Ancient Genocide
January 12, 2024
by William P. Meyers

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Jews in Ancient Israel

I believe it is highly likely that, as a practice, genocide is ancient. It dates back possibly to the earliest existence of Homo sapiens, certainly to the transition from hunter gatherer societies to more settled agricultural ones. There is beginning to be some genetic evidence of that, but here I will focus on history (writings). Sadly human history is largely the history of war, and so intersects with the history of genocide.

The first explicit description of genocide I know of occurs in the Bible, in the Jewish Old Testament. As a caveat, most archaeologists and historians believe that the early books of the Bible, and to some extent the later books, were as much fiction as history. However, they do show the mindset of their writers, and may capture some true oral history.

The text is Deuteronomy, Chapter 2, paragraphs 31 to 37. This chapter covers the Jewish conquest of ancient Israel. I use the King James Bible translation. Many other translations are available. Note that the "we" in the passages were the Jews, led by Moses's brother Aaron.

"32 Then Shihon came out against us, he and all his people, to fight at Jahaz.

"33 And the LORD our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people.

"34 And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain:

"35 Only the cattle we took for a prey unto ourselves, and the spoil of the cities which we took."

It is just a coincidence that the earliest known and the latest genocides were committed by Jews. I see no evidence that the Jews, throughout history, have been any more warlike or genocidal than any other group of people. They have been the victims of war and genocide as often as anyone.

But we, the civilized human species, should be beyond genocide by now.

When peoples, ancient or modern, came into conflict, there were four basic outcomes. The weaker party retreating was quite viable as long as the world population, or the local population, was low enough. The weaker party welcoming the powerful party and joining forces was an optimal outcome. War, or resistance, created two possible outcomes: slavery or extinction. Of course real-world confrontations can result in combinations. Being too much of a doormat could be bad. Some honorable resistance followed by a treaty sometimes led to relatively good outcomes.

The United States has no grounds for lecturing anyone about genocide. With the possible exceptions of Nazi Germany and Imperial Britain, we are the nation with the worst modern history of genocide. First we (Brits, led by the aristocracy descended from our own Norman conquerors) grabbed or bought a bit of land in Virginia and Massachusetts. Then we took almost all the land we have today, killing many a native along the way. That done, we grabbed the Philippines and committed genocide to consolidate our rule there. Then we learned it was better to commercially exploit other peoples instead of replacing them. When Asians next fought back, we vaporized huge numbers of civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How many Vietnamese did we kill? Was it a million or two million? Depends on which historian you ask.

Frankly, there has been a lot of genocide over the history of humanity. That does not mean we should tolerate new instances of it.