Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated he has informed the United States that he opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of any postwar scenario. That was likely shocking news for those not paying attention.
It is often assumed that genocide must be caused by extraordinary processes – processes that are outside of or defy the logic of normal human functioning and that cannot be easily understood. However, while it is certainly beyond our imagination what it means to experience, witness, or perpetrate genocide, the processes that lead up to that point and enable people to engage in acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group (as genocide is defined in Article II 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) are not. Rather, the processes that enable genocide include many mundane, ordinary social phenomena that also apply in times of relative peace – or what we may consider as such – and explain how individuals and groups can engage in structural and direct violence against others.
In other words, genocide is not a qualitatively distinct category of human behaviour – it follows ordinary principles of human cognition, affect, and behaviour that certain societal and political conditions (such as political upheaval, prior genocide, autocratic rule, and low trade openness) allow to escalate into more and more severe violence.
We should therefore never give in to the illusion and optimistic bias – which also helps explain some behaviours of victim groups in times of genocide that reduce their survival, as well as the likelihood of resistance – that we are immune to the risk of genocide.
We human beings have a remarkable ability to dehumanize one another: to conceive of others as subhuman creatures, and to treat them accordingly.
Reasonably, morally, and ethically – the survival of one, must not be at the expense of another.
William Perry
Victoria
