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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Other warfare & defence issues > War crimes > Genocide
On October 7, Israeli territory around the Erez border of Gaza Strip was invaded by Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, killing over 1,000 people. In response to this, the people of Gaza have been subjected to nearly eight months of wholesale genocide. Over 36,000 civilians have been killed, an estimated million made homeless and displaced, tens of thousands injured, and an entire population traumatised. Never in living history has such an atrocity been perpetrated in plain sight of the world’s leaders and mainstream media, who have all managed to give it their complete backing. Images and video clips of hourly horrors and tragedies have spread around the world, combatted by fake news propagated not by dark conspiratorial corners on the web, but by corporate media outlets and politicians.
Baseless Israeli propaganda and deliberately-biased framing has been fed to journalists and repeated, without question, on the front pages of the world’s newspapers and in the mouths of TV pundits and politicians.
One of the few voices of Gaza to make it out into Western media has been that of writer Atef Abu Saif, whose edited diary entries have been occasionally serialised in The New York Times, Washington Post, Le Monde and elsewhere. Here, the complete, unedited diaries show the journey of a man who arrived in Gaza just a few days before October 7 as a government minister and ended the period, like most other Palestinians, living in a tent in a refugee camp.
Die Herero-opstand 1904–1907 is ’n heruitgawe van ’n boek wat ses
keer tussen 1976 en 1979 deur HAUM gepubliseer is. Die lotgevalle
van die Hererovolk word in hierdie boek geskets, ’n stuk
geskiedenis wat ’n sentrale plek in Namibie se kleurryke
geskiedenis beklee. Die opstand van die Herero’s in 1904 teen
Duitse koloniale gesag kan beskou word as die enkele gebeurtenis
wat die gebied se volksverhoudinge die ingrypendste verander het.
Die Herero-opstand 1904–1907 vertel van die geleidelike opbou na
die konflik, die skielike uitbarsting van geweld en die tragiese
afloop vir die Herero’s toe duisende verhonger het en hulle grond
en politieke seggenskap verloor het.
Social psychologist James Waller uncovers the internal and external
factors that can lead ordinary people to commit extraordinary acts
of evil. Waller offers a sophisticated and comprehensive
psychological view of how anyone can potentially participate in
heinous crimes against humanity. He
outlines the evolutionary forces that shape human nature, the
individual dispositions that are more likely to engage in acts of
evil, and the context of cruelty in which these extraordinary acts
can emerge. Eyewitness accounts are presented at the end of each
chapter. In this second edition, Waller
has revised and updated eyewitness accounts and substantially
reworked Part II of the book, removing the chapter about human
nature and evolutionary adaptations, and instead using this
evolutionary perspective as a base for his entire model of human
evil.
Genocide is a phenomenon that continues to confound scholars,
practitioners, and general readers. Notwithstanding the carnage of
the twentieth century, our understanding of genocide remains
partial. Disciplinary boundaries have inhibited integrative studies
and popular, moralizing accounts have hindered comprehension by
advancing simple truths in an area where none are to be had.
Genocide: A Reader lays the foundations for an improved
understanding of genocide. With the help of 150 essential
contributions, Jens Meierhenrich provides a unique introduction to
the myriad dimensions of genocide and to the breadth and range of
critical thinking that exists concerning it. This innovative
anthology offers genre-defining as well as genre-bending selections
from diverse disciplines in law, the social sciences, and the
humanities as well as from other fields. A wide-ranging
introductory chapter on the study and history of genocide
accompanies the carefully curated and annotated collection. By
revisiting the past of genocide studies and imagining its future,
Genocide: A Reader is an indispensable resource for novices and
specialists alike.
This study deals with the phenomenon of genocide denialism, and in
particular how it operates in the context of the genocide against
the Tutsi. The term genocide denialism denotes that we are not
dealing with a single act or type of (genocide) denial but with a
more elaborate process of denial that involves a variety of
denialist and denial-like acts that are part of the process of
genocide. From this study it becomes clear that the process of
genocide thrives on a more elaborate denial dynamic than recognized
in expert literature until now. This study consists of three parts.
The first theoretical part analyses what the elements of denial and
genocide entail and how they are (inter)related. The exploration
results in a typology of genocide denialism. This model clarifies
the different functions denial performs throughout the process of
genocide. It furthermore explains how actors engage in denial and
on which rhetorical devices speech acts of denial rely. The second
part of the study focuses on denial in practice and it analyses how
denial operates in the particular case of the genocide against the
Tutsi. The analysis reveals a complex denial dynamic: not only
those who perpetrated the genocide are involved in its denial, but
also certain Western scholars, journalists, lawyers, etc. The
latter were originally not involved in the genocide but recycle
(elements of) the denial discourse of the perpetrators. The study
addresses the implications of such recycling and discusses whether
these actors actually have become involved in the genocidal
process. This sheds light on the complex relationship between
genocide and denial. The insights gained throughout the first two
parts of this study have significant implications for many other
actors that through their actions engage with the flow of meaning
concerning the specific events in Rwanda or genocide in general.
The final part of this study critically reflects on the actions of
a variety of actors and their significance in terms of genocide
denialism. These actors include scholars from various fields, human
rights organisations, the ICTR, and the government of Rwanda. On a
more fundamental level this study critically highlights how the
revisionist scientific climate, in which knowledge and truth claims
are constantly questioned, is favourable to genocide denialism and
how the post-modern turn in academia has exacerbated this climate.
Ultimately, this study reveals that the phenomenon of genocide
denial involves more than perpetrators denying their genocidal
crimes and the scope of actors and actions relevant in terms of
genocide denialism is much broader than generally assumed.
"Waging a counterinsurgency war and justified by claims of 'an
agreement between Guatemala and God, ' Guatemala's Evangelical
Protestant military dictator General Rios Montt incited a Mayan
holocaust: over just 17 months, some 86,000 mostly Mayan civilians
were murdered. Virginia Garrard-Burnett dives into the horrifying,
bewildering murk of this episode, the Western hemisphere's worst
twentieth-century human rights atrocity. She has delivered the most
lucid historical account and analysis we yet possess of what
happened and how, of the cultural complexities, personalities, and
local and international politics that made this tragedy.
Garrard-Burnett asks the hard questions and never flinches from the
least comforting answers. Beautifully, movingly, and clearly
written and argued, this is a necessary and indispensable
book."
-- Francisco Goldman, author of The Art of Political Murder: Who
Killed the Bishop?
"Virginia Garrard-Burnett's Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit
is impressively researched and argued, providing the first full
examination of the religious dimensions of la violencia - a period
of extreme political repression that overwhelmed Guatemala in the
1980s. Garrard-Burnett excavates the myriad ways Christian
evangelical imagery and ideals saturated political and ethical
discourse that scholars usually treat as secular. This book is one
of the finest contributions to our understanding of the violence of
the late Cold War period, not just in Guatemala but throughout
Latin America."
--Greg Grandin, Professor of History, New York University
Drawing on newly-available primary sources including guerrilla
documents, evangelical pamphlets, speech transcripts, and
declassified US government records, Virginia Garrard-Burnett
provides aa fine-grained picture of what happened during the rule
of Guatelaman president-by-coup Efrain Rios Montt. She suggests
that three decades of war engendered an ideology of violence that
cut not only vertically, but also horizontally, across class,
cultures, communities, religions, and even families. The book
examines the causality and effects of the ideology of violence, but
it also explores the long duree of Guatemalan history between 1954
and the late 1970s that made such an ideology possible. More
significantly, she contends that self-interest, willful ignorance,
and distraction permitted the human rights tragedies within
Guatemala to take place without challenge from the outside world."
A moving, immersive, and humanising essay collection charting the daily lives, struggles, and dreams of young people in Gaza.
A teenage girl stares at her roof, hoping it won’t collapse over her head. A young student searches the Internet for photos of libraries around the world, hoping he’ll be able to visit them one day. Another walks around the city, taking notes of all the buildings she dreams of repairing.
These are the stories of young people from Gaza, born under Israeli occupation and blockade. They are people who have endured unspeakable struggles and losses, who keep fighting to be recognised not as numbers, but as human beings with hopes, dreams and lives worth living.
We Are Not Numbers was founded in 2014 to give voice to the youth of Gaza. In this collection, vital, urgent and full of heart, spanning over ten years to the present moment, we gain an unparalleled insight into the past, as well as the current and next generation of Palestinian leaders, artists, scientists and scholars and imagine where we might go from here.
A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year A riveting account of
a forgotten holocaust: the slaughter of over one hundred thousand
Ukrainian Jews in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. In the
Midst of Civilized Europe repositions the pogroms as a defining
moment of the twentieth century. 'Exhaustive, clearly written,
deeply researched' - The Times 'A meticulous, original and deeply
affecting historical account' - Philippe Sands, author of East West
Street Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were
murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed
the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of
separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors
with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah
scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them. Largely
forgotten today, these pogroms - ethnic riots - dominated headlines
and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that
six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty
years later, these dire predictions would come true. Drawing upon
long-neglected archival materials, including thousands of newly
discovered witness testimonies, trial records, and official orders,
acclaimed historian Jeffrey Veidlinger shows for the first time how
this wave of genocidal violence created the conditions for the
Holocaust. Through stories of survivors, perpetrators, aid workers,
and governmental officials, he explains how so many different
groups of people came to the same conclusion: that killing Jews was
an acceptable response to their various problems.
Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction. A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living.
Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture―and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks―Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.
Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life―trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study―to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past―making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.
Atrocity. Genocide. War crime. Crime Against Humanity. Such
atrocity labels have been popularized among international lawmakers
but with little insight offered into how and when these terms are
applied and to what effect. What constitutes an event to be termed
a genocide or war crime and what role does this play in the
application of legal proceedings? Markus P. Beham, through an
interdisciplinary and comparative approach, unpicks these terms to
uncover their historical genesis and their implications for
international criminal law initiatives concerned with atrocity. The
book uniquely compares four specific case studies: Belgian colonial
exploitation of the Congo, atrocities committed against the Herero
and Nama in German South-West Africa, the Armenian genocide and the
man-made Ukrainian famine of the 1930s. Encompassing international
law, legal history, and discourse analysis, the concept of
'atrocity labelling' is used to capture the meaning underlying the
work of international lawyers and prosecutors, historians and
sociologists, agenda setters and policy makers.
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