South Africa has taken Israel to the International Court of Justice, accusing it of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza – and 12 other countries have supported the case.
“Genocide” is a legal term increasingly used to describe what Israel is doing in Gaza, killing more and more people, a figure approaching 40,000.
What other terms have been used to describe what is happening in Gaza??
Genocide, killing a people
Genocide is the “deliberate killing of large numbers of people of a particular nation or ethnic group with the intent to destroy that nation or group.”
The term was coined by Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin – “geno,” the Greek word for race or tribe, and “-cide,” the Latin word for murder – to describe the murder of Jews and other groups by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The term “genocide” appeared very early in this war: in October, more than 800 academics signed a letter warning of a “potential genocide in Gaza.”
In a report released in March, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, said there were “reasons to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide… has been met.”
Analysts and human rights observers point to statements by senior Israeli officials, as well as soldiers fighting in Gaza, advocating the destruction of Gaza and the displacement of its population.
Urbicide, killing a city
Coined in the 1960s, the term “urbicide” describes the deliberate destruction of a city and became widely used following the Serbian siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996.
The Russian attacks on Grozny in Chechnya in 2001, Israel’s destruction of Beirut’s southern suburbs in 2006, the destruction by Bashar al-Assad’s government of the Syrian cities of Homs and eastern Aleppo between 2012 and 2017, the ISIS campaign in Mosul, Iraq, and the Russian attack on Mariupol and Bucha in Ukraine have been described as urbicides.
Between October 7 and May 31, Israel damaged or destroyed approximately 55 percent (or 137,297 structures) in Gaza, according to a report by the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).
To the extent that these structures constitute the building blocks of a city – homes, schools, hospitals, cultural sites, religious sites, and infrastructure related to water, electricity, and transportation – some scholars consider Israel’s actions to constitute a massacre of Gaza’s cities, or urbicide.
Home murder, murder at home
Domicide is an extension of urbicide and means the deliberate and systematic destruction of living spaces, targeting intimate places of residence so that any form of stability, physical or emotional, is replaced by a sense of constant flux.
Of all the homes destroyed by Israel since October, the damage is most severe in Gaza. UNOSAT recorded 135,142 damaged homes, mainly in Gaza City, Khan Younis and the northern Gaza Strip.
With homes no longer habitable and their sense of belonging destroyed, some Palestinians will feel they have no choice but to leave Gaza.
Although this is a forced migration, it would in some way allow Israeli officials to deny any responsibility for the departure of Palestinians from their homeland.
According to the UN, restoring Gaza to its pre-conflict level would require decades of intensive work to clear rubble, unexploded ordnance and landmines.
Policide, murder of representation
Politicide occurs when a powerful actor works to politically execute the public and private spheres of their enemy.
The term first appeared in the 1970s to describe the destruction of groups of people who shared a political identity.
This term is also used to refer to the murder of political leaders and later extended to the destruction of structures that allowed political entities to exist.
“Politicide was used… to describe Israeli policy toward the Palestinians on the eve of and during the second intifada in 2000, when Israel’s clear goal was to destroy the conditions for the very existence of a Palestinian state,” Ziad Majed, professor of Middle Eastern studies and international relations at the American University of Paris, wrote in Orient XXI in December.
Ecocide, killing the environment
The term ecocide – environmental destruction – was coined in 1970 by biology professor Walter W Galston, in protest at the US use of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam to destroy plant growth under which the Viet Cong hid.
Israeli munitions have had a serious impact on the climate and ecosystems of Gaza, where Israeli attacks have contaminated the soil and groundwater with munitions such as white phosphorus.
Israel has destroyed more than half of Gaza’s agricultural land, according to an Tel Aviv Tribune investigation.
Although this makes access to vital resources like water dangerous or unsafe to consume, the true extent of the damage is not yet known.
As of 2021, 97% of Gaza’s water was unfit for human consumption after more than a decade of Israeli blockade and multiple wars.
Israel continued to attack infrastructure and block aid, rendering desalination and sewage treatment plants inoperable.
According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, as of November, 130,000 cubic metres (34.3 million gallons) of untreated sewage was being dumped into the Mediterranean Sea every day.
Even the air in Gaza has become dangerous during the Israeli war: smoky and polluted by Israeli bombs or by fires set by displaced people from the debris they find.
Researchers and experts from environmental organizations say the long-term damage has led to calls for Israel’s actions to be classified as ecocide.
Educide and Scholasticism, the Killing of Knowledge
Educide and scholasticism are the systematic destruction of an educational system and its institutions.
Educide, in particular, is the systematic murder of academics and intellectuals, or educational genocide, according to British academic Rula Alousi.
The term was first used in 2009 to describe the killing of Iraqi education personnel after the 2003 US-led invasion.
UN experts have warned of a risk of scholasticism in Gaza, as at least 90% of the territory’s schools have been damaged or destroyed.
All 12 universities and higher education institutions in Gaza were destroyed, while thousands of students and teachers were killed.
More than 600,000 students have been deprived of school since October 7.
Culturcide, killing the sense of self
Culturcide is the destruction of a culture, especially that of a specific ethnic, political, religious or social group.
Israel has destroyed or damaged approximately 200 historical cultural sites in Gaza.
Cultural casualties include archaeological sites, historic mosques housing rare manuscripts, one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries and an ancient port dating back to 800 B.C.
South Africa has included the destruction of Gaza’s cultural heritage in its case against Israel at the ICJ.
“Israel has damaged and destroyed many Palestinian centers of learning and culture,” he said in his application to the International Court of Justice.