this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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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 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.
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.
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.