The Genesis of Genocide: Paranoia, Ingroup Thinking, and Ethnic Supremacism

To study how genocide can be rationalized, you don’t always need to study history. You could just read some recent comments inspired by the Gaza war — none of which include messy details like the blockade of Gaza which has reduced it to a very large concentration camp in all but name. Given such a situation, extreme hostility toward Israel on the part of Gazans is entirely expected.

This failure to place the Gaza situation in context is typical of ingroup thinking. As Andrew Joyce notes, ignoring the context and how Jewish behavior has contributed to or even shaped the  context are key components of Jewish self-deception. But ignoring the context completely creates a situation where any and all actions against the Palestinians are warranted.

I’ll start with this blog by a Jewish New Yorker called Yochanan Gordon:

When Genocide Is Permissible

Judging by the numbers of casualties on both sides in this almost one-month old war one would be led to the conclusion that Israel has resorted to disproportionate means in fighting a far less-capable enemy. That is as far as what meets the eye. But, it’s now obvious that the US and the UN are completely out of touch with the nature of this foe and are therefore not qualified to dictate or enforce the rules of this war — because when it comes to terror there is much more than meets the eye. …

We are at war with an enemy whose charter calls for the annihilation of our people. Nothing, then, can be considered disproportionate when we are fighting for our very right to live.

The sad reality is that Israel gets it, but its hands are being tied by world leaders who over the past six years have insisted they are such good friends with the Jewish state, that they know more regarding its interests than even they do. But there’s going to have to come a time where Israel feels threatened enough where it has no other choice but to defy international warnings — because this is life or death. …

Hamas has stated forthrightly that it idealizes death as much as Israel celebrates life. What other way then is there to deal with an enemy of this nature other than obliterate them completely?

Everyone agrees that Israel has the right to defend itself as well as the right to exercise that right. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has declared it, Obama and Kerry have clearly stated that no one could be expected to sit idle as thousands of rockets rain down on the heads of its citizens, placing them in clear and present danger. It seems then that the only point of contention is regarding the measure of punishment meted out in this situation. I will conclude with a question for all the humanitarians out there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clearly stated at the outset of this incursion that his objective is to restore a sustainable quiet for the citizens of Israel. We have already established that it is the responsibility of every government to ensure the safety and security of its people. If political leaders and military experts determine that the only way to achieve its goal of sustaining quiet is through genocide is it then permissible to achieve those responsible goals? (“Genocide Is Permissible” Muses Times Of Israel, Promptly Retracts, Zero Hedge, 1st August 2014)

The psychology behind communist mass murder is still alive and well in twenty-first century New York. In his blog post, Yochanan Gordon obviously places supreme value on Jewish lives and no value at all on Palestinian lives.

But Gordon displayed more than self-pity, paranoia and Jewish supremacism in advancing a case for genocide. He was also arrogant and solipsistic. Could he not see that he was giving a huge propaganda gift to the supporters of the Palestinian cause? Apparently not. He defended his arguments vigorously for a time before retracting them with some boilerplate about peace:

“I wish to express deep regret and beg forgiveness for an article I authored which was posted on 5TJT.com, Times of Israel and tweeted and shared the world over,” Yochanan Gordon said in an email to JTA [Jewish Telegraphic Agency]. “I never intended to call to harm any people although my words may have conveyed that message,” he said. “With that said I pray and hope for a quick peaceful end to the hostilities and that all people learn to coexist with each other in creating a better world for us all.” (Times of Israel, 5 Towns paper, remove posting pondering genocide in Gaza, Jewish Telegraph Agency, 1st August 2014)

Sincere? I doubt it. But he sounded sincere when he talked about genocide.

He’s far from alone in that. Members of the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, have expressed similar sentiments:

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’ [Isn’t it already a concentration camp?]

An Israeli official has called for concentration camps in Gaza and ‘the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters’. Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, posted the inflammatory message on his Facebook page at the weekend. He lays out a detailed plan for the destruction of Gaza – which includes shipping its residents across the world – in a letter he addressed to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The message, which received more than 2,000 likes on his page, lists four action points which he wants to be enforced as soon as possible. Feiglin details the first one as ‘defining the enemy’ and states: ‘The strategic enemy is extremist Arab Islam in all its varieties, from Iran to Gaza, which seeks to annihilate Israel in its entirety. The immediate enemy is Hamas. (Not the tunnels, not the rockets, but Hamas.)’

He says another important part of his plan is the ‘conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.’ He lays out a detailed plan for the destruction of Gaza – which includes shipping its residents across the world – in a letter he addressed to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Gaza war, now in its fourth week, has left more than 1,800 Palestinians dead.

Feiglin details how he wants the Israeli PM ‘to turn Gaza into Jaffa, a flourishing Israeli city with a minimum number of hostile civilians.’ In 1948 Jaffa was a Palestinian town but there was an exodus of most of its Arab population when it fell to the fledgling Israeli army and right-wing Jewish militias. In the letter he expresses his desire for the IDF to find areas on the Sinai border to establish ‘tent encampments…until relevant emigration destinations are determined.’ He says that the supply of electricity and water to the Gaza would be disconnected before being ‘shelled with maximum fire power.’ (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’, The Daily Mail, 5th August 2014)

And Ayelet Shaked, a female member of the Knesset,  sees it as a race war where all Palestinians should be annilihated:

The Palestinian people has declared war on us, and we must respond with war. Not an operation, not a slow-moving one, not low-intensity, not controlled escalation, no destruction of terror infrastructure, no targeted killings. Enough with the oblique references. This is a war. Words have meanings. This is a war. It is not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority. These too are forms of avoiding reality. This is a war between two people [sic]. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started [sic].

I don’t know why it’s so hard for us to define reality with the simple words that language puts at our disposal. Why do we have to make up a new name for the war every other week, just to avoid calling it by its name. What’s so horrifying about understanding that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy? Every war is between two peoples, and in every war the people who started the war, that whole people, is the enemy. A declaration of war is not a war crime. Responding with war certainly is not. Nor is the use of the word “war”, nor a clear definition who the enemy is. Au contraire: the morality of war (yes, there is such a thing) is founded on the assumption that there are wars in this world, and that war is not the normal state of things, and that in wars the enemy is usually an entire people, including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure.

Behind every terrorist stand [sic] dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.” (The member of Knesset who called for genocide — against the mothers of the ‘snakes’, Mondweiss.net, 2nd August 2014)

Similar thinking is behind Jewish support for mass immigration by non-Whites into Europe, North America and Australia. It doesn’t matter that mass immigration will destroy White Christian nations. And I suspect that a Marxist version of such ingroup thinking motivated “Stalin’s willing executioners” – the disproportionately Jewish communists who committed mass murder against the Christians of Russia and Ukraine in the early twentieth century.

But such thinking has a very long pedigree in the foundational documents of Judaism. This ethnic supremacism has inspired Jewish attacks on non-Jews not just for centuries, but for millennia. If you want proof, just open the Bible:

20:16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: 20:17 But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee: 20:18 That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God. (The Fifth Book of Moses, called Deuteronomy)