Promoting Genocide at Harvard

Spotted at Sketchy Thoughts.

Visiting scholar at Harvard's Weatherhead Center Martin Kramer defends himself against accusations of genocide...by promoting the exact same genocidal policies:

I didn't propose that Israel take a single additional measure beyond the sanctions it now imposes with the political aim of undermining Hamas. And I didn't call on the West to "deliberately curb the births of Palestinians." I called on it to desist from deliberately encouraging births through pro-natal subsidies for Palestinian "refugees," which guarantee that Gazans will remain both radicalized and dependent. The Electronic Intifada claims that "neither the UN, nor any other agencies, provide Palestinians with specifically 'pro-natal subsidies.'" This is a lie: UNWRA assures that every child with "refugee" status will be fed and schooled regardless of the parents' own resources, and mandates that this "refugee" status be passed from generation to generation in perpetuity. Anywhere in the world, that would be called a deliberate pro-natal policy. Electronic Intifada: "Kramer appeared to be equating any humanitarian assistance at all with inducement for Palestinians to reproduce." Appears to whom? A pro-natal subsidy is a national or international promise to support the yet-unborn, not humanitarian assistance to the living. The pro-natal subsidy in Gaza is the unlimited promise of hereditary "refugee" status to future generations.

Translation: I wasn't calling for the genocide of the Palestinians. I was just calling for the withholding of medical care from Palestinian children in the hopes of reducing the Palestinian population.

As Electronic Intifada pointed out:

The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, created in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, defines genocide to include measures "intended to prevent births within" a specific "national, ethnic, racial or religious group."

And as Kramer himself points out:

Israel's present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim—undermine the Hamas regime—but if they also break Gaza's runaway population growth—and there is some evidence that they have—that might begin to crack the culture of martyrdom which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men. That is rising to the real challenge of radical indoctrination, and treating it at its root.

Since the question of shifting demographics and Palestinian population growth is a subject of obsessive debate and fixation among Israeli elites, how can the subject ever be so neatly divorced? 'Oh of course all these harsh measures are just to undermine Hamas, if they also reduce the Palestinian population at the same time, well that's just a happy accident.'