In 1944, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer who lost 49 relatives in the Holocaust, coined the term “genocide”. In so doing, he specifically detailed methods used to wreck the cultural, social and the very biological life of targeted populations. The essence of Lemkin’s work is that genocide is not a single event, but rather a systematic, deadly pattern of persecution inflicted upon a specific, targeted group based on a characteristic such as race, religion or other identity.

Lemkin created the term in the midst of the Holocaust, Hitler’s unambiguously intentional and barbaric design to eliminate the Jewish people. Lemkin would turn in his grave were he to see how the term has been trivialized today, tossed about with abandon to fit the whims of those who use it to support their immediate political agendas, and most recently hurled with great ferocity at Israel in relation to Gaza.

This is not to say that the Jewish world warrants special status or proprietary dominion over the word genocide. The word clearly applies to events beyond the Holocaust in Europe, and indeed has entered the lexicon. While often interpreted differently among scholars and laymen, no one can legitimately argue that the Holocaust was the first, last........

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