The Seven Steps of Genocide and the Nun's Rocks - Gihan Abouzeid
The screams were unfamiliar. What the residents of the tent and the surrounding encampment in the middle of Gaza heard was a roar of anger. The young woman having her third child sis not moan. Her face flushed as she pushed out her newborn, imploring him to remain steadfast so that he would take revenge. Her tears disappeared and a flood of threats and insults flowed from her. The moment of her labor turned into roaring surges in which her voice was lost among the voices of the women gathered around. They were crying, screaming, mourning their loss, and threatening the enemy. They were all like her, on the brink of life and death together.
The seen was repeated a thousand and six hundred kilometers away. The fourteen-year-old girl was screaming in panic after a stormy visit by soldiers from her country. Her mother contemplated her daughter's torn clothes and her astonishment. She gets lost in her affliction that almost matched that of Sudan.
In Lebanon, the nun doctor - as the neighborhood residents called her - sat ouside her house door looking at the destroyed homes and families chasing time, escaping the shells of death. She was listening to the women's demonstration in the maternity tent, the whispers of the Sudanese mother, and the terrified screams of the children at the sight of the demon of war. Her voice did not stop calling them...
She was speaking loudly to 30 women heads of state or governments. She gathered them in across from her and asked, “Are you human beings like us? Do you have a share of women’s wisdom and mercy? Have you heard about the pain of labor amidst bullets and death? About surgeries without anesthesia? About bleeding without a diaper? Have you heard about the dignity of bodies that your weapons violate?”
They all squirmed at her harsh questions and defiant look. She noticed anger in some of their eyes and a freeze in others. Some almost teared up and then stopped. As they turned around, she kept chasing them: “What is the point of women in positions doing what men do? Why have you given up your humanity? Why have you allowed yourselves to be enslaved? You believed the trick! Do you have the right to object? Can one of you...?” They walked away angrily.
When the sounds of the missiles faded away and the flying debris settled on the ground, she returned to her place outside her house's entrance. This time, she was facing a hundred of the largest arms exporting companies in the world, 70% of them belonging to the United States of America. Their bodies were swollen and on their faces were dark black glasses. They did not talk to each other, but their steps did not intersect. They remained at a safe distance from each other. Their steel jackets resembled Hollywood heroes. She wrote on the walls of her house: You are killing us. With one collective movement, they responded in agreement. Then one of them wrote: "We are making 600 billion dollars, maam. Death is a side effect of weapons."
The village was almost empty of people, but she would not leave. She returned to sit on the large, solid stone outside her house and found them all there: international agreements, one after the other, a row in the back, led by another. They were like punished schoolchildren, frozen in shock and silence. The Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide took the lead and stood reviewing its articles in front of the Human Rights Convention and the Fourth Geneva Convention and its Protocol. None of them commented and none of them sought to keep up with her or challenge her.
Weakness and despair had taken hold of them. Only the Genocide Convention had the energy to boast, and the doctor did not understand how it was boasting while unable to stop the missiles, extinguish the fires, and ward off chaos and destruction. In what mirror was it looking? It failed to curb the raging beast and those who feed it.. Haven’t you seen the women of Gaza being killed in groups and individually? They were killed in the streets, on hospital beds, while breastfeeding, while nursing children and adults, while cooking food, while crying over the house that collapsed and the family that was; they were killed because they were women. Shame on you for returning, we should not have believed in your existence, you who were born from the womb of settlement and the theft of Palestinian lands, we should not have believed.
Only here did the Genocide Convention stop its provocative play and looked for the first time into the eyes of the doctor: I am just words, maam, I am paragraphs that may be charged with the energy of action or remain hollow. I was born from letters only, and no one provided me with a magic ball to prevent wars, destruction, and tragedies. I, ,maan, am made of paper that is read on the table and since I was born, I could not stop a single genocide. They did not listen to me in Rwanda and no one remembered me in Bosnia. Women were raped, killed, and displaced from their land. I saw with my own eyes more than a million and a half Cambodians being killed. I saw in Darfur the uprooting of people and stones, and now I see weapons being distributed to soldiers like candy. My clauses are on the table of every politician. But the clauses do not stop genocide. I am just words, and the seed of genocide had been planted before I came out into the world.
Gregory Stanton,[1] head of Genocide Watch, sympathised with the confused doctor searching for answers. He approached her, explaining: "Oh mother, I knew with my decades of work that the seed of genocide is made with the division of "them and us." Then, with the invention of a symbol to refer to them and to us, a symbol that hangs or sits on the head or is carried on the neck. However, it is a symbol that distinguishes this from that. Then the environment ferments to practice the third step on the road to genocide, which is discrimination, the stronger employs their legal, cultural and economic resources to enshrine discrimination against the weaker.
We comes the most important step, stripping people of their human qualities to overcome the natural feeling of aversion to killing. The propaganda hate planting machine activates, enhancing the hatred of this creature, the other who does not rise to the level of human. Steinin says that genocide is always organized by the state, in which plans are made to commit mass killings and rapes. Motives are indoctrinated to target a group, and special training is given to killing militias and special units of the army.
The steps of genocide are now moving forward and directly towards persecution, where the persecuted are separated according to their religion or ethnic affiliation. In most cases, they are separated in special residential areas. their properties are confiscated; their resources are besieged and stolen in public; and their children are arrested or stolen. The perpetrators of genocide are watching the reactions of the international community, and from there the message is translated to them. If there is denunciation and condemnation, this means that the traffic light is green, allowing for more siege, starvation, destruction, and more genocide operations. Women are targeted to reduce the population.
Then the journey of genocide heads to its highest stage. The events of extermination take place, which include all the barbaric practices and the practices of violence that descend to erase humanity from the souls of its perpetrators. The beast dwells in them and works its hand in tearing apart the bodies and stealing their organs, raping and killing women and arresting children. The extermination machine works without restraint as long as it receives the necessary weapons.
The doctor shouted, "Where is the Security Council and where are the United Nations organizations?"
The man patted her on the shoulder, saying, "You are an expert in life and you know that organizations have a head and a body and interests and challenges and calculations. Everyone fights to survive, people, countries and organizations, and in the journey of survival losses, wars, and exterminations occur."
Who then will stop the massacres and destruction?
We, maam, you and I and the people of Lebanon, Gaza, Sudan, Yemen and Syria. the peoples and their local organizations are effective and capable. they are the ones who made civilizations and created history. We are the ones who will write our documents and our history and who will change our reality.. We alone.
Recent publications
Sovereign Debt in the Arab Region: Between Sustainability and Fair Tax Policies - Ahmad Awad
