The issue of the grave humanitarian crisis facing the people of the Darfur region of the Sudan, the accuracy of the number of victims and the appropriate meaning of the term “genocide” have been in the headlines recently, and some clarification is in order. Related to these issues is the news that Israel will no longer allow Sudanese migrants who enter its territory illegally to stay, and that it would institute a mandatory deportation policy. Each of these issues deserves discussion.

– Regarding the estimated number of Darfurians killed and displaced, a recent op-ed piece in The New York Times chided advocates on behalf of the Darfur victims for using inflated numbers for those killed. The piece, by Time magazine Africa writer Sam Dealey points out that while advocacy groups have been saying 400,000 Darfurians have been killed, the actual number is closer to 200,000. The writer indicated that whether 200,000 or 400,000 have been killed, along with the nearly 2 million who have been driven from their homes, it is still appropriate to refer to what is happening in Darfur and in the refugee camps in Chad as a “genocide.”

– The term “genocide” was coined by the Polish-Jewish lawyer and Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Europe. Lemkin played a major role in the introduction of the Genocide Convention by the United Nations at its first session on Dec. 11, 1946, when it adopted Resolution 96, which condemned genocide as a crime in international law. The term “genocide” is defined as actions in which “their inherent intention is to destroy, wholly or partially, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group per se,” and includes such actions as “the killing of persons belonging to the group; the causing of grievous bodily or spiritual harm to members of the group; deliberately enforcing on the group living conditions which could lead to its complete or partial extermination; the enforcement of measures designed to prevent birth among the group; the forcible removal of children from one group to another.”

– The term “genocide” became the focus of a major controversy recently, when Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, reversed himself on whether it was appropriate to describe the massacre of l.l million Armenians by the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1915-1918 as a “genocide.” Foxman had fired ADL’s Boston-based New England Region director for having denounced that position in an interview with the Boston Globe. In what was described by the JTA as a “dramatic reversal,” Foxman issued an official national ADL statement using the term “genocide” to describe the Armenian massacre, Foxman said he had consulted with his “friend and mentor” Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, who supported using the term. Foxman indicated that on further reflection he agreed with the view of Henry Morganthau, Sr. that the Armenian massacres would have been called “genocide” if the word had been in use at that time.

All of the verbal gymnastics and gyrations over the term “genocide” are unseemly in view of the fact that the mass murders continue in Darfur, and international action is still urgently needed to stop the bloodbath, regardless of whether official action is taken by the UN to label it a “genocide,” which common sense indicates it is.

Regarding the controversy in Israel on the deportation of Darfurian refugees coming in from Egypt, the Israeli public is understandably conflicted. On the one hand, the already weakened government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert fears being overwhelmed by masses of refugees. The Olmert government did decide to grant asylum to about 500 refugees from the Darfur genocide who had crossed over into Israel from Egypt in recent months. Olmert’s government was fearful that thousands of Sudanese migrants who had illegally entered Israel to seek work would attempt to gain permanent residence because of the crisis. A first group of about 50 deportees was sent back into Egyptian territory last weekend.

Indeed, during the term of the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin it was decided to allow into Israel a number of Vietnamese boat people for the very reason that human rights groups are pressing for admission of the Sudanese refugees. Israel had also taken in Bosnian Muslim refugees during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. While Israel certainly has an historic and moral obligation to do what it can to help bring relief to refugees from Darfur, so do the Arab and Muslim nations in the region, including Egypt, which has thus far refused to take them in, following the past practice of Arab nations refusing to absorb refugee populations, including the Palestinians. While Israel has an obligation to do its share, it is unreasonable to expect the small and overwhelmed Jewish State to be the sole refuge for refugees from Darfur.