South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice, accusing it of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza – and 12 other countries supported the case.
“Genocide” is a legal term that has been increasingly used to describe what Israel is doing in Gaza as it kills more people, a number approaching 40,000.
What other terms have been used to describe what is happening in Gaza?
Genocide, killing a people
Genocide is the “deliberate murder of a large number of people of a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”
It was coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin – “geno”, the Greek word for race or tribe, and “-cide”, Latin for kill – to describe the Nazi murder of Jews and other groups during the Holocaust.
The term “genocide” appeared at the beginning of this war – in October, more than 800 academics signed a Letter warns about “potential genocide in Gaza”.
In a March report, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, said there was “reason to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide… has been reached.”
Analysts and 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, urbicide describes the deliberate destruction of a city and became widely used after the Serbian siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1996.
Russian attacks in Grozny, Chechnya in 2001, Israel’s destruction of Beirut’s southern suburbs in 2006, Bashar al-Assad’s government destroying the Syrian cities of Homs and eastern Aleppo between 2012 and 2017, ISIL (ISIS) campaign in Mosul , Iraq and Russia attacking Mariupol and Bucha in Ukraine were described as urbicides.
Between October 7 and May 31, Israel damaged or destroyed about 55 percent (or 137,297 structures) in Gaza, according to a report by the UN Satellite Center (UNOSAT).
As these structures are the construction of a city – houses, schools, hospitals, cultural sites, religious sites and infrastructure related to water, electricity and transport – some researchers consider Israel’s actions to be the murder of the cities of Gaza, or urbicide.
Domicide, killing house
Homicide 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 feeling of constant flow.
Of everything that has been destroyed by Israel since October, the homes in Gaza were the hardest hit. UNOSAT counted 135,142 damaged housing units, mainly in Gaza City, Khan Younis and northern Gaza.
With homes no longer inhabitable and their sense of connection destroyed, some Palestinians will feel they have no choice but to leave Gaza.
Despite being a forced migration, in a certain way it would allow the Israeli authorities to deny any responsibility for the departure of the Palestinians from their homeland.
The UN says restoring Gaza to pre-conflict levels would require decades of intensive work clearing rubble, unexploded ordnance and landmines.
Politicide, killing representation
Politicide occurs when a powerful actor works to politically execute the public and private spheres of his enemy.
The term first appeared in the 1970s to describe the destruction of groups of people who share a political identity.
It is also used to refer to the assassination of political leaders and later grew to include the destruction of structures that allow political entities to exist.
Politicide “was used… to describe Israeli policy toward Palestinians on the eve of and during the second Intifada in 2000, when Israel’s clear objective was to destroy the conditions for the mere existence of a Palestinian state,” Ziad Majed, professor of Middle East. Eastern Studies and international relations at the American University of Paris, he wrote in Orient XXI in December.
Ecocide, killing the environment
Ecocide – destruction of the environment – was coined in 1970 by biology professor Walter W Galston, protesting the US use of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam to destroy the growth of plants under which the Viet Cong hid.
Israel’s munitions have had a serious impact on the climate and ecosystems of Gaza, where Israeli attacks have contaminated soil and groundwater with munitions such as white phosphorus.
Israel has destroyed more than half of Gaza’s agricultural land, according to an Al Jazeera investigation.
While this makes it dangerous to access or consume vital resources like water, the full extent of the damage is not yet known.
In 2021, 97% of Gaza’s water was not suitable 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 wastewater treatment plants inoperative.
Last November, 130,000 cubic meters (34.3 million gallons) of untreated sewage was dumped into the Mediterranean Sea every day, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Even the air in Gaza became dangerous during Israel’s war – smoky and polluted from Israeli bombs or fires set by displaced people using whatever scrap metal they could find.
Researchers and experts from environmental organizations say the long-term damage has led to calls for Israel’s actions to be called ecocide.
Education and scholasticism, killing knowledge
Educide and scholasticide are the systematic destruction of an educational system and its institutions.
Education, in particular, is the systematic murder of academics and intellectuals, or the genocide of education, according to British academic Rula Alousi.
The term was first used in 2009 to describe the murder of Iraqi educational personnel following the 2003 US invasion.
UN experts have warned of scholasticicide in Gaza, as at least 90 percent 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 thousand students have been deprived of education since October 7th.
Culturcide, killing the sense of identity
Culturcide is the destruction of a culture, especially that exclusive to a specific ethnic, political, religious or social group.
Israel has destroyed or damaged around 200 historic cultural sites in Gaza.
Archaeological sites, historic mosques housing rare manuscripts, one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries and an ancient port dating back to 800 BC are among the cultural casualties.
South Africa included the elimination of Gaza’s cultural heritage in its case against Israel at the ICJ.
“Israel has damaged and destroyed numerous centers of Palestinian learning and culture,” he said in his application to the World Court.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
