From time to time people assert that history is repeating itself. I don’t necessarily agree, depending on how far one wants to drill down. However, history does rhyme a lot (echo a lot is another way of expressing it).
I thought of rhyming (or echoing) history when reading a paywalled article by Israeli-American historian Omer Bartov published in the New York Review of Books(24 April 2025): ‘Infinite License’.
My previous Gaza genocide blogs
It provided an additional dimension to my previous blog posts on the Gaza genocide:
- When apartheid meets Zionism (15 March).
- Reasons for supporting ethnic cleansing through genocide (28 May).
- Ethnic cleansing, genocide and recognition of Palestine (4 June).
- Justifying 400,000 Palestinian deaths (2 July).
- Biblical justification of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (29 August).
Israeli-American historian Professor Omer Bartov an expert on holocausts
Omer Bartov certainly knows about holocausts. He is Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University (Rhode Island).
In reference to the horrific Jewish Holocaust of Nazi Germany in the context of Israel’s use of genocide to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians, Bartov calls a spade a spade:
The memory of the Holocaust has, perversely, been enlisted to justify both the eradication of Gaza and the extraordinary silence with which that violence has been met.
The Herero holocaust
What particularly struck me, however, was Professor Bartov’s reference to an earlier holocaust in the early 20th century involving the Herero people living in what was then German Southwest Africa (now independent Namibia).
Namibia (then German Southwest Africa) home for pastoral Herero
The Herero were a pastoral group of about 80,000 who depended on their vast cattle herds for their economic, social, and cultural life. However, migrating German settlers from the late 19th century onwards increasingly encroached upon their grazing lands.
In response, on 12 January 1904, the Herero launched a series of attacks destroying many scattered German settler farms. More than 100 settlers were killed in these attacks.
For the settlers this was confirmation that the Herero, who they described as “baboons”, needed to be eradicated. Around 10,000 soldiers were sent from Germany. By August they had crushed the Herero fighters.
Vernichtungsbefehl
Bartov quotes the German commander Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha who, in October, issued what has come to be known as his Vernichtungsbefehl (extermination order) to those Herero who remained:
The Herero are German subjects no longer. They have killed, stolen, cut off the ears and other parts of the body of wounded soldiers, and now are too cowardly to want to fight any longer…. The Herero nation must now leave the country. If it refuses, I shall compel it to do so with the big cannon. Any Herero found inside the German frontier, with or without a gun or cattle, will be executed. I shall spare neither women nor children.
The outcome for the Herero was horrific. They were shot or died of thirst and hunger in the desert to which they had been expelled. Several thousand others were taken to forced labour camps.
This first holocaust of the 20th century was ignored by Germany for years. It was not until 2021 that Germany formally apologised for:
…the suffering, inhumanity and pain inflicted on the tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children by Germany during the war in what is today Namibia.
Part of this formal apology was a pledge to pay over a billion euros in reparations.
“Remarkable similarities” with Gaza
Professor Bartov identifies “some remarkable similarities” between this remote genocide over a century ago and “…the campaign of ethnic cleansing and annihilation prosecuted by Israel in Gaza.”
Herero and Palestinians share subjection to ethnic cleansing
Specifically, Israel saw the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023 as being strikingly similar as how German (and German settlers) saw the Herero attack 119 years earlier.
That is, it confirmed that the militant group was:
…utterly savage and barbaric, that resistance to Israeli occupation would always incline toward murder, and that Gaza’s Palestinian population as a whole should be removed from the moral universe of civilization.
In this specific context Bartov quotes Israeli major general Ghassan Alian as stating soon after the attack that:
Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.
Spot the difference between this major general’s response and Lieutenant General Lothar von Trotha’s Vernichtungsbefehl against the exterminated Herero!
An interesting observation
Professor Bartov’s article is more broadly discursive than I have referred to in this post. However, there is one observation as part of this wider discourse that he made which I found sufficiently intriguing for me to mention.
Loss of Palestinian land from 1948 to 2005 through Israeli ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing was a direct consequence of the creation of the state of Israel in May 1948. Zionism required Palestine to be cleansed of Palestinians.
This began with the war of 1948 and the expulsion of the vast majority of the Palestinian population (about 750,000 people) known as the Nakba.
In asserting its “historical and moral right to exist”, the newly created Israel issued a “remarkable document”, a declaration of independence which it called its ‘Independence Scroll’.
It promised equal rights and dignity to all citizens, including what it termed the “Arab inhabitants.” Bartov suggests that:
Had a constitution in the spirit of this declaration followed, it could have created a state based on liberal and democratic principles. That, of course, never happened. No constitution was ever agreed on, and the legal standing of the Declaration of Independence is at best disputed. Even as different versions were being frantically drafted and then finalized by Israel’s first leader, David Ben-Gurion, Jewish militias and later the IDF were engaged in turning the land’s Palestinian majority into a minority through intimidation and violent expulsion.
Had the ‘Independence Scroll’ been part of a constitution, argues Bartov, Zionism may not have become Israel’s guiding ideology.
If Jews and Palestinians were to have “equal rights and dignity” as proposed then, according to the logic of his argument, ethnic cleansing would not have occurred.
Further, all that consequentially followed, including the current genocide and holocaust in Gaza and repression on the West Bank, would not have eventuated.
I’m not convinced of this suggested argument but it is not without plausibility. It is certainly worthy of further discussion.
Overcoming false memories
Just as the descendants of the German government, soldiers and settlers had to overcome the false memory for the holocaust forced upon the Herero of Namibia and do penance as a result, so also may the descendants of those responsible for today’s holocaust of the Palestinians of Gaza.
Israel, United States and Western Europe operating under a cloak of hypocrisy
Omer Bartov describes it very well this way as a fitting conclusion to this post:
By uncritically accepting that argument and assenting to the eradication of Gaza, the governments of the US and Western Europe have also accepted and employed a false memory of the Holocaust and a distorted understanding of its lessons for the present.
The long-term consequence of this travesty may, however, be that the genocide in Gaza will finally liberate Israel of its status as a unique state rooted in a unique Holocaust. This will hardly help the tens of thousands of Palestinian victims or the victims of the Hamas massacre, the dead and dying hostages or their broken families.
But the license that Israel, the land of the victims, has long enjoyed and abused may be expiring. The sons and daughters of the next generation will be free to rethink their own lives and future, beyond the memory of the Holocaust; they will also have to pay for the sins of their parents and bear the burden of the genocide perpetrated in their name.
Ian Powell was Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, the professional union representing senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand, for over 30 years, until December 2019. He is now a health systems, labour market, and political commentator living in the small river estuary community of Otaihanga (the place by the tide). First published at Political Bytes
You are starting to sound biblical when you talk about the sons and daughters having to pay for the sins of their parents, although I suspect that that was not your intention. Is it more a case of when ‘good’ men do nothing, or even encourage the offending people, that evil is allowed to continue?
Until the Genocide Convention is invoked, none of this will help the thousands of Innocent Palestinians still being murdered by the Israelis. Genocide denial is the mechanism by which our political leaders use to avoid their legally binding obligations to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. Labour Party leader Chris On the 16th of September, after months of denial, finally called what is happening in Gaza an “unfolding genocide”.
“There is an unfolding genocide in Gaza taking place, the world should be condemning that, and New Zealand should be among the countries doing so.”
Asked about the distinction of an “unfolding” genocide, Hipkins acknowledged New Zealand wasn’t a court, “there are processes around how you find that legally,” he said.
However, he said the Convention on Genocide also required the world to take steps to prevent it.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/573334/nz-govt-will-not-respond-on-latest-accusation-of-genocide-in-gaza.
The Genocide Convention obligates states to prevent and punish the crime of genocide as soon as it is detected.
New Zealand signed the genocide convention in New York in 1948. In 1978, following UN pressure, New Zealand finally ratified the Genocide Convention and wrote it into New Zealand law.
By international and New Zealand law, New Zealand is obligated to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. The only way we can avoid our legally binding obligations to the genocide convention is by denying that a genocide is occurring. This what is behind the government’s genocide denial.
All three opposition parties now agree that there is a genocide being committed in Gaza, the next step is for them to unite to put pressure on the government to invoke the genocide convention.
To invoke the genocide convention, the united opposition parties first step is to get the government MPs to admit that there is a genocide being perpetrated in Gaza by Israel.
A tall order for sure. But there is a mechanisms for them to do this.
The primary mechanism that opposition parties have to challenge a government position on any issue, is the provision for an opposition members bill to be put to a vote of parliament.
‘We the loyal members of the parliamentary opposition call on the government to recognise that genocide is being committed in Gaza by Israel.’
Win or lose, this will be good practical example of the opposition parties working together. And a proof of concept of the opposition parties ability to work together to get rid of this awful far right government.
Win or lose, at the very least we will have recorded the votes of the all the genocide deniers for the historic record and they will not be able to do a Jim Bolger act and one day retrospectively claim that they were always against the genocide in Gaza
P.S. Unlike New Zealand, the US is not a party to the UN Genocide Convention. Like New Zealand, the US signed the Convention on December in 1948. But despite UN pressure the US has refused to ratify the convention into American law, leaving the United States as a non-party to the international treaty on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.
While the US has no legal obligation to act to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, we do.
This fact alone imbues countries that are party to the Genocide Convention, like New Zealand, with even greater significance.
We all have not just a legal responsibility, but a moral responsibility to act above and beyond our legally binding obligations to the Genocide Convention.
Never again meant never again for anybody. Not even our enemies.
Which explains why countries like New Zealand were hesitant to ratify the Genocide Convention.
From Google:
New Zealand ratified the convention on December 28, 1978, with the treaty coming into force for New Zealand on March 28, 1979.
The legal right to commit genocide, against their enemies explains, the USA’s hesitancy in ratifying the Genocide Convention right up to this day.
From Google:
…. the United States has not ratified the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; the Senate declined to give advice and consent to the Convention over 36 years ago, and opponents have cited concerns that the Convention is unconstitutional and would promote a unified world government.
https://www.google.com/search?q=has+the+USA+ratified+the+Genocide+convention&oq=has+the+USA+ratified+the+Genocide+convention&gs_lcrp=
The USA is the only major world power and nuclear armed state not to have ratified the Genocide Convention. It could be argued that, because of the indiscriminate nature of nuclear weapons and their widespread and lasting destruction, their use would be to commit an act of genocide.
As the only state to ever use a nuclear weapon deliberately targetting two civilian centres, this could open up the US to litigation under the Genocide Convention.
Africa has been the target of much greed and brutality from any number of nations. But I wondered if the Congo and the Belgian king might result in a holocaust type cataclysm.
Could be: … Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million — all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian.
Heroic efforts to expose these crimes eventually led to the first great human rights movement of the 20th century, in which everyone from Mark Twain to the Archbishop of Canterbury participated.
King Leopold’s Ghost is the account of a megalomaniac of monstrous proportions, a man as cunning, charming, and cruel as any of the great Shakespearean villains…
Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Available as an e-book.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/library-research-services/collections/diversity-inclusion-belonging/king-leopolds
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