Raphael Lemkin, a secular Jewish lawyer in Poland, began studying genocide in the 1920s, coining the word to describe what the Ottoman Turks did to the Armenians, Assyrians, and Anatolian Greeks in 1915, so where his definition differs from that approved by the colonial powers who founded the United Nations, his is the one which is correct. In his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, he defined genocide as:
“Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.”
That definition describes what the State of Israel is doing today to the people of Palestine, just as it has been doing it since 1948 and the Zionists in Palestine were doing before that. It describes what China is doing to the Tibetans, Uyghyrs, Manchurians, Inner Mongolians, Cantonese, and every other non-Han, non-Mandarin group within its borders. It describes what was done to the Jews, Roma, Sinti, Slavs, queers, disabled, and other groups targeted by the Nazis in Germany and their puppets in Europe. It describes what Russia is trying do to Ukraine now, what India under Modi and the BJP is trying to do to the Muslims of India, what Sri Lanka did to the Tamils, what Iran and Pakistan are doing to the Baluchi, what every European power that set foot in the Americas did to the Indigenous people here.
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