How to Make a Genocide

The processes of genocide have been well-documented: where, when and how people are killed. How many are killed.  Who are the killers.  Who are the victims. How was genocide “justified.”

But there has been less discussion of the precursors to genocide.  How do you get a nation to engage in genocide?  What means and methods are used to prepare the seedbed? How is public opinion shaped?  What levers are used to activate the impulse for mass murder?

Genocide doesn’t just happen. Humans don’t naturally or innately hate each other. Attitudes leading to genocide must be nurtured and shaped in the minds of those who will be the perpetrators. The Other must be dehumanized, demonized; transformed into the personification of evil. In Israel’s case, it planted the seeds of genocide in children from a young age. They are taught to hate what they call “Arabs.” That the only good Arab is a dead Arab. That Palestinians are the latter-day personification of Amalek (ancient Israelite enemies).

In all genocides of the 20-21st centuries the media played a crucial role in laying the groundwork for mass murder: Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Myanmar, etc.  In Germany, the notorious propagandists Goebbels and Julius Streicher employed publications like Der Sturmer to peddle the dehumanizing lies that incited a nation. They declared Jews enemies of not only the German people, but the world.  They likened them to vermin, poison and insects.  They projected images of vile, villainous, dirty, deformed human beings.

Channel 14 genocide provocateurs all genocides of the 20-21st centuries the media played a crucial role in laying the groundwork for mass murder: Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Myanmar, etc.  In Germany, the notorious propagandists Goebbels and Julius Streicher employed publications like Der Sturmer to peddle the dehumanizing lies that incited a nation. They declared Jews enemies of not only the German people, but the world.  They likened them to vermin, poison and insects.  They projected images of vile, villainous, dirty, deformed human beings.

Goebbels and Streicher were masters of media manipulation. In fact, the latter’s post-WWII death sentence noted:

For his…speaking, writing, and preaching hatred of the Jews, Streicher was widely known as ” Jew-Baiter Number One”…He infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism. and incited the German people to active persecution. Each issue of ” Der Sturmer”, which reached a circulation of 600,000 in 1935, was filled with such articles, often lewd and disgusting.

…As early as 1938 he began to call for the annihilation of the Jewish race. Twenty-three different articles of ” Der Sturmer…were produced in evidence, in which the extermination ” root and “branch” was preached…[They]…termed the Jew a germ and a pest, not a human being, but ” a parasite, an enemy, an evil-doer, a disseminator of diseases who must be destroyed in the interest of mankind.” Other articles urged that only when world Jewry had been annihilated would the Jewish problem have been solved, and predicted that fifty years hence the Jewish graves “will proclaim that this people of murderers and criminals has after all met its deserved fate”… Such was the poison Streicher injected into the minds of thousands of Germans…

Once Streicher planted these images, this normalized them. Thence, he could proceed to eliminate the Jews, devising the means and methods to do so. From this followed a series of escalatory attacks: Kristallnacht, pogroms, and then mass murder.

Media incites genocide

Similarly, the Israeli media, ministers, generals and university presidents created an echo chamber in which all voices exhorted Israelis to mass murder.  They invoked Amalek, a tribe exterminated by King Saul and his Israelite army, because they “harried” the Israelites as they left Egypt. An Israeli settler rabbi wrote a book approving the murder of Palestinian children because they supposedly would grow up to kill Jews. An Israeli minister called Palestinian children “snakes.” A retired general wrote in a leading newspaper that Palestinian women should be murdered because they will produce the terrorists of the future.

Israelis are conditioned to hate Palestinians. They were taught it with their mother’s milk. The hatred begins in school and is cultivated in the curriculum.  Later, during their army service, the hatred could be inflicted on Palestinians directly and physically.  Instead of school textbooks and teachers’ lessons, they now had guns and missiles to act out these homicidal instincts.  Once instilled within Israeli consciousness, it became easy to implement the actual genocide.

One of the most effective tools used by genociders is the media.  In the days of Streicher, print publications were among the most successful in inculcating hate.  During the Rwanda genocide, the Hutu radio station not only incited hatred, it helped organize the killing and the killers.

Since 10/7 Israeli media has played its “patriotic” role in championing the genocide, this includes print and broadcast outlets.  The drumbeat of hateful rhetoric has been incessant.  The voices of moderation or skepticism are barely heard, if at all.

The prevalence of online media has added another effective method of provoking violence and hate: social media.  Everyone from the government to the settler movement employs these platforms as part of their digital drumbeat of hate.  Not only do they air genocidal content, they have organized acts of vigilante violence against Palestinians via Telegram and Whatsapp chat groups.

The difference between Rwanda and Israel is that the latter doesn’t need to call out vigilantes to perpetrate genocide. Israel has an army capable of murdering 100,000 people, and destroying their homes, businesses, schools and hospitals in an area comparable to Philadelphia, in a scant two years.  This is genocide on an industrial scale that echoes the efficiency of the Nazis.

Using the legal system to hold media accountable

Israeli human rights lawyer, Michael Sfard, has filed an unprecedented case on behalf of three Israeli human rights NGOs, accusing Channel 14 of “incitement to genocide” (see above video clips). There is an existing law against racist or terror incitement. But never before has Israeli legal system confronted a domestic charge of genocide.

Like many other hate outlets, Channel 14 began as a marginal player in the media market, airing content about Jewish holidays and religious tradition.  But gradually it incorporated far-right political propaganda into its programming. It hired media-savvy, provocative personalities to blare headlines and commentary at its audience.  The more strident it became the larger its base.  Now, like Breitbart, Newsmax and FoxNews, it is one of the most popular brands in the country.

As I wrote above about laying the groundwork for a genocide, Channel 14 and the others do so through incessant airing of hate content:

…If you are a viewer of Channel 14, you get that line every day. Repetition normalizes the idea, for example, that there are no innocent people in Gaza…If you heard it once or twice, you could think, “Well, they’re very furious, so it’s like cursing someone.” But when you have that sentiment drummed into you constantly over many months, it gradually normalizes the idea. When people routinely talk about bombing residential neighborhoods to dust, then we get accustomed to the notion that this is something legitimate.

Even Sfard himself is aware that in the midst of genocide, the attorney general and Supreme Court will be loathe to swim against the tide of public opinion.  He’s aware that his efforts to expose a network of media and state organs promoting genocide may be of questionable impact.  When the deck is stacked against you, it’s hard to play winning cards. Your voice is easily silenced amidst the din of hate blared in print and on the air.  Is it worth it?  Can one person have meaningful impact.

Sfard wonders:

…Whether I become, despite all my good intentions, a collaborator with the existing system by virtue of giving it a chance to show that it can work on behalf of Palestinian rights. By enabling the Israeli state to occasionally grant victories to me and my legal arguments, I allow it to maintain its democratic self-image, which is, in fact, a false image…That’s the existential dilemma that…human rights lawyers in Israel face when going to court; maneuvering on this thin crust that I mentioned, we embolden [reinforce] the argument that Israel is a democracy.

Are we not legitimizing the system by even applying for justice there?” I’ve been grappling with the issue for a long time since it concerns the validity of my entire vocation.

Nevertheless, as someone who’s devoted his career to promoting international law and human rights, he cannot simply throw up his hands and withdraw from the fight:

…For me…neglecting, or boycotting, the courts is never an option so long as there are clients who want to apply to them, especially if the clients come from the disenfranchised or victimized community.

It is difficult to dedicate one’s life to fight against genocide while realizing that you are swimming against an entire society bathed in hate.