Pri­or to the Hamas attacks of Octo­ber 7, the term “geno­cide” lit­er­al­ly mean­ing the destruc­tion of a race, held a posi­tion as the gravest crime a state can com­mit. It meant Rwan­da, Sre­breni­ca, and of course, the destruc­tion of the Euro­pean Jews.

The study of geno­cide has been crit­i­cal to our under­stand­ing of the dark impuls­es of man to destroy and of the pow­er of pro­pa­gan­da. It equipped us with and an abil­i­ty to detect and com­pre­hend the process of mass killing, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, legal exclu­sion, phys­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion and ulti­mate­ly anni­hi­la­tion.

The delib­er­ate assault on lan­guage in order to erase what it rep­re­sents has a long and sor­did his­to­ry in the anti-Israel move­ment and inter­sects close­ly with the dou­ble­s­peak and dis­in­for­ma­tion mas­tered by the Sovi­et Union.

Novem­ber 10 will be the 50^th anniver­sary of a moment of great infamy, the pas­sage of Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly Res­o­lu­tion 3379, which deter­mined that “Zion­ism is a form of racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion.” The US Ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations Patrick Moyni­han called the res­o­lu­tion “a great evil” that had giv­en “the abom­i­na­tion of anti­semitism the appear­ance of inter­na­tion­al sanc­tion.” The adop­tion of the res­o­lu­tion, even­tu­al­ly repealed in 1991, per­ma­nent­ly stained the Unit­ed Nations and cre­at­ed a blue­print of deceit and manip­u­la­tion that would become the cur­ren­cy of the polit­i­cal cam­paign to dis­man­tle the Jew­ish home­land.

It start­ed innocu­ous­ly enough, with­in a stale sub-com­mis­sion of the Unit­ed Nations that had been tasked with draft­ing a con­ven­tion on the “elim­i­na­tion of all forms of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion.” The pro­ceed­ings nat­u­ral­ly focused on apartheid in South Africa, ris­ing neo-Nazism and anti­semitism.

The Sovi­ets viewed the ref­er­ence to anti­semitism as a per­son­al rebuke from the West which had long object­ed to the state per­se­cu­tion of Sovi­et Jews, includ­ing through bans on Jews enter­ing cer­tain pro­fes­sions, entry quo­tas into uni­ver­si­ties, the ban on reli­gious obser­vance and Hebrew or Yid­dish lan­guage pub­li­ca­tions, a priv­i­lege afford­ed to oth­er minori­ties in the Sovi­et realm but denied to the Jews.

Angered by what they were sure was Amer­i­can med­dling in inter­nal Sovi­et mat­ters, the Rus­sians served up an amend­ment that “was almost a joke,” as one mem­ber of the Sovi­et del­e­ga­tion put it.

The amend­ment insert­ed Zion­ism into the list­ed forms of racism. Accord­ing to sources close to the delib­er­a­tions, the Sovi­ets under­stood “full well that the idea that Zion­ism is racism is an inde­fen­si­ble posi­tion,” yet they float­ed it any­way, in part to turn the US-led ini­tia­tive into farce, and in part per­haps, to see whether the Com­mu­nist Par­ty tal­ent for turn­ing a lie into an incon­tro­vert­ible truth could be export­ed glob­al­ly.

As they so often do, the west­ern del­e­ga­tions backed down. They agreed to remove any ref­er­ence to anti­semitism, and the Sovi­ets in turn with­drew their addi­tion of Zion­ism. But the seed had been plant­ed and a decade lat­er, with the sup­port of the Sovi­et Union and the non-demo­c­ra­t­ic nations of the world, the noto­ri­ous “Zion­ism is racism” res­o­lu­tion was passed.

US Ambas­sador Moyni­han cor­rect­ly pre­dict­ed that the res­o­lu­tion would do irrepara­ble harm to the Jew­ish peo­ple, to the Unit­ed Nations, and to the cause of fight­ing racism.

“The harm will arise first because it will strip from racism the pre­cise and abhor­rent mean­ing that it still pre­car­i­ous­ly holds today. How will the peo­ples of the world feel about racism, and about the need to strug­gle against it, when they are told that it is an idea so broad as to include the Jew­ish nation­al lib­er­a­tion move­ment?”

With racism now stripped of its objec­tive mean­ing, any­one could be labelled a racist and face the con­se­quences.

Anti-Israel activists prompt­ly got to work, using the Gen­er­al Assem­bly res­o­lu­tion to harass Jews in west­ern insti­tu­tions.

In 1977, stu­dent unions across Britain debat­ed motions along the lines of Res­o­lu­tion 3379. York, Sal­ford, War­wick and Lan­cast­er went fur­ther, pass­ing motions to expel their Jew­ish soci­eties “on the grounds that they are Zion­ist and there­fore racist.”

The lega­cy of this remains with us today. The chant of “all Zion­ists are ter­ror­ists” is a main­stay of local anti-Israel protests. The pejo­ra­tive term “Zio”, first coined by the Klans­man David Duke, then pop­u­larised by sup­port­ers of Jere­my Cor­byn, and now deeply embed­ded in pro-Pales­tin­ian dis­course, is now the “yid” or “kike” of our time, deliv­ered with the same gen­er­al­i­ty and snick­er­ing revul­sion.

The “geno­cide” slur came about in almost the iden­ti­cal way. In 1976, just a year after the Gen­er­al Assem­bly had brand­ed the con­cept of Jew­ish state­hood as racism, the Sovi­et Union accused Israel of “racial geno­cide” against the Pales­tini­ans. The accu­sa­tion osten­si­bly came in response to Israeli crack­downs in the West Bank, which left six Pales­tini­ans dead dur­ing a peri­od of severe­ly esca­lat­ing ter­ror by the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion, includ­ing the hijack­ing of inter­na­tion­al flights and the tak­ing of Israeli civil­ians hostage at the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv.

The Sovi­ets had again used the Unit­ed Nations to assail the West and strip anoth­er grave term of all truth and val­ue. If Zion­ism was racism, then every­thing is racist. If Gaza is a geno­cide, then all war is geno­cide.

It came as no sur­prise that when Israel launched its response to the hor­rors of Octo­ber 7, it was once again accused of the crime of crimes.

This time, the South African Gov­ern­ment led a push in the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice, to again asso­ciate Israel with geno­cide. South Africa’s gov­ern­ment had long main­tained cor­dial rela­tions with Hamas, even fol­low­ing its vio­lent ouster of Pales­tin­ian rivals from Gaza in 2007. Senior Hamas lead­ers were wel­comed in South Africa in 2015 for the sign­ing of a let­ter of intent aimed at strength­en­ing ties between the African Nation­al Con­gress and Hamas. Ismail Haniyeh, assas­si­nat­ed by Israel in Tehran in July 2024, had spo­ken to the South African for­eign min­is­ter just ten days after the Octo­ber 7 attacks.

While the inter­im rul­ing of the ICJ mere­ly upheld the propo­si­tion that Pales­tini­ans had a right to be pro­tect­ed from geno­cide and that South Africa had a right to present that claim to the Court, the mere link­age of Israel with the term, was suf­fi­cient to legit­imise the claim and set off a wave of media mis­re­port­ing that Israel had been found guilty of the crime.

Ed Husic ref­er­enced the ICJ and assert­ed that “there is a plau­si­ble case of geno­cide right now in Gaza.” Greens Sen­a­tor Dave Shoe­bridge declared that the ICJ “found it plau­si­ble that Israel’s acts could amount to geno­cide.”

The fact that the ICJ said no such thing and the judge who presided over the pro­ceed­ings, Joan Donoghue, her­self pub­licly stat­ed that the court “didn’t decide that the claim of geno­cide was plau­si­ble,” evi­dent­ly made no dif­fer­ence to those intent on mak­ing the accu­sa­tion.

When a three-mem­ber Unit­ed Nations Com­mis­sion of Inquiry ini­ti­at­ed by the Arab and Islam­ic states fol­low­ing an ear­li­er war between Israel and Hamas in 2021, accused Israel of geno­cide once more, it was wide­ly report­ed, includ­ing by the BBC, that the Unit­ed Nations, as a whole, had found Israel guilty of geno­cide. The fact that each of three com­mis­sion­ers had long expressed hos­til­i­ty towards Israel, includ­ing calls for sanc­tions and accu­sa­tions of apartheid, clear bias­es that should have result­ed in their exclu­sion, was of course nowhere to be seen in the report­ing.

While it is tempt­ing to file these injus­tices away as yet more evi­dence of UN fol­lies, as the “Zion­ism is racism” expe­ri­ence shows us, there will be real life con­se­quences. A new gen­er­a­tion is being induct­ed into a view of Israel as a rogue, an out­lier, a state that will com­mit crimes that oth­ers wouldn’t dream of, an irre­deemably evil and cor­rupt­ing pres­ence in the fam­i­ly of nations. This is why cam­paigns for Israel’s exclu­sion from song con­tests and inter­na­tion­al sports, and the Unit­ed Nations itself, are now com­mon­place.

No state has been accused of delib­er­ate­ly killing chil­dren with greater fre­quen­cy or rel­ish than Israel, despite far high­er civil­ian death tolls in recent wars in Africa and the Mid­dle East and far greater ratios of civil­ian to com­bat­ant casu­al­ties in west­ern cam­paigns in Iraq.

The ABC’s John Lyons has repeat­ed­ly spo­ken of “Israel killing a class­room of chil­dren a day.” We will nev­er know how many class­rooms of Israeli chil­dren were left orphaned on Octo­ber 7 or how many class­rooms of chil­dren US and British sol­diers killed bat­tling ISIS in Mosul or Fal­lu­jah because Lyons reserves the met­ric for Israel and no one else.

All this has cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment in which any­one can say any­thing about Israel, lev­el any accu­sa­tion no mat­ter how out­ra­geous or unten­able, and face no con­se­quence.

The vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Phillip Adams recent­ly post­ed that “7000 Jews died in the War­saw Ghet­to. 68,000 Pales­tin­ian have died in Gaza.” Bob Carr repeat­ed­ly likened mal­nu­tri­tion in Gaza to Stalin’s expro­pri­a­tion of Ukrain­ian peas­ant farm­ers which caused a mass famine in which upwards of five mil­lion peo­ple starved to death. The Amer­i­can activist/journalist Chris Hedges defend­ed Hamas’s atroc­i­ties on Octo­ber 7, liken­ing them to the escape of Jew­ish inmates from the Sobi­bor death camp.

Each claim is eas­i­ly debunked. But the mere exer­cise of dis­en­tan­gling the true events of the Ukrain­ian famine or the Sobi­bor pur­pose-built killing fac­to­ry or the his­to­ry of the 450,000 Pol­ish Jews crammed into the War­saw Ghet­to, starved, sick­ened and then gassed in Tre­blin­ka, serves to entrench the asso­ci­a­tion, it sug­gests a cred­i­ble accu­sa­tion has been lev­elled, or why else would one seek to mount a defence.

And so it has always been. The Jews have had to defend the charge of dei­cide, now they are forced to defend against geno­cide. They have defend­ed the claim of rit­u­al mur­der of chil­dren, now they must respond to claims of delib­er­ate­ly killing them by the class­room.

They can­not win no mat­ter how con­vinc­ing their defence. Yet they can­not sit idle either. The cost is not only in the indoc­tri­na­tion of fresh mass­es into anti­semitism, the suc­cess­ful trans­mis­sion of a vis­cer­al hatred or sus­pi­cion of the Jews to yet anoth­er gen­er­a­tion. The cost is ulti­mate­ly felt in the degrad­ing of lan­guage and there­fore the destruc­tion of what those words rep­re­sent.

The unsaid pur­pose of this assault on lan­guage and his­to­ry is to erase those parts of his­to­ry which are incon­ve­nient or fail to con­form to an ide­ol­o­gy or nar­ra­tive.

The Holo­caust, among oth­er things, demon­strat­ed the com­plete vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of Jews liv­ing with­out a sov­er­eign home­land. It fol­lows that if the Holo­caust can be erased, or at least dis­fig­ured and van­dalised to the point that Gaza is the War­saw Ghet­to and the West Bank is Sobi­bor, one need not study the Holo­caust, much less feel empa­thy or under­stand­ing towards Jews wish­ing to live in their own lands.

This is why a pro-Pales­tin­ian activist graf­fi­tied the words “Free Gaza and Pales­tine” on a wall of the War­saw Ghet­to in 2012. It is a sleight of hand to mis­di­rect the gaze from the incon­ve­nient crimes of the Holo­caust to the Pales­tin­ian issue. This is why Mah­moud Abbas, in 2022, accused Israel of com­mit­ting “50 Holo­causts”.

This process of dis­place­ment and era­sure was imma­ture­ly dis­played by the jour­nal­ist Cather­ine Nay, who upon see­ing the image of a Pales­tin­ian man and his son caught in the cross-fire between Hamas fight­ers and Israeli sol­diers dur­ing the Sec­ond Intifa­da, declared that the image of the Pales­tin­ian boy, “can­cels, eras­es that of the Jew­ish child, his hands in the air before the SS in the War­saw Ghet­to.” The pho­to to which Nay refers is one of the icon­ic images of the Holo­caust and shows a ter­ri­fied boy with arms raised up in sur­ren­der, stand­ing at the head of a line of women and chil­dren cap­tured dur­ing the War­saw Ghet­to Upris­ing, being led to depor­ta­tion to a death camp.

What­ev­er Nay may have felt about the inno­cent Pales­tin­ian child, her dec­la­ra­tion of its “can­cel­la­tion” of the Jew­ish boy in War­saw is fas­ci­nat­ing. Why did one need to erase the oth­er? Why could she not hold both images in her mind and in her sym­pa­thies. It is because she craved to free her­self from the incon­ve­nience of resid­ual under­stand­ing or basic con­cern for the Jews. The Pales­tini­ans were the Jews now. And that makes the Jews Nazis.

It is impos­si­ble to pre­vent the Unit­ed Nations from con­ven­ing its com­mis­sions of inquiry with its pre­de­ter­mined find­ings. It is impos­si­ble to pre­vent Greens sen­a­tors from per­pet­u­at­ing false­hoods. What else would they do with their time? And it is impos­si­ble to pre­vent activist jour­nal­ists from punch­ing out dis­tilled igno­rance on their iPhones.

What is pos­si­ble is to chal­lenge and hold indi­vid­u­als to account for the harm they wil­ful­ly cause.

And what is essen­tial is to fill the minds of Aus­tralians with real knowl­edge and real facts, a real com­mand of his­to­ry and an under­stand­ing of lan­guage. Only knowl­edge can ward off pro­pa­gan­da. This is why our Holo­caust cen­tres have nev­er been more vital. They pre­serve his­to­ry as it occurred. They record tes­ti­monies that no shout­ed slo­gan or graf­fi­tied slur can dimin­ish. And they ensure that all who come through its doors leave with the abil­i­ty to under­stand what hap­pens to a soci­ety, to great nations, when the abil­i­ty to rea­son, to recog­nise true evil, is lost.