Australia and the World Past and Present

Recently, Navi Pillay mentioned that she sees parallels between the situation in Gaza and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. “I see similarities”, she said. Pillay has worn many hats during her career. She has been a judge on the High Court of South Africa. She served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights between 2008 and 2014. She has been a judge on the International Criminal Court and has been President of the International Criminal Court for Rwanda.

It is timely to consider more fully the similarities and differences between the conflict in Gaza and the Rwandan genocide. All genocides share commonalities. But each is also unique, reflecting particular cultures, local histories and social contexts.

Similarities

Most of the casualties in both conflicts have been civilian. In Rwanda, the genocide began as a confrontation between the government and Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). But it soon spilt over into a wider attack upon Tutsi civilians. Civilians have also borne the brunt of violence in Gaza. Pillay’s Commission has found that 83% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza have been civilian.¹

Both the Tutsi and the Palestinians were conceived of as ethnic groups. This had not always been the case in Rwanda. There was a time when the terms Hutu and Tutsi were markers of class more than ethnicity. At that time it was possible for Tutsi to become Hutu and vice versa – depending on one’s economic fortunes. In the colonial period, these categories became more ossified as ethnic categories. This change was carried into the post-colonial period.

The use of dehumanising language is a red flag in genocide studies. In the Rwandan case, Tutsi were called inyensi or “cockroaches”. In the context of the Gaza conflict, one Israeli official used the term “human animals.”

Some accuse the international community of failing to stop both conflicts. This kind of judgement assumes that the international community can stop them. In Rwanda, a UN peace keeping operation was on the ground at the time of the genocide. Much of the problem was due to the fact that the UN mission was authorised for peace-keeping as opposed to peace enforcement under the UN Charter. The most prominent international actor in Rwanda at the time of the genocide was France.

In the end, the then government of Rwanda was ousted by the RPF with much of the former government fleeing eastwards into the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

To date, interventions by the international community have not stopped the war in Gaza. Here in Australia, the government has made diplomatic representations of various kinds to Israel. As a middle power on the other side of the world, Australia’s policy on Israel and Gaza is limited in its ability to change Israel’s actions. The most Australia can hope to influence events is by acting with similar Western democracies such as the UK, Canada, France etc, who have historically shown strong support for Israel.

Various countries and non-state actors in the Middle East have attempted to sway the conflict. Many countries in the region have expressed sympathy with the plight of Gazans and have called on Israel to cease its military operations. Hezbollah has launched attacks from Lebanon. Attacks were launched against Israel from Syria as well as from Iran and Yemen. These efforts have not stopped the conflict. Israel has been able to continue its military operations regardless. Such attacks on Israel may in fact further entrench the Israeli government’s siege mentality.

The Jews of Europe experienced their own genocide in the middle of last century. And they promised that they would never allow such a genocide to happen again. This was part of the rational for the creation of the state of Israel – to create a place that Jews would be able to call home where they would never need to fear for their lives again.

The state with the most influence over Israel is the US. Israel gets the majority of its military hardware from the US. Nevertheless, it may be the case that even if all of Israel’s supporters deserted it, the Israeli state may still attempt to continue following its current policy settings. Convinced that their own people are under existential threat, the Israeli government may continue as they have to date.

In both conflicts, colonialism played a role. Rwanda experienced both German and Belgium colonialism. In Rwanda, both the Hutu and the Tutsi were already in situ when Europeans arrived on the scene. The Europeans didn’t create the categories of Hutu and Tutsi, but as mentioned before, they did have an impact on the way in which these categories came to be seen. Events in the Middle East were quite different. When the state of Israel was created, a mass movement of peoples (and a geographic division of peoples)did take place. Jews arrived from all over Europe and many Palestinians moved southwards. Many Palestinians would argue that they were forced into places like the West Bank and Gaza, but that it outside the scope of this article. What is clear is that when the Israeli state was created, there was a massive realignment of populations.

Differences

One clear difference is the duration the two conflicts. The Rwandan genocide took place over roughly 100 days between April and July in 1994. The situation in Gaza has been ongoing since October 2023 – much longer than the Rwandan genocide. And it is unclear when it will end.

To date, there has a big difference in the death tolls. In Rwanda, the widely accepted figure is between 800,000 and 1 million dead. To date in Gaza, we are looking at tens of thousands. As of 15 July 2025, The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human rights put this figure at 58,380 verified deaths.² It needs to be said that the conflict in Gaza is not over, so this is just a provisional figure. What is clear is that intensity of the killing in Rwanda was higher than in Gaza.

The technology used in both conflicts were very different. In Rwanda, the government had access to the kind of weaponry one would expect of a national army in Africa. The RPF was more limited in the military equipment available to it. RPF fighters had access to small arms. However, when the conflict spilled over and the Interahamwe militias became involved, the most widely used weapon was incredibly low-tech – the machete. That so much carnage could be carried out so quickly with such unsophisticated weaponry almost defies belief. It is one of the things that stands out in the Rwandan genocide. The picture in Gaza is very different. The main weapon is certainly not the machete. Hamas utilises small arms, rocket launchers, bombs and the like. On the other side, Israel has one of the most sophisticated armies in the world. They have masses of weaponry. Israel has tanks, fighter jets, helicopters, anti-drone defenses. The difference between the military hardware of Hamas and that of the IDF couldn’t be more stark. It makes one wonder why it is so incredibly difficult for Israel to decisively beat Hamas or at least neutralise it and to be able to repatriate all Israeli hostages. But the tactics of the two forces couldn’t be more different. Hamas essentially engages in guerilla warfare. Unlike the war in Vietnam, Hamas conducts a urban guerilla war. It has no jungle or mountains to retreat to, so it has moved underground. And it has a history of setting up shop underneath civilian locations such as schools and hospitals etc. The UN report makes clear that civilians are caught up in Israel’s attacks on these locations. Israel responds by saying that it is hitting these locations because that’s where Hamas is. It must be incredibly difficult waging an urban war where the environment is full of civilians. How do you do it? This is one of the conundrums that Israel hasn’t been able to solve. All of Gaza is populated. The population is high and the population density is incredibly high. And in contrast to other conflicts, civilians in Gaza can’t leave the territory. They can’t cross an international border and return when the fighting simmers down.

Of the killing that does take place, there is a difference between the two conflicts. In Rwanda it is generally accepted that much of the killing was done by militias. In other words, these people were not state soldiers. They were groups that arose to take part in the genocide. This is not the case in Gaza. Those who are fighting on the Israeli side are IDF soldiers – not civilians. It should be noted that the Israeli government and the IDF state that they are fighting a war, not taking part in a genocide.

In Rwanda house-to-house searches were common. Check points were also set up on roads. Here, people’s identity cards were checked. Killings took place in the streets – in public – in front of others perpetrators or bystanders. Killing was face-to face. In Gaza things are very different. Much of the killing is from aerial bombardment. And because of this, it is very difficult for the IDF to only hit an intended Hamas target with no risk to nearby civilians. The use of planes and drones means that the people controlling these weapons are often removed from the site of impact. In Rwanda, one couldn’t be physically removed from the killing, but in the conflict in Gaza, this is possible.

In the 1994 genocide, the media was used in sowing the seeds of the hate in preparation for the killing (see for example the Kangura newspaper) and in carrying out the killing itself. During the massacre, radio was key and Radio Mille Collines became infamous for this. The Rwandan genocide took place prior to the rise of social media. During the genocide, there were international reporters on the ground in Kigali. So it was not as if there was no knowledge or footage of the genocide making its way outside of Rwanda. But it would be fair to say that interest around the would was more subdued than it has been for the Gaza conflict. For Gaza, there has been massive coverage around the world. Every month, every week and every day. Interest in diaspora communities around the world has been intense. News coverage has not only been on the direct Israel / Gaza conflict but also on all of the issues that dovetail into it – attacks by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel’s response by detonating up pagers, the fall of the Assad regime, the US bombing of Iranian nuclear missile sites, the bombing of ships by Houthi rebels and the list goes on. Social media is ubiquitous now and it is full of news about the Gaza conflict.

While both conflicts create huge numbers of refugees, the refugee experience is very different. In Rwanda most refugees were able to cross the border into another country either to wait until it was safe to return or to continue their lives overseas. Most Hutu refugees fled northeast into the DRC. However in Gaza it has not been possible to cross a border. Gaza is blockaded. People cannot leave. So they don’t have the option of fleeing to another country in order to escape the violence. The only thing that they can do is try to move to another part of Gaza. Thus, they have become internally displaced.

Although the Genocide Convention was in place at the time of the Rwandan genocide, the International Criminal Court was not. The ICC was established in 2002. For a while the international community seemed at a loss over how to prosecute those involved in the killings in Rwanda. The genocide was over relatively quickly. Then the question became what should justice look like? It was decided that an ad hoc tribunal would be created – the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). To date, that hasn’t been the direction taken for Gaza. First of all, the conflict hasn’t concluded. It may be that once it has, the international community may establish a specific tribunal for Gaza. But perhaps not. South Africa has already taken Israel to the International Court of Justice over Gaza. The Court has made provisional findings, but a final ruling looks to be years away. Pillay’s report adds to the slew of reports being published on Gaza. As Pillay’s report was carried out under the UN name, it has particular weight. Still, it is a report. It is not a finding of a court of law.

1. Human Rights Council (Sixtieth session), Legal analysis of the conduct of Israel in Gaza pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Conference room paper of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, 16 September 2025, p. 8 ↩︎
2. Ibid ↩︎