In a tense exchange in the mid-1970s with Hebrew University professor Shlomo Avineri, theologian Richard L. Rubenstein, author of After Auschwitz and The Cunning of History, offered this prediction: “I want to make it perfectly clear that I believe we are at the beginning, not the end, of the age of genocide.”
Unfortunately, he was right and, sadly, the US and most of the world has a poor track record of stopping genocide.
Rubenstein made this statement in the wake of the Holocaust, a moment when many hoped—or naively believed—that the horror of Auschwitz would mark a turning point in human history.
Instead, Rubenstein saw it not as an end but as a beginning—a template for how the machinery of modern civilization could be turned against its own people. It wasn’t just about mass murder; it was about the bureaucratization, normalization, and industrialization of mass death.
The decades before and since have confirmed Rubenstein’s warning.
In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge murdered nearly two million people in an ideological purge of their own citizens. In Rwanda, machetes replaced gas chambers as nearly one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in just 100 days.
In Bosnia, Serbian forces carried out ethnic cleansing and mass rape under the guise of nationalist renewal. In Darfur, the Janjaweed militias did the same with the backing of the Sudanese state.
In Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State waged a genocidal campaign against the Yazidis.
In Myanmar, the Rohingya have faced mass killings, sexual violence, and displacement.
And in Xinjiang, China has implemented a high-tech, bureaucratic system of cultural erasure and mass internment that fits neatly within the modern genocidal mold.
This is the world Rubenstein foresaw—a world in which genocide did not recede with the memory of the Holocaust but instead evolved, adapted, and reappeared. The means change. The moral architecture—dehumanization, impunity, silence—remains the same.
What made Rubenstein’s warning so powerful wasn’t its scope—but its premise.
In After Auschwitz, Rubenstein argued that the Holocaust had shattered the moral and theological foundations of Western civilization. The idea of a benevolent, omnipotent God who watches over history was no longer credible, he said, in a world where children were gassed and bureaucrats stamped transport orders to death camps. He didn’t merely reject God; he rejected the illusion that modernity itself was a moral project.
The real horror, he understood, was that genocide was not a medieval aberration but a modern possibility. The Holocaust was not committed by barbarians from a bygone age—it was the product of educated men, modern technology, and industrial efficiency. It was committed in one of the most culturally sophisticated nations on Earth.
The lesson of Auschwitz is not that it was unimaginable, but that it was entirely imaginable—and replicable.
Today, we face a similar moral reckoning. Genocide is once again in the news.
In Gaza, over 35,000 people (numbers are estimates and vary all over the place; I don’t wish to belabor that point here, however)—mostly civilians, many of them children—have been killed in Israel’s bombardment and invasion following Hamas’s October 7 attacks.
Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Hospitals, schools, refugee camps have not been spared. A famine is unfolding in real time. The word genocide is no longer being whispered—it is being said aloud by legal scholars, international bodies, and humanitarian organizations. The charge is serious, and its invocation should never be casual. But neither should it be suppressed for the sake of diplomatic convenience.
Many are now questioning the role of the United States—not just as a global superpower, but as an enabler of catastrophe. U.S. bombs, artillery shells, and political cover have facilitated the Israeli assault on Gaza.
At the International Court of Justice, judges found it “plausible” that Israel’s actions could amount to genocide, and ordered provisional measures to prevent further harm.
First the Biden administration and now the Trump administration, rather than taking these warnings seriously, continues to approve arms transfers and veto ceasefire resolutions.
This is not a new pattern.
The U.S. has long positioned itself as a champion of human rights while consistently failing to stop, or even recognize, genocides in progress.
It failed to intervene in Rwanda. It delayed using the word “genocide” in Bosnia until the Srebrenica massacre had already occurred. It hedged for years on acknowledging the Armenian genocide.
Even during the Holocaust, the U.S. turned away Jewish refugees and prioritized military strategy over rescue efforts. In almost every instance, political interests, alliances, or economic calculations trumped the moral imperative to act.
Gaza shows that things are not getting better. The global response to genocide remains fractured, timid, and hopelessly politicized. Each time we say “never again,” we witness a new “again.” Each time we build a museum or hold a commemoration, we find ourselves confronted by new atrocities. Genocide is no longer an unthinkable break from the norm; it is part of the norm.
And yet, our institutions—international law, the United Nations, human rights tribunals—often respond with paralysis or performative outrage. The very systems meant to prevent mass atrocity too often enable it by their failure to act. States hide behind sovereignty, media cycles move on, and victims are left to mourn in silence.
This is what Rubenstein understood: genocide is not an aberration—it is a function of power unconstrained by morality, dehumanization unchecked by community, and modernity divorced from conscience.
If we are still living in the age of genocide, the challenge is not only to mourn or remember—it is to recognize the conditions in which genocide thrives. That includes nationalism untethered from justice, propaganda that makes neighbors into monsters, legal systems that devalue human life, and the silence of those who know better.
We live in an age where the tools of extermination have become more efficient and more politically disguised.
Genocide is no longer only the camp and the gas chamber. It is the spreadsheet, the facial recognition software, the drone strike, the hunger blockade. It is what happens when we stop seeing people as people—and start counting them as costs.
Genocide does not require a declaration or a slogan—it requires only enough indifference and a few justifications.
The age of genocide continues not only because of perpetrators, but because of bystanders—because those with the power to intervene choose not to. Because “plausible deniability” is easier than moral clarity. Because in the realm of international affairs, human life is often the lowest currency.
Unfortunately, genocide was not a one-off anomaly, is not a thing of the past, it is a danger that remains woven into the very fabric of our modern world. And it will remain so until we build a world where power is accountable, human dignity is inviolable, and silence is no longer an option.
Not seeing much difference between “genocide” vs. “war”. Except/until one side is clearly losing.
Though look at how the U.S. conducted itself after WWII – it did not invade with any underlying attempt to lay claim to other countries, and it helped rebuild its former enemies (which are now among its strongest allies).
But it still laid-waste to those places, first.
Genocide is generally wages against a substate rather than between states.