{"id":291359,"date":"2016-09-04T16:25:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T20:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rael.org\/?p=291359"},"modified":"2021-01-09T16:31:21","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T21:31:21","slug":"4-million-muslims-killed-in-western-wars-should-we-call-it-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noproxy.rael.org\/da\/4-million-muslims-killed-in-western-wars-should-we-call-it-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"4 million Muslims killed in Western wars: should we call it genocide?"},"content":{"rendered":"
RAEL\u2019S COMMENT:<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n
Yes, it is a genocide. And families relatives, of course, try to find revenge through \u201cterrorism\u201d.<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

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Hearkening back to the Japanese interment camps of WWII, some Americans are now calling for Muslims to be placed in camps or even openly calling for genocide against the 1.6 billion practitioners of the faith.<\/p>\n

It may never be possible to know the true death toll of the modern Western wars on the Middle East, but that figure could be 4 million or higher. Since the vast majority of those killed were of Arab descent, and mostly Muslim, when would it be fair to accuse the United States and its allies of genocide?<\/p>\n

A March report by\u00a0Physicians for Social Responsibility\u00a0calculates the body count of the Iraq War at around 1.3 million, and possibly as many as 2 million. However,\u00a0the numbers of those killed in Middle Eastern wars\u00a0could be much higher. In April,\u00a0investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed\u00a0argued that\u00a0the actual death toll could reach as high as 4 million\u00a0if one includes not just those killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the victims of the sanctions against Iraq, which left about 1.7 million more dead, half of them children, according to figures from the United Nations.<\/p>\n

Raphael Lemkin and the definition of genocide
\nThe term \u201cgenocide\u201d did not exist prior to 1943, when it was coined by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin. Lemkin created the word by combining the Greek root \u201cgeno,\u201d which means people or tribe, with \u201c-cide,\u201d derived from the Latin word for killing.<\/p>\n

The Nuremberg trials, in which top Nazi officials were prosecuted for crimes against humanity, began in 1945 and were based around Lemkin\u2019s idea of genocide. By the following year, it was becoming international law,\u00a0according to United to End Genocide:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1946, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that \u2018affirmed\u2019 that genocide was a crime under international law, but did not provide a legal definition of the crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

With support from representatives of the U.S., Lemkin presented the first draft of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide to the United Nations. The General Assembly adopted the convention in 1948, although it would take three more years for enough countries to sign the convention, allowing it to be ratified.<\/p>\n

According to this convention, genocide is defined as:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as:<\/p>\n

(a) Killing members of the group;
\n(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
\n(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about\u00a0its physical destruction in whole or in part;
\n(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
\n(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.\u201d<\/p>\n

4 Million Muslims Killed In Western Wars: Should We Call It Genocide?<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n