For the first time, Israeli NGOs claim genocide in Gaza

The genesis of a warning system

The "Ten Stages of Genocide" model was created by research professor Gregory Stanton as a way to help people recognize and prevent genocide. He also founded Genocide Watch in 1999, an organization with the intention of predicting and potentially stopping genocides around the world.

Stage 2: Symbolization

Symbolization happens when people assign visible or verbal identifiers to group identities, like calling people “Jews” or “Roma.” On its own, symbolization is not inherently dangerous. But when hatred is added, it allows the state or society to visibly target and isolate those it wishes to oppress.

Laws can also be implemented to restrict hate symbols and speech, but their power depends on public support. Cultural enforcement matters as much as legal bans. Without it, people will simply replace offensive words and symbols with alternatives.

Stage 3: Discrimination

To prevent the third stage of genocide, nations should ensure that all groups receive equal political rights and legal protections. Democracies must allow people to challenge discrimination in court, so that anyone who violates human rights can be held accountable.

Stage 4: Dehumanization

From schoolbooks to social media, people are indoctrinated into dehumanizing people. The collective attitudes of entire societies can be reshaped like this, and it seemingly justifies violence. It is an erasure of a group’s humanity so that the dominant group can pave the way for mass killing.

Stage 5: Organization

Genocide is not random; it is organized. States and militias provide arms and training to perpetrators, and they even go so far as to coordinate secret police, death squads, and terrorist networks. These structures enable systemic violence while allowing them to maintain plausible deniability.

Any group that takes part in genocidal militias should be criminalized, and leaders must face international sanctions. UN-imposed arms embargoes and judicial accountability can reduce a group's ability to mobilize resources for coordinated acts of genocidal violence.

Stage 6: Polarization

During this stage, extremists arrest or assassinate any opposition to ensure no internal resistance. Emergency decrees concentrate power in the hands of the dominant group. Minorities are disarmed so that they cannot defend themselves from systematic aggression.

Stage 7: Preparation

The seventh stage of genocide sees the dominant group try to create the “final solution” to the perceived problem. Oftentimes, their true intentions are disguised, and they refer to their goals as “ethnic cleansing,” “purification,” or “counter-terrorism.”

It is incredibly important for governing bodies to criminalize any and all conspiracies to commit genocide. National authorities must arrest planners, and anyone spreading rhetoric that calls for extermination must be prosecuted under international law.

Stage 8: Persecution

The world’s inaction emboldens perpetrators. As the dominant group tests boundaries by instigating smaller massacres, the lack of a firm response becomes a green light for the group to commit total genocide. Without intervention, state actors realize that impunity is almost guaranteed.

Stage 9: Extermination

Extermination is the stage of genocide where mass murder unfolds. Victims are seen as subhuman, which justifies their killing on an industrial scale. Extermination is usually intended to target all the group, but oftentimes it is only committed in part based on gender, age, or leadership.

Beyond physical extermination, genocide erases cultural heritage. Religious sites are destroyed, libraries burned, languages banned. This destruction seeks to remove even the memory of a people’s existence, ensuring their total absence from historical record.

Stage 10: Denial

The final stage of genocide is denial, which actually lasts throughout and always follows closely after. Perpetrators of genocide dig up graves, burn the bodies, and try to erase evidence. They continually deny their crimes, and even blame the victims for the atrocities that have happened.