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Comment by markdown

2 years ago

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I didn't mean in general. I meant on Hacker News.

How can you compare the war in Gaza to the systemic killing of Jews by the Germans is beyond me. The war in Gaza is devastating but on the scale of wars it pales compared to the war in Ukraine, or the war in Yemen, or the civil war in Syria, or the wars in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or any other major conflict in recent history. And none of these are comparable to WW-II or the Holocaust either.

How can you compare the world today that is demanding of Israel to stop the war to the world that stood by and didn't do enough during the holocaust.

If I draw graph where I plot all world conflicts in history, with one axis being the human toll (dead, injured) and the other axis being world response (not sure what metric we should use, I'll pick number of people marching in the streets), you'll see that Israel is being singled out in a negative way. And that's before we have the discussion of "right" vs. "wrong", "who started", or the other political and historical aspects.

I disagree with "Palestinians being genocided". I think the word genocide should be used to describe some very specific circumstances and should not be used for violent conflicts even when very large number of people die.

I think your statement would sound a lot hollower if we put in in more objective terms, let me rewrite that for you: "I wonder if that's the world felt if it wasn't 18,000 Palestinian deaths in war between Gaza and Israel following the Oct 7th attack on Israel but 6 million Jews who were systemically murdered by Hitler's Germany with the stated goal of murdering all Jews in Europe. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps.".

  • > How can you compare the war in Gaza to the systemic killing of Jews by the Germans is beyond me.

    One was due to a hatred for a people while the other is over land, but regardless of the motive, genocide is genocide. Leave or be killed is what Hitler said, and it's what Netanyahu and is IDF have been saying.

    > The war in Gaza is devastating but on the scale of wars it pales compared to the war in Ukraine, or the war in Yemen, or the civil war in Syria, or the wars in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or any other major conflict in recent history.

    You must have your head in the sand. More civilians (mostly children) have been killed in 2 months than in an entire year in Ukraine. Historians reckon the destruction in Gaza is worse than the carpet bombing of Germany in WW2.

    > I disagree with "Palestinians being genocided". I think the word genocide should be used to describe some very specific circumstances and should not be used for violent conflicts even when very large number of people die.

    You can disagree all you want but the word is very clearly defined in international law, and all experts on the matter agree that it fits the definition.

    > I think your statement would sound a lot hollower if...

    Refer my earlier paragraph. You don't get to define what genocide means to suit your purpose. Arguing that it isn't genocide because they haven't killed enough people for that is insane. It's not about the numbers, it's about intent. They've displaced millions and killed as fast as they can, indiscriminately. They've also destroyed all civilian infrastructure to ensure that any survivors have nothing to return to. They've made explict statements saying they want to wipe Palestinians off the land.

It absolutely did. The world largely didn't know and/or ignored what was happening to Jews.

Likewise with almost every other tragedy/war/genocide/whatever you prefer to call it that's happened in the world.