire hemisphere and 1 million north of the Rio Grande. In the 1960s, however, the anthropologist Henry Dobyns took account of disease to provide much higher estimates of 75 million for the hemisphere and 10–12 million north of Mexico. Although Dobyns’s estimates have been hotly debated, even advocates of much lower figures acknowledge the impact of devastating epidemics. 1

Advocates of the “yes it was genocide” position have generally accepted high estimates for the pre-Columbian population and a correspondingly very high figure for initial depopulation. If 75 million people lived in in the Western Hemisphere in 1491 and the death toll from epidemic disease was 70, 80, or even 90 percent (as was sometimes the case), the sheer numbers (50–60 million) are overwhelming and compel recognition as genocide when measured against the numbers for commonly accepted cases of genocide in the twentieth century. 2

Ironically, however, an emphasis on a very high number for initial depopulation can provide an opening for a counter position. Since Europeans who brought pathogens to the Western Hemisphere did not do so with the intention of killing indigenous people and since under many definitions intentionality is a crucial criterion for genocide, a high number can be used to support a “no it was not genocide” position on the grounds that the vast majority of deaths do not qualify. 3 To counter this position, some writers have provided examples of Europeans intentionally inflicting Indians with disease (usually through blankets inflected with smallpox) and argued for their typicality. 4 But the evidence marshaled thus far has failed to dislodge a scholarly consensus that the intentional infliction of disease was rare. To the extent, then, that the question of genocide and American Indian history centers or depends heavily on the question of the size and intentionality of disease-caused depopulation, the “no it was not genocide” position remains credible.

Good reason exists, however, to challenge the premise that the extent and intentionality of initial depopulation from disease is crucial to the question of genocide and American Indian history. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that European and European American actions toward the Indians of eastern North America during the eighteenth century (long after the first epidemics) were consistently genocidal according to the most conservative definition of the successful execution of a societal or governmental intention to physically kill all Indians. An arithmetic approach assigning the majority of total deaths to disease would argue against regarding the last phase in depopulation as genocide, yet why should the number of Indians in that region who had died earlier from disease have any bearing on an assessment of whether the annihilation of the survivors would qualify as genocide or not? Whether the annihilated survivors were 10, 30, or 50 percent of a pre-Columbian population would be irrelevant.

For a discussion of genocide, then, the issue is not so much the impact of initial epidemics but the effects of direct actions Europeans and European Americans took toward Indians through wars of conquest, enslavement, forced dispossession and removal, and destruction of material resources. In this context, disease is relevant as part of an assessment of the consequence of colonizers’ actions. War, for example, can result in displacement, impoverishment, and social stress, thus increasing vulnerability to pathogens. Often, in fact, epidemic disease did not appear at the moment of initial contact but instead emerged at a later stage when processes of colonization were well underway.

Disease and Other Forces of Destruction

To make these observations more concrete, let us look at what happened in the place where Columbus first landed, the Caribbean. Given the common narrative of Europeans bringing destructive microbes, it is perhaps surprising that Columbus’s first voyage did not result in the transmission of epidemic disease to Caribbean Indians, but, of course, groups of Europeans who encountered Indians did not always include people who were sick and contagious. The situation was different on Columbus’s second voyage ( 1493–1496 ). Soon after landing, some of the crew became ill, probably from influenza, and infected the Native populations of Hispaniola, Cuba, and Jamaica. The severity of the epidemic was probably related to the prior lack of exposure of Indians to the pathogens in question, though the epidemic cannot be separated from other forces of destruction. The expedition’s goal was not to kill Indians, but as its leaders and men pursued their main objective—acquiring gold—they did exactly that. To obtain gold, Spaniards needed Indians’ knowledge and labor and so enslaved them, using violence to secure Native peoples and keep them in chains. Some accounts, such as one by Bartolomé de Las Casas of Spaniards making bets “as to who would slit a man in two, or cut off his head at one blow” or tearing “babes from their mother’s breast by their feet, and dash[ing] their heads against the rocks,” suggest a genocidal mentality, though such accounts may imply that these actions were the product of particularly depraved men and unrelated to the purposes of the expedition. In fact, however, the expedition’s leaders saw violence as essential for achieving their goals. To create and maintain slavery and to suppress real and imagined insurrections, the Spanish regularly maimed, murdered, and waged war against Native people. The purpose was not to kill every single Indian (some were needed to work) but to terrorize them into submission. Rape, evidently common, did not simply reveal individual or group pathologies, it functioned as a tool of terror. Violence, then, was central to Spanish colonization in the Caribbean, although far more Indians died from disease, malnutrition, and starvation. 5

Little evidence is available for the death toll for the first few years of Spanish colonization. It is clear, however, that as the Spanish colonizing project expanded in the early sixteenth century, its destructive impacts escalated. Violence continued to be a factor (in 1502, Nicolás de Ovando, the Spanish governor of Hispaniola, massacred some six to seven hundred Indians from the chiefdom of Higüey who had rebelled in protest of the Spanish use of attack dogs) as did malnutrition and disease (dysentery, typhus, etc.) under conditions of coerced labor and economic disruptions. Another major epidemic—smallpox—swept through the islands in 1518–1519. By this time, however, the indigenous population of the major islands had been greatly reduced. On Hispaniola only twenty to thirty thousand adult Tainos remained alive, far fewer than the pre-Columbian population of at least several hundred thousand and by some estimates as high as 8 million. In this instance, then, smallpox, so often appearing as an initial destroyer, arrived with a horrific catastrophe well underway. By 1542 , the Native population of Hispaniola was only two thousand. Enslaved Africans were now the main source of labor. 6 Only a small percentage of Caribbean Indians died from virgin soil epidemics in the commonly understood sense of epidemics arriving just in advance of, or at the moment of, initial contact, though disease was undoubtedly the largest killer, flourishing under conditions the Spanish created as they colonized the islands. Some analysts might apply a strict interpretation of intent and conclude that the Spanish did not commit genocide, since they did not establish a formal plan to exterminate all Indians. Other analysts, however, might observe that the large majority of Indians who died during these fifty years did so under conditions that the Spanish created as they pursued their objectives and contend that this should be considered genocide under a looser interpretation of intent.

The timing of disease and its intersection with other forces of destruction varied from region to region within the Americas. In what became the southeastern United States, as historian Paul Kelton has shown, Ponce de León’s 1513 expedition and subsequent Spanish explorations did not introduce new diseases into the region, though disruptions from these expeditions created conditions for already existing pathogens like syphilis and yaws to spread. It was not until the late seventeenth century that the classic killer smallpox appeared. When it did its spread was closely connected to the British colonial project of exploiting existing indigenous practices of captive taking to create markets both for slaves outside Indian country and for European goods (manufacturers, alcohol, clothing) within it. The slave trade directly contributed to the depopulation of many Indian communities, but its most damaging consequence was the creation of conditions for the transmission of epidemic disease. When smallpox broke out in Virginia in 1696 it spread rapidly along networks of human contact that had been shaped by violence, deracination, and deprivation, destroying Indian communities from the Carolinas to the Gulf Coast and up the Mississippi River to Illinois. It was only now, two hundred years after the first European set foot in the Southeast, that Native populations experienced the catastrophic population declines usually associated with initial contact epidemics. As in the Caribbean, when smallpox struck, it was a consequence of European economic pursuits. 7

In one of the last regions affected by the European invasion, the Pacific Northwest, the story is closer to the usual one of devastating initial contact epidemics. It was not until almost three hundred years after Columbus that Europeans began exploring the coast of what is now Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Smallpox first appeared in the region in the mid-1770s, probably transmitted by Spanish expeditions landing along the coast. Over the next fifty years, smallpox epidemics continued to devastate Native communities, though in contrast to expectations of a linear population decline, northwestern Indians were able to recover a good part of their post-contact losses. Indians had time to recover between epidemics, and these epidemics became less severe over time as surviving populations acquired immunities to a greater range of disease. 8 During these decades, Indians in this region were not subject to other massively destructive forces. The main European colonial project in the Northwest was the fur trade. The exchange of furs for European goods occasionally led to disputes that sometimes became violent. Over time, the trade encouraged consumption of alcohol, prostitution, and destruction of game, all forces that damaged Indian health and community well-being. Compared to many other colonial enterprises, however, the fur trade was relatively benign and had positive short-term consequences for individuals and communities who were positioned to improve their material well-being and advance strategic objectives.

However, in the 1830s malaria—a new disease—repeatedly struck Chinooks and Kalapuyas along the lower Columbia and Willamette Rivers. According to anthropologist Robert Boyd, between 1830 and 1841 , the Native population in this area declined by as much as 90 percent. Unlike the 1696 smallpox epidemic in the Southeast, the 1830s malaria epidemics in the Northwest were only indirectly related to colonialism. Europeans, of course, introduced malaria (probably by way of Pacific trade networks), but the disease spread in an environment that European colonial projects had not yet disrupted. 9 More than many epidemics, then, this one fits the standard story of a massively devastating inadvertent virgin soil epidemic. As suggested earlier, however, an “unintended” population collapse may be irrelevant to an assessment of genocide. The crucial question is what happened next. One thing that happened is that Native populations did not recover or, to put it another way, were never allowed to recover. The reason was the advent of a new phase in the region’s colonization: the coming of American missionaries and settlers with an intention to remake Indian country in their own image. Although missionaries offered Christian conversion, as historian Gray Whaley has argued, they saw colonization as a progressive development that might allow for the salvation of a few individual Indians but would otherwise result in their general dispossession and extermination. Once settlers arrived, they forced Indians off their land, often squatting on Native land in advance of treaties, which eventually legalized dispossession. Indians sometimes forced treaty negotiators to make concessions and thereby gained certain advantages, but this does not mean that Indians “voluntarily” ceded their land. Instead, the on-the-ground facts of squatter occupation combined with severe material deprivation and the threat and actual use of violence constituted powerful means of coercion. Violence was especially pronounced in southwestern Oregon in the early 1850s when gold rush settlers waged a war of extermination against Indians, a clear-cut case of genocidal intent. For some, though, even this case might not qualify as genocide, since the federal government did not directly sanction settler actions (even though it did underwrite expansion into the region). In the same decade, settlers in the Puget Sound area went to war to subdue a Native resistance movement led by the Nisqually chief Leschi. In this situation, however, war did not escalate into one of total elimination, as a relatively small settler population lacked the inclination, impetus, and power to eliminate Indians. 10

New England and the Pequot War

If discussions of genocide in the Americas are initially hemispheric and give some attention to Spanish imperialism in the Caribbean and Mesoamerica, they usually soon look north to English colonial settlements in Virginia and New England. The actions of the Pilgrims and Puritans toward Indians, especially, are seen as constitutive and emblematic of a subsequent colonial and U.S. national history.

In 1616 , just prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims, an epidemic (variously identified as typhus, yellow fever, and leptospirosis) struck New England coastal Indian communities and raged for three years. Current estimates are that the epidemic killed up to 90 percent of the Native population in the Massachusetts Bay area. When the Pilgrims arrived in 1620 , they saw evidence of massive depopulation and attributed it to the “good hand of God . . . that he might make room for us there.” Another epidemic—this time smallpox—hit in 1633–1634 . 11 Discussions about genocide in New England have focused less on these epidemics than on the 1637 Pequot War when Puritan leaders authorized military action to punish Pequots for killing English traders. Supported by Naragansett and Mohegan allies, a colonial force set fire to a village of several hundred Pequots on the Mystic River and killed most of those who tried to escape. The colonists hunted down surviving Pequots, killing some and selling others into slavery, and then imposed a treaty that abolished the Pequot nation. 12

Scholars who hold that colonial actions against the Pequots do not constitute genocide argue that Pequot raiding genuinely threatened the colonists and so they were acting in self-defense; that the colonists’ actions at Mystic River were spontaneous; that the colonists’ enslavement of some Pequots shows that they did not intend to kill them all; and that the colonists did not intend to kill all Indians, as evidenced by their alliance with Naragansetts and Mohegans. Those who argue for the Pequot War as a case of genocide respond that the war’s ultimate cause was colonial expansion; that although colonists may have genuinely seen themselves as threatened, this was objectively untrue and ultimately an aspect of a worldview that assumed their cultural superiority over savage Indians; that although the colonists’ cultural chauvinism was not necessarily genocidal toward all Indians, in the case of Indians acting against colonial interests (like the Pequots), it could lead to a genocidal mentality; and that even though colonists did not kill all Pequots, their killing of a substantial number, including noncombatants, and their legal declaration of national extinction constitute genocide by many definitions. 13

To some extent, this debate involves reiteration of older arguments about whether colonists’ actions were legitimate or deplorable. 14 In the end, though, the debate about genocide and the Pequot War hinges on definitions. Under a narrow definition of genocide as requiring an intention to physically eliminate every single individual of an ethnic or racial group (even if the relevant group is limited to the Pequots and is not construed as all Indians), the Pequot War does not qualify. If, however, the definition is loosened to include cases of an intention to destroy a group by physically eliminating a substantial portion of its numbers, it probably does, since evidence is abundant of an exterminatory disposition prior to the Mystic River massacre. On the spectrum of available definitions of genocide, some of which assess impact, not intention, and some of which require only cultural destruction, this one is still fairly conservative since it retains the necessity for intent and massive killing.

For those critical of the Puritans, the Pequot War has the status of a national original sin, and so it is understandable that it would become the focus of intense debate about genocide. What decision is reached about this particular case, however, may not be of more than limited utility in resolving the broader question of genocide in American history. The definition chosen for evaluating the Pequot War, of course, would guide considerations of other instances of massive violence, but it would still be necessary to identify patterns of violence over time, locate them within a broader context of European Americans’ ideologies, policies, and actions, and relate them to other forces of destruction. Ultimately, this involves taking into account complex histories spanning at least three centuries. If conceived of as genocide, the Pequot War may nonetheless be an outlier; if the war is categorized as nongenocidal, it may still be true that colonizers’ subsequent actions were genocidal.

The United States and the Question of Genocide 15

Discussions of genocide in American history generally highlight a few other episodes that occurred prior to 1776 , such as King Philip’s War ( 1675–1678 ), the effort of British general Jeffrey Amherst to dispense smallpox-infected items to rebellious Indians in western Pennsylvania in 1763 , and the Paxton Boys’ slaughter of peaceful Conestogas that same year. But these events are generally treated as precursors to a more extended consideration of genocide in the history of the United States.

Writers who indict the United States and its citizens for genocide cite depopulation from disease, sometimes alleging its intentional infliction. The most frequent charge is that the army or fur traders distributed smallpox blankets to Indians on the upper Missouri River in 1837. 16 Though scholars have generally accepted evidence of an intention to engage in biological warfare for the Amherst case, they have not for the outbreak of smallpox on the upper Missouri. Overall, though, arguments for genocide tend to place more emphasis on massacres and forced removals than disease. Unlike the debate on the Pequot War, in which antagonists have staked out clear positions, there has been no point-by-point response to arguments that the United States systematically committed genocide. This is not because there is a consensus behind the “pro-genocide” position. In fact, although few scholars in the fields of American Indian and western U.S. history have systematically addressed the question of genocide, for many, perhaps most, scholars in these fields, an overarching indictment of genocide seems too extreme. Some might label specific events and cases, such as the Sand Creek massacre of 1864 or widespread settler violence against Indians during the California Gold Rush, as genocidal, but they would not see U.S. policies and settler actions as consistently so. Others would resist arguments for even limited genocide in U.S. history, citing definitions of genocide that would appear to require a federal government policy to physically destroy all (or most) Indians and observing that federal policies were intended to prevent physical disappearance by promoting assimilation. Some scholars would propose ethnic cleansing as an appropriate alternative to genocide. 17 Others might consider assimilation to be a form of cultural genocide but would insist on a strong distinction between this policy and physical elimination.

It is true enough that U.S. policymakers regularly expressed a preference for assimilation, but this does not mean that they rejected physical elimination under all circumstances. To fully comprehend U.S. policy toward Indians it is important to realize that policy was grounded in the nation’s fundamental commitment to territorial expansion. This commitment arose not just from the aggregation of individual settlers’ and speculators’ pursuit of wealth, but also from the premise—central to Americans’ republican political philosophy—that liberty depended on widespread ownership of private property. To build what Thomas Jefferson described as an “empire for liberty,” then, mandated obtaining Indian lands. How would this be done? Policymakers envisioned an ideal scenario in which Indians would willingly sign treaties ceding their lands in exchange for assistance in becoming civilized. But what if Indians refused to cede their lands? What if they rejected the “gift” of civilization? At that point, U.S. policymakers consistently stated, Indians would be subject to war—not the limited warfare that European legal theorists had agreed was acceptable between civilized nations but a war of extermination. In 1790 Secretary of War Henry Knox sanctioned such a war when he ordered the U.S. Army to “extirpate, utterly, if possible” a confederacy of Indians centered in Ohio that had rejected U.S. demands for a land cession. Facing similar opposition seventeen years later, President Jefferson sent word to Indians near Detroit that “if ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi,” adding that should Indians go to war, “they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them.” Genocidal war, then, was not just an option, it was necessary in situations of Native resistance. 18

War, 1776–1815

Because a significant number of Indians consistently rebuffed demands that they cede their lands and because Americans were determined to acquire them anyway, the United States constantly pursued war against Indians. Indeed, America was born fighting Indians. In the early phases of the Revolutionary War most Indian nations allied with Great Britain in large measure because they saw a new settler nation as an unprecedented threat to their lands. In 1779 the United States declared war on the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) to punish them for raids they had undertaken to roll back colonial settlement. The object, in George Washington’s words, was “the total destruction and devastation of their settlements.” When the Continental Army invaded, the Haudenosaunee decided not to risk the loss of life that would result from defending their towns and instead evacuated them. This allowed U.S. troops to burn dwellings and crops, but as Chief Old Smoke later explained, “we lost our Country it is true, but this was to secure our Women & Children.” 19 The number of Haudenosaunee directly killed by the American army was around two hundred (including some women and children), though as many as a thousand died from disease (primarily dysentery but also smallpox) and starvation in refugee camps. Out of a population of 9,000, the death toll from all causes was probably around 15 percent. Had the Haudenosaunee decided to defend their towns, it would almost certainly have been higher.

Many U.S. military operations against Indians had similar dynamics. In some instances, Indians were able to take advantage of their knowledge of terrain and the vulnerability of U.S. forces to achieve resounding victories. In 1791 a force of Miamis, Shawnees, Kickapoos, Weas, Delawares, Potawatomis, and others launched a surprise attack on an invading U.S. expedition and killed six hundred troops (over twice the number killed in the far better known Battle of the Little Bighorn). For the most part, though, Indians were unwilling to risk massive casualties (they were especially concerned to protect women and children) and so generally evacuated their towns, knowing they would be torched. All told, from the late 1770s through 1815, U.S. forces (including state militias) burned hundreds of Indian towns in New York, western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Tennessee, western Virginia, the western Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and western Florida. In most instances, Indians’ intelligence-gathering systems alerted them to impending attacks and so U.S. forces found towns emptied of most inhabitants. Sometimes, however, U.S. forces managed to achieve surprise. When they did, they demonstrated little restraint. In an attack on the Indian town of Ouiatenon on the Wabash River in Indiana in 1791 , for example, a Kentucky militia fired on Indians in five canoes who were trying to escape. The official report stated that militiamen “destroyed all the savages with which five canoes were crowded,” without stating the sex or age of the Indians. Almost certainly, many were noncombatants. In another instance in 1782 a Pennsylvania militia surprised a group of about one hundred Christian Indians at Gnadenhütten in eastern Ohio. In a chilling example of what sociologist Michael Mann has termed the “dark side of democracy,” the militiamen voted on whether or not to kill their captives. When the majority vote was tallied, the militiamen proceeded to slaughter men, women, and children alike. 20

An exception to the general pattern of the reluctance of Indians to risk high casualties was in Alabama, where in the early 1810s the Red Stick Creeks mobilized against American expansion and Creeks they regarded as collaborating with it. When U.S. forces moved against them, Red Sticks repeatedly chose to defend their villages and newly established fortified positions, while at the same time attacking the Americans when they could. Over the course of several months, the Red Sticks sustained massive casualties, culminating in the loss of at least eight hundred in 1814 when Andrew Jackson, “determining to exterminate them,” as he later put it, breached their fortifications at Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River. This event, usually termed a battle, had some characteristics of a massacre. Though most of the Red Sticks killed were combatants, between two and three hundred were shot down while trying to escape by swimming across the Tallapoosa River. Official reports fail to identify them, observing only that “the river ran red with blood,” but undoubtedly many were women and children. 21

Taking stock of the period from 1776 to 1815 , it is clear that the United States never intended to put to death all Indians in the territory it claimed. If that is the standard for genocide, then the term does not apply. On the other hand, U.S. officials consistently demonstrated a willingness to use overwhelming violence against Indian nations it judged to be acting contrary to American interests (self-defined to be just). Most military operations did not result in wholesale slaughter, but this was less a measure of restraint than limited U.S. capacity, on the one hand, and strong Native capacity, on the other. As a general rule, U.S. military operations against Indian communities carried an inherent potential for wholesale violence against combatants and noncombatants or, in the language commonly used at the time, extermination. Military operations often did not result in massacre, sometimes because of their own weakness (inadequate supplies, poor intelligence, failure to avoid detection), more often because of the ability of Indians to avoid being slaughtered, sometimes by fighting back, sometimes by eluding U.S. forces. Over time, what made U.S. military operations effective was their relentlessness. Indians might repulse a single invasion of their country or, if that was impossible, abandon their towns and rebuild, but because the United States had a large and growing population, a high capacity to continuously mobilize young men to fight, and an unwavering commitment to expansion, the nation was able to wage endless war. Faced with the very real possibility that their people would eventually be destroyed utterly, leaders of Indian resistance eventually agreed to U.S. treaties requiring land cessions. The threat of genocide in this very strong sense of the term played a crucial role in allowing the United States to achieve its primary goal of taking Indian lands.

Removal, 1815–1840

After 1815, the United States intensified its efforts to expand. To do so, it adopted a policy, formally institutionalized through the Indian Removal Act of 1830, of moving all Indians living east of the Mississippi River to Indian Territory (the modern states of Kansas and Oklahoma). As measured by lives lost, Indian removal was far more destructive than the earlier period of war. Consider the three largest Indian nations east of the Mississippi, the Choctaws, Creeks, and Cherokees, each with approximately 20,000 people. During the removal process in the 1830s, approximately 2,000 Choctaws, 4,500 Creeks, and 5,000 Cherokees perished, mostly from intersecting factors of disease, starvation, exposure, and demoralization. Many hundreds died during the journey west, though the “trail of tears” metaphor obscures the fact that the majority of deaths occurred in internment camps while awaiting transportation west and in the first few years after relocation. The death toll for all three nations—close to 20 percent—is equivalent to 60 million for the current U.S. population. Smaller nations north of the Ohio also suffered significant losses through removal. A reported forty-three Potawatomis in a group of eight hundred died as they traveled from Indiana to Kansas, while sixty Wyandots, mostly young children, in a group of seven hundred died from disease shortly after their arrival in the West.

To secure Indians’ compliance to relocate, the federal government depended on threats. One was the withdrawal of federal protection, thus making Indians subject to state legal regimes that would leave them vulnerable to settler encroachment and eventual dispossession. U.S. officials also routinely informed Indians that the government would employ violence if they refused to emigrate, a threat that invoked an earlier history of war. When Indians did refuse, officials made good on their word, authorizing war against Sauks and Foxes in the Black Hawk War ( 1832 ) and Seminoles in the Second Seminole War ( 1836–1842 ). In the first instance, an American army had the opportunity to employ unrestrained violence when troops, assisted by Ho Chunk auxiliaries, intercepted Black Hawk’s band as they attempted to cross the Mississippi River from southern Wisconsin. The Americans fired indiscriminately, killing well over two hundred Indians, including noncombatants. In Florida, where the terrain and climate were unfavorable for military operations, the army had a much more difficult time finding, let alone surprising, Seminole settlements and so resorted to tactics such as seizing Seminoles during peace negotiations and sending them to prisons. Although no major massacre occurred during the Second Seminole War, military officers frequently called for the extermination of Seminoles, and so the absence of massacre was not due to a lack of disposition but to the absence of opportunity. Like other Indians in similar circumstances, Seminoles were often able to evade U.S. troops and occasionally inflict casualties on them.

Scholars have begun referring to Indian removal as ethnic cleansing, a term whose aptness seems incontestable. 22 But was it genocide? One response would be that since the United States did not intend to kill Indians (and presented removal as a humane alternative to extinction) and since the deaths that resulted from removal, insufficient to constitute genocide anyway, were the unintended consequence of unforeseen circumstances (bad weather, unanticipated epidemics), genocide does not apply. Another response would be that although removal was not intended to kill, the fact that it had that effect constitutes a limited genocide, especially since government officials had ample cause to know that forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes was likely to result in substantial loss of life, knowledge made more concrete over time as the actual process of removal regularly had this effect. At the very least, it could be said, genocide was present in the removal process in the sense that the policy’s implementation depended on the government’s threats to use unrestrained violence to secure compliance even though officials generally did not have to employ it.

California Gold Rush

The threat of massive violence was realized more readily in Gold Rush California. Even in this case, though, it was not presented as a first option. In 1851 California governor John McDougal warned Indians that if they did not submit to treaties on U.S. terms California would “make war . . . which must of necessity be one of extermination to many of the tribes.” Officials said much the same thing during the period of removal. The difference in California was that settlers and officials were much quicker to sanction massive violence, in part because impulses for extermination were stronger, in part because settlers pressured California Indians to take actions that fueled these impulses. During the 1850s, settlers enslaved California Indians (especially children), overran their lands, and formed militias to hunt them down. In northern California starving Yukis, deprived of game by settler activities, began killing settlers’ livestock. In one instance, a farmer who lost twenty hogs went to a nearby Yuki ranchería , where he and his comrades killed three on the spot and captured five others whom they hanged after a “trial.” Such actions led Yukis to attack settlers, and in turn, settlers escalated their violence. In 1859 militiamen calling themselves the Eel River Rangers went on a killing spree, targeting as many Indians as they could regardless of sex or age, several hundred in all. Although California state officials tried to distance themselves from the Eel River Rangers, as historian Benjamin Madley has demonstrated, California governor John B. Weller was aware of the militia’s activities and provided official support for it. As well, the state legislature and U.S. Congress appropriated money to support this and other militia campaigns, in some instances with knowledge of militia actions. 23

The American takeover of California caused an indigenous population decline that was sharper than in any other time or place in U.S. history. In 1848 the California Indian population was probably about 150,000. By 1860, it was only 30,000. Direct killing was a significant factor and may have explained the majority of deaths for some nations, such as the Yukis and Yanas, but overall more people died from disease and malnutrition as they were subjected to coerced labor, land loss, destruction of game, and reservation confinement. 24 During this period, it seems that it was more the constant presence of multiple diseases than the sudden appearance of a single epidemic that devastated Indian communities, since communities were unable to rebuild their populations (as they were sometimes able to do after a single epidemic). Although settlers and the public officials they elected did not devise schemes for collecting pathogens and introducing them into Indians’ bodies, to describe deaths from disease during the California Gold Rush as inadvertent seems narrowly legalistic in that disease was so clearly linked to a colonial project that resulted in multiple forces of destruction consistently interacting over many years.

Because the Indian population of California fell so precipitously and because extreme violence was integral to the process, many scholars not inclined to see genocide as pervasive in U.S. history have said that what happened in California is exceptional and does qualify. 25 Even in this case, however, there is some dissent. One argument is that genocide does not apply since disease was the primary factor in the depopulation of California Indians; another is that mass violence was undertaken primarily by settlers and that the state and federal governments did not establish a policy of physically killing all Indians. 26 As with other situations, differences of opinion rest on disagreements about definitions. Under a strict definition requiring a federal or state government intention to kill all California Indians and an outcome in which the majority of deaths were from direct killing, genocide does not seem applicable. Under a less strict, though still fairly conservative, definition requiring only settler intention to destroy a substantial portion of California Indians using a variety of means ranging from dispossession to systematic killing, genocide seems apt, especially since the demographic outcome in California was so catastrophic. The fact that the state government promoted aggressive settlement, undermined Indian land rights, and supported Indian-hunting militias strengthens the case. The role of the federal government is more complicated. On the one hand, federal officials, including army personnel, sometimes took action to protect Indian lands and prevent extreme settler violence. On the other hand, the army did engage in punitive massacre in 1850 when it slaughtered sixty or more Pomos in the Bloody Island Massacre. Congress failed to ratify treaties that might have provided Indians with a buffer against destructive settler actions; Congress also funded militia activity.

The Indian Wars

Any discussion of genocide must, of course, eventually consider the so-called Indian Wars, the term commonly used for U.S. Army campaigns to subjugate Indian nations of the American West beginning in the 1860s. In an older historiography, key events in this history were narrated as battles. It is now more common for scholars to refer to these events as massacres. This is especially so of a Colorado territorial militia’s slaughter of Cheyennes at Sand Creek ( 1864 ) and the army’s slaughter of Shoshones at Bear River ( 1863 ), Blackfeet on the Marias River ( 1870 ), and Lakotas at Wounded Knee ( 1890 ). Some scholars have begun referring to these events as “genocidal massacres,” defined as the annihilation of a portion of a larger group, sometimes to provide a lesson to the larger group. 27

As they had done in earlier periods in U.S. history, after the Civil War federal officials expressed a preference for Indians to cede their lands in exchange for assistance toward eventual assimilation. Policymakers presented assimilation as a benevolent alternative to physical extinction, in this way providing a way for later historians to acquit them of genocidal intentions. But what if Indians rejected the gift of Western civilization? Or what if they attacked or raided settlers who trespassed on their land and damaged its resources? In that case, both civilian and military officials agreed, Indians would be legitimately subject to aggressive warfare.

U.S. military operations against Indians did not intend to kill every single person in their path, though they did intend to inflict massive, catastrophic violence to secure compliance. Since they usually targeted communities rather than armies, these operations inherently carried the potential for massacre. In many instances, U.S. forces were unable to achieve their objectives, in large measure because of indigenous capabilities. Indian fighting forces were highly skilled and, in some cases, most famously at the Little Big Horn ( 1876 ), were able to inflict massive damage on invaders. Indians relied on intelligence-gathering systems to prevent surprise attacks and on established procedures for the evacuation and protection of noncombatants. In this way, they avoided many potential massacres. In some cases, however, troops were able to achieve surprise or break through Indian defenses, and, when they did, they showed little restraint, killing women, children, and older men. In some instances, troops or militiamen attacked Indians who had not actually engaged in resistance or raiding, as in the Sand Creek and the Marias massacres, thus revealing a disposition to regard all Indians as deserving of extermination. Army officers, too, sometimes expressed genocidal sentiments, most famously in Phil Sheridan’s statement, “the only good Indians I ever saw were dead.” 28 Although historians have often treated such statements as isolated expressions, they revealed a discourse of extermination that was in continual circulation among settlers, military personnel, and political leaders and that was periodically activated in what might be described as “genocidal moments.” 29

Violence, of course, was not the only destructive force operating against Indian communities in the West. The U.S. colonization of the West led to land loss, the decimation of the bison and other game, and increased exposure to disease and alcohol. For many western Indian nations, population losses were severe. The Comanches, for example, had a population of perhaps 40,000 in the mid-1700s. In the 1780s, smallpox struck them for the first time and reduced their population to 20,000 to 30,000, where it stabilized into the 1840s. Over the next few decades Comanches were repeatedly hit by epidemics, but because of generally favorable economic conditions, they were able to recover. Sometime around the mid-1840s, however, as bison populations declined, leading to the collapse of the Comanche economy, so did the Comanche population. By 1870 the Comanches numbered between 4,000 and 5,000. A portion of this decline can be explained by war with Texas militias and the U.S. Army, though Comanches also suffered losses in war with other Indian nations as they competed for increasingly scarce resources. But the main causes of depopulation were starvation and disease (aggravated by malnutrition). Between 1870 and 1875, the Comanche population fell even farther—to a mere 1,500. During these years, the army conducted military operations against Comanches to force them onto a reservation in western Oklahoma, killing a few hundred. By far the largest number of deaths during this period continued to be related to material deprivation and social stress. 30

An arithmetic approach to the question of genocide in the Comanche case might encourage a conclusion that the United States did not commit genocide against the Comanches since the bulk of the long-term decline from 40,000 to 1,500 occurred before American settler or governmental actions had much direct impact on the Comanches. By this logic, however, it would be impossible for genocide to occur after a certain level of depopulation was reached, no matter what happened after that point (even if it involved successfully rounding up every single member of the group and executing them all)—an absurd proposition. More plausibly, an arithmetic approach applied to the last phase of Comanche depopulation ( 1870–1874 ) might argue against genocide since the majority of deaths were not from direct killing. At this point, we face the familiar problem of deciding whether cases involving multiple, intersecting forces of destruction related to colonial action qualify as genocide or not. Some scholars, such as Jacki Thompson Rand, who in writing about the Kiowas, argues that the United States engaged in a “genocidal attack on Native institutions, cultures, and economies,” would say yes, though my sense is that most specialists who work on the history of western Indians in the late nineteenth century are likely to disagree. 31

Beyond this is the larger question of the extent to which U.S. actions during the period of the Indian wars should be considered as consistently genocidal, partially genocidal, rarely genocidal, or never genocidal. As in many other times and places in the Americas, this is a challenging question, one that depends on a careful evaluation of the histories of multiple Indian nations. These histories varied considerably. Some western nations, such as the Poncas, decided not to resist U.S. expansion and did not face American violence, though they nonetheless lost their economic and political independence and were subject to forced removal and confinement, processes that resulted in significant population loss. Analyzing these multiple histories requires taking into account real differences but without losing sight of a common context of settler colonialism.

Reservations and the Twentieth Century

By the late nineteenth century, Indian nations were no longer pursuing policies involving militant resistance and instead were attempting to adjust to the challenges of living under U.S. authority on reservations. To assert authority over Indians on reservations, civilian officials developed Native police forces and relied on the presence of troops at western posts. Usually, arrests and the threat of violence were sufficient to allow officials to achieve minimal control. In the late 1880s, however, Indians on dozens of reservations participated in a religion-based political movement known as the Ghost Dance. Ghost Dancers hoped to achieve the reversal of colonialism not through violent resistance but through an apocalyptic event that would destroy or remove all or most European Americans from what had recently been Indian country. To suppress the Ghost Dance, the federal government authorized military force against the Lakotas, an action that led to the Wounded Knee massacre, sometimes regarded as the “last” event in the Indian wars, but more appropriately considered an instance of the violent suppression of an anti-colonial movement. 32 Beyond this instance of massive violence and many instances of small-scale violence by settlers, poverty and disease constituted the greatest threat to Indians on reservations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Data are unavailable for all reservations, but existing information indicates that the majority of Indian nations lost population in the late nineteenth century. The Crows, for example, had allied with the United States in the 1860s as a strategy for self-protection, and although they did not endure direct violence, they were nonetheless affected by other forces of destruction. By the 1880s, the Crows had been forced to cede much of their land and had lost access to game and other resources that had once provided economic independence. Their population, at least 3,000 in 1880 , fell to 2,500 in 1887 and 1,900 in 1903 , a decline of over a third in two decades. The Crow population loss was probably greater than average, though the pattern was common enough to result in an overall decline of the Indian population within the United States to a low point (often referred to as “the nadir”) of about 250,000 sometime around 1900. 33

Since then, the population of American Indians has steadily increased. This trend is undoubtedly related to transitions in the needs of settler colonialism, but it is also due to the efforts of Native individuals, families, and nations to rebuild their communities. 34 Despite overall demographic growth, however, it remains possible to characterize at least some U.S. actions toward Indians during the twentieth century as genocidal. Some writers have argued that government policies to force Indians to assimilate fall under the categories of “cultural genocide” or “ethnocide.” 35 The explicit goal of off-reservation boarding schools, articulated in the infamous words of Carlisle Indian School founder Richard Henry Pratt—“to kill the Indian and save the man” 36 —certainly supports these labels. Boarding schools have also been characterized as institutions of outright genocide on the grounds that the mortality rate (from disease) within boarding schools was very high and that boarding schools took children from Native groups and in this way prevented births within them. 37 While most scholars who have studied boarding schools regard them as oppressive institutions and would likely accept cultural genocide as an apt term for their objectives, they have been more interested in documenting students’ and parents’ perspectives and agency rather than in arguing that the institutions were designed to achieve physical genocide or that they (partially) accomplished it. 38 Other federal policies and societal actions have also been described as genocidal. They include, in particular, sexual violence against indigenous women, including forced sterilizations during the 1960s and 1970, as well as the mandating of “blood quantum” as a criterion for tribal membership, which, because of intermarriage between Indians and non-Indians over time, inevitably operates to achieve “statistical extermination.” 39

Discussion of the Literature

The term genocide was coined by the Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe . Lemkin’s definition was fairly broad:

[G]enocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify 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. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. 40

Lemkin applied the term to a wide range of cases including many involving European colonial projects in Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and the Americas. A recent investigation of an unfinished manuscript for a global history of genocide Lemkin was writing in the late 1940s and early 1950s reveals an expansive view of what Lemkin termed a “Spanish colonial genocide.” He never began work on a projected chapter on “The Indians of North America,” though his notes indicate that he was researching Indian removal, treaties, the California gold rush, and the Plains wars. 41

After coining the term, Lemkin worked tirelessly to persuade the United Nations (UN) to criminalize genocide. In 1948 the UN adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

In many ways, the UN convention definition is quite broad, identifying multiple forces of destruction and requiring only partial destruction of a group. The specification of “intent,” however, has sometimes had a restrictive effect, both in international jurisprudence and in historiography, especially if construed to be limited to state actors.

As the field of genocide studies developed in the 1970s and 1980s, scholars proposed multiple definitions for genocide. Some of these expand the term to include political groups; some place greater emphasis on mass killing than in the UN convention; some stipulate a threshold of at least a “substantial” loss of population; others loosen the criteria for intention with formulations such as “sustained purposeful action” that may have “indirect” consequences. 42 More recently, genocide scholars working on indigenous people in settler colonial situations (especially in Australia) have argued for replacing an “intentionalist” with a “structuralist” approach, and they have proposed concepts such as “society-led” (instead of “state-led”) genocides, “relations of genocide,” and a “logic of elimination” inherent to settler colonialism. 43

As applied to indigenous people of North America, the term genocide was not used much, if at all, until the mid-1970s. During the classic period of modern Indian militancy from the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 to Wounded Knee in 1973 , activists sought to educate the American public about an ongoing history of U.S. oppression, but they did this by calling attention to massacres, broken treaties, and racism and rarely if ever invoked the language of genocide. An early use of genocide can be found in the 1974 “Declaration of Continuing Independence” produced by the First International Indian Treaty Council, which in addition to themes of sovereignty and broken treaties, noted that there is “only one color of Mankind in the world who are not represented in the United Nations; that is the indigenous Redman of the Western Hemisphere” and recognized that this absence “comes from the genocidal policies of the colonial power of the United States.” 44 Not long after, a few scholars began to use the term. Jack Norton’s When Our Worlds Cried: Genocide in Northwestern California , published in 1979 , sought to expose “the genocide committed against the aboriginal peoples of Northwestern California” and noted that several tribes “were annihilated as a people and a culture in the ‘final solution’ to the Indian problem.” 45

More fully developed arguments for the pervasiveness of genocide emerged at the time of the Columbus quincentenary. Two works, David E. Stannard’s American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World and Ward Churchill’s A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present made the case, as their titles indicate, by arguing for moral and analytical equivalences with the Holocaust, going so far as to accuse those who disagreed with them as deniers. For the most part, historians ignored these works and their arguments for genocide’s pervasiveness; when they did engage them, they proceeded from the assumption that the arguments were sufficiently flimsy to require only a few pages to dispatch. 46

In the two decades since the quincentenary, the concept of genocide has had only a modest impact on the writing of American Indian history. As an indication of the status of genocide in the academic field of American Indian history, it is noteworthy that the authoritative Blackwell Companion to American Indian History , a hefty volume containing twenty-five chapters, does not contain a chapter on genocide, nor are Stannard’s or Churchill’s books included in its bibliography, which with 487 entries can hardly be accused of not being comprehensive. 47

To some extent, the relative absence of genocide in much of the scholarship in American Indian history can be explained by the priority of other agendas, especially the often articulated importance of recovering the agency of Native people against an earlier historiography that supposedly portrayed them simply as victims. Indeed, some Native scholars have cautioned that writing indigenous histories as genocide risks reinforcing pernicious ideologies of Indians as vanishing and degraded. 48 That said, indications points to an increasing engagement with genocide and related issues by scholars of American Indian history. One sign is a growing number of studies that use the term genocide , most often in passing as descriptions of particular impulses, actions, or effects, 49 though sometimes as categories of analysis. 50 In addition, some specialists in American Indian history have undertaken work in genocide studies 51 and settler colonial studies, the latter a field with some overlap with genocide studies as it is concerned to elaborate settler colonialism’s demand that indigenous people “go away” through removal, assimilation, or physical elimination. 52 At the same time, scholars in genocide studies, most of whom do not specialize in American Indian history, are increasingly turning to North America as they expand the range of cases to be investigated and compared. 53 Taken together, these points of engagement suggest the possibility of a new, post-quincentenary approach to the question of genocide in the Americas. Such an approach would take the question seriously but without the necessity of providing a predetermined answer either to the general question or to the multitude of specific cases encompassed by it. Such an approach would also consider Native agency, including resistance and other survival strategies, as a crucial variable.

Kurdish Genocide

In March of 1988, Iranian troops and Kurdish guerrillas took control of the Iraqi military base in Halabja. Two days later, the Iraqi Air Force fired rockets and napalm into Halabja’s residential areas followed by a poison gas attack. Some 3,000-5,000 innocent civilian Kurds, mostly women and children, were killed and 10,000 or more severely injured. The Kurdish genocide was the most brutal gas attack since poison gas was outlawed after World War I.

With so many different ethnic groups living in one region and straddling several borders, the north central Kurdish area of the Middle East has been a continuous battle ground amongst and between the nation-states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Throughout the history of this area, the Kurds have revolted against the Turks, Arabs and the Persians in trying to establish an autonomous or independent state but have always been defeated. In defeat, they’ve pressed for some degree of autonomy which was granted, but inevitably revoked. Cyclically, the Kurds re-organized, rearmed and revolted and were again forcibly put down.

The Kurds have fought independently, but have also formed alliances at different times. They aligned themselves with the Persians against the Turks, and then the Turks against the Arabs, Assyrians and Armenians. In fighting their oppressors for autonomy and independence, the Kurds have in turn also sought to repress other ethnicities, notably the Armenians and Assyrians.

Kurdish Genocide by the Ottoman Empire

Leading up to and during World War I, the Ottoman Empire conducted a number of genocidal campaigns against the Christian minorities living within Turkey as well as other provinces under its control. The most well-known is the Armenian genocide. There were also lesser known, but no less brutal, genocide campaigns against the Assyrian Christians in Northern Iraq.

After World War I, the newly declared Turkish Republic leader Kemal Atatürk repudiated the Treaty of Sèvres which proposed a referendum be conducted in the Kurdish homeland. As a result, conflict continued between the Turkish military and the Kurds. This conflict still exists today, as the Turkish Kurdistan area has been depopulated, thousands of villages have been destroyed and a state of martial law has been implemented.

Forced Relocation by the Iraqi Ba’ths

In Iraq in 1970, after almost a decade of fighting, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) , led by Mustafa Barzani, reached an agreement with Baghdad on autonomy for Kurdistan and political representation in the Baghdad government. By 1974, key parts of the agreement were not fulfilled, leading to another outbreak of hostilities. By the end of the 1970’s, 600 villages were destroyed and 200,000 Kurds were forcibly resettled to other parts of Iraq.

Kurdish Genocide in Al-Anfal Campaign

During the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980’s, the Iranians provided support to the Kurdish guerilla forces in their battle for independence in Northern Iraq and to open another front to divide Iraqi military operations. The Iraqi military largely put down the Kurdish rebellion. But Kurdish guerrillas joined with Iranian units in carrying out attacks on the Iraqi military. The Iraqi military responded by conducting ground attacks by army units, aerial bombing, destruction of villages, concentration camps, mass executions and chemical warfare targeting the Kurdish population. This was called the Anfal Campaign by the Iraqis and Kurdish Genocide by the international community.

In March of 1988, Iranian troops and Kurdish guerrillas took control of the Iraqi military base in Halabja. Two days later, the Iraqi Air Force fired rockets and napalm into Halabja’s residential areas followed by a poison gas attack. Some 3,000-5,000 innocent civilian Kurds, mostly women and children, were killed and 10,000 or more severely injured. It was the most brutal gas attack since poison gas was outlawed after World War 1 in 1918 and an act of horrific barbarity never before committed.

Iranian Revolution

Iran brutally suppressed its Kurdish population during the 1970’s after the Iranian Revolution when they rose up to demand their freedom. Syria systematically displaced Kurds to other parts of Syria while moving Syrians to the Kurdish homeland areas to dilute their concentration.

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Trail of Tears: The Greatest Genocide in American History

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Published: Aug 16, 2019

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Genocide, Essay Example

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The term “genocide” did not exist before 1944. It is a very specific term, referring to violent crimes committed against groups with the intent to destroy the existence of the group. Human rights, as laid out in the US Bill of Rights or the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, concern the rights of individuals. The phrase genocide existed in 1944. It refers to violent crimes against human beings with the intention of destroying the being of those individuals or groups. There is a concern for human rights in the US Bill of Rights and in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration. After the holocaust on 9 December, the UN approved the prevention and conservation and punishment of genocide as a crime as championed by Lemkin. The Conservation declares genocide a global crime, which must be punished and prevented. It is defined as acts done with the intention of destroying, in part or in whole, ethnic, religion, national, or any other group through mass killing of members, causing physical or mental harm, having measure to prevent births, or transferring children to another area of group by force. The paper will outline the similarities and differences between genocides in Cambodia and Kosovo by looking at the causes, the way people’s lives were ended, the killing fields, and the reactions from the international bodies.

Similarities

Both the Kosovo and the Cambodian genocides were horrible and involved, mass killings, rotting bodies, and strange empty graves. Many witnesses and evidence were hidden through intimidation and killings (Jones 2006).

The Khmer Rouge began their killings campaign immediately they took authority of Cambodia in 1975. The targets were all intellectuals who included religious leaders, doctors, attorneys, and military leaders. The genocide is estimated to have killed more than 1.7 million individuals during that campaign (Jones 2006). It is noted as one of the greatest tragedies involving humans in the 20 th century. The oppressive, ultra-communist Khmer Rouge rule that was led by Pol Pot, wanted to convert the country to agrarian utopia and this led to mass killing of the people in Cambodia.

In 1998 and 1999, more than 12,000 Kosovan men, children, and women were killed by the Serbian forces. Another eight hundred thousand were deported by force, while others fled in fear of being murdered (Hughes 2009). The act was referred as to ethnic cleansing, cleansing the elements or the people who were undesirable and unwanted. These people were discriminated against and were seen as unclean and unnecessary, the Albanians. There was a mass act of rape of women, torture and brutality, and sadism (Quigley 2006). The overall results were extreme dehumanization. This violence and murder lasted 78 days only after the NATO was involved and hence forced Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his men from Kosovo permanently. However, thousands of Albanians kept missing and never returned home even after Slobodan in 2001, released thousands of Albanian prisoners from jails.

With reference to the US bombings, for in both instances there is a debatable case for a link to subsequent killing committed by the rule of Slobodan Milosevic and Pol Pot. In the Cambodian situation, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge was greeted as they rallied into Phnom Penh in 1975. Most of the people who would be its prospect victims supposed that Pot’s army would defend them from US attack. Certainly, the disreputable emptying of Cambodian cities that describes the beginning of the country’s odd social revolution was consummate peacefully (Hughes 2009). Most urban inhabitants believed that the momentary mass departure was required because of the risk of renewed harassment from the US air force.

In Kosovo, assaults on Kosovar Albanians that were modest in scale only became full-sized tribal cleansing after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing battle had begun. However, to an onlooker it seems grotesquely one-sided to examine only the slaughter of the Khmer Rouge and Serbian armed forces and mercenaries. To the sufferers, individuals whose bodies are maimed and whose houses are destroyed by napalm and cluster bombs, terms like collateral damage are little more than literalism (Simon 2007).

Differences

The Kosovan genocide was largely aimed at killing of the Albanian by the Serbian forces as directed by the Serbian leader Slobodan after the declaration that Kosovo was still and would remain part of Serbia. The violent response by the Albanians is what led to the mastermind of the genocide by the Serbian leader (Quigley 2006). In contrast, the Cambodian genocide was planned when Pol Pot and his group took power in Cambodia and was target at mass killing of all intellectuals in the country for the interest of the party. Therefore, it is clearly noted that the two events are different as Kosovan genocide was what can be termed as ethnic or national genocide as it was one nation killing the other nation, while that of Cambodia is a group genocide as it involved killing of a certain targeted group of people, the intellectuals in the country (Simon 2007).

In summary, having seen the effects of the crime of genocide in these two cases, genocide must be prevented with all measures as it leads to both mental and physical harm to the victims, and mass murder with the intention of whipping out the target group by the dominant group. It is an international crime and, therefore, must be punished as it is against human rights.

Hughes, J. (2009). Colonial genocide and reparations claims in the 21st century the socio-legal context of claims under international law by the Herero against Germany for genocide in Namibia, 1904-1908 . Westport, Conn: Praeger Security International.

Jones, A. (2006). Genocide a comprehensive introduction . London New York: Routledge.

Quigley, J. (2006). The Genocide Convention an international law analysis . Aldershot, England Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub.

Simon, T. (2007). The laws of genocide: prescriptions for a just world . Westport, Conn: Praeger Security International.

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Resource Overview

Pedagogy for instruction, lesson plans.

Digital Student Activities

Podcast for students, timeline of the holocaust, audio glossary, upper elementary guidelines, schindler's list, classroom poster series, we share the same sky companion resource.

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USC Shoah Foundation’s first podcast, We Share The Same Sky , seeks to brings the past into present through a granddaughter’s decade-long journey to retrace her grandmother’s story of survival. We Share The Same Sky tells the two stories of these women—the grandmother, Hana, a refugee who remained one step ahead of the Nazis at every turn, and the granddaughter, Rachael, on a search to retrace her grandmother’s history.

In order to enhance its classroom use, USC Shoah Foundation and Echoes & Reflections have created a Companion Educational Resource to support teachers as they introduce the podcast to their students. This document provides essential questions for students, as well as additional resources and content to help build context and framing for students’ understanding of the historical events addressed in the podcast. Access to the podcast, as well as additional supporting materials—including IWitness student activities, academic standards alignment, and general strategies for teaching with podcasts—can all be found at the We Share The Same Sky page in IWitness. Note: Due to the subject nature, the podcast is appropriate for older students, grades 10-12. As always, teachers should review the content fully in advance to determine its appropriateness for their student population.

Below is information to keep in mind when teaching the content in this unit. This material is intended to help teachers consider the concept of genocide, how to foster empathy with the victims who were persecuted, how to better understand the mechanisms used and the process of the escalation of hate that can lead to genocide, and how the legacies of genocides are created, memorialized, and remembered.

This unit is shaped by four fundamental questions that have shaped each lesson: What is genocide? Who were the people before they became victims? How did genocide occur? How do we remember a genocide? In asking these questions about four genocides of the 20th century, the purpose of this unit is to encourage critical thinking in students to explore the concept of genocide and analyze some of the common themes seen across multiple genocides. This unit challenges students to find value and meaningful lessons in the study of genocide and how memory and the understanding of genocides of the past can empower them to act against hatred today.

What is genocide? Why do we study about it? Why should we study it?
Was the Holocaust an example of genocide? What are some of the parallels between the genocides studied in this unit and how are they different from the Holocaust?
Who were the victims of the genocides in the 20th century studied in this unit? Why is it important to learn about the victims of genocide as they were, before they became victims?
How does a society ostracize a group and make it acceptable to commit atrocities against them? How does media, propaganda and fear capitalize on long roots of preexisting hatred and enmity to contribute to creating conditions where genocide can occur?
How do documentation, including testimony, the law, and remembrance of genocide benefit human civilization?

90-120 minutes

LESSON 1: What is the Crime of Genocide?

1	Students learn that they will embark upon a study of genocide, a term that has many facets but can be difficult to define. Students perform a self-examination of their knowledge of genocide by completing the .

2	Students engage in a think-pair-share with a classmate about their completed . As a whole group, the class discusses what they know about genocide and their main questions. The questions are recorded on chart paper and posted for the duration of the unit.

3	Students watch the video, As they watch, they take notes about the different experiences mentioned and major themes to explore. The entire class discusses these and they are added to the posted chart paper as areas to explore later in the unit.

Students learn that the term genocide was coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944. Individually or in small groups, students read the handout, . As they review, students annotate the text and record information that helps them to understand the many ways perpetrators may enact genocide on a victim group.

Students complete a jigsaw activity examining the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, the Cambodian Genocide and the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Students utilize the handout, their , and the handout to create an explanation for whether and why each of these events should be considered a genocide (Armenia, Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda). Questions to guide this activity include:

6	Students are introduced to [L]Ben Ferencz[/L]. As a class or in small groups, students interact with Ben through . Students ask Ben some of these sample questions, as well as ones they create on their own:

7	As a summative task, students are challenged to contemplate the efficacy of society and international law in preventing genocide. In pairs, students read the poem, , from poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, and discuss the following questions:

How does the poem build from the first line to the last? What do you think the significance of that is?
What does the author want the reader to think, do, and understand after having read this poem?
How does this poem help us understand the crime of genocide and how individuals, society, and the law have largely failed to prevent it?

60-90 minutes

LESSON 2: What do Genocides Destroy?

This lesson introduces students to the people before they became victims of genocide. It highlights their interests, hopes, dreams, and humanity. This glimpse into their worlds allows students to see them as individuals, creating empathy and deepening understanding of the diversity of life in their respective countries. At the end of the lesson, students begin to examine the chasms that existed in society and the small but meaningful ways in which these groups were vulnerable to ostracization and acts of discrimination.

Students learn that victims of genocide do not live their lives in the shadow of the impending catastrophe. They are people with various interests, values, hobbies, jobs, who seek to live fulfilling lives. They don’t know what is to happen in their futures. Students are introduced to two survivors of different genocides, Armenian survivor [L]Jirayr Zorthian[/L], and Tutsi survivor [L]Live Wesige[/L], and watch their testimonies. As they watch the clips, students take notes on the .

2	In small groups, students read the handout, , and complete the and discuss the questions at the bottom.

3	Students participate in a whole class discussion, sharing their reflections from the victims and discussing the following questions:

Why is it important to learn about the lives of victims of genocide before they became victims?
How can understanding who these people were help us to recognize the magnitude of genocide and the total rupture it causes to victim groups?

4	Students learn that even before genocide occurs, there is often an undercurrent within the respective societies that seeks to ostracize victim groups in small but meaningful ways that helps foment the genocide, including overt and sometimes violent actions.

5	Students learn that a stereotype is “an oversimplified generalization about a person or group of people without regard for individual differences.” In small groups, students identify different stereotypes they have observed and experienced. Then, they discuss the following questions:

6	Students watch the testimonies of [L]David Faber[/L], [L]Sara Pol-Lim[/L], and [L]Kizito Kalima[/L]. As they watch the clips, students take notes on the handout. After viewing the clips, the class discusses the following questions:

How was each person ostracized? How were the differences, real or imagined, of each person emphasized in order to separate them from the larger group? How did that make them feel?
How did the actions of others, including neighbors and people in authority, contribute to the isolation of the victims?
How did the schools, communities, and society as a whole suffer from the exclusion of the victim groups? What was lost by rejecting them?

Students are informed that victims of persecution were often marked to further separate them from larger society. Jews had been marked in different ways over thousands of years, and during the Holocaust, some were forced to wear the Star of David on their clothes. In pairs or triads, students analyze the artwork, , by Samuel Bak.

What do you see in the artwork? How does Bak use color and texture to convey his feelings about being forced to wear the Yellow Star?
What is the tone of the artwork? What are some emotions the artist is conveying?
Connect this artwork to the testimonies of David, Sara, and Kizito. How does this work of art expand our understanding of the pain felt by groups that are ostracized from their communities?

120-150 minutes

LESSON 3: How do Genocides Destroy?

In this lesson, students are confronted with the escalation of hate, which when left unchecked, can lead to the conflagration of genocide. Students are to consider the power of the media and propaganda to ignite pre-existing hatreds, dehumanize the victims, and encourage average citizens and neighbors to turn against their fellow persons. Teachers should exercise caution in examining the hate speech that was used to persuade and mobilize the masses so as not to cause harm nor foster similar hatreds in their students. Finally, students confront the horrors of genocide and how, even amidst extreme persecution, victims struggled to maintain their humanity.

Students are informed that they will learn about the escalation of hate, the impact that the leaders of governments have on inciting genocide, the power of the media to carry that message, and the fertile ground that makes the public receptive to these messages of hate. In pairs or small groups, students read the handout, , and answer the questions that follow.

2	Students watch the video, , which talks about the power of propaganda and the radio to incite genocide in Nazi Germany and Rwanda. Next, the class discusses the following questions:

3	Students examine the images in the handout. In pairs, students discuss the following questions:

What do you see in each image? What is the propagandist trying to make viewers feel?
Why is the concept of a parasite or something that can make us sick a common propaganda technique? How does that stoke fear in a population?
How did propaganda messages like these and stereotypes used by the perpetrators dehumanize their victims? What might have been the effects of such dehumanization for both individuals and victim communities?

4	Students watch the testimonies of [L]Marion Pritchard[/L], [L]Freddy Mutanguha[/L], and [L]Arshag Dickranian[/L]. As they watch the clips, students take notes on the handout. After viewing the clips, the class discusses the following questions:

, and what does Marion advise on the power of propaganda?

5	As a summative task, students write a brief journal entry reflecting on this quote from Marion: “It shows that even with people who want to resist propaganda, it still has an effect.”

6	Students watch the testimonies of [L]Freddy Mutanguha[/L], [L]Elise Taft[/L], [L]Barbara Fischman Traub[/L], and [L]Theary Seng[/L] and are confronted by the knowledge that genocide is often perpetrated by neighbors and those once considered friends. Discuss some or all of the following questions:

What are some of the emotions, voice intonations, and body language cues that you noticed in the clips? Why are these cues an important part of understanding and fostering empathy with the survivors?
Based on their actions, the neighbors knew what was happening or even participated. In each scenario, describe what the neighbors were doing and the effect it had on the individuals who were targeted.
How is genocide often a very personal and intimate experience for the victims? Does this surprise you? How does it affect your understanding of how genocides are perpetrated?

7	In small groups, students review, discuss, and complete the about handout. Students thoroughly analyze each photograph, one photo at a time. When finished, each photo is projected, students review their completed graphic organizers, and discuss the following questions:

What is the tone(s) of the photograph? How would you describe the conditions endured by the people in the photograph?
What do you notice about the faces, disposition, and body language of the people in the photographs?
How do these photos help you understand the suffering of the people?
How can these photos help you understand the tragedy of genocide?

8	In small groups, students examine the handout and complete the questions found in the handout.

9	As a summative task, students discuss the following questions together:

How do the testimony, photographs, and artifacts help us better understand what happened to the victims of genocide?
Why is it important to affirm the humanity of the victims?
How does this approach help us better understand the loss, resistance, and resilience experienced by the victim group?

LESSON 4: Aftermath

This lesson considers what happens after a genocide has occurred. There is no blueprint of how to respond to genocide but after each of the genocides explored in this unit, there were criminal trials against some of the perpetrators. These trials brought various levels of justice and accountability, while collecting vast amounts of documentation. Students are introduced to the concept of denying a genocide, even against the factual documentation. Next, students will explore the roles of memorials and museums to create and protect the legacy of a genocide. Lastly, students are then asked to reflect on what they have learned and why it is important to study genocide.

1	Students watch the testimonies of [L]Freddy Mutanguha[/L] and [L]Theary Seng[/L]. Then, students discuss the following questions:

2	Students learn that often the last stage of genocide is denial. Today, there are many people who deny the Holocaust as well as many that deny the Armenian Genocide, including in official statements by the Republic of Türkiye. Students view the video, and the testimony of [L]Haigas Bonapart[/L].

Why do you think the final stage of genocide is denial? Why would perpetrators seek to deny a genocide? Why would people decades later continue to deny?
How does denial affect the victim survivors of genocide? How does this action of denial continue to harm victims and all of society?
What are some ways we can combat denial and the weaponization of lies?

3	Students watch the testimony of [L]Brigitte Altman[/L]. The handout, is distributed and students complete the in small groups. After they complete the graphic organizer, students discuss the following questions:

4	As a summative task, students watch the testimony of [L]Jan Karski[/L]. Students reflect on his testimony and what they have learned by responding to these questions in a journal entry and then discussing them with a partner or as a whole class:

Jan Karski states that “great crimes start with little things” and then goes on to give examples of things people should not do. How does the memory of genocide inspire us to oppose the little things Karski warns us about?
What from this brief study of genocide will you remember most and why? What are you curious to learn more about?
Why is studying genocide important? What lessons can be learned from studying genocides?

The ideas below are offered as ways to extend the lessons in this unit and make connections to related historical events, current issues, and students’ own experiences. These topics can be integrated directly into Echoes & Reflections lessons, used as stand-alone teaching ideas, or investigated by students engaged in project-based learning.

Raphael Lemkin spent his life advocating for the concept of genocide to be accepted and codified into international law. He believed that belonging to a group was an essential way of identity and that the destruction of a social group is a societal evil. He argued that genocides had changed the course of human history by eradicating cultures, peoples, and forcing mass migrations. Watch this from the movie about his life, , and conduct further research into the life of Lemkin. Examine the use of the word genocide since he coined the term and investigate its misuse/appropriation.

2	Students research local museums and create a multimedia presentation analyzing the role of museums in honoring, remembering, and educating the population about genocide, human rights violations, and other aspects of social justice.

3	Visit IWitness ( ) to access additional testimonies, resources, an learning activities about the genocides discussed in this unit as well as additional genocides and mass atrocities, including the Anti-Rohingya Mass Violence, the South Sudan Civil War, and the Guatemalan Genocide.

Students watch and write an essay about the life of Eva Heyman. Students should analyze the artistic decision to use Instagram to tell her story and whether it is appropriate to use this platform for this topic. Students should also explore the role of different mediums to tell the human story of genocide and the advantages and disadvantages to these artistic expressions.

5	Students create a poster or other large visual about a genocide answering the following questions and share with their classmates and the larger school community:

Students are confronted with that show knowledge of genocide by leaders who then failed to take action to prevent or stop a genocide from occurring. Students should utilize with the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum’s project to research how certain events were reported in their local newspapers. Students contemplate how genocide can be prevented, from individuals to groups to country leaders to foreign nations. What are some actions students can take to bring humanity closer to the promise of “Never Again”?

Center for Constitutional Rights

Search form, donate button, the genocide of the palestinian people: an international law and human rights perspective.

While there has been recent criticism of those taking the position that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, there is a long history of human rights scholarship and legal analysis that supports the assertion. Prominent scholars of the international law crime of genocide and human rights authorities take the position that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian people could constitute a form of genocide. Those policies range from the 1948 mass killing and displacement of Palestinians to a half-century of military occupation and, correspondingly, the discriminatory legal regime governing Palestinians, repeated military assaults on Gaza, and official Israeli statements expressly favoring the elimination of Palestinians.

Genocide is a term that has both sociological and legal meaning. The term genocide was coined in 1944 by a Jewish Polish legal scholar, Raphael Lemkin. For Lemkin, “the term does not necessarily signify mass killings.” He explained:

More often [genocide] refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight . The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion. It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and dignity. When these means fail the machine gun can always be utilized as a last resort. Genocide is directed against a national group as an entity and the attack on individuals is only secondary to the annihilation of the national group to which they belong. [1]

Since Lemkin’s first invocation of the term, it has gained political, social, and legal meaning. For political scientists, historians, and sociologists, genocide is “understood as a major type of collective violence, with a distinctive place in the spectrum of political violence, armed conflict, and war, of which it is usually seen as a part.” [2]

From a legal perspective, genocide, like the crime against humanity of persecution, is an international crime distinguished by the specific intent to discriminate against a group on recognized grounds through a series of acts or omissions often reflected in and achieved through State policies. While different in degree, both genocide and persecution “[reduce] a person to their identification with or membership in a group,” but also “[attack] the group itself.” [3] Persecution criminalizes the denial of fundamental rights for members of the group, and genocide criminalizes the most extreme stage of discrimination: efforts to actually destroy the group.

According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, [4] genocide includes various acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” as such, including:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. [5]

This definition is reflected in Article 6 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has jurisdiction over crimes occurring on the territory of the State of Palestine since June 13, 2014. [6]

The Genocide Convention was written in the aftermath of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust, especially to deter and prevent such horrors in the future and, failing that, to punish those responsible. The Convention thus provided a legal framework that clearly identifies the essence of the crime of genocide, regardless of the political, social, or cultural permutations in which the crime may be attempted or carried out and regardless of the specific qualities, stage, or scale of the genocidal process. The Holocaust set the terms by which a form of general or pervasive violence against a group might be legitimately termed “genocide” as a general sociological concept as it need not “imply a comparison to any other specific case.” [7]

Scholars of genocide have distinguished it as a crime different from other forms of war, killing, violence, discrimination, and repression. “Genocidal action aims not just to contain, control, or subordinate a population, but to shatter and break up its social existence. Thus genocide is defined, not by a particular form of violence, but by general and pervasive violence.” [8] They note that settler colonial regimes are structurally prone to genocide, and may indulge in “genocidal moments” when they become frustrated by the resistance of a colonized or occupied people. [9]

The term “genocide” has been used to describe the mass murder of Armenians by the Ottomans, Stalin’s expulsion of Chechens, Ingush Tartars, and Jews from the U.S.S.R., the removal of Jews and Hungarians from Romania, and Italy’s efforts to clear Slovenes and Croats from the Dalmatian coast. [10] There have been successful prosecutions of individuals for genocide arising out of efforts to destroy the Tutsi population in Rwanda in 1994 [11] and Srebrenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995. [12]

Numerous prominent human rights authorities, advocates, and scholars have claimed that Israel’s policies and actions with respect to the Palestinian people have amounted to a form of genocide.

Expulsion and Killing of Palestinians in 1948

With respect to the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, there has been a robust scholarly debate about whether the settlement of Jews and the expulsion of Palestinians in Mandate Palestine could be described as genocide. Sociologist Martin Shaw, one of the most distinguished modern scholars of genocide, has written, “We can conclude that pre-war Zionism included the development of an incipiently genocidal mentality towards Arab society.” [13] “Israel entered without an overarching plan, so that its specific genocidal thrusts developed situationally and incrementally, through local as well as national decisions. On this account, this was a partly decentred, networked genocide, developing in interaction with the Palestinian and Arab enemy, in the context of war.” [14]

In 2010, the Journal of Genocide Studies hosted a conversation between Martin Shaw and another prominent scholar of genocide, Omer Bartov, on whether the term “genocide” could be reasonably applied to the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, particularly the expulsion and killing of Arabs in 1948. [15] The two scholars took very different positions on the question, but the journal rejected complaints from some quarters that it was an illegitimate, or worse, a bigoted question to pose and debate at all. [16]

Francis Boyle, a professor of international law, testified in 2013 that “The Palestinians have been the victims of genocide as defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” [17] He argued that:

For over the past six and one-half decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors in law – the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs – have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, religious, economic, and cultural campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious group (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) constituting the Palestinian people. [18]

Long-Term Military Occupation of Palestinian People

When the international community ratified legal rules that would regulate the actions of occupying powers while also protecting the rights of occupied peoples and nations/states, it was understood that military occupation would be a short-lived necessity attendant to armed conflict, and that occupying forces would be withdrawn at the end of the conflict. [19] Israel’s prolonged belligerent occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza for 50 years far exceeds the kind of occupation that animated the creation of legal rules of occupation contained in international law. Given the seemingly permanent nature of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, some human rights experts, including Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, have warned of an “incremental genocide” of Palestinians and the ultimate destruction of Palestinians as a national group. [20] This “incremental genocide” through the policies and practices that have both sustained and served as the hallmarks of Israel’s occupation is accomplished, they argue, by a normalization of the Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory and the exile or absorption of the national group of people who identify as Palestinian. International law is clear that an occupying power may not annex the people or territory it occupies. [21]

The late human rights lawyer and Center for Constitutional Rights Board President Michael Ratner also charged Israel with committing “incremental genocide” against the Palestinian people: “There’s no doubt again here this is ‘incremental genocide,’ as Ilan Pappé says. It’s been going on for a long time, the killings, the incredibly awful conditions of life, the expulsions that have gone on from Lydda in 1947 and ‘48, when 700 or more villages in Palestine were destroyed, and in the expulsions that continued from that time until today. It’s correct and important to label it for what it is.” [22] He argued further, “I want to emphasize today [that] these killings are part of a broader set of inhuman acts by Israel constituting international crimes, carried out by Israel over many years, going back to at least 1947 and 1948. They include crimes that aren’t talked about that much in the media or the press, the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and apartheid. These crimes can be prosecuted in the International Criminal Court and are defined there.” [23]

The Russell Tribunal on Palestine, a nongovernmental “people’s body” made up of prominent international human rights experts and advocates, convened between November 2010 and September 2014 to investigate the question of human rights violations in the context of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza. [24] It took testimony and deliberated specifically on the question of whether Israel may have committed genocide in relation to the Palestinian people. The jury concluded that some Israeli citizens and leaders may have been guilty in several instances of the separate crime of incitement to genocide, which is specified in Article 3(c) of the Genocide Convention. “The cumulative effect of the long-standing regime of collective punishment in Gaza appears to inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the incremental destruction of the Palestinians as a group in Gaza. The Tribunal emphasises the potential for a regime of persecution to become genocidal in effect.” [25]

Military Assaults on Gazan Population

With respect to Israel’s most recent military offensive, the so-called “Operation Protective Edge” launched against Gaza in the summer of 2014, prominent human rights authorities expressed concern that the campaign constituted a violation of international humanitarian law as contained in the Geneva Conventions:

Amnesty International issued a statement proclaiming “an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation is essential to break the culture of impunity which perpetuates the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The case for such action is made all the more compelling in the light of the ongoing serious violations of international humanitarian law being committed by all parties to the current hostilities in the Gaza Strip and Israel.” [26]
The ICC has jurisdiction over genocide, and the U.N. Special Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide issued a statement two weeks into the 2014 offensive that they were “disturbed by the flagrant use of hate speech in the social media, particularly against the Palestinian population,” finding that “individuals have disseminated messages that could be dehumanising to the Palestinians and have called for the killing of members of this group,” while “remind[ing] all that incitement to commit atrocity crimes is prohibited under international law.” [27]
Al-Haq, the oldest Palestinian Human Rights organization, found that serious violations of international law were committed in the course of the 2014 Israeli offensive against Gaza. [28] Al-Haq, along with other Palestinian human rights organizations the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Al-Mezan, and Aldameer, submitted a legal file to the International Criminal Court urging it to open an investigation and prosecution into the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the course of Israel’s 2014 Gaza offensive. [29] The crimes suggested for prosecution by these human rights organizations include genocide.
Dozens of Holocaust survivors, together with hundreds of descendants of Holocaust survivors and victims, accused Israel of “genocide” for the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza during the 2014 Israeli military offensive against Gaza, "Operation Protective Edge". [30]
Others who have charged that Israel committed genocide during Operation Cast Lead include Bolivian President Evo Morales, who recalled that country's ambassador from Israel. He stated, “What is happening in Palestine is genocide.” [31]
Author and activist Naomi Wolf wrote, “I mourn genocide in Gaza because I am the granddaughter of a family half wiped out in a holocaust and I know genocide when I see it.” [32]

Israeli Government Statements Targeting Palestinians

Finally, prominent Israeli politicians have publicly called for action against the Palestinian people that unequivocally meets the definition of genocide under the 1948 Convention. For instance, in February 2008, Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defense minister, declared that increasing tensions between the Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip could bring on themselves what he called a shoah , or holocaust, “The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.” [33]

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked posted a statement on Facebook in June 2014 claiming that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and called for the destruction of Palestine, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.” Her post also called for the killing of Palestinian mothers who give birth to “little snakes.” [34]

In August 2014, Moshe Feiglin, then-deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, called for the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza and offered a detailed plan for shipping Palestinians living in Gaza across the world. Specifically, he envisioned a scenario where the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) would find areas on the Sinai border to establish “tent encampments...until relevant emigration destinations are determined.” He further suggested that the IDF would then “exterminate nests of resistance, in the event that any should remain.” [35] He subsequently wrote in an op-ed, “After the IDF completes the ‘softening’ of the targets with its fire-power, the IDF will conquer the entire Gaza, using all the means necessary to minimize any harm to our soldiers, with no other considerations.” [36] He continued, “Gaza is part of our Land and we will remain there forever. Liberation of parts of our land forever is the only thing that justifies endangering our soldiers in battle to capture land. Subsequent to the elimination of terror from Gaza, it will become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. This will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel. The coastal train line will be extended, as soon as possible, to reach the entire length of Gaza.”

Prominent human rights advocates and scholars have argued that the killings of Palestinians and their forceful expulsion from mandate Palestine in 1948, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and the violence and discrimination directed at Palestinians by the Israeli government have violated a number of human rights protections contained in international human rights law, genocide being among them.

Download a PDF of this document here.

[1] Raphael Lemkin, Genocide – A Modern Crime , 4 Free World 39 (1945), available at: http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/freeworld1945.htm (emphasis added).

[2] Martin Shaw, Genocide , Oxford Bibliography, September 30, 2013, available at: http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199756384/obo-9780199756384-0029.xml.

[3] Helen Brady and Ryan Liss. Historical Origins of International Law Vol. 3, “The Evolution of Persecution as a Crime Against Humanity,”FICHL Publication Series No. 22 (2015) p. 554, available at https://www.fichl.org/fileadmin/fichl/FICHL_PS_22_web.pdf. Notably, “some scholars suggest[ ] that any distinction [between genocide and persecution] has effectively disappeared,” with the two crimes “offer[ing] two different but related visions of the same harm: in short, a crime against the individual as a member of a group (persecution) or a crime against the group itself (genocide).” Id . at 491.

[4] Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948 as General Assembly Resolution 260, and entered into force on 12 January 1951, available at: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf . The Genocide Convention has 147 signatories, including the United States, Israel and Palestine.

[5] Genocide Convention, Article II.

[6] Declaration Accepting the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, Dec. 31, 2014, available at http://www.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/PIDS/press/Palestine_A_12-3.pdf . On January 6, 2015, the United Nations Secretary General, acting in his capacity as depository for the Rome Statute, accepted Palestine’s accession to the Rome Statute. United Nations, Depository Notification, Ref: C.N.13.2015.TREATIES-XVIII.10, 6 Jan. 2015, available at https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/CN/2015/CN.13.2015-Eng.pdf . On January 16, 2015, the Prosecutor of the ICC, Mrs. Fatou Bensouda, opened a preliminary examination into the situation of Palestine.

[7] Martin Shaw in Martin Shaw & Omer Bartov, The Question Of Genocide In Palestine, 1948: An Exchange Between Martin Shaw And Omer Bartov , 12 Journal of Genocide Research 243, 244 (2010).

[8] Martin Shaw, Palestine In An International Historical Perspective On Genocide , 9 Holy Land Studies 1, 5 (2010).

[9] A. Dirk Moses, An Antipodean Genocide? The Origins Of The Genocidal Moment In The Colonization Of Australia , 2 J. of Genocide Research 89, 90 (2010).

[10] Martin Shaw, Palestine In An International Historical Perspective On Genocide , 9 Holy Land Studies 1, 9 (2010).

[11] See, e.g., Prosecutor v. Jean-Paul Akayesu , ICTR, http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/tjug/en/160324_judgement.pdf .

[12] See, e.g., Prosecutor v. Radovan Karadžić, ICTY, http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/tjug/en/160324_judgement.pdf .

[13] Martin Shaw, Palestine In An International Historical Perspective On Genocide , 9 Holy Land Studies 1, 13 (2010), noting the comments of the President of the Zionist Organization Chaim Weizmann’s comment in 1941 “if half a million Arabs could be transferred, two million Jews could be put in their place.”

[14] Id . at 19.

[15] Martin Shaw in Martin Shaw & Omer Bartov, The Question Of Genocide In Palestine, 1948: An Exchange Between Martin Shaw And Omer Bartov , 12 Journal of Genocide Research 243, 244 (2010).

[16] See Gal Beckerman, Top Genocide Scholars Battle Over How To Characterize Israel’s Actions , Forward, February 16, 2011, available at: http://forward.com/news/135484/top-genocide-scholars-battle-over-how-to-character/ .

[17] Professor Francis A. Boyle, The Palestinian Genocide by Israel Before

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal , August 21-24, 2013, available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2339254.

[18] Id . at 3.

[19] See Geneva Convention III: Articles 1-4 ; Geneva Convention IV 1907: Section Three – Occupied Territories – Articles 47-56 ; Geneva Convention IV 1949: Section Three – Occupied Territories – Articles 47-78 ; Additional Protocols I and II .

[20] Ilan Pappé, A Brief History of Israel’s Incremental Genocide , in ON PALESTINE (Noam Chompsky and Ilan Pappé ed.; Haymarket 2015) pp. 147-154. See also, Steve Lendman, Israel’s Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine , in THE PLIGHT OF THE PALESTINIANS (William A. Cook ed., Palgrave 2010).

[21] Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter states that “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” See also: Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949 Section III, Art. 47, “Protected persons who are in occupied territory shall not be deprived, in any case or in any manner whatsoever, of the benefits of the present Convention by any change introduced, as the result of the occupation of a territory, into the institutions or government of the said territory, nor by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power, nor by any annexation by the latter of the whole or part of the occupied territory.”

[22] Michael Ratner, UN's Investigation of Israel Should Go Beyond War Crimes to Genocide , The Real News, July 27, 2013, available at: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12155 .

[23] Id . See also Saree Makdisi, Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (Norton 2010) for the notion of a “slow motion” extension and consolidation of the genocidal aspects of 1948.

[24] Russell Tribunal On Palestine, “About,” http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/about-rtop.

[25] http://www.russfound.org/RToP/RToP.htm.

[26] Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories: The International Criminal Court must investigate war crimes, August 1, 2014 http://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/MDE15/019/2014/en/.

[27] UN, Department of Public Information, Statement by the Special Advisers of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, Mr. Adama Dieng, and on the Responsibility to Protect, Ms. Jennifer Welsh, on the Situation in Israel and in the Palestinian Occupied Territory of Gaza Strip, July 24, 2014, available at

www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/pdf/24.07.2014%20Special%20Advisers'%20Statement%20on%20the%20situation%20in%20Israel%20and%20the%20occupied%20Gaza%20strip.pdf .

[28] See , Divide and Conquer: A Legal Analysis of Israel’s 2014 Military Offensive Against the Gaza Strip, 2015, available at: http://www.alhaq.org/publications/publications-index/item/divide-and-conquer .

[29] Palestinian Human Rights Organisations Deliver Submission to the International Criminal Court on Alleged Israeli War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity during 2014 Gaza offensive, Nov. 23, 2015, available at: http://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/targets/international-criminal-court-icc/998-palestinian-human-rights-organisations-deliver-submission-to-the-international-criminal-court-on-alleged-israeli-war-crimes-and-crimes-against-humanity-during-2014-gaza-offensive.

[30] Zachary Davies Boren, Holocaust survivors and their descendants accuse Israel of ‘genocide’ , The Independent, August 24, 2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/holocaust-survivors-and-their-descendants-accuse-israel-of-genocide-9687994.html .

[31] Bolivian president: Israel air strikes on Gaza is 'genocide' , July 16, 2014, http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-07-16/bolivian-president-israel-air-strikes-of-gaza-is-genocide .

[32] Naomi Wolf walked out of synagogue when they had nothing to say about Gaza massacre , July 22, 2014, http://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/synagogue-nothing-massacre.html .

[33] Israeli minister warns of Palestinian 'holocaust' , The Guardian, February 29, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1.

[34] Text of Shaked’s Facebook post (in Hebrew), since deleted, is available here: https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2014-07/ayelet-shaked-facebook-post-30-june-2014-genocide.jpg?itok=k5yvVqQp&timestamp=1448949295 .

[35] Jill Reilly, Israeli official calls for concentration camps in Gaza and 'the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters' , Daily Mail, August 4, 2014, available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2715466/Israeli-official-calls-concentration-camps-Gaza-conquest-entire-Gaza-Strip-annihilation-fighting-forces-supporters.html .

[36] Moshe Feiglin, My Outline for a Solution in Gaza , Arutz Sheve, August 15, 2014, available here: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15326#.VCLljPldXTo.

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Trail of Tears: the Greatest Genocide in American History: [Essay
The Trail of Tears is one of the biggest genocides of all time and is widely overlooked in American history. In order to understand the situation Native Americans were put through, it is important to know the events that led up to this horrific time in our nation's history. There is an English saying that goes "those who do not know their ...
Genocide, Essay Example
The phrase genocide existed in 1944. It refers to violent crimes against human beings with the intention of destroying the being of those individuals or groups. There is a concern for human rights in the US Bill of Rights and in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration. After the holocaust on 9 December, the UN approved the prevention and ...
UNIT XII: TEACHING ABOUT GENOCIDE
Students watch Eva's Stories and write an essay about the life of Eva Heyman. Students should analyze the artistic decision to use Instagram to tell her story and whether it is appropriate to use this platform for this topic. ... Students utilize the Genocide handout, their Learn and Confirm Chart, and the Axis Rule in Occupied Europe handout ...
The Genocide of the Palestinian People: An International Law and Human
The ICC has jurisdiction over genocide, and the U.N. Special Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide issued a statement two weeks into the 2014 offensive that they were "disturbed by the flagrant use of hate speech in the social media, particularly against the Palestinian population," finding that "individuals have disseminated messages ...
Genocide Essay
Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. Leading up to a genocide, there are several 'telltale signs' that can warn a country of upcoming conflict such as dehumanization of specific groups, classification and symbolization. The question at hand is how citizens of ...

125 Genocide Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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What is Genocide?

Origin of the Term “Genocide”

Early Use of the Term “Genocide” in the International Military Tribunal

Genocide as an International Crime

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Defining genocide: the Nürnberg Charter and the genocide convention

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The History of the Genocide in the Rwandan Essay

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What is Genocide?

Origin of the Term Genocide

Genocide as an International Crime

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Beyond Intractability

Genocide Defined

Causes of Genocide

Responding to Acts of Genocide

Problems with Punishment

The Aftermath of Genocide

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Century Of Genocide: Critical Essays And Eyewitness Accounts

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Genocide: the power and problems of a concept

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Genocide - Essay Examples And Topic Ideas For Free

Outlook on the Cambodian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide

Critical Race Theory: Guiding the Path of Black Lives Matter

History of the Rwandan Genocide

Genocide: the Nazis’ Original Plan

Why did the Holocaust Happen?

Genocide in Germany the Holocaust

How could Rwandan Genocide be Justified?

Deliberate and Systematic Destruction of a Racial, Political, or Cultural Group

The Greek Genocide History

Phenomenon of Genocide

Human Rights are Basic Rights Given to a Person Mainly because they are Humans

The Holocaust’s Bureaucracy of Genocide

Horror of Genocide

Genocide in Germany: the Holocaust

Native American Genocide

The Theme of the Holocaust and the Responsibility

American Genocide Issues

Problem of Genocide in America

Darfur and the Labeling of Genocide

The Genocide of the Pontic Greeks

Why should we Never Forget the Holocaust

US Backed a Genocide

The Root of the Holocaust: Darfur

Gender and Sexuality: a Historiography and Analysis of the Holocaust

Elie Wiesel’s “Night”: Unveiling Humanity in Echoes in Darkness

United States of Islamophobia

Understanding the Concept and Implications of the “Final Solution”

Adolf Hitler’s Role in the Holocaust: a Historical Analysis

When did the Holocaust End? Examining the Conclusion of a Dark Era and its Lasting Impact on World History

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Teaching Guides

NEW! Armenian Life in the Ottoman Empire Before 1915

New! “Bird Letters” Lesson & Activity

Stages of Genocide: A Toolkit for Educators

Operation Nemesis: Using a murder trial to teach about the Armenian Genocide

Survivor Objects: the Zeytun Gospels