Comment by breppp
2 hours ago
I think the more interesting thing here is the ability to fantasize categories such as genocide
where war can be maximalized into genocide when you don't like the winner, and the genocidal act that has started said war (classic genocide mass killings of civilians by death squads) is appropriated by the perpetrators turned victims
This is demagoguery. There is ample evidencence that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Historians who study genocide all their careers, including Israeli Jewish ones, concluded it a long time ago. There is 100 pages with references in the application by South Africa to the ICJ. If you intend to take the same route as the Holocaust denialists, the burden is on you to disprove all the evidence.
Its all abstractions that help justify ethno-nationalism at the expense of concern about individual tragedy.
most of the wars in history were fought by empires that were the exact opposite of ethnic-nationalism, and also most genocides. it is completely unrelated
Ethno-nationalism seems to be a strong factor in both Israeli and Palestinian politics. I can't think of a more direct example of ethno-nationalism than the Jewish state.
Also, my point was more about how conflict is perceived and litigated in politics and threads like this. Factoids about history are completely irrelevant to that. Its just another abstraction.
I guess "genocide" is also defined by the winners, or their defenders. And if it's not a genocide, then it's just mass killing of innocents, and that's... fine!
Wonko the Sane is right.
do you define the dresden firebombings or the hiroshima nuclear attack as genocide?
Israel hasn’t gotten fire bombed or nuked. What’s the parallel with the WW2 Axis Powers here?
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Is this how you win the arguments in your head? Your opponent uses the word "genocide", you concluded turning Gaza into rubble with kids and many more innocents underneath them doesn't fit the term "genocide", and you further conclude whatever claim your opponent is trying to make is wrong, and therefore there aren't a few hundred thousand dead civilians, ah the whole accusation is just fictional, they all actually lived happily ever after in peace and harmony (in your head).
Yeah yeah, people are still dying, and we're arguing about the definitions of words. How convenient. Whatever distraction helps you sleep at night, I suppose.
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Neither was genocide, neither in outcome nor in intention.
You could argue about "mass killing" or some such. Dresden firebombings did not attempted to eliminate German nation as such. It does not matter how actual nazi try to frame it as similar to holocaust, it was not nearly close.
And same goes for Hiroshima. It was not an attempt to eliminate Japanese people out of existence.
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