Comment by Sabinus
4 days ago
>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.
Read the article you linked to. In Srebrenica there were 40,000 Bosnian Muslims. 8,000 killed (and many more deported) with the goal of exterminating the rest is 20%. In Gaza, according to the highest Hamas estimates, it's 40,000, most of them apparently militants. Out of 2 million inhabitants that's 2%.
And Bosnian Muslims did not initiate a pogrom that killed 1200 people, out of the blue, against Bosnians when that happened.
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.
>Point being, call it whatever you want. It won't make a difference.
It does make a difference. If it didnt, Israel wouldnt be fighting back against the accusations so vehemently. They wouldnt be accusing the ICJ of anti semitism.
US and EU leaders wouldnt be going out of their way to downplay this.
It makes a difference becausr undermines US and European moral legitimacy. This makes it harder for us to get what we want out of diplomacy. This wouldnt be such a problem if western economic and military global primacy were maintained but they're also collapsing. Ukraine is a military disaster for us and China's industrial might eclipses ours.
The worst time to be seen to be the bad guy is when you are showing weakness.
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> Point being, call it whatever you want. It won't make a difference.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and people knowing what actually happened matters a lot more in the long term than any indifference and apathy in the short term.
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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.
> So can we also say Hamas is genocidal?
No, because intent matters, and Hamas do not have genocidal intent - all they want is freedom from Israeli occupation and dehumanisation, and their stolen land back.
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What about something else? What are we to say about it? Why are you asking me. Say what you need to say about it.
I'm not the genocide decider, I have no particular reason or expertise from which to judge whether any other specific conflict is a genocide.
The person I was responding to was quibbling about the use of this word, and I'm pointing to a subject expert's opinion that the use is correct.
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