Gaza has been blockaded for almost 20 years. It’s the complete stopping of food and water for months that makes it genocide, yeah. Combined with all the bombing etc. Are you being serious?
If you show me any analogous situation to Gaza then yes you will show me another genocide. Feel free to give an example you think is similar but widely accepted as fine.
Edit: still absolutely reeling over this: “Oh so you’re saying that every case of mass civilian starvation is genocide?!” Err… yeah?
The word genocide has been over-used and diluted. It should only be used sparingly if you want it to retain any meaning at all. Hitler actually attempted to exterminate the Jews. That is the modern canonical example for genocide, but there are many historical examples as well (Carthage, etc.). Israel isn’t doing anything like that. You are just playing word games with an ambiguous definition.
Ah yes, comparing 18,000 people dead as the result of collateral damage in dense urban warfare to the systematic round-up and extermination of 6 million Jews by Hitler. Makes perfect sense. What was I thinking?
I hope they read it. This post was what made me start openly calling it genocide. It’s a weighty word to use but that’s why it’s important to do so when it is actually happening. You can’t promise “never again” if you don’t remember what it even is.
Yes, I know. I’m saying that the definition can be read expansively or narrowly, and when it is read expansively, it loses some of its impact. To my mind, putting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the same category as Nazi death camps is somewhat problematic. Do you disagree?
I disagree. Genocide doesn’t list a minimum number of causalities to be considered genocide. If I go out and kill one person, that makes me a murderer. If I kill a couple of people, that makes me a serial killer. If I kill less people than John Wayne Gacy, does that suddenly mean I’m not a serial killer, because his serial killing was worse?
Just because the atrocities committed in Israel aren’t as significant as those in Nazi Germany doesn’t mean it’s not a genocide.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you. Obviously, the UN has had a hard time coming up with a definition of genocide that is both inclusive and impactful. I think your counter-examples actually underscore my point that there are some concepts that are hard to adequately capture under a single category. That’s why, for example, we have different categories for different types of homicide: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, felony murder, manslaughter, negligence resulting in death, etc.
Definitions are hard and somewhat arbitrary, but we all have an intuitive sense of degree. My point is that the expansive definition dilutes it’s effect.
My point is that the expansive definition dilutes it’s effect.
Are you sure that that’s your point? Because to me it sounds like you nitpicked this one genocide here (maybe because it’s painful to believe) and decided it can be excluded from a definition over a self-proclaimed technicality that you just came up with?
It feels like everything you are saying is just because it rubs you wrong to say the Jewish state of Israel is committing a genocide and a continued ethnic cleansing. I am not saying that this is your argument, I’m just saying that that is how you come off.
Yes, it does rub me the wrong way when we classify the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as “genocide”. That’s why I’m arguing about it.
In another part of this thread, myself and another commenter went back and forth with a bunch of other examples of mass killings in the past, and I think it shows that it isn’t so easy to define what is genocide and what isn’t. Using the UN definition, could you, for example, classify what Hamas did on October 7 as genocide? I wouldn’t, but read the definition again and ask yourself whether it fits.
In the case of Israel and Palestine, I don’t believe that Israel intends to wipe out the Palestinian people. Maybe Netanyahu and his right-wing cronies would if they could, but the Israeli population doesn’t want that. Hamas also wants to wipe out Israel, but I doubt the Palestinian people as a whole would support that.
The Israelis have negotiated with Palestinian governments, turned over land to them, provided them with aid and utilities and even included them at all levels of Israeli government. That doesn’t sound like genocide. Now, it is true that Palestinians don’t have equal rights in Israel, but there is a big difference between that and actual genocide. I don’t understand where this impulse for exaggeration comes from. It is very short-sighted.
Yeah I do. I don’t see how it’s problematic. They don’t have to be equally bad to be in the same category.
The conflict itself obviously is not in this category. This particular bout of conflict, progressively reducing the “safe” zones in Gaza (while bombing them anyway), calling Palestinians “animals”, cutting off food, water, medical supplies, connectivity and more, stripping people and taking photographs of them, putting hospitals under siege, and all of the daily horrors we’ve been reading about. That is something else.
To say this isn’t genocide because there are no gas chambers would be missing the point, I think. Hitler really gave a text book example. Israel is being a bit less obvious but the result is the same. Death and displacement of the unwanted.
Okay, let’s set aside magnitude then. Definition of genocide includes the aspect of intent. Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people. Not “people”, but “a people”, meaning basically a nation/race/tribe/etc. I don’t think that Israel is attempting to kill “the Palestinian people”. Do you?
Yeah I do! In fact that’s why I started this discussion with the example of the purposeful starvation and cutting off of water to Gaza. In my opinion this is an example of intentionality. This is not an accident or just a “side effect” or something. It is done purposefully. In the UN’s language, it is “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”
You say…
Not “people”, but “a people”, meaning basically a nation/race/tribe/etc. I don’t think that Israel is attempting to kill “the Palestinian people”
But the reality is that it’s “In whole or in part,” and Gaza is part of the Palestinian people. The important part isn’t the % intended to be killed. It’s primarily why they’re killed, and more specifically, if they are killed because they are members of a group. This is unavoidably true in Gaza.
You can see the issues with your take in other cases. The Cambodian genocide is a widely recognized genocide. They killed 25% of the pop and probably always intended to keep enough alive to run the farms. So not “The Cambodian people,” as a whole, but it doesn’t really matter.
That’s a good point about Cambodia, actually. Hmmm, so what is the difference between mass killing of political opponents like Stalin did, or mass killing for the sake creating terror and holding on to power like Mao did, or whatever it was that Papa Doc was up to in Haiti, and genocide? Or are all of those genocide according to this definition?
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it seems more complicated than genocide. On the one hand, Israel has negotiated with moderate Palestinian governments for a two-state solution and various other aspects of self-government, including the provision of utilities, and they include Palestinians in all levels of government in Israel. On the other hand, at the moment they also oppress the Palestinian people and are in the process of trying to completely destroy Hamas in a pretty horribel way in Gaza. If it is actual “genocide” that Israel is after, they are pretty inconsistent about it.
If we go with your expansive interpretation of genocide, would you consider what Hamas did on October 7 to be genocide? I mean, they did “deliberately inflict on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” for the people on the affected kibbutzim and the music festival, and Hamas has as its declared intent the destruction of the state of Israel. Does the fact that Hamas lacks the means to kill all Jews make the massacre they were able to inflict any less genocidal? I don’t know, I haven’t classified Hamas’s Oct 7 action as “genocide” previously, but your more expansive definition and all of the analogies we are both using makes me wonder where the boundaries of genocide are, compared to other forms of mass killing.
People left to die from preventable diseases in a preventable siege?
153:10 at the UNGA, with only ten countries (including the US and Israel, or “Azrael” as my grandma liked to call them) standing in the way of a humanitarian ceasefire?
Literally all of this was happening in Ukraine and nobody serious was calling it a genocide. It is just urban warfare. It sucks but it is not genocide.
oh, so you do acknowledge that Putin’s actions have also been called genocidal, you’re just also being consistent at refusing to acknowledge genocide at all. well, at least you’re willing to acknowledge consistency in genocide, even if you’re unwilling to call it that.
still, you’d also have to say that if I don’t know what genocide means, then the UN also doesn’t know what genocide means when they accuse Putin of genocide in Ukraine (source) as they have of Israel in Palestine (source)…
Putin’s actions have not been found to be genocide by anyone reputable. I can say that while being vehemently against the invasion and all it stands for and additionally supporting Ukraine in every capacity.
Words matter. They are important to understand.
You have not gotten me in any logical inconsistency despite thinking you have. Genocide is an important concept to understand so you do not water it down when it actually happens. If every action in war is considered a war crime, no actions are war crimes and people will not believe your claims when you make them.
Edit: before you read this, it’s worth noting the following:
you’d also have to say that if I don’t know what genocide means,
I wasn’t replying to you… I was replying to @galloog1@lemmy.world, so not sure why you took it as a response to you? Maybe a technical error? In any case I don’t agree.
You said:
oh, so you do acknowledge that Putin’s actions have also been called genocidal,
My conclusion is that you must have been sniffing glue because how else would you “read” this in my comments above…
Then you do some more analysis of what I mean and believe, but all of it is bullshit standing on the one-legged “conclusion” that you made.
Now to your links…
The first is titled something completely unrelated to start with: UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine finds continued systematic and widespread use of torture and indiscriminate attacks harming civilians. No one denies this.
It goes on to read:
“The Commission is also concerned about allegations of genocide in Ukraine. For instance, some of the rhetoric transmitted in Russian state and other media may constitute incitement to genocide. The Commission is continuing its investigations on such issues.”
Good, there we have it then.
Putin is bad, etc, but there doesn’t seem to be much that that commission has found except for rhetoric in Russia, but generally Putin’s actions are those of an invader, and if more inquiries are made about genocide in Ukraine, I would be an idiot to deny that.
The second link is an entire document dedicated to genocide against Palestinians. Something that has been ongoing for over 7 decades.
The title reads “Gaza: UN experts call on international community to prevent genocide against the Palestinian people”
Not an inquiry. Not based on “rhetoric in the media”, but based on Israel’s continued aggression.
In any case, it seems that Russia is only brought to comparison here just to make Israel look like a “poor victim of double standards”. You know, not from your genuine interest in human lives or anything… just the genuine interest to make Israel’s actions acceptable.
So you admit that UN calls what’s happening in Palestine and in Ukraine a genocide. It seems that I’m right, and then comment is wrong and you’re arguing against the evidence.
My interest is in the correct classification of war crimes to ensure they are less likely to happen. I have met very few people in this community who understand what war crimes are and how they differ from general warfare. If all warfare constitutes war crimes, then war crimes have no meaning and you enable them to happen.
Is it really that inconceivable to you that a blockaid had a military purpose? Were all the blockaids in history considered genocide?
Gaza has been blockaded for almost 20 years. It’s the complete stopping of food and water for months that makes it genocide, yeah. Combined with all the bombing etc. Are you being serious?
If you show me any analogous situation to Gaza then yes you will show me another genocide. Feel free to give an example you think is similar but widely accepted as fine.
Edit: still absolutely reeling over this: “Oh so you’re saying that every case of mass civilian starvation is genocide?!” Err… yeah?
The word genocide has been over-used and diluted. It should only be used sparingly if you want it to retain any meaning at all. Hitler actually attempted to exterminate the Jews. That is the modern canonical example for genocide, but there are many historical examples as well (Carthage, etc.). Israel isn’t doing anything like that. You are just playing word games with an ambiguous definition.
Ah yes 18,000 civilian dead bodies, all just playing word games in their mass graves.
Ah yes, comparing 18,000 people dead as the result of collateral damage in dense urban warfare to the systematic round-up and extermination of 6 million Jews by Hitler. Makes perfect sense. What was I thinking?
We’re on our way to get to 6 million. This is the world failing to stop a full blown genocide from resuming.
Imagine yourself saying that at the beginning of the holocaust when the humber of casualties was only 18k.
That would be disgusting wouldn’t it?
I think no one except for supporters of Israel would dub this was “collateral damage”. Literally no one else agrees.
Disturbing.
You’re wrong, please educate yourself.
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide
I hope they read it. This post was what made me start openly calling it genocide. It’s a weighty word to use but that’s why it’s important to do so when it is actually happening. You can’t promise “never again” if you don’t remember what it even is.
I literally gave the official UN definition and argued a specific point regarding it.
Yes, I know. I’m saying that the definition can be read expansively or narrowly, and when it is read expansively, it loses some of its impact. To my mind, putting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the same category as Nazi death camps is somewhat problematic. Do you disagree?
I disagree. Genocide doesn’t list a minimum number of causalities to be considered genocide. If I go out and kill one person, that makes me a murderer. If I kill a couple of people, that makes me a serial killer. If I kill less people than John Wayne Gacy, does that suddenly mean I’m not a serial killer, because his serial killing was worse?
Just because the atrocities committed in Israel aren’t as significant as those in Nazi Germany doesn’t mean it’s not a genocide.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you. Obviously, the UN has had a hard time coming up with a definition of genocide that is both inclusive and impactful. I think your counter-examples actually underscore my point that there are some concepts that are hard to adequately capture under a single category. That’s why, for example, we have different categories for different types of homicide: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, felony murder, manslaughter, negligence resulting in death, etc.
Definitions are hard and somewhat arbitrary, but we all have an intuitive sense of degree. My point is that the expansive definition dilutes it’s effect.
Are you sure that that’s your point? Because to me it sounds like you nitpicked this one genocide here (maybe because it’s painful to believe) and decided it can be excluded from a definition over a self-proclaimed technicality that you just came up with?
It feels like everything you are saying is just because it rubs you wrong to say the Jewish state of Israel is committing a genocide and a continued ethnic cleansing. I am not saying that this is your argument, I’m just saying that that is how you come off.
Yes, it does rub me the wrong way when we classify the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as “genocide”. That’s why I’m arguing about it.
In another part of this thread, myself and another commenter went back and forth with a bunch of other examples of mass killings in the past, and I think it shows that it isn’t so easy to define what is genocide and what isn’t. Using the UN definition, could you, for example, classify what Hamas did on October 7 as genocide? I wouldn’t, but read the definition again and ask yourself whether it fits.
In the case of Israel and Palestine, I don’t believe that Israel intends to wipe out the Palestinian people. Maybe Netanyahu and his right-wing cronies would if they could, but the Israeli population doesn’t want that. Hamas also wants to wipe out Israel, but I doubt the Palestinian people as a whole would support that.
The Israelis have negotiated with Palestinian governments, turned over land to them, provided them with aid and utilities and even included them at all levels of Israeli government. That doesn’t sound like genocide. Now, it is true that Palestinians don’t have equal rights in Israel, but there is a big difference between that and actual genocide. I don’t understand where this impulse for exaggeration comes from. It is very short-sighted.
Yeah I do. I don’t see how it’s problematic. They don’t have to be equally bad to be in the same category.
The conflict itself obviously is not in this category. This particular bout of conflict, progressively reducing the “safe” zones in Gaza (while bombing them anyway), calling Palestinians “animals”, cutting off food, water, medical supplies, connectivity and more, stripping people and taking photographs of them, putting hospitals under siege, and all of the daily horrors we’ve been reading about. That is something else.
To say this isn’t genocide because there are no gas chambers would be missing the point, I think. Hitler really gave a text book example. Israel is being a bit less obvious but the result is the same. Death and displacement of the unwanted.
Okay, let’s set aside magnitude then. Definition of genocide includes the aspect of intent. Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people. Not “people”, but “a people”, meaning basically a nation/race/tribe/etc. I don’t think that Israel is attempting to kill “the Palestinian people”. Do you?
Sure seems that way.
But I am sure all of those innocent children and babies are Hamas
Yeah I do! In fact that’s why I started this discussion with the example of the purposeful starvation and cutting off of water to Gaza. In my opinion this is an example of intentionality. This is not an accident or just a “side effect” or something. It is done purposefully. In the UN’s language, it is “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”
You say…
But the reality is that it’s “In whole or in part,” and Gaza is part of the Palestinian people. The important part isn’t the % intended to be killed. It’s primarily why they’re killed, and more specifically, if they are killed because they are members of a group. This is unavoidably true in Gaza.
You can see the issues with your take in other cases. The Cambodian genocide is a widely recognized genocide. They killed 25% of the pop and probably always intended to keep enough alive to run the farms. So not “The Cambodian people,” as a whole, but it doesn’t really matter.
That’s a good point about Cambodia, actually. Hmmm, so what is the difference between mass killing of political opponents like Stalin did, or mass killing for the sake creating terror and holding on to power like Mao did, or whatever it was that Papa Doc was up to in Haiti, and genocide? Or are all of those genocide according to this definition?
In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it seems more complicated than genocide. On the one hand, Israel has negotiated with moderate Palestinian governments for a two-state solution and various other aspects of self-government, including the provision of utilities, and they include Palestinians in all levels of government in Israel. On the other hand, at the moment they also oppress the Palestinian people and are in the process of trying to completely destroy Hamas in a pretty horribel way in Gaza. If it is actual “genocide” that Israel is after, they are pretty inconsistent about it.
If we go with your expansive interpretation of genocide, would you consider what Hamas did on October 7 to be genocide? I mean, they did “deliberately inflict on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” for the people on the affected kibbutzim and the music festival, and Hamas has as its declared intent the destruction of the state of Israel. Does the fact that Hamas lacks the means to kill all Jews make the massacre they were able to inflict any less genocidal? I don’t know, I haven’t classified Hamas’s Oct 7 action as “genocide” previously, but your more expansive definition and all of the analogies we are both using makes me wonder where the boundaries of genocide are, compared to other forms of mass killing.
A military blockade on a civilian area?
People detained in unknown locations?
Constant shelling of schools and hospitals?
Withholding medical supplies?
People left to die from preventable diseases in a preventable siege?
153:10 at the UNGA, with only ten countries (including the US and Israel, or “Azrael” as my grandma liked to call them) standing in the way of a humanitarian ceasefire?
Sounds like
a pretense togenocide to me.Literally all of this was happening in Ukraine and nobody serious was calling it a genocide. It is just urban warfare. It sucks but it is not genocide.
Nice whataboutism, but people are absolutely calling what Putin is doing a genocide against Ukrainians (and have been all along) because it is.
Well, at least you are consistent about not understanding the differences between war and genocide.
Putin isn’t trying to “genocide” Ukrainians…
Are you sure you understand what genocide means? It doesn’t mean “any bad war thing”
You are so close. So very close.
oh, so you do acknowledge that Putin’s actions have also been called genocidal, you’re just also being consistent at refusing to acknowledge genocide at all. well, at least you’re willing to acknowledge consistency in genocide, even if you’re unwilling to call it that.
still, you’d also have to say that if I don’t know what genocide means, then the UN also doesn’t know what genocide means when they accuse Putin of genocide in Ukraine (source) as they have of Israel in Palestine (source)…
Putin’s actions have not been found to be genocide by anyone reputable. I can say that while being vehemently against the invasion and all it stands for and additionally supporting Ukraine in every capacity.
Words matter. They are important to understand.
You have not gotten me in any logical inconsistency despite thinking you have. Genocide is an important concept to understand so you do not water it down when it actually happens. If every action in war is considered a war crime, no actions are war crimes and people will not believe your claims when you make them.
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Removed by mod
Edit: before you read this, it’s worth noting the following:
I wasn’t replying to you… I was replying to @galloog1@lemmy.world, so not sure why you took it as a response to you? Maybe a technical error? In any case I don’t agree.
You said:
My conclusion is that you must have been sniffing glue because how else would you “read” this in my comments above… Then you do some more analysis of what I mean and believe, but all of it is bullshit standing on the one-legged “conclusion” that you made.
Now to your links…
The first is titled something completely unrelated to start with: UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine finds continued systematic and widespread use of torture and indiscriminate attacks harming civilians. No one denies this.
It goes on to read:
Good, there we have it then. Putin is bad, etc, but there doesn’t seem to be much that that commission has found except for rhetoric in Russia, but generally Putin’s actions are those of an invader, and if more inquiries are made about genocide in Ukraine, I would be an idiot to deny that.
The second link is an entire document dedicated to genocide against Palestinians. Something that has been ongoing for over 7 decades. The title reads “Gaza: UN experts call on international community to prevent genocide against the Palestinian people”
Not an inquiry. Not based on “rhetoric in the media”, but based on Israel’s continued aggression.
In any case, it seems that Russia is only brought to comparison here just to make Israel look like a “poor victim of double standards”. You know, not from your genuine interest in human lives or anything… just the genuine interest to make Israel’s actions acceptable.
So you admit that UN calls what’s happening in Palestine and in Ukraine a genocide. It seems that I’m right, and then comment is wrong and you’re arguing against the evidence.
My interest is in the correct classification of war crimes to ensure they are less likely to happen. I have met very few people in this community who understand what war crimes are and how they differ from general warfare. If all warfare constitutes war crimes, then war crimes have no meaning and you enable them to happen.