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Recently, a distressed Twitter/X message from a well-known Israeli-Australian human rights jurist caught my eye. It dealt with an institute I had never heard of previously.
Perhaps this is merely a testament to my ignorance.
Shameful, Shameless
The institute, the Lemkin Institute, professes to be dedicated to the study of genocide and what appalled the eminent jurist was the manner that the Institute — which bears the name of the man, who originally conceived the term "genocide" — had distorted its purported focus of its inquiry.
With dismay, he tweeted, "Quite incredible that @LemkinInstitute, named after Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term 'genocide', would now be shilling for jihadists of Hezbollah (and Hamas), who would seek to carry out another genocide against the Jewish people! Shame on you!"
There is much to justify his consternation.
After all, the institute issued a statement which could be construed as Judeophobia.
The statment condemns Israel’s response to an unprovoked and barbarous massacre (Oct. 7, 2023) of its civilian population by the Islamo-fascist organization Hamas — with the eager complicity of the Gazan population at large.
This is blind to the fact that Israel is engaged in conflict, one not of its choosing, with two terror organizations.
Those terror organizations are backed by a global state sponsor of jihadi terror, all of which have the explicit intent of genocide (the express intent to eliminate the Jewish state and its inhabitants), emblazoned across their publicly professed positions.
In fact, the obliteration of Israel is a major part of the raison d’etre of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Tehran's tyrannical theocracy.
Yet, on its X account, the institute shamelessly accuses Israel of being a "genocidal state that is completely out of control," wildly alleging that it's "supported by a Western world that is, in large measure, too racist and Islamophobic to care."
Similar tirades appear on the Institute’s website and the LinkedIn account of the institute’s executive-director.
Conflating "Chalk and Cheese"
It should be remembered that when Lamkin coined the term "genocide," it was against the backdrop of the World War II Holocaust, a mega tragedy involving the purposely planned and perpetrated annihilation of millions of non-combatants (particularly Jews) for no other reason than their ethnic and religious origins. Israel’s action in Gaza differs vastly from anything that can be associated, even remotely, with "genocide."
After all, what genocidally-inclined villain would take the painstaking — perhaps even, ill-advised — efforts Israel has taken to protect enemy civilians?
Indeed, authoritative military sources — including former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Richard Kemp, and West Point’s Urban warfare expert, John Spencer — have stated unequivocally that Israel has achieved the lowest ratio of civilian casualties in the history of urban warfare.
Moreover, Israel has regularly "pre-warned" Gazan civilians to vacate areas to be attacked and arranged for safe passage of non-combatants out of combat zones to designated sanctuary areas.
Additionally, Israel has conveyed well over a million tons of humanitarian aid—including food, water, and medical supplies — to the Gazan population.
Perversely, it's difficult to conceive of conduct any less consistent with the practice of genocide.
Caricaturizing and Miniaturizing
Indeed, not only has the institute evaded mentioning that much of the Gazan death toll is due to actions of Hamas' leadership (which not only used its own civilians as human shields) but actively urged, threatened, and physically prevented them from evacuating war zones for safer locations.
Thus, the Jews, the victims of the archetypical genocide (the Holocaust) are now, by some perverted sleight-of-hand, being portrayed as the purveyors of a contrived, choreographed "genocide" of its attackers.
In embracing this distorted approach, in which all civilian deaths due to war, regardless of scale, scope, or circumstance, are designated "genocide," the institute has tarnished its solemn sphere of study — in effect, caricaturizing its content and miniaturizing its dimensions.
It is against this backdrop that the accusation of genocide leveled by the institute, not only at Israel, but at its strategic allies, should be viewed.
Thus the Lemkin Institute charged Azerbaijan, one of Israel’s largest suppliers of energy and a major commercial partner, with perpetrating "genocide" during its 2023 operation in Nagorno-Karabakh — this despite the very low estimates of fatalities incurred in the fighting (mostly combatants on both sides) and that the ethnic Armenian residents were afforded passage to their motherland, Armenia.
Curiously, larger-scale Azerbaijani deaths and expulsions in previous engagements over Nagorno-Karabakh including Armenian bombardments of Azerbaijani civilian centers.
Accordingly, whatever one’s opinion on the rights-and-wrongs of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, it's clear that Baku’s objective was not ethnic slaughter, but ending the undeniably anomalous situation whereby a sizeable enclave, entirely within the frontiers of one sovereign nation, is populated by inhabitants — who not only identify with another nation, but an adversarial one at that.
The Ominous Omens of Nov. 2016
The "intellectual" utterances demonstrated by the institute might not be worth much attention, had it not been for the upcoming 2024 election.
The institute's senior leadership has seemingly thrown their weighty influence firmly behind the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.
The aim?
To allegedly implant their (the Lemkin Institute’s) biased anti-Israel agenda into the Harris-Walz camp.
For Israel, this is one more ominous omen in the gathering accumulation of areas of grave concern that a Harris victory portends.
Martin Sherman spent seven years in operational capacities in the Israeli defense establishment. He is the founder of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a member of the Habithonistim-Israel Defense & Security Forum (IDSF) research team, and a participant in the Israel Victory Project. Read Martin Sherman's Reports — More Here.
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