In the Corriere del 29 November, Liliana Segre supports the need to limit the use of word “genocide” based on the characteristics of the events that coined and shaped it. The massacre in Gaza, writes the Senator for life, does NOT have elements attributable to the two “typical characteristics” of previous genocides, therefore in that circumstance the use of word it should be avoided.

According to Mrs. Segre, the genocides suffered by Armenians, Ukrainians, Jews, Roma, Sinti, Cambodians and Tutsis fall into two characteristics:

1. planning the complete elimination (even if only in intention) of the ethnic group or social group object of the genocidal campaign.
2. the absence of a functional relationship with a war.

In point 2, the functional relationship between the two world wars and their respective genocides (Armenians + Sinti Roma Jews) certainly exists, but in a contrary sense to the Senator’s model: not genocide as a function of war, but war, an indispensable historical moment in which to hide shame of a genocide. This is exactly what is happening in Gaza.

In point 1, the Palestinians of Gaza are a “social group” in their own right. That strip of land, in fact, has unique connotations, closed as it is between Israel, a corner of Egypt, and the sea. The “different Semites” who inhabit it form a separate category, even compared to the Palestinians of the West Bank (moved as needed), and those of Israel (contingent in 1948). It is unfortunate to point out that those characteristics are given by geography, but also by the identitarian nature of the Jewish state: in any modern Western state, “identitarian” would be synonymous with “racist”.

To fit into Liliana Segre’s model, it is therefore necessary to distinguish the genocide of the Gazians from the ethnic “broom” reserved for the more fortunate brothers in the West Bank, who are simply asked to go further.