I have finally snapped!
I have become so annoyed by lying halfwits misusing the word ‘genocide’ that I am going to spell out the true meaning of the word and why they are making complete fools of themselves every time they apply ‘genocide’ to the deaths of civilians in Gaza.
I will try to explain this in short, simple words so that even the idiots who mouth off this word will finally understand that they are being stupid, and their use of ‘genocide’ is illiterate, ignorant, and an attempt to gerrymander the English language.
The word ‘genocide’ was coined by Polish-born U.S. lawyer and linguist Raphael Lemkin in 1944 to label the attempt by the Nazis to completely wipe out the Jewish people in Europe.
The Nazis called their mass slaughter of Jews ‘the Final Solution’—we now call it the holocaust.
Six million Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered in those genocidal death camps.
The ‘geno-’ part of the word ‘genocide’ comes from genus a Latin word meaning, in this context, ‘race.’
It labels the race of people into which one is born.
The suffix ‘-cide’ comes from the Latin word suffix ‑cīdium meaning killing, slaying, murder.
The deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in a warzone in Gaza during the fiercest of the fighting is completely and totally unlike the cold-blooded decision by the Nazis to attempt to slaughter an entire race of people—a commitment they pursued during the prolonged years of the Second World War.
For a start, the Palestinians are not a race.
They are group within the much larger Arabic race.
Secondly, there are often (in fact, usually) severe civilian casualties in a warzone—think of the carpet-bombing of German cities by the RAF in WWII or the Tet Offensive in Vietnam.
In both of those tens of thousands of civilians died.
But they were not ‘genocide’—there was no attempt to slaughter an entire race of people, as happened with the Nazi pursuit of the Jews.
In fact, many of the people who deliberately lie and call Gaza a ‘genocide’ would themselves happily see all Jews on the planet killed.
It is largely people who have a genocidal mindset against the Jews who abuse our English language by deliberately and maliciously misapplying ‘genocide’ to the current situation in the Middle East.
When they utter the word ‘genocide’ they brand themselves either idiots or a liars.
(Or, quite possibly, both.)
The latest issue of The Spectator Australia is in newsagents now -- with the cartoon about inflation on the front cover and my 'Language' column in the back.
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