The Ten Stages of Genocide – Condemning Merciless Killing

Genocide | (noun) ‘the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people on the basis of their race, nationality, religion, or ethnicity.’

The word “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer. He created this word by combining genos (Greek, meaning “race”) and -cide (Latin, meaning “killing”). It has since been expanded upon and has become a concrete word and definition as well as condemned and illegal in international law.

The ten stages of genocide were first proposed by Gregory H. Stanton, founding president of Genocide Watch. He outlines genocide as:

A process that develops in ten stages that are predictable, but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The later stages must be preceded by the earlier stages, though earlier stages continue to operate throughout the process. (Stanton 1)

The ten stages are not necessarily linear and can coexist at the same time. Additionally, there are measures that can be taken in order to stop and/or prevent a genocide from happening, however there will come a time when the damage has been irrevocable. It is the responsibility of the international community to step up when victims cannot, however that has not been happening with the situation in Gaza. Some of the most powerful nations in the world are actively endorsing a genocide by providing the perpetrators with weapons and military aid, while many others have opted to remain passive bystanders — something that can be likened to turning your back to those in need or refusing to act when you have the power to act. 

Before looking at the ten stages, it is important to clear up the situation. The situation in Gaza as of writing this, is a genocide. When Hamas fighters attacked Israel and killed an estimated 1400 people, it is fair to say that Israel was in the right to defend itself. However, according to the Red Cross, self-defense is “the use of force to repel an attack or imminent threat of attack directed against oneself or others or a legally protected interest.” This does not align with Israel’s actions. In fact, they have long passed the line of self-defense and onto that of genocide.

Following the attack on October 7, 2023, Israel has killed over 9,000 innocent civilians in the Gaza strip. It has bombed hospitals, schools, mosques, ambulances, refugee camps  and many other places with the excuse that Hamas members have hidden themselves there when it knows plain well it is just attacking innocents. It has cut off water, electricity, WIFI, and fuel, while preventing necessary aid from coming into Gaza. It has used white phosphorus, something that ignites on contact with oxygen and sticks to skin and clothing, against civilians in Gaza. It has staged a full ground invasion against Gaza, which has no military. It has even gone so far as to threaten to use atomic bombs on Gaza. This is nowhere near everything that Israel has done to the civilians of Gaza and all the while, Israel has known exactly what they are doing and who they are murdering, because they run the census in Gaza, and they know where everybody lives.

Murdering innocent civilians in retaliation to an attack by a militant group could hardly be considered self-defense, which is why it is absurd to label the Israeli military and governments actions as such. Being backed with billions of dollars and weapons of murder by the international community while the other side has no access to food, water or electricity is not self-defense. This is a genocide which falls into many of the same categorizations as the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide.

Stage 1 & 2: Classification and Symbolization

Classification:

All cultures have categories to distinguish people into ‘us and them’ by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality: German and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi. If societies are too segregated they are most likely to have genocide.

Symbolization:

We give names or other symbols to the classifications. We name people “Jews” or “Gypsies”, or distinguish them by colours or dress; and apply the symbols to members of groups. Classification and symbolizations are universally human and do not necessarily result in genocide unless they lead to dehumanization. When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups: the yellow star for Jews under Nazi rule, the blue scarf for people from the Eastern Zone in Khmer Rouge Cambodia.

Israel has committed apartheid against Palestinians in and around its borders for many years. Apartheid is the forcible separation and severe discriminatory treatment against people based on race or ethnicity. It is an example of systematic oppression and abuse, where one demographic is put at a disadvantage within institutions such as government, court and schools. 

Time and time again, Israel has created laws, policies, propaganda and statements that harm Palestinians and elevate Jewish Israelis. For decades, Israel has forcefully displaced and relocated Palestinians, deprived them of economic and social rights, and even gone so far as to unlawfully murder Palestinians. 

Shockingly, Israel maintains a two-tier system within its society. One that designates Jewish Israelis as first-class citizens, and Palestinians as second-class residents. Under this system, Jewish Israelis are afforded the rights and privileges of Israeli citizens while Palestinians must live under severe discrimination, oppression and military rule.

“Israel is not a state of all its citizens… [but rather] the nation-state of the Jewish people and only them”

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu

Another thing worth mentioning is the language often used regarding Gazans. We have all heard the words “open-air prison” in reference to the Gaza Strip, but those words are rooted in problems. The insinuations of the word “prison” naturally makes us ask, “What did they do wrong in order to be in prison?” But the people of Gaza did nothing wrong. They have been condemned to live in a state of siege for the mere crime of being born there. For being of a different race, religion, ethnicity and skin colour. They are not criminals to be allocated to a prison. They are human beings who were born into a state of being hostages. Israel has controlled every aspect of their lives, leaving them no means of escape or retaliation. 

If that wasn’t enough, on October 16th, Netanyahu’s X account (formerly known as Twitter) made a now-deleted post, about how Israel’s actions are a “Struggle between children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of jungle.”

This is hugely problematic, as it heavily implies that Israelis (a majority of whom are Jewish and/or of European descent) are the “children of light” and “humanity” while calling Palestinians (who they are predominantly Arabic and/or Muslim) the “children of darkness” and designating them as living by “the law of jungle.” 

Considering that a large part of Islamophobia is the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes regarding how it is a “dirty religion” and the depiction of Muslim people as uncivilised, aggressive, barbaric, sexist and terrorists, it would not be inaccurate to say that Netanyahu’s statement is rooted in racism. Furthermore, it creates further division between the “us” (Israel) and “them” (Gaza) in this situation; celebrating and encouraging one group while stripping the other of their humanity. Creating justifications to commit genocide.

Stage Three: Discrimination

A dominant group uses law, custom, and political power to deny the rights of other groups. The powerless group may not be given full civil rights or even citizenship. Prevention against discrimination means full political empowerment and citizenship rights for all groups in a society. Discrimination on the basis of nationality, ethnicity, race or religion should be outlawed. 

Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group — sub-human, so to speak. They are denied the aforementioned rights and freedoms that Jewish Israelis are unconditionally provided and are even denied a nationality in the eyes of Israel. They have control over the population registry for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, just as the Nazis did to the Jewish people, and deem them stateless, creating more obstacles for them to be able to live, work and participate in legal, political and judicial systems.

Israel also controls electricity, transportation, education, healthcare, water, food and other things in the Gaza strip (as demonstrated by them depriving the Gazans of just that throughout the last month) which they use in discriminatory ways.

Similar things happen to Palestinians in Jerusalem and the West Bank, with forced ethnic displacement, home demolitions, police brutality and blatant oppression running rampant and serving as obstacles that exist for the seeming crime of being different.

This treatment of Palestinians has been happening for the past 75 years, and it is only now that it has escalated. It is appalling how long this has been going on, and how little the Western world knew (and frankly, still knows) about the unfair circumstances that Palestinians have been forced to live under. This is nothing if not discrimination on the basis of religion and ethnicity and is a root cause in the current situation.

Stage Four: Dehumanization

Dehumanization is when one group treats another group as second-class citizens. Members of a persecuted group may be compared with animals, parasites, insects or diseases. When a group of people is thought of as “less than human” it is easier for the group in control to murder them.

Regarding the siege on Gaza, Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Defense Minister, said, “No electricity, no food, no fuel. We are fighting animals, and we will act accordingly.”

This is a disgusting example of Israel’s dehumanization and desensitization of Palestinians. For a significant figure in the Israeli government to compare the innocent civilians they are massacring to animals on national television and to be met with little backlash is downright abominable. It demonstrates just how deep Islamophobia runs in our world, and just how effective propaganda, misinformation and ignorance have been in enabling the genocide.

These words, among others, are what these people have used to justify genocide with the label of self-defense. When we see a group of people as a mass of statistics, as sub-human, or otherwise dehumanized, it helps to desensitize us to the atrocities committed against them. It is for these same reasons that the Ukraine-Russia war rightfully sparked so much sympathy and outrage, yet people are arguing over whether or not Palestinians deserve to be treated as human beings. One group is distinctly more humanized by the world, and it is blatantly obvious.

Stage Five: Organization

Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, though sometimes informally or by terrorist groups. Special army units or militias are often trained and armed. Plans are made for genocidal killings.

It is said that a Gazan child born in 2006 has lived through 5 wars. 2008, 2011, 2014, 2018, and 2023. In addition to these, there have been countless massacres, murders, and acts of violence committed against Palestinians by Israelis for the past 75 years. These are all organized attacks against Gaza, wreaking havoc on the already destabilised people.

Additionally, there are the inevitable plans required to carry out the attacks and invasions that Israel has on Gaza. They have done this while knowing the Gazans’ inability to defend themselves, considering they don’t have a military, over half of them are children, and they have been in a siege with no access to basic human rights. 

Finally, the Israeli government has purchased and distributed firearms to “civilian security teams” in the West Bank. These actions, instead of properly addressing the situation, enables Israeli citizens’ rage and resentment for what they endured on October 7th by handing out weapons in the name of self-defense while restricting movement for Gazans and actively massacring them. 

Stage Six: Polarization

Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast propaganda that reinforces prejudice and hate. Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction between the groups. Extremist terrorism targets moderates, and intimidates them so that they are silent. Moderate leaders are those best able to prevent genocide and they are often the first to be assassinated.

There has been polarization not only among Israelis and Palestinians but throughout the rest of the world as well.

Within Israel, there have been many extremists appointed in high-level government jobs who are given full reign to spread harmful, racist ideology and ideas, especially about Palestinians. Some examples are Ayelet Shaked, former Justice Minister, who had previously called for the genocide of Palestinians and the rampant and open use of dehumanizing language within Israeli media. Additionally, deeming all Gazans and Palestinians members of Hamas or terrorists creates fear and justification around the actions of Israel.

Around the world, many news outlets and people in positions of power have adopted these same tactics of extremism and propaganda, spreading misinformation and blind hate. They demonize the religion of Islam and its people, weaponize history and ignorance in order to accuse people of anti-semitism when they are simply speaking out against a genocide, and ultimately, normalize and vindicate violence against Palestinians. As a result, reports of Islamophobia in the past month have sky-rocketed and tensions have grown. While people argue and defend their positions as political or religious opinions, real people suffer real casualties, like the six-year old Palestinian boy who was stabbed to death by a landlord in the US and the millions of people trapped and dying in the Gaza Strip.

Stage Seven: Preparation

National or perpetrator group leaders plan the “Final Solution” to the Jewish, Armenian, Tutsi or other targeted group “question.” They often use euphemisms to cloak their intentions, such as referring to their goals as “ethnic cleansing,” “purification,” or “counter-terrorism.” They build armies, buy weapons and train their troops and militias. They indoctrinate the populace with fear of the victim group. Leaders often claim that “if we don’t kill them, they will kill us,” disguising genocide as self-defense. There is a sudden increase in inflammatory rhetoric and hate propaganda with the objective of creating fear of the other group.

Disguising genocide as self-defense is exactly what Israel has done. Over and over again, they spread the claim that they have no choice, that it is a kill or be killed situation. They have wielded the collective grief of the Israelis after the October 7th attack and directed it to fester into hate and fear. Every time they target and bomb something like an ambulance, hospital or school in Gaza they use the excuse that Hamas militants have been using and hiding in them, and every time there is an uproar regarding the death toll of Palestinans, they justify it by saying they have successfully eliminated a Hamas militant who had posed a threat. Since being accused of using tunnels to hide under hospitals, Hamas has issued an official statement asking the UN to conduct an investigation to prove Israel’s claims. Israel, who would only benefit from having their claim confirmed if it is true, has said nothing on the matter but is not allowing foreign journalists and professionals inside Gaza. They have even gone so far as to blame the Gazans for crimes they themselves have committed. For example, Israel accused Hamas militants of beheading 40 babies, but when asked for proof, a Israeli military spokesperson only replied with, “We cannot confirm but you can assume it happened.” Even without conclusive evidence, Israel has used this claim to stoke the anger and horror of its own citizens and millions of people around the world. Meanwhile, there are videos surfacing every day of Palestinians being murdered, abused, and even found headless on the internet. 

Stage Eight: Persecution

Victims are identified and separated out because of their national, ethnic, racial or religious identity. The victim group’s most basic human rights are systematically violated through extrajudicial killings, torture and forced displacement. In state sponsored genocide, members of victim groups may be forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is often expropriated. Sometimes they are segregated into ghettos, deported to concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved. They are deliberately deprived of resources such as water or food in order to slowly destroy the group. Genocidal massacres begin. All of these destructive acts are acts of genocide outlawed by the Genocide Convention. They are acts of genocide because they intentionally destroy part of a group. The perpetrators watch for whether such massacres are opposed by any effective international response. If there is no reaction, they realize they can get away with genocide. The perpetrators know that the U.N., regional organizations, and nations with powerful militaries will again be bystanders and permit another genocide.

The existence of the Gaza Strip itself is proof of this. It is a besieged land with limited resources, where millions of people are condemned to live under a state of full control where their food, water, electricity, gas, transportation and freedom itself is controlled by a colonizing power such as Israel. The aforementioned forced ethnic displacement and classifications of being secondary citizens are also examples of persecution. The massacres have been going on not for a month, but regularly for the last 75 years — it is only now that there is open discourse and international media coverage over them. In the Gaza Strip, people have already been deprived of resources and are dying not only of bombings and military attacks but of disease, hunger and thirst.

As for the latter part regarding international response, the world has already made clear where they stand. Mass-protests or not, a multitude of governments have already declared their siding with Israel and endorsed their genocide. If not a bold declaration of solidarity like the US, countries have conceded to stand by and do nothing to prevent this genocide from fully being carried out.

Stage Nine: Extermination

Extermination begins, and quickly becomes the mass killing legally called “genocide.” It is “extermination” to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human. When it is sponsored by the state, the armed forces often work with militias to do the killing. The goal of total genocides is to kill all the members of the targeted group. Destruction of cultural and religious property is employed to annihilate the group’s existence from history (Armenia 1915 – 1922, Da’esh/ISIS 2014 – 2018).

Over 9,500 people have already been killed in the Gaza strip. These people have been targeted uncompromisingly, regardless of age, gender or affiliation with Hamas. People in Gaza have resorted to using freezers in ice-cream trucks to preserve bodies until they can bury them, because they have run out of other ways to preserve them. There are mass graves of unidentifiable bodies. There are countless unidentified and orphaned children, some so young that they will never know the name that their families gave them. It is nothing if not a genocide.

Stage Ten: Denial

Denial is the final stage that lasts throughout and always follows genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. Acts of genocide are disguised as counter-insurgency if there is an ongoing​ ​armed conflict or civil war.  Perpetrators block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile. There they remain with impunity, like Pol Pot or Idi Amin, unless they are captured and a tribunal is established to try them.

This stage, like all the others, has been happening before our very eyes. We are seeing a genocide happen right before our very eyes, and instead of doing something to prevent it, officials are refusing to acknowledge Israel’s wrongdoings and people are having debates on the definition of a genocide. We are arguing over the importance of human lives. We are arguing over whether or not 2+ million human beings deserve to exist.

This started out as what seemed to be a collective punishment against Gaza for the actions of a few, and quickly spiralled into a genocide that people continue to deny, a month after the 7th of October and 75 years after the colonization of Palestinians by the Israelis began. However, it has been justified as self-defense and a myriad of other things that can never truly justify genocide.

Ultimately, it has proved that the world is so blinded by hate, prejudice and ignorance that we are willing to sit back and watch a genocide happen. Not only one genocide in Gaza either. But multiple other ones, like those in Sudan, Congo, Azerbaijan and Myanmar. Ultimately, our countries, governments and people are failing humanity.

And so we must fight not to continue with this.

We must fight for human lives, against misinformation, colonization and genocide by educating ourselves and wielding our voices when others cannot. Please fact-check and bias-check all of your sources. Please listen to Palestinian voices speaking out about what is happening. Please open your hearts to change and fight ignorance. Please denounce hate, fear mongering and prejudice. Our desires to avoid guilt and responsibility do not outweigh the lives of millions of people.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

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Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,

Further Reading/Watching (Remember to do your own fact-checking and bias-checking!!): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5