I Thought I Knew What Genocide Was

A mural painted on the rubble of a destroyed building in Al Thawra Street in Rimal, Gaza. The mural was created by Mostafa Mehna with 25 children from Gaza. The Arabic text reads "There is hope" -- photo, February 2025 via Hla.bashbash, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Biljana Vankovska

As a professor who has spent more than forty years studying questions of war and peace, international law and relations  —and above all, the human consequences of armed conflict— I once believed I knew what genocide was.

As someone who witnessed the bloody disintegration and murder of my beloved homeland, Yugoslavia, I thought I understood. For decades, I have mourned the innocent victims of that madness. When 9/11 happened —at the very time my own Macedonia was going through a precarious internal conflict, mercifully with fewer casualties— I sensed immediately that this was the beginning of a new imperial crusade led by the United States and its allies. I watched with deep concern as atrocities unfolded from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya and Syria.

The late Robert Fisk was then the voice of the voiceless. I used to translate his dispatches for my elderly mother, unable to stop her tears —or mine— at his descriptions of morgues, of children’s bodies, of grieving parents.

When the Palestinian tragedy turned into an open genocide in the autumn of 2023, I could not look away from the ‘disturbing scenes.’ On the contrary, the least I could do was to witness and to write about those tormented people. Some in my indifferent surroundings wondered why I did this: why I watched those horrors, why I didn’t simply live my peaceful professor’s life. They said, ‘We have enough of our own problems.’

But I ‘kept vigil’ over those suffering children and parents because my conscience would not let me rest. Each night, before laying my head on the soft pillow, a wave of guilt overcame me. How could I sleep peacefully when bombs were falling on innocent people in Gaza, when children died in the cold nights and mothers could not even feed them?

Someone told me this was ‘secondary trauma,’ possibly rooted in something deeper. That mental health expert didn’t know two things. First, I grew up with Palestine —at least in thought and in a sense of solidarity. At school, we were told about the dispossessed people, robbed of their land, yet as resilient as wild grass. We collected small changes as a gesture of childhood solidarity and wrote letters to imaginary friends somewhere far away. Second, I had lived to see the monstrous return of violence at my own doorstep —in a country we once believed to be a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, of peaceful coexistence and solidarity with peoples fighting colonialism.

All this shaped my ‘secondary trauma.’ And today, two years into a genocide broadcast live before our eyes, I find myself in a world showing morbid symptoms of the collapse of everything humane, beautiful, good, and just. Ah, Gramsci understood well —though he never saw this massacre carried out by those who call themselves ‘civilized.’

So when the invitation unexpectedly arrived to participate in the Final Session of the People’s Tribunal on Gaza —an informal moral court created by civil society and people of conscience— my first feeling was surprise: a professor from a small, almost unknown country being called to serve. The second was an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Yet when I entered the grand hall of Istanbul University with my fellow ‘jurors of conscience,’ I knew why I was there. It would not be difficult, I thought, to confirm what we had all been witnessing in real time for two long years.

I believed I was prepared for anything we would hear or see —for every recorded testimony and live statement. I thought I knew what genocide was. I thought that after so many tears, only conscience and reason remained, ready to pronounce the truth: that Zionism is one of the ugliest stages of hyper-imperialism, and that genocide has its own perverse but profitable political economy, feeding the monstrous appetite of Death itself.

The three-day program of the Tribunal’s final session began early each morning and stretched late into the evening. As jurors, we sat without pause, listening to everything presented before us —evidence, testimonies, expert analyses. Our notebooks were filled with notes, though in truth, these things cannot be forgotten once heard.

At first, I still believed I knew what genocide was, and that I could withstand the psychological and emotional pressure. My only effort was to keep reason clear, conscience awake, and moral focus intact. Yet as the hours passed, I felt the tension grow heavier, pressing on our shoulders as though we were bearing an unbearable weight we had vowed to translate into a final moral verdict.

Then came the session on the various crimes, revealing the perverse creativity of genocide. That was when breathing became difficult. Still, I listened carefully to testimonies about starvation and famine —the weaponization of food and water; about ecocide— the destruction of soil, the uprooting of centuries-old olive trees, the poisoning of water, the banning of fishing.

And then we came to domicide —the destruction of homes, the annihilation of private spaces of life, love, and memory.

The first witness, speaking online, could not be seen at first because of technical issues. His voice was young, hesitant, apologetic for his poor English. But what was most striking was his refusal to speak about the destruction itself. Instead, he described the home he loved: the little yard, the beautiful tree under which his friends gathered while his mother served them coffee. It reminded me of my own mother, of our own family rituals. He spoke of warmth, of open gates that were never locked —gates open to any passerby. When his face finally appeared, I saw light and love in his eyes, no trace of hatred or bitterness. Even when he spoke of the ruined home and mourned the tree —I wish I remembered its name— he did so through the gentle light of preserved memories.

I was watching a survivor of genocide, yet I did not expect such serenity, such forgiveness. And then he apologized again —for his poor English! That was the moment I broke. I could no longer hold back my tears. I was supposed to be a composed juror, yet I became an ordinary human being who wanted nothing more than to embrace that young man.

He broke me with love. Why? Because for hours we had been discussing the old ideological roots of Zionism, the evil of settler colonialism, the Nakba, the generations of displaced people, the fact that in Gaza almost no one is native-born —all have been driven into that vast open-air prison of two million souls, denied the right to return home. And suddenly, there before us, was a living proof that even in a concentration camp, people have not lost the capacity to love, to build, to learn, to be together.

Had his face shown anger, I would not have been so shaken. But love was the last thing I expected to find —and it broke me. His lament for the shade of the vanished tree, for the destroyed home, reminded me of a woman from Srebrenica who, after listing all her dead family members in a documentary, ended with sorrow for her lost rose garden. That is domicide —when they destroy not only your walls or your loved ones, but also the symbols of your shared life and tenderness.

Yet the hardest session was still to come —the one on crimes against the health system. The Norwegian surgeon Mads Gilbert, who has worked in Gaza since 2009, had long been my hero. Hearing his testimony, his cry —“No one from my medical profession has raised their voice, though they have known for decades what is happening!”— moved me deeply.

When the session ended, I ran to shake his hand, to thank him for his courage, to confess how ashamed I felt of my own academic profession —so concerned with conferences, impact factors, and ‘excellence,’ and so little with its true mission: to serve as conscience and consciousness for the world. He hugged me and said, “Don’t be ashamed of your tears. They show you’re human. Continue to fight, even if all you have are tears.”

That day was my personal catharsis. The moderator approached me and handed me the microphone, though I had not asked to speak. Unprepared, I said what my heart demanded:

I came here believing that it was enough to be a professor and an activist, that I surely knew what genocide was when I saw it. But today, listening to these testimonies, I realized I know nothing about suffering. I am living through the trauma of genocide, which I have been witnessing online every day. Forgive my tears —they may not befit my role here, but my cup has overflowed.

This experience, and the remarkable document we produced together —a testimony not only to the past but to the future— had changed me forever. From now on, my struggle against genocide, always and everywhere, will remain marked and strengthened as never before.

For this, I owe gratitude to my dear friend and colleague, Professor Richard Falk, who trusted me enough to invite me to serve on the jury. We parted with the conviction that this final session was far from the end —dark days are still ahead for Gaza. The colonial and imperial vultures will not stop.

But neither will we abandon these people who, in the most inhumane conditions, have remembered the most important lesson of life:

There is no surrender. ¡No pasarán! Love will prevail.

Biljana Vankovska is a professor of political science and international relations at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, a member of the Transnational Foundation of Peace and Future Research (TFF) in Lund, Sweden, and the most influential public intellectual in Macedonia. She is a member of the No Cold War collective.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.