Similarities between quotes of Israeli officials & RTLM radio broadcast in Rwandan genocide

To cut the tall trees. (Image source: C4 Adventures)

In her influential essay “Genocidal Language Games,”¹ philosopher Lynne Tirrell details several instances of rhetoric used prior to and during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. We see the same structure in the rhetoric used by Israeli officials regarding Gaza today.

Written twenty years after the fact, Tirrell surfaces certain facets of the language used, not only by central actors who drove the genocide but also the banter of the everyday, and how that changed along with the temper of the times. The entire essay instructs us as to how we should interpret and understand not only the meaning but the import of what central figures in Israel are saying about Gaza.

In one particular passage, Tirrell speaks about the notorious radio broadcasts of RTLM (Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles Collines, or “Free Radio and Television of the Thousand Hills”) that aired just prior to the nationwide slaying, where neighbor felled neighbor with machine-like efficiency, an act they described amongst themselves as “the work.” 

Tirrell lifts up to the light this segment, ten sentences that broadly served to transform ordinary Rwandans into génocidaires. Tirrell says, “As we shall see, this passage is a complex set of speech acts with one major function: to justify all harm and destruction done to Tutsi.”

“On RTLM, Valérie Bemeriki rapidly exclaimed:

‘I have always told you. All the people who joined the part controlled by the Inyenzi Inkotanyi are Inyenzi themselves. They approved the killings perpetrated by Inyenzi. They are criminals like the Inyenzi Inkotanyi. They are all Inyenzi. When our armed forces will get there, they will get what they deserve. They will not spare anyone since everybody turned Inyenzi. All those who stayed there are all Inyenzi since those who were against Inyenzi have been killed by Inyenzi. Those who succeeded to escape ran away to Ngara, Burundi and to the western part of our country. Those who stayed are accomplices and acolytes of the Inyenzi.’” (p. 197)

[‘Inyenzi’ means ‘cockroach’. ‘Inkotanyi’, a term describing the revolutionary forces, means ‘immortal ones’.]

This is a mirror image of the rhetoric being used by Israeli officials to characterize what’s going on in Gaza. Indeed, though I had read this passage initially last summer, when I returned to it in the aftermath of Israel’s reprisal for October 7th, I was stunned by the parallels in structure and rhetorical thrust.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said,

“It’s an entire nation that is out there that’s responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up, they could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”

Deputy Director General for Public Diplomacy at Israel’s Foreign Ministry Emmanuel Nahshon said,

“This war is not only against Hamas. Any scenario other than a complete and unequivocal defeat of the enemy, at any cost, condemns us and our descendants to a bleak future. If we do not convey our message to our foes now, they will continue to hurt us.”

And Eliyahu Yossian, a military officer at the elite Unit 8200, said, “There is no population in Gaza. There are 2.5 million terrorists.”²

There are many more statements besides. These three are merely illustrative.

Indeed, if you go back to the RTLM passage above and substitute “Hamas” for inyenzi, the thrust comes through in an instant. “They are criminals like Hamas. They are all Hamas.”

I was also reading Molly Amman and J. Reid Meloy’s “Stochastic Terrorism: A Linguistic and Psychological Analysis,”³ where the authors note that originally stochastic terrorism was conceptualized as being something communicated from the top down, through mass media, that allowed leaders or ruling classes to directly influence the broader public. 

The definition of stochastic terrorism was altered subsequently to help explain a certain class of lone wolf perpetrator, but the revision continued to stress the relationship between speech by central figures and the broadcasting of that speech to inspire violence. I think the concept of stochastic terrorism is useful here, because it is through that formulation that we may see how hierarchical communication can distribute genocidal intent throughout a culture.

Amman and Meloy state,

“[Some forms of coercion in political speech] may be considered legitimate uses of threat discourse. Other versions of this script might be thought of as illegitimate, on the other hand, such as speech that incites criminal violence. The Islamic State terror group used such an approach: the West hates Islam; the West is intent on destroying Islam and Muslims; therefore, it is every Muslim’s obligation to kill unbelievers wherever they may be found. The threat, fear, solution-through-violence motif is a common one in the use of the discrete emotion of fear to induce terrorist violence.” (p. 4)

We hear the strains of this very logic in the justifications given by Israelis — both the elite and the everyday — to legitimize their deadly, draconian, disproportionate violence that they are visiting upon the Palestinians in Gaza. We are told that Palestinians are raised to hate Jewish people, that they are intent on destroying Jewish people for being Jewish (rather than wanting simply to reclaim their homes). 

Because of this hatred in every Palestinian’s heart, we are told, Israelis are justified in taking any and all steps to “secure their self-defense.” Even U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, at this very late date, that “we’re determined that Israel succeed in making sure it can defend itself.”

[I have discussed the formulation of ‘self-defense’ in the context of genocide here.]

What we see is a clear attempt by those in the upper echelons of Israeli society to communicate to the broader public that all manner of violence and harm can and should be visited upon Gazans. They are all Hamas — there are no civilians, just terrorists — and the babies of yesterday came on October 7th. Therefore even the children are suspect; even the children deserve to die.

Washington Post, “Young Israelis block aid to Gaza while IDF soldiers stand and watch,” February 10, 2024

It doesn’t take much explication of these comments to determine the intent. The parallels here to Rwanda in 1994 as well as genocides elsewhere are clear and shocking. The officials making these statements almost certainly hope that we, the listeners on the outside looking in, will become inured to what they’re saying, that it will in time seem very regular, if distasteful, speech. But we must keep forefront in mind that this language is lethal. They may say these things so often that the sayings become commonplace, but that does not mean that we should condone them. As Tirrell asserts in her essay (p. 175),

“In [Rwanda] and other twentieth-century genocides, the majority population was made ready to kill their minority neighbors, first by getting them talking amongst themselves as if these neighbors were not really people at all, using derogatory terms for these others that spread fear and disgust. Then the derogatory terms were used openly and publicly, increasingly targeting individuals. … It is not a short route from derogating speech acts to murder, but it is crucial to understand the power of speech to facilitate the growth of both linguistic and broader social norms that make murder and mayhem come to be accepted.”

1. Tirrell, Lynne. “Genocidal Language Games.” In Ishani Maitra & Mary Kate McGowan (eds.), Speech and Harm: Controversies Over Free Speech (2012). Oxford University Press.

2. See Hebh Jamal’s essay “A list of Israeli lies, propaganda and genocidal intent” (Substack, November 15, 2023).

3. Amman, Molly and J. Reid Meloy, “Stochastic Terrorism: A Linguistic and Psychological Analysis.” Perspectives on Terrorism (2021), Vol. 15, No. 5.