Intent is critical, but abstractions cannot yield the real import. Brace yourself.
It goes against the grain to use the words “bandied about” referring to so serious a matter as genocide, but that’s the point. The word and the reality — “genocide” — are bandied about today, robbing this horrendous human development of its true import.
Theory — abstract criteria for genocide — are insufficient to tell the story of genocide. Excerpts from five memoirs tell the real story. Read them, and you know what genocide is. Equally, you know that Israel’s military response to the war started by the uniquely evil and elusive Hamas is not genocide.
We apologize for the brutality of the excerpts, but it’s really important to know what genocide is — and is not.
This, from the memoir, The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945, by Wladyslaw Szpilman (later, a major motion picture), pages 98-99:
“ . . . Bodies lay there [on the border of the Warsaw ghetto]: the bodies of those killed yesterday . . . Among the bodies of men were the corpses of a young woman and two girls with their skulls smashed to pieces. The wall under which the corpses lay showed clear traces of bloodstains and brain tissue. The children had been murdered by a favourite German method: seized by the legs, their heads swung violently against the wall. Large black flies were walking over the dead and the pools of spilt blood on the ground . . . ” (Picador Paperback Edition, New York, 2003.)
This, from Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, by Yaffa Eliach, p. 135:
“[In Auschwitz,] one day, as Ida was sorting the clothes, an S.S. officer walked over to her and said: ‘Why do you smile, Jewish pig?” Before Ida had a chance to respond, she saw a black boot flying into her face, felt a piercing pain and the gush of blood, and looked down to behold her front teeth on the floor in a puddle of blood. “Pretty white teeth look better on the floor than in a filthy Jewish mouth,” said the S.S. officer. He commanded Ida to wipe the blood off the boot that knocked out her teeth and cheerfully walked away, humming a tune.” (Vintage Books, New York, 1988.)
This, from The Girl in the Green Sweater: A Life in Holocaust’s Shadow, by Krystyna Chiger with Daniel Paisner, page 61:
“[In Lvov,] when Grzymek gave the order for everyone to clean the streets, my father . . . suggested that perhaps the obersturmfuhrer might assign him and his fellow craftsmen a task more meaningful than simply sweeping the streets. Grzymek . . . reached for the leather whip he kept on his belt and lashed my father across the face . . . My father was cut in several places, and his left eye started to bleed. From that moment on, my father could not see properly with his left eye. Then Grzymek handed my father a shovel and a mop and told to him to get to work.” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2008.)
This, from Life in a Jack: The Irena Sendler Project, by Jack Mayer, page 230:
[Working in the laundry in the Pawiak prison in Warsaw,] Irena watched a Jewish boy, maybe three or four years old, through the laundry window playing with two sticks. An SS officer knelt and held out some candy for the child; he beckoned for him to take it. The boy took one sweet in each hand and smiled. The guard patted him on the head, and the toddler turned and walked away across the yard. The SS man removed his Luger from its holster, casually aimed at the boy’s back, and shot him dead. Irena covered her mouth with a soapy hand.” (Long Trail Press, Middlebury, VT, 2011).
This, from First One In, Last One Out: Auschwitz Survivor 31321, by Marilyn Shimon, pages 58-59:
“Zyklon B . . . had previously been used as a pesticide to kill lice in prisoner’s clothes and proved to be highly effective. The Nazis concluded that if it could kill lice, it could kill humans. [In Auschwitz,] Commandant Karl Fritzsch experimented with the effect of Zyklon B on people. He used 600 Soviet prisoners and 250 patients from the hospital. Within a few minutes, all the ‘subjects’ were dead. . . . The only challenge the Nazis encountered was how much Zyklon B was needed to kill the greatest number of people in the shortest amount of time. They wanted to be cost effective . . .” (CreateSpace, North Charleston, NC, 2017.)
It was in reference to these and parallel cruelties that the word “genocide” was coined. It is committed today by Hamas, not by Israel. Intent is critical in defining and in carrying out genocide. Intent to harm innocent people is written all over the typical Holocaust excepts cited above — and it written all over Hamas’ cruelties on Oct. 7, 2023 and ever since.
Israel, in stark contrast, informs Gazans in advance of a targeted attack against Hamas. Israel’s intent is not to harm civilians. You won’t find excerpts like those cited above from Israel in the war that Hamas began, but excerpts like these are reflected in Hamas’ deeds. Genocide is even written into Hamas’ founding document: the destruction of Israel.
To accuse Israel of genocide is to trivialize the word and to excuse Hamas. Whether Israel’s prosecution of the war against Hamas at this stage is the still the best solution for Israel is debatable. But genocide, it is not. For that, look to Hamas.
© IJN 2025
