An Apple Is Not an Orchard

 Words mean things. Suicide means killing yourself. Homicide means killing another person. Genocide (from the Greek “genos”, meaning race, tribe, people, kin, or lineage, and the Latin “caedēs”, a killing, slaughter, or massacre) means killing an entire race of people.

There were way too many of those during the 20th Century:

 • Ottoman Turkey, 1915-1917 vs. Armenia, 1-1.5M casualties

 • Soviet Union, 1929-1953, vs. anti-Communists and anti-Stalinists, 20M

 • Nazi Germany+occupied Europe, 1933-1945, Nazis vs. Jews, Gypsies, gays, and dissidents, 13M

 • China, 1949-1952, vs. anti-Communists, 20M

 • China, 1966-1976, vs. pro-reformers, 15M

 • Guatemala, 1960-1981, vs. Maya Indians, 100K

 • Burundi, 1972, Tutsis vs. Hutus, 150K

 • Uganda, 1971-1979, Idi Amin regime vs. tribal and political rivals, 300K

 • Cambodia, 1975-1979, Khmer Rouge vs. “intelligentsia”, 1M

 • Rwanda, 1994, Hutus vs. Tutsis, 800K

What they all had in common, the thing that MADE them genocides, were these 3 components:

(1) Identification (by race, religion, tribe, class, education, etc.) of a disfavored group as being subhuman and unfit to live.

(2) A policy of exterminating them.

(3) Largely succeeding.

NONE of those conditions apply regarding Palestinians. There are about 2 million of them living in Israel itself, easy to get to, and they are not being rounded up and herded off to modern-day Auschwitzes, Dachaus, and Buchenwalds. Another 3.3 million live in the occupied West Bank and are similarly not being massacred. Israeli retribution for the attacks of October 7 has been aimed solely at the 2.3 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. That’s an area of 141 square miles (about the same size as Philadelphia), and if Israel had really wanted to commit genocide there, it could’ve nuked the whole place on October 8. Instead it invaded, and so far that has resulted in 70,000 dead Palestinians, or about 3% of the population.

The math is indisputable. 3% is not 100%. The part is not the whole. The apple is not the orchard. What’s happening in Gaza is NOT a genocide. Frankly, it cheapens the term to use it this way; it should be reserved for what it really means: complete extermination of a people.

But, if not genocide, what? A near approximation from ancient history suggests itself. The Roman Empire was widely tolerant of cultural differences but it brooked absolutely no opposition to its own rule from the people it had conquered. It employed a variety of measures to drive this point home to any such group that proved too obstreperous or uppity: fines, deportations, enslavement, etc. Among its arsenal of techniques was “decimation” (from the Latin “decimatio”, removal of a tenth). This involved picking one person out of ten to be publicly executed as a clear message to the rest: “We’ve had it with you guys. We’ve done this now, and we can do it again. Shut up, fall into line, and get back to work.” Brutal, cruel, callous, heartless, and absolutely arbitrary, because in their relentless efficiency, the Romans didn’t waste a lot of time on niceties like due process. It didn’t matter whether their randomly chosen victims were rebels, loyalists, or simply regular people trying to go about their everyday business; they just needed some examples. And they did it because it worked.

But look at what decimation DIDN’T do. It didn’t harm the remaining 90% (not physically, at least). It didn’t engage in mass exiles. It didn’t destroy infrastructure or ruin croplands. It didn’t depopulate the working class. In short, the Romans had an empire to maintain and thus were serious about that “get back to work” bit.

That’s totally unlike the utter devastation being wreaked on Gaza, with most of its buildings destroyed; catastrophic shortages of water, food, shelter, and medical care; forced mass migrations; maimings, blindings, and cripplings of innocent civilians; and relentless, all-pervasive terror.

So, if what’s going on in Gaza isn’t really either genocide or decimation, what CAN we call it? Merely “atrocities” or “war crimes” — let alone the pathetic rationalizing euphemism “collateral damage” — don’t seem adequate for the scale and extent of what Israel is doing there. I suggest “bibification”, defined as “infliction of massive deaths and horrific suffering on innocent people in order to distract from the cupidity, corruption, crimes, incompetence, and moral failings of the leaders of their oppressors”.