“GENOCIDE” WAS INEVITABLE

ONCE YOU HAVE TURNED YOURSELF BLUE ACCUSING ISRAEL OF EVERY MADE-UP CRIME UNDER THE SUN, WHAT DO YOU DO FOR AN ENCORE? “GENOCIDE!”

Concept creep(s) in action.

The Palestinian genocide was inevitable.

Not the actual genocide — there isn’t one.

I’m talking about the false allegation, the fake “genocide.”

That slander was inevitable. It had to come to this.

In 2000, in Durban, South Africa, the anti-Israel crackpots invented the idea that Israel was perpetrating “apartheid.”

Anything can be compared with anything, of course, and there are always stupid and persuadable people ready to swallow whole whatever lies some people purvey — especially when those lies are about Jews. But the apartheid libel was particularly specious.

Arguably, most societies in the world resemble apartheid more than Israel does — particularly societies immediately adjacent to Israel, where women, non-Muslims and ethnic minorities are not just discriminated against socially, but are legally deemed inferior.

Then came allegations of “ethnic cleansing.”

This was extra-ridiculous, because, if Israel is perpetrating ethnic cleansing, it is doing an uncharacteristically shitty job of it. The Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza — where ethnic cleansing has allegedly been taking place — has grown from about 1 million in 1967, when Israel took control of those territories, to about 5.5 million today. Some ethnic cleansing.

It is a symptom of the world’s uncritical acceptance of the most apoplectic allegations against Israel that ideas that can be summarily debunked — in the most spectacular fashion, like noting that a population that grows 550% in six decades is not experiencing ethnic cleansing — can nevertheless hold such currency and evoke hysterical crusades of madness against the falsely accused perpetrator. It is, I repeat, a phenomenon possible probably only when it comes to this particular country, in a world encoded to believe the most outlandish allegations against Jews.

Having screamed about “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” until they had practically blacked out, activists had to grasp for ever-more incendiary language.

And along came genocide.

The genocide libel is to activism what “You’re grounded for life” is to bad parenting. After you escalate threats and condemnations to the point where the kids stop listening to your hollow menacing, you pretty much have to make the leap into absolute lunacy.

Genocide, it shouldn’t need to be said, is not just another word for a bunch of people dying (as I explained here, and here). It has very specific meanings. And the definition does not fit in the case of Israel and Gaza. There is no genocide happening. There is a disinformation campaign employing and misrepresenting the term.

Even more than the despicable allegations of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, though, the people who employ the genocide libel are malevolent on a different scale.

First of all, to shriek about “genocide” where no genocide is happening — even when actual genocides are taking place in other parts of the world — takes a special kind of loathsomeness.

Imagine ignoring the worst atrocities happening to millions of people, on the one hand, and then making up allegations that the same thing is happening to a different group, when it clearly is not.

Then imagine those lying, selective activists who deflect from millions dying in order to redirect global attention to their Palestinian hobby horse — and self-righteously declaring themselves the good guys.

It’s like the phenomenon I noticed a few years ago, when people started saying that words are “violence.” No, they are not. Violence is violence. And when you say that words are violence, that hurting someone’s feelings is the same as hurting someone’s person, then you place yourself in a weakened position to respond when actual violence erupts, having debased the very idea of what constitutes violence.

If everything is genocide, then nothing is genocide. Writing this month in Tablet, political scientist Zach Goldberg analyzed how media perpetuates “concept creep,” the expansion of a term’s meaning into new, broader (sloppier) definitions. The example of “genocide” is gobsmacking.

“In The New York Times, articles pairing Israel and genocide reached levels more than nine times higher than the peak for Rwanda and nearly six times greater than for Darfur.”

A genocide that is not a genocide gets six to nine times more references than the worst genocides of recent history. In America’s newspaper of record.

More than this, though, there is the very specific nastiness of leveling this false allegation against the Jewish state.

The word “genocide” had to be created to describe what happened to the Jewish people in the 20th century. Jews actually know what the word means. They’ve experienced it. To falsely accuse victims of genocide of perpetrating genocide is a particularly ghastly type of inversion. It is proof — again — that anti-Israel or “pro-Palestinian” activism generally has far less to do with advancing Palestinian well-being than it does with sticking it to the Jews. It is less a form of activism than a simple exercise in the human capability for sadism.

It is additionally appalling that the accusation inverts the actual intent of the parties. The Palestinian terror organizations have explicitly stated as their core mission the annihilation of Jews. Israel has no parallel agenda. And yet the actual would-be genociders are depicted as the victims of genocide and the would-be genocided are accused of genocide.

Here, though, is why “genocide” was inevitable.

Anti-Israel activists have been setting their hair on fire for decades, alleging that Israel was guilty of unimaginable crimes against humanity. Once you have almost entirely exhausted the vocabulary of outrage, there is really only one place left to go.

The greatest crime humankind has ever invented is genocide. So that was the inescapable next step in the hysterical haranguing.

But if it is such an outlandish lie, so provably false, why do so many people believe it?

The answer is simple.

For centuries, people have been willing to believe the worst imaginable allegations about Jews.

Our civilization has, in its DNA, a propensity to allege and believe that Jews are not just responsible for the worst inhumanity imaginable, but that Jews are the very embodiment of evil. This inherent antisemitism is not a bug of Western civilization, but a feature.

In a field tilled for centuries with this kind of anti-Jewish indoctrination, even the most indefensible, demonstrably wrong lies will germinate and grow.

The practical value of the genocide libel became crystal clear to me last night. A “friend” on Facebook, in an argument with someone else (eg., not me), declared: “I support Israel’s right to defend itself. That doesn’t mean it gets carte blanche to commit genocide which any sane person can see is what is happening.”

See how this works? “I support Israel’s right to exist.” Until it actually does. And then I wave an invented libel about a genocide that isn’t happening to override my alleged support for Israel’s right to defend itself. Which makes my initial statement null and void.

From top to bottom — from the people who perpetrate it to the people who swallow it uncritically — the genocide libel is an example of antisemitism’s power in our society.

We live in a short attention span world and the Israel-haters have already sucked all the oxygen out of our ability to assimilate and contextualize current events. To monopolize attention on their pet topic, they shriek about a fictitious genocide even as actual genocides go unchallenged. Every other catastrophe in the world is eclipsed by the endless frenzy about a fake genocide.

That was inevitable. Because once you have turned yourself blue squawking for decades about every made-up crime under the sun, once you have created a wall of noise that blots out every other cause on the planet, what do you do for an encore?

Genocide!

And why was this particular false accusation so appealing to both the liars who invented it and the millions who credulously swallow it?

Because the world is inclined to believe the worst about Jews.

Is an allegation against Israel true? Not true? Who cares?

If it causes pain to Jews, we’ll chant it from the rooftops.