this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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Calling the Israel govt "genocidal" is not fair or accurate. Israel has had military superiority over Gaza every day since it was captured in 1967. If they were genocidal, they could've slaughtered all the people in Gaza at any time. Instead, the population of Gaza has doubled since 1967. If you want to know what a real genocidal regime looks like, imagine the situation were reversed and Hamas had overwhelming military superiority over Israel. Imagine Hamas had tanks, F-16s, F-35s, and Apache helicopters. What would happen? The genocide would start immediately. Hamas would be slaughtering civilians en masse. No restraint. No negotiations. True Genocide.
Before you ask, I'm not Jewish and I'm not defending Israeli atrocities. I just think this is an extremely simplistic and unfair characterization of Israel.
The language lacks a nuance in between "intentional mass slaughter" and "systematic eradication and displacement of ethnic group."
Both are classed as genocide by international conventions, even if in our heads they seem very different.
I think that's why often genocide is used for the former and ethnic cleansing for the latter, which makes some form of sense since, as you said, there appears to be a difference.
I'm not trying to lessen the evil of what either is because I don't believe in 'which is more evil' contests, just that, for categorization purposes, maybe that is needed.
Genocide isn't about just slaughtering people, it is also about removing and displacing a people from a region, something which Israel policy definitely and inarguably has systematically been.
https://www.wordnik.com/words/genocide
Genocide is slaughtering people, there is no other meaning. You can call removing and displacing people something else, which doesn't change how bad they are.
Are you fucking seriously going to try and split hairs over definitions (which you’re incorrect btw, genocide’s literal definition is the killing of a large group of people in an ethnicity with the goal of destroying that nation or group) so you can level the playing field of evil here??
The prior comment remarked that Israel could have slaughtered everyone in Gaza but didn’t, and now you’re trying to redefine genocide so that Israel looks worse.
Mental gymnastics aside, Hamas was fucking insane to go after children. Israel is fucking insane to go after Hamas with the human shields they have.
No amount of hand wringing externally is going to defuse this. Hubris is going to make this worse though, that I do believe.
This thread was about whether or not it's "fair or accurate" to call them "genocidal". The word, "literally" taken down to its roots, does mean "geno" (people) "cide" (killing), but actual definitions in use are more nuanced. From the UN "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide", for instance:
The UN's historically been an apologist for atrocities whenever the power benefits afford the defense of the reprehensible. Pulling out a UN Convention definition when politically convenient is a disgrace, much like the UN's history of confronting atrocities for the past 40 years.
That's basically an ad hominem. That's a commonly accepted definition, address the content specifically if you have an issue with it.
Israel is not doing any of the things listed
That wasn't my point either way - but, as a group, as a government, they plainly are.
They literally are not. What you're missing is that shooting someone in combat scenarios is not "killing members of the group/causing serious bodily/mental harm to members of the group" as genocide is defined. Murdering them wholesale is. Intentionally starving them, as with the Holodomor, is.
None of the rest is even arguably happening at all. There is no way to construe their relationship as genocidal.
The reason why is right there in the opening: with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group
Are Israel's policies discriminatory? Yes. Oppressive? Hell yes. Poorly conceived, authoritarian bullshit? I'm right there with you. Genocide? No.
Things can be wrong and need changing without being literally the worst thing.
they literally said they're cutting off food.
No, they're blockading food imports. By forming an absolute blockade, they prevent/significantly reduce weapons and personnel trafficking.
If civilians start starving en masse, you will absolutely see international calls of genocide.i will be among the first to the podium on that one.
we already are, and you're saying it's a lie. i have no reason to think you'll ever change your tune.
looks to me like you're setting up a no-true-scotsman.
this same reasoning would mean the nazis were justified in violently suppressing ghetto uprisings.
Israel is not trying to exterminate Palestinians.
You could make a case that the conditions in the Palestinian territories cause bodily or mental harm, but then you would have to approve the intent. You would have to prove that Israel has intentionally caused and kept those conditions (as opposed to the incompetence of the Palestinian authorities) with the purpose to damage Palestinians as much as people. I think the grounds for such a case are weak.
I take this statement to mean something like a government trying to destroy a group by engineering a famine or something along these lines, like what the Russians did in Holodomor. This isn't the case in Israel. If anything Israel is going out of its way to provide food, fuel, electricity, and other supplies to the Palestinian territories. The flow of supplies is only ever paused in extreme situations like right now, and the pauses are temporary.
Israel is not imposing measures to prevent Palestinian births.
Israel is not forcibly transferring children Palestinian children to Israel or elsewhere.
Based on the definition you provided, the case for calling Israel genocidal is weak at best. So no I don't it's fair or accurate to call Israel genocidal.
The international definition of genocide isn't what you claim
Saying that relocating people is as bad as killing them seems like it's a way to equate the level of evil from one group/nation to another. I see the pictures of bodies from the Holocaust, and I just can't equate that to a forcible relocation.
I didn't create that definition.
If a bunch of refugees flee roaming Jewish folk running around trying to murder them (like Muslims fled India and Hindus fled Pakistan during Partition as folks of each religion roamed around trying to murder people of the minority faith) in 1948 and refugees flee the 1967 war, fearing for their safety, and then they're not allowed to return to their homes, that's ethnic cleansing. If you're constantly being pushed off your land and your home in order to be replaced by settlers of another faith, that's also ethnic cleansing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Palestinian_exodus
P.S. Fuck the British (of that time) and their fucking imperialism.
And fuck the Hindus and Muslims and Jews who participated in the ethnic cleansing.
This goes both ways:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world
Nearly 1 million Jews got displaced, exiled, or forced to flee. This was done purely because Israel was created. Many islamic countries are extremely antisemtic and were waiting to do this for a long time, but they didn't have the justification until Israel was created. The thing is that these Jewish communities, while oppressed and always under the threat of violence, have managed to form their own communities in a lot of islamic countries for centuries. They all of a sudden found themselves being kicked out of their countries, many with no possessions, to a country they had nothing to do with.
UN convention on Genocide: "Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people[a] in whole or in part." I think it's reasonable to argue that applies to Istael's treatment of Palestine.
I don't it's reasonable at all. It's only seems reasonable if all your information about Israel from propaganda memes like this. If you actually think about this means and look into Israel's policies, you'll see that it's very hard to make the case that Israel is committing genocide. This conflict is very complex and nuanced, and you can't brush away something you don't like by labeling it genocide. That term doesn't apply here at all. The only place in this conflict where genocide does apply is to terrorist groups like Hamas who want to genocide Jews as their goal or to the fundamentalist Jews who want to do the same but for muslims.
Gee do you think the population may have doubled partially because of all the ethnic cleansing that the Israeli gov (or settlers with the gov's implicit support) have done in places those people used to live?
No, those people simply had kids.
You haven't heard of the illegal Israeli settlements? You haven't heard about the forced removal of Palestinian homes?