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cultural genocide
Is ‘Cultural Erasure’ Only Wrong When Our Enemies Do It?
While I certainly join U.S. State Department Undersecretary Uzra Zeya in condemning all state-inflicted murder and ethnocide, I also condemn her ironic, genocidal omissions.
Mar 17, 2024
Oh Lord, kumbaya...
As I absorb the daily news of war and global devastation, I sing these words to myself—quietly, yes, secretly, lest I ignite instant flash-bang sarcasm from the surrounding world. What next? A flower in a rifle barrel?
Sarcasm spits in the face of idealism—a.k.a., “feelgood-ism”—and life goes on. Any questions? Sure, war is hell and all that, especially when the bad guys wage it, but sitting around the campfire and lamenting musically for global niceness is a sin against our military budget. Don’t be silly. We need to protect ourselves.
“The most defiant act of resistance is to sing.”
At least that seems to be the accepted consensus. And the word “kumbaya”—a cry for God and the relief of suffering—simply equals naivete. But here’s the problem, as I’m coming to see it: Sarcasm—which sees itself as realism mixed with caustic humor—can easily wind up being nothing more than a defense of war... a defense of the worst of who we are. Oh Lord, kumbaya.
All of which brings me back to Palestine, where what’s happening is humanity’s darkness—colonial conquest, theft of land, blatant murder and evisceration of a culture—in full view of the world. As IDF soldiers dance and laugh on their cellphone videos while they take part in the devastation of Gaza, the whole enterprise degenerates into armed sarcasm.
“What’s happening in Gaza is a multi-layered act that extends far beyond the physical destruction of artifacts or the killing of individuals,” according to Mariam Shah, writing at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “These actions are part of broader destructive processes that undermine a community’s heritage, identity, and existence—with profound symbolic and psychological implications for Palestinians not only in Gaza but globally...”
“This destruction, both physical and symbolic, serves a larger political agenda—the erasure of Palestinian identity and collective memory, which may amount to cultural genocide.”
Another term for this is “ethnocide,” coined, ironically, by Jewish exile from Poland Raphael Lemkin in 1944 (who also coined the word “genocide”). It’s hardly something new, but every instance of it births anew the soul-deep question: why?
Perhaps even more crucially, it also births the follow-up question: What’s the alternative? Sociocultural entities encounter one another and see only an enormous wall of differences: in language, in tradition, in certainties of all sorts. The automatic response tends not to be, uh... curiosity, a desire to understand and learn. The more likely response is fear, which can easily blossom into violence, especially if need is also part of the context of their meeting: a need (or desire) for the land that other culture occupies. Welcome to human history!
I write these words as a citizen of the United States of Irony. A few months ago—well into the Israeli assault on Gaza, with U.S support and weaponry—U.S. State Department Undersecretary Uzra Zeya spoke about “cultural erasure” at a conference in Prague. “We are at a critical juncture in history,” she said, “where the very fabric of many unique religious and cultural identities is being threatened by authoritarian regimes and extremist groups around the world.”
Oh Lord, kumbaya.
She proceeded to condemn Russia, China, and ISIS in Iraq for inflicting hell and ethnocide on vulnerable cultures in their domain. China is “systematically dismantling” the identities and traditions of the Tibetan and Uyghur communities, and has destroyed thousands of mosques and sacred sites. Russia, of course, “has attempted to destroy Ukraine’s distinct cultural heritage.” And ISIS has “inflicted unimaginable suffering on the Yazidi community as part of its genocide. ISIS fighters destroyed Yazidi shrines and massacred thousands...”
She then declared: “The United States will continue to speak clearly and forcefully against attempts to erase the culture and unique identities of vulnerable communities, and we will back up our words with our actions.”
By arming Israel? By separating migrant families at our southern border? By lamenting over the threat of “white replacement” and (maybe) re-electing Donald Trump president? By ignoring our own history?
While I certainly join Zeya in condemning all state-inflicted murder and ethnocide, I also condemn her ironic, genocidal omissions. It’s not just the country’s declared enemies—the bad guys—who do this.
We stole the continent, corralled the Indigenous occupants onto “reservations,” then decided to steal their children and turn them into white people via legally enforced boarding schools, a project known as “kill the Indian in him and save the man.”
“Some 100,000 Native Americans were forced to attend these schools, forbidden to speak Native languages, made to renounce Native beliefs, and forced to abandon their Native American identities, including their names,” according to the Equal Justice Initiative. “Many children were leased out to white families as indentured servants.”
“Parents who resisted their children’s removal to boarding schools were imprisoned and had their children forcibly taken from them... ”
Have we transcended this history? Are we better people now?
All I can do in this moment is reach for the spirit of hope... and kumbaya. In a remarkable Al-Jazeera interview, three Palestinians talked about their culture—their art and poetry, theater and song—and how not only is it being bombed and demolished, it’s standing directly against the ethnocide, not simply resisting but transcending it. These are the words of Serena Rasoul, one of the interviewees:
“The most defiant act of resistance is to sing... to one another, to God, to the land. You can level our buildings but you can’t destroy our spirits. The majority of Palestinian folk songs are around joy and love. That’s who we are.”
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'This Is Not Self-Defense... This Is Ethnic Cleansing': Israel Blows Up Gaza University
"All the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed," said one international relations expert.
Jan 18, 2024
The Israel Defense Forces' detonation of more than 300 mines planted at Israa University in Gaza on Wednesday provided the latest evidence that Israel's objective in its bombardment of the enclave is not self-defense, rights advocates said.
"This is not self-defense," said Chris Hazzard, an Irish member of the United Kingdom's Parliament. "This is not counter-insurgency. This is ethnic-cleansing."
The International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) called the destruction of Israa University Israel's latest attempt to carry out a "cultural genocide" along with the slaughter of at least 24,620 people in just over three months—people who Israeli officials have claimed are legitimate military targets despite the fact that roughly half of those killed have been children.
The wiping out of cultural landmarks was included in South Africa's International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of genocidal acts in Gaza last week, with the complaint noting that "Israel has damaged and destroyed numerous centers of Palestinian learning and culture," including libraries, one of the world's oldest Christian monasteries, and the Great Omari Mosque, where an ancient collection of manuscripts was kept before the building was destroyed in an airstrike last month.
"The crime of targeting and destroying archaeological sites should spur the world and UNESCO into action to preserve this great civilizational and cultural heritage," Gaza's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said after the mosque was bombed.
Now, international relations professor Nicola Perugini of the University of Edinburgh said, "all the universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed."
On its Facebook page, the university said the IDF had occupied the campus for about 70 days before planting 315 mines and detonating the institution's main building, its museum, a university hospital, and other buildings.
The IDF occupied Israa University, said administrators, "and used it as a military base for its mechanisms and a center for [the] snatching of isolated civilians in the areas of Rashid, Maghraqa, and Zahraa streets, and temporarily detained [them] to investigate with citizens before moving them."
Mitchell Plitnick, president of Rethinking Foreign Policy, said the fact that 315 mines were detonated meant that "by definition... it was not a legitimate military target."
"Israel would have to have full control to plant so many mines," said Plitnick. "This is a clear example of a war crime and destruction for the fun of it."
Eight universities in Gaza have now been targeted since the IDF began its bombardment on October 7, according to the IMEMC.
Birzeit University, in the occupied West Bank, condemned the destruction of the school and accused Israel of stealing 3,000 rare artifacts from Israa's museum.
"Birzeit University reaffirms the fact that this crime is part of the Israeli occupation's onslaught against the Palestinians," said the school on social media. "It's all a part of the Israeli occupation's goal to make Gaza uninhabitable; a continuation of the genocide being carried out in Gaza Strip."
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Canada's First Nations Push Back Against Centuries of Murder, Abuse and Neglect
Jun 12, 2015
Victors write the history books. They write versions that are often coloured by their perceptions and the image they want to portray. They hope that time will erase any trace of wrongdoing or injustices imposed on others. But, they forget that memories are long and passed from generation to generation. They forget that some bystanders will not be silenced or stopped until justice is served.
After reading recent editorials by Betty L. Reade and Richard Gwyn it's time Canadian history books were rewritten and the disturbing truth laid bare.
In June 1749, Governor Edward Cornwallis establish Halifax thereby violating earlier treaties with the Mi'kmaq (1726). When Mi'kmaq fought against this expansion the British constructed more settlements and forts. On October 2, 1749, Cornwallis placed a bounty on the head of every Mi'kmaq man, woman and child. Ten guineas, the equivalent of $19 today, was paid for each scalp. Cornwallis meant to eradicate the Mi'kmaq.
To date this law has never been repealed.
The Indian Act passed by Canada's Parliament in 1874 effectively imprisoned Aboriginals on reserve lands making them legal wards of the state.
Proof of genocide exists in the form of letters documenting the distribution of small pox infected blankets by the British to Aboriginals during the battle of Fort Pitt, Saskatchewan in 1885.
In 1884 Ottawa passed legislation creating state-funded, church administered Indian Residential Schools. In 1920 the federal government mandated that Aboriginal children must attend residential schools from age seven to fifteen.
In 1928 the Sexual Sterilization Act was passed in Alberta. Anyone attending a native residential school could be sterilized upon the approval of the school Principal. At least 3,500 women were sterilized under this law.
In 1933, British Columbia passed the same Sexual Sterilization Act. The United Church established sterilization centres in Bella Bella and Nanaimo. Thousands of native men and women were sterilized until the 1980s.
That same year, residential school principals were made the legal guardians of all native students. This law required Indigenous parents to surrender custody or face imprisonment.
The federal government attempted to close all residential schools in 1938, but gave in to pressure from Catholic and Protestant church leaders.
From 1946 until the 1970s a Central Intelligence Agency used students from Canadian residential schools as involuntary test subjects with the consent of the churches.
During the 1940s and 50s, Health Canada used children from residential schools in medical experiments.
Even after the last residential school closed our institutions failed to protect Indigenous children, youth, and women.
B.C. judge David Ramsay pleaded guilty on May 3, 2004, to sexual assault causing bodily harm, breach of trust and three counts of buying sex from a person under 18. The offences took place between 1992 and 2001.
His victims, mostly Aboriginal girls living in poverty and in trouble with the law, were subjected to acts of escalating sexual violence. Some were as young as 12 years old.
In June 2004, Ramsay was sentenced to seven years in jail. He died January 19, 2008.
In 2015 an RCMP officer in northern Manitoba arrested an intoxicated Indigenous woman at a house party only to return, off duty, to request her release into his custody so that he could, "pursue a personal relationship."
In Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, an RCMP constable took a complaint from a woman who was choked, beaten, stripped, and pushed out of a house naked by her boyfriend. The constable failed to interview witnesses and refused to lay charges as per RCMP policy on domestic violence, which states, in part, "A charge will be laid when reasonable and probable grounds exist, irrespective of the willingness of the victim to give evidence."
Respected international and national groups are demanding a national inquiry into Canada's 1,181 missing and murdered Indigenous women. This process must be followed with the timely implementation of recommendations.
The International Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on December 9, 1948 set the United Nations definition of genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group:
(a) Killing members of the group
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Using this check list, Canada is five for five.
Yes, the terms cultural genocide and genocide need to be used when referring to Canada's treatment of Indigenous people because Canada has clearly established a history of persistent attempts at eradicating our Indigenous populations.
As Mr. Gwyn pointed out, "a huge increase is taking place in the number of university-educated Aboriginal [people]." This is testimony to the fact that Canada's Indigenous people are able to embrace education as well as cultural traditions and native languages.
Thank goodness they were, and are, strong enough to fight for their rights without giving in to learned hopelessness.
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