Levinas & Genocide

Yesterday we didn't get to the second article which dealt with Levinasian ethics in view of genocide, particularly the Rwanda Genocide. But I was so confused by this article that I would regret very much missing the chance to ask about the point of this article. Particularly, I'm not sure how genocide fits into Smith's presentation of Levinas. Maybe someone with keener eyes than mine can correct my error, but I didn't see Smith ever discuss genocide in his paper. He discussed homicide quite a lot (despite using the word genocide for it), but genocide doesn't seem to appear except in a brief synthesis of Heidegger's Das Man with Levinas' ethic (a synthesis which he later casts aside as outside the realm of the essay).

So I'm left without exposition and without clue as to how genocide could fit into Levinasian ethics which seem to be very concentrated on the person, the I. Since the I, the single person, can't commit genocide (unless she's very efficient with her time!) but can only participate or command a genocide, I don't understand how any personalist ethic can really be fit neatly to the issue - i.e. it seems that it would require quite a bit of molding to fit Levinas into a discussion of genocide.

And in the end, I'm confused as to the very choice of genocide as a test-case. Assuming that the word still means anything at all aside from being a caricature of everything we don't like in human behaviour (a very generous assumption, in my opinion), I don't understand why Smith chose to address genocide rather than the more applicable-to-Levinas homicide. He seems to insinuate that genocide is an obvious site of radical evil, but aren't there any number of other examples of radical evil in the world? So what makes genocide so special? Is it just the fact that to discuss genocide increases the level of spectacle in a way that discussing infidelity, child abuse, rudeness, &c. wouldn't?

-Gabriel