Elihu D Richter MD MPH, Yael Stein MD, Alex Barnea, MA and Marc Sherman MLS
Genocide Prevention Program of Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine
and
World Genocide Situation Room
Genocide Prevention Now (GPN)
of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide
www.genocidepreventionnow.org
Wars are not fought for territory, but for words.
Man's deadliest weapon is language.
He is susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases.
And where there is an epidemic, the group mind takes over.
Arthur Koestler 1978
This article is based a presentation at the SPME conference on Iran in sponsored by Case Western Reserve in Cleveland in November 2009 and two sequential postings on www.genocidepreventionnow.org and is published with permission of Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide
We thank Scholars for Peace in the Middle East for partial support.
Acknowledgments: We thank Jacey Macrae, Isabella Glaser, and Laura Seton, for research and editorial assistance, and David Lisbona, Professors Israel Charny, Greg Gordon and Greg Stanton for editorial suggestions, advice and encouragement
Executive Summary
Genocide and its prevention both result from human choice and bystander indifference. Since the Armenian genocide, and the Holocaust, perpetrators have used dehumanizing metaphors to prepare their followers to overcome normative inhibitions that stand in the way of their becoming killers, rapists, and plunderers of members of potential victim populations. Today, one lesson from the Holocaust is that there are existential dangers associated with ignoring state sanctioned dehumanizing hate language. Not all hate language and incitement leads to genocide, and genocide can occur without hate language and incitement. There can be hate language with and without explicit incitement, propagated by rogue regimes.
We suggest that the spread of such dehumanizing hate language drives a new world-wide axis of genocide, which is now recycling the motifs of genocidal -Semitism of Nazi Germany and the Islamists. We examine the differences in impact and importance of between public and person-to-person “kitchen-table” incitement
We present a thumbnail chronology and trace the pseudo-scientific origins of state sanctioned hate language and incitement which started with the Armenian Genocide. We present as case studies, Hitler’s Holocaust, and former Yugoslavia (Bosnia) the Middle East, notably Iran, Cambodia, and Rwanda—the most famous example. In Darfur, incitement was below the radar screen, and in Kenya, incitement to killing spread by text messaging, In Sri Lanka, where two sites committed mass atrocities, there was no widely reported external evidence of incitement.
If state sanctioned hate language and incitement predict, promote and catalyze genocidal scenarios, there is a compelling case for applying models from epidemiology and public health which take us to prediction and prevention. This section examines concepts and tools of public health, preventive medicine and epidemiology—the field which studies the distribution and determinants of diseases in populations. These concepts and tools, first developed to control and eradicate microbial diseases transmitted by water, food, air-borne and person-to-person spread, have produced spectacular advances in identifying the risks and advancing prevention of chronic non-infectious diseases -- e.g. heart disease, cancer, mass disasters, injuries, and violence. These models include: Surveillance, the Mean determines the Extreme, Positive Deviance and the use of the Precautionary Principle.
We have noted that the case for preventing genocide by preventing hate language and incitement derives from the fact that the latter mobilize and motivate perpetrators and desensitize bystanders. Such prevention requires developing world-wide networks for epidemiologic surveillance of hate language and incitement. These networks would trigger interventions before perpetrators start carrying out mass atrocities against victim populations, exploiting existing legal and extra-legal interventions as well.
In conclusion, the perils of neglecting the propagation and spread of state sanctioned and state sponsored hate language and incitement are ominous, especially in an era of push-button genocide and nuclear terror, rogue regimes and terror groups. Conversely, when regimes inciting to genocide are developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the case is imperative for stopping them from doing so, given the fact that such incitement is an early warning sign until proven otherwise.
Will humankind test the efficacy of going from post-event intervention to Predict and Prevent, using the models from public health? The lessons of the Holocaust empower us to address prevention of hate language and incitement when they are used against all populations, without waiting for the consequences.
Introduction: Incitement and Genocide; Definitions, Chronology, Origins and Selected Case Studies
From the perspective of public health and preventive medicine, if genocide—the ranking cause of violent death in the 20th century-- 280 million,[i] [ii] is predictable, it should be preventable. Today, it is an oxymoron to refer to “preventing” genocide once the killing, raping, expulsions and plundering begins. But can most genocides be prevented by preventing state sanctioned dehumanizing hate language and incitement? If the answer is yes, the stakes are enormous for genocide prevention everywhere in the world.
We examine this question using concepts and tools of public health, preventive medicine and epidemiology—the field which studies the distribution and determinants of diseases in populations. These tools, first developed to control and eradicate microbial diseases transmitted by water, food, air-borne and person-to-person spread, have produced spectacular advances in identifying the risks and advancing prevention of chronic non-infectious diseases, --e.g. heart disease, cancer, mass disasters, injuries, and violence.
The use of dehumanizing hate language and incitement (HL&I) all too often predicts, initiates, promotes, and catalyzes genocide. HL&I are “out there”, definable and detectable. Since the Nuremberg trials and the UN Convention on the Prevention of Genocide and its Punishment, (UNGC), they are punishable as Crimes against Humanity.[iii]
This essay defines hate language and incitement, traces its use in promoting genocide and its pseudo-scientific origins and presents case studies, starting with the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust
Hate language refers to terms which are used to stigmatize, demonize or dehumanize groups defined by their national, ethnic, religious, racial, or political identity.[iv] *Dehumanization in particular refers to hate language which includes metaphors-usually from public health and medicine-- which induce disgust, revulsion and hate for the other.[v]
Standard definitions of incitement refer to something that incites or provokes; a means of arousing or stirring to action.[vi] [vii] Perpetrators use hate language to incite groups to commit genocide and other mass atrocities directed against vulnerable populations. When mass murder is low tech, HL&I is indispensable for mobilizing and motivating huge numbers of persons to stab, mutilate, rape, bludgeon, shoot, gas, burn and bury large numbers of victims and plunder their homes. It was the gas chambers that killed at Auschwitz, but as Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, "Auschwitz was built not with stones, but words." [viii] Equally important, perpetrators use HL&I to silence, intimidate and desensitize bystanders. Edmund Burke's famous quote reminds us that “For evil to flourish, all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing”[ix].
Section I:
Dehumanizing hate language and genocide: A thumbnail chronology
The Young Turk regime in 1915 called the genocide of Armenians the eradication of 'dangerous microbes' in the body politic.[x] Lenin described the bourgeoisie as parasites, insects, leeches, bloodsuckers.[xi]
Such dehumanizing terms went hand-in-hand with pseudo-medical terms for measures to get rid of disease. Stalin and Beria in the early 1930’s used artificially produced mass famines to kill millions of Ukranians,[xii] and used a pseudo-medical term --'purge' ('chitki') --when later deporting ('korenizatsiia') over two million members of ethnic minorities, former members of the bourgeois and kulak classes to slave labor camps in Siberia. Half a century later, in 1988, the Soviets used the term 'ethnic purge' ('etnicheskie chistki') to describe expulsions of Azerbaijanis from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Hitler called the Jews 'parasites, plague, cancer, tumor, bacillus, bloodsucker, blood poisoner, lice, vermin, bedbugs, fleas, racial tuberculosis' on the German body that would supposedly be killed with the 'Jewish disease.'[xiii] [xiv] Later, the Nazis used the term `Judenrein’ which means 'Jew-free', to stigmatize the victim group as a carrier of filth and disease, and then, as the disease itself to be eradicated. The term predated the term ‘ethnic cleansing’, a euphemism often used by perpetrators to justify their genocidal actions and by bystanders to rationalize inaction. [xv] Mao Tse Tung’s Communist revolutionaries in China used similar language when overseeing mass murders of their enemies[xvi], as did the North Koreans who used mass starvation to kill populations considered hostile to the Communist regime.[xvii] In the 1970’s, the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia used terms such as “microbes”, “parasites”, “worms” and cancer to stigmatize their victims as they carried out the mass murders of 3 million of their own countrymen.[xviii] In the early 1990’s, Radovic Karovic stigmatized Bosniaks as not “belonging to the family of nations, ...of desert origin, ...and originating from a specific gene of the Ottoman Army”.[xix] Thereafter, victims of Serbian genocide in Kosovo themselves killed many belonging to Roma minorities, whom they described as “majupi”, or lower than garbage. In the 1990’s in Rwanda, Hutu radio in 1994 used the term 'cockroaches' ('inyenzi') to incite mass murder of Tutsis by machete-wielding militias.[xx]
Hate language and its pseudoscientific origins
In the 20th century, endemic bigotry, xenophobic nationalism and racist biology created an ambience conducive to the spread of dehumanizing medical metaphors of hate language to stigmatize victim groups. This ambience both fed and was fed by the flawed constructs and pseudoscience of late 19th and early 20th century eugenics and social Darwinism. Eugenics sought to promote human progress by selection of groups and individuals considered to be genetically superior and best fit to survive and by restricting reproduction of the unfit, in keeping with distorted interpretations of Darwinian science. In the US, proponents of Eugenics provided the justifications for compulsory sterilization of inmates of mental institutions and for restrictive immigration.[xxi] In Germany, medical scientists used the ethically flawed constructs of eugenics to promote “racial hygiene” of Nazi Medicine and its horrors. Starting with euthanasia of mentally impaired, Nazi doctors became leaders in implementing the Final Solution to make Europe ‘Judenrein’ including many inhuman scientific medical experiments on Jewish subjects, regarded as lab specimens. Flawed theories of race led to classification of Rwandans into short Hutus and tall Tutsis differentiated by nose lengths, carefully measured by Belgian anthropologists. Notions of racial superiority provided similar rationales for racism in North America and South Africa In the 20th century and many other locales world wide.
State sponsored hate language and incitement as an early warning indicator in models of genocide
A classic model of genocide identifies dictatorship and asymmetric power relationships, past conflicts, unrest, political and economic failures and vulnerable target groups as circumstantial predictors.[xxii] [xxiii]This model does not address the role of hate language and incitement as intrinsic direct triggers of violent conflicts along racial, ethnic, religious or political lines
Charny’s Genocide Early Warning System[xxiv] and Stanton’s Eight Stages of Genocide pioneered in drawing attention to the use of language of hate, stigmatization and dehumanization by perpetrators to recruit, motivate and mobilize followers and deter bystanders. [xxv] Classification, Symbolization and Dehumanization, the first 3 of Stanton’s Eight Stages, all contain elements of incitement, and they lead to Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Extermination, and Denial.
Hate language and incitement: Public and Private
There is a need to recognize that not all hate language and incitement leads to genocide, and genocide may occur without evidence of hate language or incitement. Furthermore, there can be incitement without dehumanizing hate language, and hate language without incitement. The distinction between the two may be important for legal purposes, but their consequences are usually the same. Sometimes they go together and sometimes they do not (see below). Hate language and incitement together increase risks for genocide, especially when they come from the top down in authoritarian regimes with their environments of coercion, direction and instruction. Perpetrators sometimes commit genocide without explicit external hate language and open public incitement, such as when they deliberately seek to conceal their genocidal aims, e.g. exploiting famine, either from natural disaster or man-made, to starve populations they identify as enemies Often, so as to camouflage intent, perpetrators simultaneously project several different messages, aimed at different populations, at the same time. When the messages are in “local” language, vernaculars and dialect, i.e. not English the texts, subtexts, and contexts are disputable. One message is portrayed to the western free world, (for example, the leader might take on a role as protector of human rights). A second, is aimed at the potential victims--- in more explicit threatening language. A third message— the operational one— could be aimed at their own people – to incite to action, or to desensitize local bystanders.
Hate language without incitement and direction is present everywhere— and by itself, is generally not subject to legal prosecution.[xxvi] Racist, religious epithets and expressions of bigotry directed towards the other are endemic the world round, at the kitchen table, in the barroom, the locker room, (i.e. Archie Bunker), the market place, and the board room. The messages may be explicit, euphemistic or coded. It is difficult to regard such language, though offensive, as an early warning sign for genocide or mass atrocities, since its specificity and predictive value is so low, and it lacks a larger context of coercion, threat, direction, intimidation or danger. But from the standpoint of public health and social psychology, the use and spread of such language is the case for action for educational interventions, directed at the communities in which it is endemic—and becomes especially critical in the era of hate language and incitement spread by the internet. However, the past century has taught us that when leaders of movements or governments in power use explicit pseudo medical and epidemiologic metaphors, such as microbes, filth, cancer, typhoid, and rats, to dehumanize victim groups, it is prudent to regard such language as an urgent warning sign of imminent genocide, and the burden of proof is on those who deny their ominous portent. This burden of proof becomes heavier when perpetrators propagate notions of in-group exclusivity based upon myths of hygiene or purity, and when their incitement is accompanied by direction, instruction, supplying, informing, and supporting those who become the agents of genocidal actions. [xxvii]
Case Studies: Incitement, propaganda, and power
Europe: Nazi Germany -
Hate language and Incitement from the top down
During the 12 years in which they were in power, the Nazis, pioneered using mass media, radio, film, and the educational system to propagate their genocidal incitement, most virulently against Jews, but also against Roma, gays, trade unionists, socialists and communists.[xxviii] The totalitarian rule of Nazi Germany, with its control of all resources of the State, produced an environment of coercion, control, direction and instruction. Yet, evidence is not available that the Nazi’s propaganda explicitly and publicly declared that genocidal extermination of Jews and other groups was their objective. They concealed this objective from the outside world with euphemisms and code words (e.g. “Final Solution”, Aktion) and did everything they could to conceal the mass murders in the death camps. Nazi propaganda used scenes of rats juxtaposed with stereotypes of Jews, depicted as the carriers and purveyors of filth and disease, to induce disgust and revulsion. Goebbels used aggressive repetition of simple crude messages and images to propagate revulsion and hate towards Jews. He adopted the advertising techniques of Edward Bernays, a psychologist, who pioneered in the development of the phenomenally successful campaigns of the tobacco companies to create new mass markets for cigarettes. [xxix] [xxx] Campaigns of dehumanization and de-legitimization, which themselves followed classification and symbolization, produced willing killers and complicit bystanders.
Nazi campaigns to dehumanize Jews and others went hand in hand with highly public campaigns to promote and protect health and hygiene (‘Rassenhygiene’) in the Master Race. The organizers of these campaigns were far ahead of their time in promoting improved nutrition and exercise, summer youth camps in the countryside, self examination for breast cancer and industrial hygiene and safety. The Nazis used dehumanizing hate language to condition audiences to proceed from accepting a universal norm-- getting rid of disease in individuals, to accepting getting rid of diseased individuals, and then getting rid of groups of diseased individuals, to getting rid of groups considered to be the disease itself. Compulsory euthanasia of the inmates of mental institutions and the gas chambers followed. Dr Karl Astel, a high ranking Nazi physician who initiated public health campaigns to promote health and hygiene in the Master Race, supervised the use of gas chambers for extermination programs in the concentration camps. Astel saw himself as protecting the Master Race against the purveyors of disease, and was noted for his pioneering work in leading Nazi mass campaigns against smoking, even though the SS itself manufactured cigarettes to sell to soldiers.
Europe: Bosnia: Incitement as explicit threats without hate language
In Bosnia, more than 100,000 were killed, in Serbian ‘ethnic cleansing’, --often a euphemism for genocide [xxxi]--in the wake of the break-up of former Yugoslavia. Claims that genocide was restricted to the events of Srebrenica ignore evidence of Serbian intentions going back to 1991-2, including threats to annihilate the Bosnian Muslim community. On Oct 11 1991, Radovan Karadzic made the following statement: “In two-three days, Sarajevo will vanish and there will be 500,000 dead people. In a month, Muslims will disappear from Bosnia". Two days later, Karadzic also said: “First of all, none of their leadership would make it alive. They would all be killed in a matter of several hours. They would not even have a chance to survive.” [xxxii]
This incitement directly preceded Serbian genocidal mass killings of civilians, reports of hundreds of prison camps, 500,000 persons in detention, 50,000 tortured persons, 20,000 estimated rapes, and 151 mass graves.[xxxiii] [xxxiv]
The Middle East:
Dehumanizing Hate Language including Nazi Motifs, and Incitement, in the Muslim World
Nazi hate language was beamed by powerful radio transmitters directed at audiences throughout Europe and the Middle East. The dehumanizing and demonizing motifs of Nazi antisemitism spread to the Middle East, where they fused with the antisemitic motifs of Jihadist Islamic antisemitism.[xxxv] [xxxvi] [xxxvii] [xxxviii] Interestingly, fanatically theocratic cults which glorify death expropriated metaphors from a pagan cult of cleanliness and hygiene.
For decades, Wahabi propagandists from Saudi Arabia and Egyptian and Palestinian media have been spreading motifs strikingly similar to those of the Nazis. [xxxix] [xl] Yet, Egypt’s regime has what appears to be a durable peace treaty with Israel despite condoning hate language in media, school texts and places of worship, and sponsoring the broadcasting of recycled versions of the antisemitic myths of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion".[xli] [xlii]
This is a scenario which for all practical purposes undermines any option for peace and reconciliation from the bottom up, even though there is a cold peace from the top down—and leaves open the possibility of future bloodshed.
Some excerpts from Saudi, Egyptian and Palestinian sources are presented in Appendix 1.
Iran
Iran is now the epicenter for official state sanctioned incitement to genocide. Since 1979, the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and most notably Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been using language identical to that of Hitler and other perpetrators, to demonize, dehumanize and delegitimize “Zionists”, a euphemism for Jews.[xliii] Although most Jews in Iran do not appear to be in physical danger, since the Islamic Revolution, on several occasions Jews have been subject to show trials, imprisoned for trumped up reasons or executed.[xliv] [xlv] Iranian state sponsored hate language and incitement [xlvi] goes beyond that of the Nazis in that it explicitly and openly calls for the annihilation of Israel, and its context is its secret development of nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems and support, direction and instruction of terror proxies carrying out its writ, notably Hamas and Hezbollah. Since the contested Iranian elections in June 2009, ruthless suppression of political dissent now goes hand in hand with these indicators of genocidal intent. Palestinian Media Watch has documented messages by Palestinian Authority figures in the media, educational system, and mosques, using collective labeling, creating a threat, and eliminating the threat.[xlvii] At the time of writing, we see the re-emergence of grotesque reports of Jews harvesting the organs of Muslims, recycling older metaphors of genocidal antisemitic demonization. [xlviii]
The Middle East: Children and intergenerational effects of hate language and incitement
Children are those most vulnerable to the effects of the toxic messages of incitement. Intergenerational transmission of hate messages led to antisemitic motifs becoming embedded in everyday Middle East political and social culture. Burden has summarized the effects of incitement of children living in authoritarian societies and family structures, in patterning their long term attitudes and future susceptibility to becoming suicide bombers.[xlix] [l] [li] Hamas, which rules Gaza, is a fascist terror organization whose platform calls for the destruction of Israel, and explicitly incites children acts of terror, glorified as martyrdom.[lii] Hamas uses school texts, places of worship, children’s TV programs, and summer camps to recruit the young as child terrorists or soldiers. [liii] The PA and Fatah, which are considered to be less extreme organizations, generate less explicit incitement, but use messages with subtexts which demonize and delegitimize, and preachers under their control have used dehumanizing metaphors to incite to hatred.[liv] The PA has also decided to name public places, such as schools and city squares after suicide terrorists. [lv] [lvi] [lvii]
Intergenerational transmission of hate language and incitement ensures the durability of the demonizing and dehumanizing motifs of antisemitism, now so deeply embedded in the Islamic world and reemerging in the western world. [lviii] Furthermore, repetition creates an environment for desensitizing bystanders, and undermines attempts at conflict resolution, based on mutual respect for human life and dignity and live-and-let-live. “Our hatred for Israel is in our genes”—a statement from Syrian actress Amal ‘Arafa, testifies to the enduring effects of an environment in which hate language is both embedded and endemic.[lix]
Africa - Rwanda: Common source from the top down: The role of the only radio station—800,000 dead
Since Streicher and Goebbels, the Rwandan Genocide is the most blatant and best studied example of how architects and perpetrators, using the most popular radio station in the country, mobilized, recruited motivated, directed and instructed the Interhambawe– to butcher some 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates in Rwanda over a period of between 3 to 5 months in 1994. [lx] Hate language and incitement broadcast by Radio TV Libre Milles Collines (RTVLMC)–a private corporation set up by a consortium of higher-ups in the Rwandan government to bypass the prohibitions against governmental incitement of the Arusha Accords – powered the intense ferocity of killers. RTVLMC’s broadcasts were the major source of news and information for most of the Rwandan public, and therefore had enormous influence. Fig 1 presents a rough timeline of the sequence of warning indicators, (including incitement), killings, first reports and responses for this horrific story.
In Rwanda, the machetes were the hardware, but the words were the software of this campaign. RTVLMC began referring to individual Tutsi leaders, and then groups of Tutsis, as cockroaches (‘nyenzi’ in Rwandan) in increasingly provocative language. Explicit Radio messages to “kill the cockroaches” and to “do your job” preceded the outbreak of the mass butchery in April 1994. The perpetrators, using a mix of rock music, and juicy gossip to gain the ear of a mass audience, broadcast carefully calibrated increases in frequency and intensity of hate language to incite to mass killing in a society where neighbors killed neighbors. The timeline below gives details of the buildup in incitement prior to the mass killings.
Darfur: Was there Incitement below the radar screen?
In September 2004, the US State Department declared that acts of genocide had occurred in Darfur. [lxi] In Darfur, (where the death toll has been estimated to be up to or exceeding 400,000), [lxii] the Sudanese regime supported, protected and supplied the Janjaweed’s genocidal activities, but denies genocidal intent.
John Hagan has shown there was an increased use of racial epithets by Janjaweed rapists when they were joined by soldiers from the Sudanese Army—a finding suggesting, but not proving, the possibility of incitement and direction from the top down, below the level of detection, directly reaching the perpetrators, without the use of open incitement to motivate the entire population. [lxiii]
In Darfur, the record so far suggests that perpetrators carried out mass killing without broadcasting hate language and incitement, so as to conceal intent and a pattern of central direction.
Kenya: Person-to-person spread of incitement
In Kenya, election campaigns have been shown to be the high risk periods for viral person-to-person spread of incitement, at first by word of mouth and then by text messaging—a highly efficient method. In the aftermath of disputed election results in 2008, and perhaps even before, tribal elders incited their followers to kill, plunder, and pillage.[lxiv] The inciters channeled endemic everyday street violence in the poor countryside and incited mobs to burn, kill and plunder rival tribal and political groupings. Because the inciters used vernacular dialects in isolated and remote rural settings, the story was not picked by urban based media until after violence started. The death toll was at least 1300 killed and 300,000 displaced.[lxv]
Mediators from the African Union were able to bring together shaken elites from two rival groupings just when the situation reached the tipping point and Kenya was on the brink of becoming another Rwanda. Pressures from the top down aborted the spread of the killings, burnings, and expulsions. Governmental initiatives led to the use of text messaging to counter the inciters’ text messaging, [lxvi] It remains to be seen if the current uneasy quiet will be broken with the next election.
Indian Subcontinent - Sri Lanka: State Discrimination and Tamilese terror without overt public incitement
In Sri Lanka, at the time of writing, a bloody civil war has ended with the Sinhalese government killing some 20,000 Tamilese, brutally suppressing the Tamilese minority, and pushing the entire group into no-escape zones in the northeast and southeast corners of the island, where there were some 200,000 refugees in the late summer and early autumn of 2009. The government has seized male children below 10 years old, and taken them away, and there is no information on their subsequent fate.[lxvii] More recently, the Sinhalese Government forces released pregnant women from badly overcrowded refugee enclaves [lxviii] into surrounding areas where there were no potable water, food or shelter, and where they were left to fend for themselves. These reports suggest the possibility that there may have been intentions to destroy a population, in whole or in part, via conditions simulating a man-made disaster.
The picture is unclear concerning the role of hate language and incitement by the Sinhalese government and the Tamilese Tigers terror groups—the inventors of the suicide belt bomb-- against civilians and military bases, actions which have had the result of diverting outside attention away from their oppressive mistreatment, and the social, cultural and economic discrimination against them. There have been bitter accusations –and equally bitter denials of whether the Central Government’s actions have been genocidal —a subject beyond the scope of this review.
Over the years, in Sri Lanka there has been intense controversy over the boundaries of journalistic freedom and speech. Information is not readily available, however, on the role of incitement by both sides in promoting the discrimination, the terror, and the backlash to the terror. Watchdog groups have accused the government of inciting to violence against journalists, and have catalogued a list of journalists who have been kidnapped, beaten and killed, despite laws in the books guaranteeing basic freedoms. [lxix]
Section II: The epidemiology of hate language and incitement:
Useful models from public health
Certain concepts from public health are useful for examining the impact of population-wide exposure to dehumanizing medical metaphors and messages, on potential individual perpetrators, the population-at-large of followers and bystanders. This section examines concepts and tools of public health, preventive medicine and epidemiology—the field which studies the distribution and determinants of diseases in populations. These concepts and tools, first developed to control and eradicate microbial diseases transmitted by water, food, air-borne and person-to-person spread, have produced spectacular advances in identifying the risks and advancing prevention of chronic non-infectious diseases, --e.g. heart disease, cancer, mass disasters, injuries, and violence.
Concepts such as Predict and Prevent, surveillance, early warning signs, incubation periods, and pro-active intervention against sources of exposure have been the basis of spectacular advances in both infectious and non-infectious diseases and mass violence. They are now part of everyday conventional wisdom concerning decision making and public policy. More recently, concepts such as the Mean determines the Extreme, and the Precautionary Principle should help advance the locus of genocide intervention from proof of intent after the event to Predict and Prevent.
Hate language and incitement: “The Mean determines the Extreme,” but the extreme also determines the mean
The epidemiologist Geoffrey Rose made the point that for any exposure to a risk factor or disease, “the mean determines the range.” [lxx] [lxxi] Applied to genocide, we can paraphrase this aphorism to say that the Mean determines the Extreme. This somewhat simplistic but powerful aphorism is a way of saying that small increases in exposure applied to large numbers of persons—i.e. a population-- produce more persons with an adverse outcome ---i.e. perpetrators--- than large increases in exposure applied to small numbers of people. Applied to incitement and genocide, this concept suggests the hypothesis that massive population-wide exposure to hate language and incitement will shift the distribution curve for the level of hate to the right, producing a pool of potential perpetrators and complicit bystanders. The numbers of perpetrators produced by such population wide incitement will be much larger than the number from high intensity messages directed to small high-risk groups.
We do not have empirical verification of the hypothesis, that Rose’s aphorism is a valid tool for predicting the population-wide effects of exposure to incitement. But a simple thought experiment suggests the hypothesis that the power of population-wide exposures could be massive. Marketing a low intensity message of incitement with a success rate of 5% for recruiting perpetrators from a population of 500,000 will yield 2,500 candidates. By contrast, marketing a high intensity message with a success rate of 50% to a high risk subgroup of 500 will yield only 250 candidates.
“The mean determines the extreme” may help us understand why architects of genocide find it useful to direct their messages of hate at the total population. It is suggested, that their aim is to shift to the right the entire population curve for the probability that individuals will act out messages from HL&I. Population wide exposure not only produces the potential for large numbers of recruits, but also creates a total population-wide protective ambience for the indoctrination directed at the smaller number of hard-core perpetrators.
But, in genocide… does the extreme determine the mean?
The notion that the Mean determines the Extreme is true, when the exposure is independent of the outcome, such as with smoking and cancer – i.e. if a larger number of people smoke, we will encounter more cases of cancer. But as with contagious diseases, there are secondary consequences --- producing a small pool of hard core perpetrators, who promote the spread of more hate and incitement. There are circular and mutually reinforcing relationships between those who do the inciting—those on the Extreme-- and those who have been incited to carry out mass atrocities—i.e. all the others. These relationships produce tipping points for autocatalytic spread of genocidal messages and actions. What may have started as messages coming from the top down into a social system, take on a momentum of their own as those on the extreme fringe propagate their messages and use intimidation to recruit more followers.
Positive Deviance, Exposure and Individual Susceptibility
In Epidemiology, it is well recognized that the risk for contracting a given disease caused by an environmental agent, is a function of the interaction between exposure and susceptibility. [lxxii] [lxxiii] There are individuals who, following exposure to a carcinogenic agent for as briefly as a month, will contract a cancer associated with the agent. But then there are other individuals, who will live to the age of 100, going to the funerals of all those who warned them of the risks from far heavier exposures to the same agent. In short, increased exposure is predictive of increased risks for members of the group, but not determining for individual members of the group.
Is the exposure-susceptibility model useful for understanding the contribution of past exposure to background levels of incitement as triggers of terror rampages in troubled individuals? This question applies to the case of the US military psychiatrist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, in whom the warning signs of danger were missed prior to his reported rampage killing of 14 of his colleagues. [lxxiv] The exposure susceptibility model also applies to the "underwear bomber" and "Jihad Jane", two other troubled individuals who were recruited via the internet. [lxxv] [lxxvi] The exposure-susceptibility paradigm leads us directly to examine the potential of applying the concept of Promoting Positive Deviance—for which there are now abundant precedents in public health. [lxxvii]
Shifting the mean to the left and promoting Positive Deviance
It is suggested that “the Mean determines the Extreme” can be exploited for prevention of genocide. Preventive approaches have to be population-wide, and directed to removing population-wide exposures to incitement. Strategies which aim to shift the curve to the left need to exploit the public health experience with promoting positive deviance. The aim is to shift the distribution curve for the entire population back to the left. It is not enough to restrict attention only to the high-risk groups at the right end of frequency distribution.[lxxviii] [lxxix]
Genocide scholars have noted that among ordinary people, there is a minority---estimated by Christopher Browning to be of the order of 10%--who are resistant to such incitement and are unwilling to participate in the mass killing.[lxxx] Browning’s estimate was based on empirical studies of the behavior of reservists, nearly all not members of the Nazi party, in a German police battalion sent to Poland to carry out mass shooting of captive Jews. "The other children egged the boy on, but he did not want to throw the stone through the window", says it all.
Who are these individuals and why are they are resistant to incitement and hate language? Promoting the attitudes and traits of such individuals is one of the major challenges to those concerned with the primary prevention of genocide.
Hate language and Incitement - Incubation periods: How much time do architects and perpetrators need? The challenge to responders
How much time do perpetrators and their accomplices need to motivate sufficiently large a population to become executioners in Aktions, members of execution squads, wielders of hatchets who bludgeon, behead, and shoot, or today- send rockets at vulnerable populations with intent to kill; or for them to become bystanders? The challenge to perpetrators is formidable: to remove the inhibitions to direct hands-on one-to-one butchery—without the blunting effects of "push-button" distancing---i.e. when the perpetrators are using weapons which produce a disconnection between action and consequence, as in operating missile delivery systems or chemical warfare systems.
The challenge to responders is even more formidable: to intervene fast enough to prevent incitement leading to killing.
Experience from the Holocaust, former Yugoslavia and Rwanda suggests that a period of weeks to months may be sufficient to produce cadres of genocidaires who do the killing and raping, and to deflect bystanders from protest or resistance. Eight months elapsed between the onset of Radio TV de Libre Milles Collines (RTVLMC)’s incitement in Rwanda in August 1993—at first, coy, and then ever more explicit–and the mass killing, although there had been years of preparation and organization partially hidden from the eyes of outside observers. [lxxxi]
Often, perpetrators reactivate submerged half buried or half forgotten “memories", or recycle myths, as is the case with the blood libels of antisemitism to produce rage, revulsion, demands for revenge, and hate—and desensitization of bystanders, although, as noted, in an era of push-button genocide, such incitement may be hardly necessary. [lxxxii] Most recently, we see, ominously, the recycling of such blood libels in liberal democratic countries---e.g. the Swedish newspaper story on Israelis harvesting the organs of killed Palestinians,[lxxxiii] [lxxxiv] or the Turkish TV series broadcasting fictional images of what appear to be Israeli soldiers killing children.[lxxxv] [lxxxvi] These examples of the demonization, defamation and disinformation by antisemitism, whatever the inciters' intent, can certainly be expected to both increase the pool of perpetrators of genocidal terror and increase mass desensitization of bystanders.
The Case for Action: What Now... and If Not Now, When?
The foregoing underscores the importance of online surveillance systems for tracking HL&I in real time, so as to trigger interventions directed at those who manufacture and disseminate their toxic messages. The interventions can include a mix of political, economic, educational, legal or military measures. The failure to jam or bomb the Rwandan radio transmitters is a spectacular example of a low-cost, low risk missed opportunity for intervention against toxic incitement, which could have crippled the Rwandan regime’s capacity to organize, instruct, inform and incite its genocidaires. [lxxxvii] By contrast, in Darfur, where there was no widely known public hate language and incitement, but indications of incitement directed at perpetrators, preventive measures would have required political, military and economic sanctions against leading members of the regime, along with bombing the Janjaweed. Darfur tells us that the absence of evidence of public state sponsored hate language and incitement is no guarantee of absence of risk for a genocidal scenario. Indeed, the Darfur story shows how the absence of incitement directed towards the outside world may serve to conceal genocidal actions.
How long does it take to reverse the effects of incitement and hate language?
The adverse impacts of incitement and hate language are a function of the intensity and frequency of exposure. They are modified by the political and social context shaping the susceptibility of the target population to the messages, notably an authoritarian structure. Getting rid of the message by removing its propagators from power gets rid of the exposure. Denazification was successful in Germany in transforming its society into a normal democracy ---even if beer hall and kitchen table hate may have persisted, because the Allied Occupiers destroyed Nazi regime, reshaped Germany’s political and social environment and totally transformed the educational information system. [lxxxviii] Half a century later, there are still bigotry and hate crimes in Germany, a result of the intergenerational transmission of the age-old motifs of antisemitism and hatred for foreigners. But state-based structures of modern liberal democracy, including laws against hate crimes, so far appear to be robust enough to withstand their challenges—unless there will be violent economic and social upheaval. Where there is lack of will or power at the level of the State to defeat and remove those producing the incitement, we are left with the challenge of decades of work to undo the enduring intergenerational effects of their HL&I.
In Rwanda, the incitement from RTVLMC to “kill the cockroaches” ended when a Tutsi exile army defeated the government’s army. Former bitter enemies live side-by-side, tensely, and in pain and grief, but in peace. In Cambodia, the same happened when the Vietnamese invaded that country and destroyed the Khmer Rouge regime. Without total defeat of a regime carrying out genocidal mass atrocities, preventing genocide by preventing incitement and hate language requires effective use of the tools of international law to punish the inciters, as proposed by Irwin Cotler and cosigners in their Petition, [lxxxix] if not officially, at least in the court of public opinion.
Push button genocide: When incitement may not be necessary
Today, in the era of mass bombing, the threats of nuclear genocide, and the threat of push-button genocide, the distance between those pressing the button and those who are the “targets”—itself a dehumanizing term - creates possibilities for genocide without mass hate. In a scenario in which a small number of perpetrators carry out atrocities directed against a defined population --- as when Saddam used helicopter gunships to gas the Kurds in Iraq [xc] - in theory, all that is necessary is to harden feelings of disconnection and depersonalization in those pressing the button.
Past action against hate language and incitement
The horrific effects of dehumanizing hate language by the Nazis led to the enactment of the provisions in the UN Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of Genocide. Incitement to genocide was defined as a crime against humanity. The Convention was the basis for the conviction and execution of Julius Streicher for the inflammatory language he published in Der Sturmer. [xci] Following the Rwandan genocide, the UN incorporated the provisions specifying that incitement to genocide is a crime against humanity, into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. These provisions were the basis of the International Criminal Tribunal Court- Rwanda- ICT-R convictions of broadcasters, rock singers and journalists for incitement to genocide. [xcii] [xciii] [xciv] The Mugasera case - in which the former politician was accused of encouraging attacks in Rwanda on Tutsis in his speech - using principles from international law, established the precedent that criminal liability exists even if it is not possible to prove a direct cause effect connection between the words of the individual inciter and the subsequent genocide.[xcv] Today, many countries have laws against hate language and incitement.
The Precautionary Principle: Prediction, prevention and protection
Can we prevent genocide by preventing state sponsored hate language and incitement? A coherent approach to prevention of genocide requires that we advance the temporal locus of intervention from that period in time when the perpetrators start carrying out their mass killings, rapes, expulsions and plundering, or committing push-button genocide--- to when earlier warning signs signal genocidal intent. Accordingly, genocide prevention needs to move from interventions triggered by evidence of proof of intent after the event, to actions to predict and prevent before the event.
Richter and Stanton have noted that the proposal to criminalize and prosecute incitement by state authorities and their funded or protected surrogates is an example of applying the Precautionary Principle — public health’s gift to genocide prevention.[xcvi] The Precautionary Principle specifies that when there is uncertainty concerning the likelihood of the occurrence of a catastrophic event, it is better to intervene to prevent rather than wait and do nothing. The Precautionary Principle shifts the burden of proof from those suspecting the risk to those denying it. Since human lives are at stake, there is an ethical import to delay. It restates the aphorism that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. [xcvii] [xcviii] [xcix]
The case for application of the Precautionary Principle to the prevention of genocide –perhaps the ultimate man-made human catastrophe, is that the negative consequences of doing nothing to stop state sponsored HL&I incitement are far greater than the negative consequences of doing something. [c] Intervention against state sanctioned hate language and incitement before the killing starts is far less dangerous than failing to stop incitement and thereby allowing perpetrators to expel, plunder and exterminate. We suggest that the downside consequences of using the tools of international law to stop hate language and incitement are far less than those from sending in armed forces to defeat or destroy genocidal regimes once the killing and mass expulsions begin.
We have to recognize that if there is state sanctioned hate language and incitement, there is an increased risk for genocide, but this relationship is not necessarily determinant. Furthermore, there can be genocide without hate language and incitement. Perpetrators can use mass starvation to commit genocide without mass incitement, thereby concealing their actions from their own countrymen and the outside world.
This lack of total predictability was the pretext for US Genocide Prevention Task Force’s rejection of recommendations to apply the Precautionary Principle, and promote interventions directed against state sponsored hate language and incitement.[ci]*
As already noted, the Nazis used hate language, but did not explicitly incite — so as to conceal and camouflage their genocidal goals. As a result, it was not until mid-1942 — more than 3 years after their invasion of Poland, that the world began to recognize the horrible scale of the Holocaust’s atrocities. Legal distinctions between hate language and incitement, while important for ascertaining accountability, are not crucial to prevention. From the standpoint of prevention, what counts is not proof of criminality, but interventions directed at the causes –e.g. the potentially horrific effects of dehumanizing hate language and their genocidal consequences.
Using the Precautionary Principle to prevent hate language and incitement
The foregoing helps clarify strategies for guiding prediction and prevention of genocide and protection of vulnerable populations. We suggest that the case for action for testing these strategies is compelling.
What can be done?
From Darfur and Rwanda, we have learned from bitter experience that the proposal to establish a standby military Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) to intervene to stop genocide may have become an oxymoron. The same conclusion applies to its parent vision: that it is possible to prevent genocide once the mass killing starts. To date, RDF’s have not been rapid (e.g. Bosnia), [cii] they did not truly deploy (e.g. Darfur), [ciii] and they did not have real force at a level which deterred (e.g. Rwanda). [civ] So far, those nations with the force to deploy do not have the appetite or will to put their sons at risk to protect some faraway group “out there”—for all too readily understandable reasons.
If state sanctioned hate language and incitement often predicts genocide, it remains to be seen if stopping such hate language and incitement prevents many genocides. To create the data base for putting this hypothesis to test, Genocide Prevention Now of the Institute for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem is proposing an international worldwide network for tracking and monitoring hate language and incitement (HL&I) based on predict-and-prevent models for surveillance of epidemic warning signs, derived from epidemiology and public health. This network will be developing search engines for tracking dehumanizing language from figures of authority—(“top down”)-or when it reaches a critical mass from viral dissemination (“bottom up”). The objective is to produce an ongoing world wide data base which will trigger interventions before the killing starts, by when it is already too late.
Conclusion
This overview of the history of incitement and hate language and its relationship to genocide in various scenarios requires us to examine whether its prevention will help us prevent genocide around the world.
Genocide and its prevention both result from human choice. But if state sanctioned hate language and incitement predict, promote and catalyze genocidal scenarios, then the case is compelling for applying the Precautionary Principle to prevent genocide by preventing such hate language and incitement, which mobilizes and motivates perpetrators and desensitizes bystanders. Such prevention requires developing world wide networks for epidemiologic surveillance of hate language and incitement. These networks would trigger interventions before perpetrators start carrying out mass atrocities against victim populations. Such interventions can exploit existing legal tools available under international law, but there are extra-legal interventions as well. Surveillance would give force to existing tools of international law to detect, deter, prevent and punish for the crimes of hate language and incitement. Other forms of incitement which need to be monitored are the recycling of demonizing myths such as those of genocidal antisemitism.
One lesson from the Holocaust is that there may be existential dangers associated with ignoring state sanctioned dehumanizing hate language, with and without explicit incitement, propagated by rogue regimes. We suggest that the spread of dehumanizing hate language drives a new world-wide axis of genocide.
In conclusion, the perils of neglecting the propagation and spread of state sanctioned and state sponsored hate language and incitement are ominous, especially in an era of push-button genocide, nuclear terror, rogue regimes and terror groups. Conversely, when regimes propagating such incitement are developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the case is imperative for stopping them from doing so, given the fact that such incitement is an early warning sign (EWS) until proven otherwise.
Will humankind test the efficacy of going from proof of intent after the event to predict and prevent? The lessons of the Holocaust empower us to address prevention of hate language and incitement against all populations without waiting for the consequences.
Appendix 1: Hate Language and Incitement in the Middle East – excerpts from school textbooks and Media.
Saudi Arabia school textbooks: [cv]
"The Jews are wickedness in its very essence". [cvi]
"Now it [Palestine] is occupied by the Jews, a people of treachery and betrayal, who have gathered there from every place: from Poland, Spain, America and elsewhere. Their end, by God's will, is perdition". [cvii]
Egyptian school Textbooks: [cviii]
"The lesson’s goals -
It is desirable that at the end of the lesson the student will be able to:
• Define the reasons for the war between the Muslims and the Jews of the Qaynuqa’ tribe.
• Mention some of the Jews’ blameworthy characteristics." [cix]
"The description of the Jews in the Qur’an is an eternal miracle [in itself], since it described them by the traits to which they have adhered throughout all their generations, such as stubbornness, material greed, slander, hypocrisy, plotting against Islam and the Muslims, and waging a war which is multifarious in its methods and manifestations and one in its true nature and goal." [cx]
"The Protected People [Ahl al-Dhimmah] shall not go out with them [i.e., with the Muslims, for prayer for rain outside the city]… because the gathering of infidels is expected to bring forth a [divine] curse." [cxi]
"[One] of the rules derived by the [Muslim religious] scholars from these [Qur’anic] verses is the following:
1. Obligation to fight the infidels with utmost vigor and power until
they become weak, their state disappears and they submit to the rule of the law of Islam." [cxii]
Egyptian TV:
Renowned Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass, on Egyptian TV: "Jews Control the Entire World" [cxiii]
Interviewer: "So [the Jews] were dispersed in 133 C.E.?"
Zahi Hawass: "That's right."
Interviewer: "And they didn't reunite until 1900?"
Zahi Hawass: "Exactly."
Interviewer: "So they were dispersed for 18 centuries?"
Zahi Hawass: "For 18 centuries, they were dispersed throughout the world. They went to America and took control of its economy. They have a plan. Although they are few in number, they control the entire world."
Egyptian Cleric Ahmad 'Eid Mihna on Egyptian TV: "The Jews Are Behind Misery, Hardship, Usury, and Whorehouses" [cxiv]
Palestinian Authority school Textbooks: [cxv]
Israel is portrayed as a power that harms its immediate environment, as enumerated in a list of more than twenty-five crimes, beginning with its very establishment, through the occupation of Palestine both in 1948 and 1967, expulsion of the Palestinian people, oppression of those under its control, aggression against neighboring Arab states, massacre of Palestinians, assassination of Palestinian leaders, destruction of the Palestinian economy, house demolition, stealing Palestinian land and water, breaking of Palestinian
territorial unity, attempts at obliterating Palestinian national identity and heritage, usurpation or desecration of Palestinian Christian and Muslim holy places, and finally, Israel’s responsibility for social ills such as drug addiction in Palestinian society, the meager participation of Palestinian women in economic activity, family violence, etc. [cxvi]
The Zionist movement is presented as a racist movement connected with Western imperialism. [cxvii]
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a czarist Russian fabrication from the early twentieth century, is presented in a PA history textbook for grade 10 as the secret resolutions of the First Zionist Congress. The text reads: “There is a group of confidential resolutions adopted by the Congress and known by the name The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the goal of which was world domination. They were brought to light by Sergey
Nilos and translated into Arabic by Muhammad Khalifah Al-Tunisi. [cxviii]
Following worldwide protests, the PA issued a revised edition of this book, but for a long time there was no indication that the old copies had been removed from schools and stores. The 2007 revised book does not include references to the Protocols.
"Your enemies killed your children, split open your women’s bellies, held your revered elderly men by the beard, and led them to the death pits." [cxix]
This text was written by the Egyptian writer Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti, who died in 1924. It was not originally directed against the Jews, but its inclusion in a Palestinian textbook of today clearly has a demonizing effect regarding Jews.
Palestinian TV:
New Antisemitic Animated Film on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV Vilifies Palestinian Authority: PA Security Forces Help Stereotypical Blood-Drinking Jews [cxx]
Settler Massacres Palestinians to Drink Their Blood, and is Welcomed by PA Officer
Father: "Son, the five most delicious things in the world are three..."
Settler: "I know."
Settler and his father: "Palestinian blood."
Father: "Go, son. Drink their blood, and come back safely."
Settler: "I will do it for you, father."
Father: "This is a map of Hebron. Take it. You may need it."
Settler: "I will not need it, because I am not Gilad [Shalit], and the West Bank is not Gaza. Calm down. Shalom, father."
The bear puppet host, Nassur, of a Hamas children's TV program, and Saraa Barhoum, 11 year old Child Star: [cxxi]
[Seven year-old Palestinian child on phone tells how his father, a member of the Hamas Al-Qassam Brigades, “died as a Shahid (Martyr).”]
Nassur to child on phone: “What do you want to do to the Jews who shot your father?”
Child on phone: “I want to kill them.”
Saraa: “We don't want to do anything to them, just expel them from our land.”
Nassur: “We want to slaughter (Nidbah-hom) them, so they will be expelled from our land, right?”
Saraa: “Yes. That's right. We will expel them from our land using all means.”
Nassur: “And if they don't want [to go] peacefully, by words or talking, we’ll have to [do it] by slaughter.” (Shaht)
Turkish TV:
New television drama depicts Israel Defense Forces soldiers as brutal murderers.
The show, called "Ayrilik", features a love story that develops between the lead characters during Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli media reports.
A partial episode available on YouTube depicts multiple images of the IDF brutalizing the Palestinian population by shooting children in the chest and kicking elderly people on the ground, among other things.
The Turkish Web site of TRT includes a brief explanation of the series and announces that the production is “a heartfelt display of the events in Palestine, which was occupied in 1948.” The series, the website said, “portrays the sorrow of women and children, in particular, and gives a voice to the suffering of mothers whose children and husbands were slaughtered.” [cxxii] [cxxiii] [cxxiv]
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* The UNGC did not include mass killings of groups defined by their political origin, because of pressure from the Soviet Union. This exclusion meant that the Stalinist starvation campaigns against the Ukranians, the mass deportations of ethnic minorities, the starvation campaigns by the North Koreans, Mao’s mass purges, and the Cambodian genocide were not covered by the UNGC—a colossal omission.
* Using this logic, there would not be case for smoking bans, since most smokers do not get cancer, and many cancer victims have never smoked
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[i] Charny I. The Encyclopedia of Genocide, Israel W. Charny, Editor in Chief; Rouben Paul Adalian, Steven L. Jacobs, Eric Markusen, Samuel Totten, Associate Editors; Marc I. Sherman, Bibliographic Editor; Pauline Cooper, Managing Editor; Forewords by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Simon Wiesenthal; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1999, Two volumes, 720p.
[ii] Rummel, R.J. Death by Government, Transaction Publishers, 1997, Democide — Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder, Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence, Trasnaction Publishers, 2002.
[iii] Convention on the Prevention of Genocide- General Assembly Resolution 260 (III) of 8 December 1948. Available at: URL: http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/044/31/IMG/NR004431.pdf?OpenElement.
[iv] Richter ED, Barnea A. Tehran’s Genocidal Incitement Against Israel. Middle East Quarterly. 2009; 16(3) pp. 45-51. Available at:
http://www.meforum.org/2167/iran-genocidal-incitement-israel
[v] See 4
[vi] To incite: “to set in rapid motion, rouse, stimulate, stir up, animate, instigate, or stimulate to do something” or “to urge or provoke (some action).”
Incitement: “… the action of inciting or rousing to action; an urging setting up, or stimulation” or “that which incites or rouses to action, animating cause or motive, spur”.
An inciter: “one who incites or rouses to action; an instigation”.
The compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. 2 v. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971.
[vii] Gordon G. From incitement to indictment: prosecuting Iran’s president for advocating Israel’s destruction and piecing together incitement law’s emerging analytic network. J. Crim. L. Crinmiology 200898(3):853-920.
[viii] Samuels, S. Applying the Lessons of the Holocaust:
from Particularism to Universalism and Back. Available at: http://www.holocaust-trc.org/samuels.htm
[ix] Burke, Edmund. 1729 – 1797. The quote is not found in any of Burkes' literature – but is associated with him.
[x] Dadrian V. The role of Turkish physicians in the World War I genocide of Ottoman Armenians. Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1986; 1(2):169-192.
[xi] Solzhenitsyn, A. The Gulag Archipelago. London, Collins 1974. p. 27.
[xii] Library of Congress: Revelations from the Russian Archives. Available at: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/ukra.htm
[xiii] Naimark N. Fires of hatred: ethnic cleansing in 20th century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. p. 58–62.
[xiv] Hitler A. Nation and Race. In: Mein Kampf. I. 1924; 11:285–329, Nation and Race.
[xv] Blum Rony et al. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ bleaches the atrocities of genocide. The European Journal of Public Health. 2008, 18(2):204-209
Available at: http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/ckm011v1
[xvi] Ribao, R. Sweep Away All Monsters. Peking Review. 1966; 9 (23). 3 June 1966. Available at: http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1966/PR1966-23c.htm
[xvii] Refugees International, Acts of Betrayal. The Challenge of Protecting North Koreans in China, April 2005, Available at: URL: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/47a6eba50.html
[xviii] Yager C. They Killed Their Neighbors: Genocide’s Foot Soldiers”. CNN. 10 December 2008. Available at: URL:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/25/sbm.perpetrators/[xix] Cekic S. The Aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo 2005, p.239. Institute for the Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, Sarajevo.
[xx] Richter ED. Commentary on Genocide: Can We Predict, Prevent, and Protect? Journal of Public Health Policy. 2008; 29(3) 265–274.
[xxi] Laughlin HH. Eugenical Steriliziation in the United States. 1922, Chicago: Psychopathic Laboratory of the Municipal Court of Chicago. The American Journal of Sociology 1930 36(1):65-73. Available from: URL:http://dnapatents.georgetown.edu/resources/EugenicalSterilizationInTheUS.pdf
[xxii] Harff Barbara. “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955,” American Political Science Review Vol. 97, No.1 (February 2003), pp. 57-73.
[xxiii] Barbara Harff, Genocide, July 17, 2003, Commissioned by the Human Security Centre. Available at:
http://www.humansecurityreport.info/background/Harff_Genocide.pdf[xxiv] Israel Charny: On the Development of the Genocide Early Warning System, p.254, The Encyclopedia of Genocide, Israel W. Charny, Editor in Chief; Rouben Paul Adalian, Steven L. Jacobs, Eric Markusen, Samuel Totten, Associate Editors; Marc I. Sherman, Bibliographic Editor; Pauline Cooper, Managing Editor; Forewords by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Simon Wiesenthal; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1999, Two volumes, 720p.
[xxv] Stanton, Gregory H. Eight Stages of Genocide
Originally written in 1996 at the Department of State; presented at the Yale University Center for International and Area Studies in 1998). Available at:
http://www.genocidewatch.org/aboutgenocide/8stagesofgenocide.html[xxvi] Gordon Gregory, personal communication
[xxvii] Thomas E. Davies. How the Rome Statute Weakens the International Prohibition on Incitement to Genocide
Available at: http://harvardhrj.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/davies.pdf
[xxviii] Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Victims of Nazi Hatred. Available at: http://www.hmd.org.uk/genocides/victims-of-nazi-hatred/
[xxix] Proctor R. The Nazi War Against Cancer; Princeton University Press, 2000, 380 pages
[xxx] Davis Devra. The Secret History of the War on Cancer. Basic Books, New York, 2007, 528 pages
[xxxi] See 15
[xxxii] Kreso M. Milosevic Guilty of Genocide-Decision on Motion of the Hague Tribunal of 16 June 2004, Sarajevo 2007 (source: www.un.org), Institute for Crimes Against Humanity and International Law, Sarajevo, 2007, p 9
[xxxiii] Mass crimes against humanity and genocides, Atrocities since World War II. Available at: http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocide4.htm
[xxxiv] The History Place. Genocide in the 20th century. Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992-1995, 200,000 deaths. Available at:
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/bosnia.htm[xxxv] A State-of-the-Art Contribution to Our Knowledge of Contemporary Anti-Semitism. Neu-alter Judenhass: Antisemitismus, arabisch-israelischer Konflikt und europäische Politik
(New-Old Jew Hatred: Anti-Semitism, the Arab-Israeli Conflict, and European Policy) by Klaus Faber, Julius H. Schoeps and Sacha Stawski. Reviewed by Joel Fishman.
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=624&PID=0&IID=1663&TTL=Joel_Fishman_on_Neu-alter_Judenhass:_Antisemitismus,_arabisch-israelischer_Konflikt_und_europ%C3%A4ische_Politik
[xxxvi] Matthias Küntzel, National Socialism and Anti-Semitism in the Arab World. Available at: http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-kuntzel-s05.htm
[xxxvii] Matthias Küntzel: Hitler's Legacy: Islamic anti-Semitism in the Middle East – the Impact of the Muslim Brotherhood. Invited Paper at Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, November 30, 2006
Available at: http://spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=3008
[xxxviii] Andrew G. Bostom. The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History. Prometheus Books, April 2008 Reprint, 768pp
[xxxix] See 35
[xl] See 36
[xli] Wolfram Reiss and Rainer Bartsch. Christian Religion in Arab School Books, A Mere Precursor of Islam. Available at:
http://www.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-478/_nr-423/i.html[xlii] Andrew G. Bostom, Textbook Jihad in Egypt
FrontPageMagazine.com . Wednesday, June 30, 2004, available at:
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=12414[xliii] See 4
[xliv] BBC News. Trial puts spotlight on Iran's Jews, 13 April, 2000. Available at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/711917.stm[xlv] Backgrounder: The Trial of 13 Iranian Jews. Anti Defamation League.
Available at: http://www.adl.org/backgrounders/Iranian_Jews.asp
[xlvi] Cotler Irwin. The Danger of a Nuclear, Genocidal and Rights-Violating Iran:
The Responsibility to Prevent Petition, pgs.20-34. Available at:
http://content.liberal.ca/fe9cf988-49a0-42eb-9e11-2a512494abd7/pdf/2010-01-07-r2p-petition.pdf[xlvii] Marcus, I. and Crook, B. "Kill a Jew – go to Heaven" A study of the Palestinian Authority's promotion of genocide. Available at: URL: http://www.pmw.org.il/KAJ_eng.htm
[xlviii] Haviv Retting Gur, Israelis, US Jews harvesting Algerian children's organs: Report spreading like wildfire across Muslim and anti-Semitic web sites. Jerusalem Post, September 15, 2009. Available at: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/Page/IndexPho&cid=1123495333292
[xlix] Burdman D. Education, Indoctrination, and Incitement: Palestinian Children on their way to Marytrdom. Terrorism and Political Violence. 1556-1836. Volume 15. Issue 1. 2003.
[l] Stalinsky, Steven. Palestinian Authority Sermons 2000-2003. 26 December 2003. MEMRI Special Report - No. 24. Available at: URL: http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR2403
[li] Children in the Service of Terror. 21 July 2009. MEMRI Special Dispatch- No. 2455 Available at: URL: http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP245509
[lii] Hamas Covenant 1988. Avalon Project. Yale Law School. Available at: URL: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
[liii] Antisemitism on Egypts Al-Rahma TV. MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 2466. 30 July 2009. Available at: http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=antisemitism&ID=SP246609
[liv] Marcus, I. PA Libels, Lies, and Distortions. Palestine Media Watch. Available at: URL: http://www.pmw.org.il/
[lv] Names of Palestinian Authority Schools . Palestinian Media Watch.
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=608[lvi] Abu Mazen's Palestinian Authority Names Another Summer Camp After A Suicide Bomber
http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=541[lvii] PMW Bulletins - Abbas sponsors birthday celebrations honoring terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, killer of 37. Available at:
http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1526[lviii] Wistrich Robert S. A LETHAL OBSESSION. Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad. Random House. 1,184 pp.
[lix] Syrian Actress Amal 'Arafa: Hatred of Israel is in Our Genes and Blood. Al-Hirwa TV. 4 October 2008. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5Os4pdjtZ0
[lx] Chalk F Radio Propaganda and Genocide MIGS Occasional Paper Nov. 1999; http;//migs.concordia.ca/occpwpers/radio-pr.html/
[lxi] Powell Reports Sudan Responsible for Genocide in Darfur
Calls for continued pressure, action from U.N., U.S. and AU. 09 September 2004. http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2004/September/20040909115958JTgnilwoD0.5094873.html#ixzz0i5ZINXAi
[lxii] Reeves E, Darfur Mortality: Shoddy Journalism at the NY Times. Aug 14 2007. Available at: http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article180.html
[lxiii] Hagan, J.; Rymond-Richmond, W.; Palloni, A. Racial Targeting of Sexual Violence in Darfur. American Journal of Public Health, 2009: 99(8) 1386-1392
[lxiv] Gettleman Jeffrey. Signs in Kenya that Killings were planned. New York Times. 21 January 2008. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/world/africa/21kenya.html?_r=1
[lxv] Factbox - Recent African Elections. Reuters News. 4 Dec 2008. Available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL3713586
[lxvi] Text Messages Used to Incite Violence in Kenya, by Ofeibea Quist-Arcton Feb 20 2008. Available at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19188853[lxvii] BBC News. Sri Lanka youth seized to fight, 13th November 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6144200.stm[lxviii] BBC News. 'Dire conditions' at Sri Lanka camp. Tamils forced into Sri Lanka's government run camps say conditions are difficult with water shortages and high levels of sickness.
Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8295494.stm
[lxix] Sri Lankan Government Must End Incitement to Violence against Journalists: Stop the War on Journalists in Sri Lanka. Available at: http://asiapacific.ifj.org/en/articles/sri-lankan-government-must-end-incitement-to-violence-against-journalists
[lxx] Rose G. Sick individuals and sick populations. International Journal of Epidemiology. 1985;14:32-38.
[lxxi] Penman AD, Johnson WD. The Changing Shape of the Body Mass Index Distribution Curve in the Population: Implications for Public Health Policy to Reduce the Prevalence of Adult Obesity. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/Pcd/issues/2006/jul/05_0232.htm
Contains the exposition of the Rose model and illustrative graphs as they apply to blood pressure control
[lxxii] Perera Frederica P. Environment and Cancer: Who Are Susceptible? Science 7 November 1997: Vol. 278. no. 5340, pp. 1068 - 1073
[lxxiii] Nordberg Gunnar F. Biomarkers of exposure, effects and susceptibility in humans and their application in studies of interactions among metals in China. Toxicology Letters. Volume 192, Issue 1, 15 January 2010, Pages 45-49
[lxxiv] Self-radicalized terrorists more common. UPI.com, Nov. 15, 2009
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2009/11/15/Self-radicalized-terrorists-more-common/UPI-33911258298466/[lxxv] CNN International. Al Qaeda link investigated as clues emerge in foiled terror attack. December 29, 2009.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/28/airline.terror.attempt/index.html[lxxvi] Profile: 'Jihad Jane' from Main Street
11 March 2010
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8561888.stm[lxxvii] Levinson FJ, Barney J, Bassett L, Schultink W. Utilization of positive deviance analysis in evaluating community-based nutrition programs: an application to the Dular program in Bihar, India.
Food Nutr Bull. 2007 Sep 28(3):259-65.
[lxxviii] Mojtabai R; Malaspina D; Susser E. The Concept of Population Prevention: Application to Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin. Vol 29(4), 2003, 791-801.
[lxxix] Adler RN, Smith J, Fishman P, Larson EB. To prevent, react, and rebuild: health research and the prevention of genocide. Health Services Research. 2004; 39(6 Pt 2):2027–51.
[lxxx] Browning C. Ordinary men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York, HarperCollins, 1992.
[lxxxi] The sound of hatred. BBC News Online, Monday 21 June 1999.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/35/179.html
[lxxxii] See 58
[lxxxiii] Swedish paper's organ harvesting article draws Israeli outrage. CNN.com/world, August 19, 2009, available at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/08/19/israel.sweden.organ.harvesting/index.html[lxxxiv] Accusation of Organ Theft Stokes Ire in Israel, The New York Times/ Middle East, August 23, 2009, available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/world/middleeast/24mideast.html[lxxxv] Israel-Turkey tensions high over TV series. CNN World, January 12, 2010. Available at:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/12/turkey.israel/index.html[lxxxvi] Israel rebukes Turkey over a television series, BBC News, 12 January 2010, available at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8453694.stm[lxxxvii] Dallaire, R. with Beardsley, B. Shake hands with the devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2003.
[lxxxviii] Michael Walzer. Regime Change and Just War
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=663[lxxxix] See 46
[xc] Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons: Attacks on the Kurds. Henry L. Stimson center. http://www.stimson.org/cbw/pdf/FSAttackonKurds.pdf
[xci] Juslius Streicher – Biography. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007316[xcii] Incitement to Genocide in International Law. United States Holocaust Memorial museum.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007839[xciii] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Adopted by the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court on 17 July 1998. Entry into force: 1 July 2002, in accordance with article 126.
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/criminalcourt.htm
[xciv] International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
http://www.ictr.org/[xcv] Top Court upholds Mugesera Deportation Order. CTV.ca. 28 June 2005. Available at: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1119959045332_19/?hub=TopStories
[xcvi] Richter ED and Stanton GH, The Precautionary Principle: A Brief for the Genocide Prevention Task Force submitted Nov 2007, available from authors.
[xcvii] Richter ED, Laster R. The Precautionary Principle, Epidemiology and the Ethics of Delay. International Journal of Occupational Medicine and Environmental Health, 2004; 17(1): 9 — 16.
[xcviii] Richter ED, Blum R, Soskolne C, Stanton G. The precautionary principle: environmental epidemiology’s gift to genocide prevention. (International Society for Environmental Epidemiology Paris, September 2006).
[xcix] Richter ED Incitement to Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect http://opiniojuris.org/author/elihu-richter/ April 22 2008
[c] See 20
[ci] Albright M K. Cohen W S. Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U. S. Policymakers. Washington, D. C., U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2008.
http://www.ushmm.org/genocide/taskforce/[cii] Weiss Thomas. The UN ‘s Prevention Pipe Dream. 1996. http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/berkjintlw14&div=16&g_sent=1&collection=journals#429
[ciii] Reeves. E. Failure to Mount a Humanitarian Intervention in Darfur: Historical context for dramatically escalating insecurity, November 29, 2004
http://www.sudanreeves.org/Sections-req-viewarticle-artid-229-allpages-1-theme-Printer.html[civ] See 87
[cv] The West, Christians and Jews in Saudi Arabian Schoolbooks, January 2003. Research Update reveals Lack of Change in Saudi Curriculum, July, 2008. IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education. Available at:
http://www.impact-se.org/research/sa/index.html[cvi] Saudi Arabia school textbook: "Language exercise, Facilitating the Rules of the Arabic Language", Grade 9, pt. 2 (1999) p. 24. IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education. Available at:
http://www.impact-se.org/docs/reports/SA/SA2003_ch5.pdf[cvii] Saudi Arabia school textbook: "Dictation", Grade 8, pt. 1 (2000) p. 24. IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education. Available at:
http://www.impact-se.org/docs/reports/SA/SA2003_ch5.pdf[cviii] IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education – private correspondence.
IMPACT-SE's published research on Egyptian school textbooks, is available at: http://www.impact-se.org/research/egypt/index.html
[cix] Egyptian school textbook: "Islamic Religious Education", Grade 4, Part 1, (2002) pp. 32-34. IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education.
[cx] Egyptian school textbook: "Islamic Education", Grade 10, (2002) p. 39. IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education.
[cxi] Egyptian school textbook: "Selections for the Explanation of [the Book of] “Selection” ", Grade 9 (2002), p. 103. IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education.
[cxii] Egyptian school textbook: "Commentary on the Surahs of Muhammad, Al-Fath, Al-Hujurat and Qaf", Grade 11, (2002) p. 24. IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education.
[cxiii] MEMRI - The Middle East Media Research Institute. Egyptian TV, February 11, 2009. Available at:
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/4029.htm[cxiv] MEMRI - The Middle East Media Research Institute. Inter Arab Relations. Video Clip. Egyptian TV. Egyptian Cleric Ahmad 'Eid Mihna: The Jews Are Behind Misery, Hardship, Usury, and Whorehouses.
http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/2409.htm[cxv] IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education. (formerly CMIP—the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace) Available at: http://www.impact-se.org/research/pa/index.html
[cxvi] See chapter on “Israel’s Image” in various CMIP reports on PA schoolbooks. Available at: http://www.edume.org
[cxvii] Palestinian school textbook: "History of the Modern and Contemporary World", Grade 10 (2004), p. 63. .) IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education. Available at: http://www.impact-se.org/docs/reports/PA/PA2008.pdf
[cxviii] Palestinian school textbook: "History of the Modern and Contemporary World", Grade 10 (2004), p. 63. (Sergey Nilos was the Russian author of this notorious document, under the auspices of the czarist secret police.) IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education. http://www.impact-se.org/docs/reports/PA/PA2008.pdf
[cxix] Palestinian school textbook: "Reading and Texts", Grade 8, Part 2 (2002), p. 16. IMPACT-SE, Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education. http://www.impact-se.org/docs/reports/PA/PA2008.pdf
[cxx] MEMRI - The Middle East Media Research Institute. Inter Arab Relations. January 4, 2010. Available at: http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/3877.htm
[cxxi] Al-Aqsa (Hamas) TV, Sept. 22, 2009. Palestinian Media Watch. Available at: http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=1339
[cxxii] Haaretz - VIDEO / Israel rebukes Turkey over brutish TV portrayal of IDF
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1121061.html[cxxiii] BBC News. Turkish TV series angers Israel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8308124.stm[cxxiv] The New York Times. Israel Protests Turkish TV Series About Palestine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/world/middleeast/16israel.html
