Devastating human costs of extreme Domicide in Gaza
JVL Introduction
In this moving article Ammar Azzouz discusses the impact of the destruction of homes on a people in a time of war. The horrors of war become flattened in the accumulation of statistics, so many residential units destroyed, so many millions displaced, square kilometres turned to rubble. This article spells out the deep suffering that lies behind these awful numbers, as bombs drive people off their land. Gaza is an example of ‘extreme domicide’ where not only are Palestinians in Gaza left homeless and defenceless, but their memories and culture are erased. Drawing on his own experience of displacement from Homs, Syria and over a decade of research and scholarship, Azzouz argues that domicide is a tool of war. As we watch the continuing devastation in Gaza Azzouz gives us an insight into the human dimensions of place and space and the connections between them.
Accompanying the article in the Guardian is this link to the results of a visual investigation using, eg satellite imagery but also on the ground verification about How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods and we recommend that you also look at this.
MR
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Tue 30 Jan 2024. Read the original here.
As a Syrian I feel the pain of Palestinians as their homes and lives are destroyed. This is domicide
This systematic and deliberate erasure of communities and culture must be recognised as a specific category of violence
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Deliberate destruction of people’s homes is part of the Israeli genocide.
Repeated inference that Israel’s war on the Palestinians is a reprisal for the brutal October 2023 raid into Israel is misleading. The sad truth is that the 2023 raid was itself a reprisal for Israel’s constant oppression, dispossession and often brutal killing of the indigenous people over about 75 years.
To imagine bombs smashing down the houses, the streets, the buildings, our homes in London. Instinctively we avoid thinking of it because it is too terrible to imagine. What I cannot understand is the racist hatred that must pervade the Israel people en masse. (Of course there are Israelis who hate what is happening, who don’t support it, and they are presumably seen as pariahs by the general population; they have to be brave to openly disagree with what is happening. ) The young people – who are in the army – have been seriously indoctrinated in acting without any sense of humanity towards fellow human beings. How is that different from those indoctrinating the hatred of jews in Nazi Germany?
Domicide, urbicide, ecocide and genocide are key factors within Zionism’s DNA. Right from Herzl’s mention of spiriting the indigenous people of Palestine out of the country in 1897, to the current deranged and predetermined eradication of Gaza, its memory and its people, Israel has never failed to grab every opportunity to pursue this grim essence of settler colonialism, and use every lie and distortion, enhanced by the complicity of the coloniźal and imperial West, who have granted Israel total impunity, to carry out its imperialist and supremacist agenda, in total breach of international and humanitarian law, in fact granting itself the divine right of Kings. Israel thus aligns itself with the worst regimes of history, and its leaders, and those colonial regimes that aid and abet it, will be brought to justice in the end.
The concept of domicide should be incorporated into the categorization of “crimes against humanity.” Establishing genocide within a two-month period following the onset of war presents significant challenges. The disparity in power within the Security Council, coupled with the dominance of “superpowers” over international institutions, renders the identification of genocide nearly impossible. This difficulty arises because acknowledging genocide may conflict with the interests of these influential nations. Consequently, it often takes several years to reach a conclusive judgment, by which time irreversible damage has been inflicted, and communities have been decimated. I argue that domicide should be considered an early indicator of genocide. Domicide is conspicuously evident in any war or conflict, and its recognition as a crime against humanity could preempt genocide. This is predicated on the understanding that the intent behind domicide is to facilitate genocide and ethnic cleansing.