Comment from Michael Hudson : Justice appears in a word

I’m seeing a powerful transformation in the use of the term “holocaust” on the Internet. Long before World War II, it was a Greek-based English word for killing or massacre. It was a natural extension for its being used as a more familiar word to describe what the Palestinians call the nakba, their holocaust or “catastrophe.” And making a full historical circle, it is being extended to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as in Lebanon. It also would apply to the allied Saudi- and U.S.-backed Isis terrorism by the Wahabi Sunni against Shia, Christians and other religions.

As the word “holocaust” is extended to, for instance, Ukraine’s ethnic cleansing violence against Russian speakers in what were its Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, it will become generalized to signify an ethnic destruction in general. It looks like this will remove the Israeli monopoly of the term. And it also will show the ironic reversal in who is suffering a holocaust from whom.

What will the word “holocaust” mean to future generations?

For Israel, it was the founding mythology. But for Israel’s victims it was a retaliation against them for what was done by the Nazis and central Europeans.

Both suffered their own holocaust.

Will there be a new wave of Nuremburg trials? That’s what Putin wants to hold in Ukraine.

That would need a new ICC, with truly multipolar UN support and new administrative rules.