Those Who Justify Genocide

[Philosophy Now]

Michael McManus asks what remains of morality in the face of genocide.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/138/Those_Who_Justify_Genocide

[Impenitent]

justifying genocide ... why limit the commission of genocide to the Nazis?

ignoring genocide is the norm, and history never repeats... (neither does moral indignation...)

training killers for political ends is not uncommon... liberal arts degrees laced with social justice are awarded too frequently at American universities...

-Imp

[dorothea]

The Turkish Muslim genocide of Christian Armenians is mentioned. What's your point?

[Impenitent]

The Turkish Muslim genocide of Christian Armenians is mentioned. What's your point?

Indians

-Imp

[dorothea]

You are certainly laconic. Are you a Spartan rebirthed I wonder.
If you mean the American tribes, I'm not sure - I don't know much - whether there was systematic genocide or not.
I do know that two philosophers 100 years apart (Hobbes and Adam Smith) both expressed horror at the cruelty shown by the tribes *Comanche, Lakota etc) to each other. That's saying something given what we know about the cruel C17th and C18th in Britain.

[Nick_A]

Hi Dorothea

Well being part Russian and Armenian I've lost family history to both the Armenian genocide and the Russian revolution. My question to you is why the fallen human condition makes genocide and political killings acceptable? Part of being human is having respect for life. Yet we don't. Genocide is a cyclical occurence. why? Take out the BS and what does it say about what we are?

[dorothea]

acceptable? my first thought was, no. But it happens so often. The killers quoted in the article thought, some of them, that they were helping the survival of the best type of human - those like themselves. Maybe it's just our version of what lions do when they take over a pride from another male: kill the cubs that don't carry their own genes. maybe a couple of million years of evolution has not really made us much better than pond life.

[Averroes]

I have read the article and I find that the on going genocide of Palestinian people would have been a pertinant example for the subject the author wanted to address. For example, the Nobel Prize of Literature Jose Saramago compares the suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation as the same suffering of the jews in the Nazi boot camps.

He declared the following after a visit to Palestine in March, 2002:

• “The repression from Israel is the worst form of Apartheid. Nobody has the faintest idea of what is going on here, even the best informed people. Everything is in pieces, the land is destroyed and nothing else may be planted. All this smells like a boot camp, like Auschwitz. The israeli have turned into NAZI JEWS”

And when Noam Chomsky (who btw has a Jewish background!) was asked by Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow on the apartheid system put in place by the Israeli occupying forces, he said:

• NOAM CHOMSKY: In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by “apartheid” you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse. There’s a crucial difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce. It was 85 percent of the workforce of the population, and that was basically their workforce. They needed them. They had to sustain them. The bantustans were horrifying, but South Africa did try to sustain them. They didn’t put them on a diet. They tried to keep them strong enough to do the work that they needed for the country. They tried to get international support for the bantustans.
  
  The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just don’t want them. They want them out, or at least in prison. And they’re acting that way. That’s a very striking difference, which means that the apartheid analogy, South African apartheid, to the Occupied Territories is just a gift to Israeli violence. It’s much worse than that. If you look inside Israel, there’s plenty of repression and discrimination. I’ve written about it extensively for decades.

And when asked to comment on the repeated Israeli attacks on Gaza, each time killing thousands of unarmed Palestinian women and children in their homes and schools, Noam Chomsky said:

• NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s a hideous atrocity, sadistic, vicious, murderous, totally without any credible pretext. It’s another one of the periodic Israeli exercises in what they delicately call “mowing the lawn.” That means shooting fish in the pond, to make sure that the animals stay quiet in the cage that you’ve constructed for them

Noam Chomsky also commented on the starvation policies implemented by the Israeli occupying forces on the Palestinian people:

• NOAM CHOMSKY: Israel has—Israeli experts have calculated in detail exactly how many calories, literally, Gazans need to survive. And if you look at the sanctions that they impose, they’re grotesque. I mean, even John Kerry condemned them bitterly. They’re sadistic. Just enough calories to survive. And, of course, it is partly metaphoric, because it means just enough material coming in through the tunnels so that they don’t totally die. Israel restricts medicines, but you have to allow a little trickle in. When I was there right before the November 2012 assault, visited the Khan Younis hospital, and the director showed us that there’s—they don’t even have simple medicines, but they have something. And the same is true with all aspects of it. Keep them on a diet, literally. And the reason is—very simple, and they pretty much said it: “If they die, it’s not going to look good for Israel. We may claim that we’re not the occupying power, but the rest of the world doesn’t agree. Even the United States doesn’t agree. We are the occupying power. And if we kill off the population under occupation, not going to look good.” It’s not the 19th century, when, as the U.S. expanded over what’s its national territory, it pretty much exterminated the indigenous population. Well, by 19th century’s imperial standards, that was unproblematic. This is a little different today. You can’t exterminate the population in the territories that you occupy. That’s the dovish position, Weissglas. The hawkish position is Eiland, which you quoted: Let’s just kill them off.

At the moment the attention of the media is rightly focused on the unjust and degrading treatment of the African-Americans in the USA. But let's not also forget about the Palestinian people whose fate is far worse than the African-Americans. An increasing number of people are joining this just cause all over the world. Like for example the Presbyterian Christians in the USA who have repeatedly voiced their support for the BDS movement against the rogue, apartheid and terrorist state of Israel as Noam Chomsky called it.
Presbyterian Church (USA)  support BDS: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/us-p ... pport-bds/

Another example being Ireland who has for a long time been a supporter to boycotting Israel and has done its best to implement BDS in its legal system despite great opposition from Israel. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/irel ... ent-goods/

While some countries like the USA are still supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupying forces, some other countries, in spite of the difficulties, are standing up and taking concrete measures to stop or at least not participate in this genocide which has been going on for more than 70 years now.

[dorothea]

Quoting bigots ignorant of history and bereft of decency does not support your absurd argument. Jews have lived in North Africa and the Levant for 3000 years and continued to do so when Christianity arrived. The problems started when the sexually depraved and blasphemous heresy of Islam began it's campaign of hatred and genocide. Israel is a plural, tolerant society under the rule of law. Palestinians are even in the legislature. No Islamic state can say the same. Indeed, nowhere on earth is there anywhere inimical to Muslim happiness and success as an islamic government. The Palestinians have shown themselves unworthy of any sympathy and they get precious little from their neighbours. When given the vote they elected murderous corrupt terrorists. When Iraq invaded peaceful Kuwait, Palestinian servants employed there join in the rapes and murders of girls women and boys. Their behaviour was even viler than the invaders - so much so that General Schwarzkopf would not allow Kuwaiti soldiers to enter Kuwait City unescorted. Saud troops took their place at the head of the victory march to avoid a bloodbath of Palestinian collaborators. Arabs owe trillions in compensation for Jews' lost lives, property and lands that they have been driven from over the past centuries. They won't get it of course because Islam is beyond reform. Like Mormonism it is a religion founded on lies and wholly without any ethical code whatsoever.

[Nick_A]

Simone Weil explains the justification for genocide.

"My own feeling was that when once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whole life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men that murder. ... For the purpose [of the whole struggle] can only be defined in terms of the public good, of the welfare of men -- and men have become valueless. ... One sets out as a volunteer with the idea of sacrifice, and finds oneself in a war which resembles a war of mercenaries, only with much more cruelty and with less human respect for the enemy." Simone Weil

Now it becomes clear. It is the officials of the state together with some deity which has the authority and intelligence to proclaim who or what has value. The public good depends on this moral ability to judge value and put it into effect and rid society of the valueless

[dorothea]

That certainly explains the thinking of some of those death squads in Poland. The one that keeps me awake is the man who 'soothed his conscience' by shooting the kids. During the Rwandan massacres I recall a woman saying she had killed her dead Tutsi neighbour's children because there was no one now to feed them. Who would have ever dreamed that compassion could generate such horrors, and with the perpetrator remaining insensible of what they'd done? Where does this leave ethics? Do they have any point?

[Sculptor]

You are certainly laconic. Are you a Spartan rebirthed I wonder.
If you mean the American tribes, I'm not sure - I don't know much - whether there was systematic genocide or not.
I do know that two philosophers 100 years apart (Hobbes and Adam Smith) both expressed horror at the cruelty shown by the tribes *Comanche, Lakota etc) to each other. That's saying something given what we know about the cruel C17th and C18th in Britain.

I'm sure both Hobbes and Smith were perfectly capable of turning a blind eye to their own horrors.
It's called exceptionalism.
Do you have any quotes from either of these guys, btw, or are you just making it up on the spot?
I won't hold my breath waiting.
ETC is a meaningless phrase.
I doubt that either had the slightest bit of first hand evidence of either the Lakota or the Comanche.

[Sculptor]

I have read the article and I find that the on going genocide of Palestinian people would have been a pertinant example for the subject the author wanted to address. For example, the Nobel Prize of Literature Jose Saramago compares the suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation as the same suffering of the jews in the Nazi boot camps.

He declared the following after a visit to Palestine in March, 2002:

• “The repression from Israel is the worst form of Apartheid. Nobody has the faintest idea of what is going on here, even the best informed people. Everything is in pieces, the land is destroyed and nothing else may be planted. All this smells like a boot camp, like Auschwitz. The israeli have turned into NAZI JEWS”

And when Noam Chomsky (who btw has a Jewish background!) was asked by Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow on the apartheid system put in place by the Israeli occupying forces, he said:

• NOAM CHOMSKY: In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by “apartheid” you mean South African-style apartheid. What’s happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse. There’s a crucial difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce. It was 85 percent of the workforce of the population, and that was basically their workforce. They needed them. They had to sustain them. The bantustans were horrifying, but South Africa did try to sustain them. They didn’t put them on a diet. They tried to keep them strong enough to do the work that they needed for the country. They tried to get international support for the bantustans.
  
  The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just don’t want them. They want them out, or at least in prison. And they’re acting that way. That’s a very striking difference, which means that the apartheid analogy, South African apartheid, to the Occupied Territories is just a gift to Israeli violence. It’s much worse than that. If you look inside Israel, there’s plenty of repression and discrimination. I’ve written about it extensively for decades.

And when asked to comment on the repeated Israeli attacks on Gaza, each time killing thousands of unarmed Palestinian women and children in their homes and schools, Noam Chomsky said:

• NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s a hideous atrocity, sadistic, vicious, murderous, totally without any credible pretext. It’s another one of the periodic Israeli exercises in what they delicately call “mowing the lawn.” That means shooting fish in the pond, to make sure that the animals stay quiet in the cage that you’ve constructed for them

Noam Chomsky also commented on the starvation policies implemented by the Israeli occupying forces on the Palestinian people:

• NOAM CHOMSKY: Israel has—Israeli experts have calculated in detail exactly how many calories, literally, Gazans need to survive. And if you look at the sanctions that they impose, they’re grotesque. I mean, even John Kerry condemned them bitterly. They’re sadistic. Just enough calories to survive. And, of course, it is partly metaphoric, because it means just enough material coming in through the tunnels so that they don’t totally die. Israel restricts medicines, but you have to allow a little trickle in. When I was there right before the November 2012 assault, visited the Khan Younis hospital, and the director showed us that there’s—they don’t even have simple medicines, but they have something. And the same is true with all aspects of it. Keep them on a diet, literally. And the reason is—very simple, and they pretty much said it: “If they die, it’s not going to look good for Israel. We may claim that we’re not the occupying power, but the rest of the world doesn’t agree. Even the United States doesn’t agree. We are the occupying power. And if we kill off the population under occupation, not going to look good.” It’s not the 19th century, when, as the U.S. expanded over what’s its national territory, it pretty much exterminated the indigenous population. Well, by 19th century’s imperial standards, that was unproblematic. This is a little different today. You can’t exterminate the population in the territories that you occupy. That’s the dovish position, Weissglas. The hawkish position is Eiland, which you quoted: Let’s just kill them off.

At the moment the attention of the media is rightly focused on the unjust and degrading treatment of the African-Americans in the USA. But let's not also forget about the Palestinian people whose fate is far worse than the African-Americans. An increasing number of people are joining this just cause all over the world. Like for example the Presbyterian Christians in the USA who have repeatedly voiced their support for the BDS movement against the rogue, apartheid and terrorist state of Israel as Noam Chomsky called it.
Presbyterian Church (USA)  support BDS: https://www.palestinechronicle.com/us-p ... pport-bds/

Another example being Ireland who has for a long time been a supporter to boycotting Israel and has done its best to implement BDS in its legal system despite great opposition from Israel. https://www.palestinechronicle.com/irel ... ent-goods/

While some countries like the USA are still supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupying forces, some other countries, in spite of the difficulties, are standing up and taking concrete measures to stop or at least not participate in this genocide which has been going on for more than 70 years now.

This is made more horrific by the establishments of the US and UK suppressing questions about this topic.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Ever noticed how members of the religion of Political Correctness share the same opinions, glazed expressions, lack of any shred of self doubt, and general air of smugness as all religious fanatics in their own particular religions? The Politically Correct are the moral authority for hupersonkind (seem familiar?).
You find them all over the internet, quoting their messiah Noam Chomsky, and inappropriately using words like 'racist', 'genocide' and 'apartheid'--all of which have very specific meanings.
These self-righteous wankers have destroyed the 'left', which is why we keep getting arsehole neo-liberal govts. voted in around the world, election after election.

[dorothea]

Sculptor.
When Hobbes was challenged on his view that the State of nature (nasty, brutish etc) once prevailed on earth he responded that it was maybe not the case except in the new World. (See chapter 13 of Leviathan). he had the next best thing to first-hand knowledge through his substantial investments in companies operating in Virginia. Adam Smith mentions new World atrocities in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. (Check the index.) Perhaps you are a victim of the victimhood stories you absorbed at school and in the MSM since?

Here's just one example of how enemies were executed. Pegged out, spread-eagled on the ground, very small fires (just a few twigs) were lit under each hand and foot. The aim was to progressively burn the limbs away slowly over several days and to keep the victims cries going day and night. Children were given the job of keeping the fires lit while the adults carried on their daily tasks. The victim would be fed and watered to prolong the agony. It's also possible that herbal preparations were used - with similar effects to the drugs KGB used to keep people conscious while they were fed feet first and slowly into a furnace.

I will not reply to your comments on Israel which are refuted by the universal hostility in the Western media except to say there are only two possible reasons for attacks on the only Jewish state surrounded by 57 Islamic hellholes: ignorance, culpable, or Jew-hatred. You will know which applies in your case and reason and evidence are blunt arrows I suspect. nevertheless I recommend two books and a movie. Martin Gilbert's In Ismael's House; Uprooted, by Lyn Julius; and the film In Between directed by Maysaloun Hamoud.