Genocide justification

Genocide justification is the claim that a genocide is excusable, necessary, legal, or even praiseworthy. Genocide justification differs from genocide denial, which is an attempt to reject the occurrence of genocide. Perpetrators often claim that genocide victims presented a serious threat, justifying their actions by stating it was legitimate self-defense of a nation or state. According to modern international criminal law, there can be no excuse for genocide. Genocide is often camouflaged as military activity against combatants, and the distinction between denial and justification is blurred.

Examples of genocide justification include, but are not limited to the Turkish nationalists' claims in regard to the Armenian genocide, the Nazis' justifications behind the Holocaust, anti-Tutsi propaganda during the Rwandan genocide, Serbian nationalists' justifications for the Srebrenica massacre, the Myanmar government's claims about the Rohingya genocide, and most recently the Israeli government and Zionist declarations about the Gaza Genocide, with all cases having sects and actors that simultaneously engage in genocide denial.

Legality Several laws against genocide denial also forbid the justification of genocide. In addition, some countries have laws against genocide justification but not genocide denial. For example, in Spain, a law criminalizing genocide denial was struck down as unconstitutional by the Spanish Supreme Court. As of now, only 12 nations have criminalized genocide justification, including Andorra, Colombia, Liechtenstein, North Macedonia, Rwanda, and Switzerland. In addition, justification of genocide during ongoing killings may constitute incitement to genocide, which is criminalized under international criminal law.

In general All genocides are considered to go along with rationalizing narratives justifying them in terms of threat and urgency, and the perpetrators consider their actions right and necessary. According to W. Michael Reisman, "many of the individuals who are directly responsible operate within a cultural universe that inverts our morality and elevates their actions to the highest form of group, tribe, or national defense". Bettina Arnold observed, "It is one of the terrible ironies of the systematic extermination of one people by another that its justification is considered necessary." She also argued that archaeology and ancient history are sometimes used to justify genocide. Rationalizing genocide helps perpetrators accept their actions and role in the genocide, preserving their self-image. Academic Abdelwahab El-Affendi writes that one of the horrors of genocide "is when everyone else, including academics and leading intellectuals, seems to believe the narrative, or at least prevaricate about its plausibility".

Examples

1804 Haitian massacre According to the historian Philippe R. Girard, the genocide of French Creoles after the Haitian Revolution was justified by its perpetrators based on the following rationales:

The ideals of the French Revolution justified the massacre. Atrocities committed by French troops in Haiti permitted revenge. Radical measures were necessary to secure victory in the war and emancipate the slaves. Whites were not human. Black leaders hoped to take over plantations previously owned by whites. Girard notes that after the massacre, the man who ordered it, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, stated, "We answered these cannibals' war with war, crime with crime, outrage with outrage." For Dessalines, Girard writes, "genocide merely amounted to vengeance, even justice". Historian C. L. R. James wrote that the massacre was only a tragedy for its perpetrators because of the brutal practices of slaveholding. Adam Jones and Nicholas Robinson have classified this as a subaltern genocide, meaning "genocide by the oppressed", and that it contains "morally plausible" elements of retribution or revenge. Jones said that this type of genocide is less likely to be condemned and may even be welcomed, despite the torture and execution of thousands of women and children on the island.

Armenian genocide

Justification and rationalization are commonly associated with the Armenian genocide. Perpetrators portrayed the killings as a legitimate defense against Armenians who were perceived as traitors colluding with Russia during a time of war. Both at the time and later, it has been claimed that the deportation of Armenians was justified by military necessity. Historian Erik Jan Zürcher summarizes this "defense of violent aggression" as "they asked for it, it was not really so bad and anyway, others have done the same and worse." Historian Hans-Lukas Kieser said, "To justify genocide, Talaat framed a whole discourse and set of arguments, so that the self-righteous justification for murder and destruction remained entrenched in later memoirs, politics, and historiography." In an interview with Berliner Tageblatt in May 1915, Talaat stated, "We have been blamed for not making a distinction between guilty and innocent Armenians. [To do so] was impossible. Because of the nature of things, one who was still innocent today could be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns. Our actions were determined by national and historical necessity." In 1919, Mustafa Kemal — the future founding figure of Turkey — stated:

Whatever has befallen the non-Muslim elements living in our country, is the result of the policies of separatism they pursued in a savage manner, when they allowed themselves to be made tools of foreign intrigues and abused their privileges. There are probably many reasons and excuses for the undesired events that have taken place in Turkey. And I want definitely to say that these events are on a level far removed from the many forms of oppression which are committed in the states of Europe without any excuse. Turkish historian and military officer Ahmet Refik Altınay published a pseudo-historical book named "İki Komite iki Kitâl" in 1919 which he claimed that the Armenians of Turkey died as a result of a symmetrical civil war instead of a national extermination. Famous novelist Halide Edib Adıvar justified her own assimilatory actions on Armenian oprhans during the war. In 1920, parliamentarian Hasan Fehmi stated:

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