Comment by pydry
4 days ago
Speaking of not leaving things out:
This was genocide, supported and endorsed by the US.
The moral standing of the US and Europe has, in the eyes of the rest of the nonaligned world, plunged to new depths because of this and that has been a massive, MASSIVE help to Putin and China.
>This was genocide
Please don't abuse this word. If Israel was conducing genocide there wouldn't be Arab Israelis, and the population of Gaza would not grow over time.
Ethnic cleansing and insufficient proportionality consideration, likely. Not genocide. The Israelis don't want to remove Palestinians from the face of the earth, they want political and physical safety for the Jews, and history has worked out such that they feel they need an Jewish-majority ethnostate.
> the population of Gaza would not grow over time
That has nothing to do with anything. If I steal from you, I steal from you, doesn't matter if you get more than I stole from elsewhere. By that logic, not even the Shoa would be a genocide. So how can people say this, and not even once, but over and over? It just means you're not even treating the charge seriously.
> The Israelis don't want to remove Palestinians from the face of the earth
It's nothing to do with "the Israelis". It's about the specific people and organizations espousing genocidal rhetoric and engaging in respective actions, such as starving off civilians. Whoever is guilty of that doesn't get to invoke all other Israelis as a blanket. Specific people are guilty of specific things. All Israelis want safety, but not all Israelis dance and sing "there are no schools in Gaza, because there are no kids in Gaza".
More importantly, wanting to wipe someone "off the face off the Earth" is not required to meet the standard of genocide, not even close. It might be required for the whole "Amalek" thing, but not for genocide.
Just take this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide
> 8,372 killed (Srebrenica)
> 25,609–33,071 Bosniaks and Croats killed (wider definition of genocide)
Not only are those "low" numbers compared to the survivors, not even in their wildest dreams would anyone ever claim the goal was to "wipe Croats off the face of the Earth".
Those who want to annex Palestine don't care if it's via ethnic cleansing or genocide, and made that clear in word and deed. There's no getting away from that.
This is not abuse of the word, complete success is not necessary for genocide to be an appropriate description.
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
This israeli scholar of genocide could see that just a few weeks into this escalation. Why can't you?
Perhaps you can enlighten me on this topic. So, for the sake of argument, let's consider Israel's recent actions as a genocide. Then what? What's the UN going to do? Send a nasty letter to Israel? Create a fake warrant for Bibi that every country just ignores?
From a military perspective, Israel is highly useful to the United States and many other Western countries. Israel is basically the Guam of the Middle East. So, genocide or not, I bet good money not a single thing will happen to Israel. Sure, there might be some theatrical cases in which some soldiers are imprisoned for war crimes and some high-rankers being dishonorably discharged. But it's all just for show.
Israel basically is what keeps Iran from overstepping too much. To the West, that is far more valuable than the lives of Palestinians. I am not trying to be insensitive, and I truly feel empathy for all the poor Palestinian people that lost their lives over this senseless conflict. However, if the rest of the world cared, then the rest of the world would have intervened.
Point being, call it whatever you want. It won't make a difference.
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From the same article
> Under international law, the crime of genocide is defined by “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,” as noted in the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
So can we also say Hamas is genocidal? Because complete success is not necessary, intent matters and magnitudes don't matter. Right? My disagreement is just that - We cannot just accuse one side in this unfortunate event.
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Which countries are in is this non-aligned world?
Please be careful when using the word genocide
Gaza population: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1422981/gaza-total-popul...
Jews in before/after WW2 in Germany: 500k before, 200k after, 100k now. 6M European jews killed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany
What Palestinians went through in the last 15 months is grotesque and unforgivable, but their "elected government" could have completely avoided this.
>Please be careful when using the word genocide
I am using the term legally.
Genocide does not require success in exterminating the whole race. The holocaust was not successful, Bosnia wasnt successful, neither was Gaza. Roughly 7-10% of Gaza were killed, mostly women and children, and the intent to kill them because of their race was clear and well evidenced by South Africa.
Please, dont deny genocide -not the holocaust. Not the armenian genocide. Not the bosnian genocide. Not this either. It is disrespectful to every victim.
China gained even more from this genocidal spree & exercise in ignoring international law. BRICS got a new lease on life. And NDB is shaping up to be a legitimate competitor to the IMF.
Israel's actions in the last 75 years simply cannot be compared to genocide in any rational sense of the word. The number of Palestinians has been rising steadily for decades and life expectancy for Palestinians has been increasing as well. Israel has not killed two million or three million or five million Palestinians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_State_of_P...
Everything that happened since October 7th was avoidable. You can't expect to murder 1200 Israelis in this fashion and think nothing will happen. It would only invite more murders and more murders.
A slaughter might have been avoidable, but ethnic cleansing wasnt avoidable. It has persisted in the west bank for decades. Israel tried to dump all the Gazans in Congo. This was materially no different to when Hitler tried to dump all German jews in madagascar. For Israel this a racial problem, and whilst theyd prefer expulsion (like Hitler), theyre not above extermination (like Hitler) if the "dump them all in africa" project falls through.
Netanyahu is on record saying that he intended to squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the Palestinians and never stop.
Israel will not give up on its ethnic cleansing dreams unless it is forced to . That may require the end of Israel - just as South African apartheid was ended once it lost support from racist western backers.
A side effect of this slaughter is that it has ripped off the mask of liberal, egalitarian Israel. The liberal, egalitarians in the west no longer support the country - only racists who believe that genocide is provokable still do.
I appreciate that you took the time to respond, but I think that analysis of the population of Gaza clearly shows that there hasn't be any ethnic cleansing either. The Palestinian population has been going up since 1948. So has life expectancy. These facts destroy the narrative of ethnic cleansing.
> For Israel this a racial problem, and whilst theyd prefer expulsion (like Hitler), theyre not above extermination (like Hitler) if the "dump them all in africa" project falls through.
Right, Israel doesn't want any Arabs within its borders. If there are any Arabs living in Israel they are there as a class of indentured servants who can't vote or serve in the government. Are there any Arabs in Israel?
I am personally sorry for what happened in Gaza, but Hamas chose to start a war and civilian deaths are an unavoidable fact of war. What would you want done if your family had been the victims of a barbaric, unprovoked attack, or if your family were kidnapped and taken from you?
And you're stating your opinion as if it were fact. You believe that no one on the left still supports Israel except if they are racist. That's just your opinion. It's not a fact. You believe that anyone who does support Israel is a racist. That's your opinion. It's not a fact.
You are definitely entitled to your opinion, but it's very telling that your opinion seems to deny and disregard quite a lot of facts.
> A side effect of this slaughter is that it has ripped off the mask of liberal, egalitarian Israel.
Is Israel a democracy? Can women vote in Israel? Can women serve in the army? Is it illegal to be gay in Israel? Can Israeli Arabs vote? Can they serve in parliament? Do they serve in parliament? What happens to gay men and women in Gaza and the West Bank? Why do they want to flee to Israel?
Again, you can have whatever opinion you want but the facts don't agree with you.