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How can you type something like this after the numerous independent reports of IDF behaviour, civilian casualties in Gaza, and the treatment of Palestinians in

by torlok 2y ago

How can you type something like this after the numerous independent reports of IDF behaviour, civilian casualties in Gaza, and the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank? I can't believe anybody can just ignore reality like that.

Manuel_D 2y ago
Can you define the term "genocide"?
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  The deliberate killing or displacement of a significant part of a population, typically on ethnic or religious grounds. As some examples, Nazi Germany's slaughter of Jewish, Romani, Armenian, gay and other minority people. Serbian slaughter of Muslim people in Kosovo, most notably at Srebenica. Israeli slaughter of Arabic people living in Gaza.
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    > The deliberate killing or displacement of a significant part of a population, typically on ethnic or religious grounds. As some examples, Nazi Germany's slaughter of Jewish, Romani, Armenian, gay and other minority people. Serbian slaughter of Muslim people in Kosovo, most notably at Srebenica. All of these conflicts saw large (upwards of 30% of the population) killed. > Israeli slaughter of Arabic people living in Gaza. Even if we trust the Palestinian government's own estimates, the death toll in Gaza has been under 2% of the population. One of these is an order of magnitude less than the others. Furthermore, it's an incredibly inconsistent application of the term. Did we invoke the word "genocide" in the Iran-Iraq conflict? In the Syrian civil war? In the American Civil War? Was Germany a victim of "genocide" at the hands of the Allies in WWII? All of these involved proportional loss of life greater than the conflict in Gaza. I, and most people, do not regard these as genocide. The term "genocide" apparently has a vastly different thresholds when it involves Israel.
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      > Even if we trust the Palestinian government's own estimates, the death toll in Gaza has been under 2% of the population. In one year, and only counting direct deaths. By your logic, Hitler wasn't a monster in the first year or two since the beginning of the Holocaust, since not that many people had died yet, right? We should have kept selling arms to Germany, since it wasn't yet a genocide, only 2% of the population had been killed. The government of Israel is telling everyone exactly what they are planning to do - rid Gaza of Hamas and anyone supporting them, including people "supporting Hamas" by, say, using and paying for hospitals sponsored by Hamas (as in, the government of Gaza). They are telling everyone that they believe Palestinians are collectively responsible for October 7th, not just those who did the killing, not just those who provided logistics, but all those who stood by and did nothing to stop it. They are leveling virtually every piece of infrastructure in Gaza: every single hospital in Gaza has been bombed and destroyed, every university, every high-school, most schools and kindergartens, vast swaths of apartment blocks. American doctors have spoken about how many toddlers they have seen shot in the head or chest by IDF soldiers. Sure, it's taking a while to kill 1.5 million people. But all indications, of all kinds, from actions, to words, to assassinating peace negotiatiors, UN forces, Red Cross forces, journalists, aid workers of all kinds: Israel is making its intentions for Gaza extremely clear, and the genocide is mounting every single day. You truly have to not want to see it to say all of these things. And your other examples are misguided. Civil wars completely blur the line between combatants and non-combatants, so it gets much harder to distinguish bloody battles from one-sided slaughter that can amount to genocide. Even so, Syria's president has definitely been accused of war crimes, even though his actions were never so systematic to amount to genocide. In the Iran-Iraq conflict, we were on the side carrying out the aggression, and access to information about how the war was going was not that easy; even so, nothing like the systematic wide scale wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure happened, though there were clear war crimes committed during that conflict, and many who cried out against them. Germany was the aggressor in WWII; but the (mutual) carpet bombing that leveled large parts of cities and killed civilians intentionally and indiscriminately could be called genocide by today's standards, and many look back with a critical eye at Allied actions towards the end of the war (even more so in Japan, with the fire bombing of Tokyo often being called an atrocity). And except for WWII, none of these resulted in this many casualties in so short a time frame, not even close. Especially when you consider how one-sided the slaughter in Gaza is, with Israel having almost no losses whatsoever since their invasion started, at least not from Gaza.
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      What ethnic cleansing of the Arab world's entire Jewish population are you talking about, specifically? Just like in Europe, there have been many waves of better and worse relationships, from relative acceptance to Nazi-like persecution, in various places and at various times, even looking just at the last hundred years. Still, to a great extent, the biggest contributing factor to the current extremely low Jewish populations in the Middle East outside Israel has been migration or flight to Israel. For example, in Iran, even before the Islamic Revolution and the wave of antisemitic persecution that followed it, which could be described at least as ethnic cleansing if not outright genocide, there had been significant migration of Iranian Jews to Israel.
      - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
        [flagged]
        tsimionescu 2y ago
        I agree that the line can sometimes be blurry. But when you directly tell the vast majority of the population of a region (>80%) to flee their homes and migrate south on foot or be killed in bombings, and then still kill more than 20 000 women and children, there is no equivocation. This is genocide.
      - jedimind 2y ago
        The situation described in Iran after the Islamic Revolution did not even remotely constitute genocide or similar. Genocide is defined as the intentional action to destroy a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. While the Jewish community in Iran has faced discrimination, emigration, and instances of harassment and persecution, these conditions do not amount to genocide. The term genocide involves deliberate acts aimed at the physical extermination of a group, and this has not been the case with the Jewish community in Iran, despite the difficulties they have faced. The Iranian government officially recognizes Judaism, allows for Jewish religious practices, and Jews also have a reserved seat in Parliament. There has never been widespread killings or any organized campaign targeting Jews specifically for eradication in Iran, except for isolated cases against jews accused of spying for America and/or Israel. None of this was ethnic-cleansing or genocide. The establishment of Israel in 1948 and its Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to Jews worldwide, made Israel an appealing destination for many Jewish emigrants from Iran, that's why the overwhelming majority emigrated, but there were also substantial numbers who resettled in the United States, particularly in cities like Los Angeles and New York.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  Genocide is violence that targets individuals due to their membership in a group, and has the goal of destroying that group. "They're not killing them fast enough" does not make it not genocide. I also think it's a bit odd to argue about the definition of the word. During this last escalation, Israel's government has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, including almost 17,000 children, and injured about 100'000 people in Gaza. Even if you come to the conclusion that this does not technically qualify as a genocide, that doesn't help any of the people living in Gaza. It doesn't help the Israelis, either, most of whom would probably prefer to live in peace. It seems callous and pointless to look at what is currently happening and take that as an opportunity to start arguing about the definition of a word.
  - Manuel_D 2y ago
    [flagged]

by torlok 2y ago

Manuel_D 2y ago

Can you define the term "genocide"?

tsimionescu 2y ago
The deliberate killing or displacement of a significant part of a population, typically on ethnic or religious grounds. As some examples, Nazi Germany's slaughter of Jewish, Romani, Armenian, gay and other minority people. Serbian slaughter of Muslim people in Kosovo, most notably at Srebenica. Israeli slaughter of Arabic people living in Gaza.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  > The deliberate killing or displacement of a significant part of a population, typically on ethnic or religious grounds. As some examples, Nazi Germany's slaughter of Jewish, Romani, Armenian, gay and other minority people. Serbian slaughter of Muslim people in Kosovo, most notably at Srebenica. All of these conflicts saw large (upwards of 30% of the population) killed. > Israeli slaughter of Arabic people living in Gaza. Even if we trust the Palestinian government's own estimates, the death toll in Gaza has been under 2% of the population. One of these is an order of magnitude less than the others. Furthermore, it's an incredibly inconsistent application of the term. Did we invoke the word "genocide" in the Iran-Iraq conflict? In the Syrian civil war? In the American Civil War? Was Germany a victim of "genocide" at the hands of the Allies in WWII? All of these involved proportional loss of life greater than the conflict in Gaza. I, and most people, do not regard these as genocide. The term "genocide" apparently has a vastly different thresholds when it involves Israel.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    > Even if we trust the Palestinian government's own estimates, the death toll in Gaza has been under 2% of the population. In one year, and only counting direct deaths. By your logic, Hitler wasn't a monster in the first year or two since the beginning of the Holocaust, since not that many people had died yet, right? We should have kept selling arms to Germany, since it wasn't yet a genocide, only 2% of the population had been killed. The government of Israel is telling everyone exactly what they are planning to do - rid Gaza of Hamas and anyone supporting them, including people "supporting Hamas" by, say, using and paying for hospitals sponsored by Hamas (as in, the government of Gaza). They are telling everyone that they believe Palestinians are collectively responsible for October 7th, not just those who did the killing, not just those who provided logistics, but all those who stood by and did nothing to stop it. They are leveling virtually every piece of infrastructure in Gaza: every single hospital in Gaza has been bombed and destroyed, every university, every high-school, most schools and kindergartens, vast swaths of apartment blocks. American doctors have spoken about how many toddlers they have seen shot in the head or chest by IDF soldiers. Sure, it's taking a while to kill 1.5 million people. But all indications, of all kinds, from actions, to words, to assassinating peace negotiatiors, UN forces, Red Cross forces, journalists, aid workers of all kinds: Israel is making its intentions for Gaza extremely clear, and the genocide is mounting every single day. You truly have to not want to see it to say all of these things. And your other examples are misguided. Civil wars completely blur the line between combatants and non-combatants, so it gets much harder to distinguish bloody battles from one-sided slaughter that can amount to genocide. Even so, Syria's president has definitely been accused of war crimes, even though his actions were never so systematic to amount to genocide. In the Iran-Iraq conflict, we were on the side carrying out the aggression, and access to information about how the war was going was not that easy; even so, nothing like the systematic wide scale wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure happened, though there were clear war crimes committed during that conflict, and many who cried out against them. Germany was the aggressor in WWII; but the (mutual) carpet bombing that leveled large parts of cities and killed civilians intentionally and indiscriminately could be called genocide by today's standards, and many look back with a critical eye at Allied actions towards the end of the war (even more so in Japan, with the fire bombing of Tokyo often being called an atrocity). And except for WWII, none of these resulted in this many casualties in so short a time frame, not even close. Especially when you consider how one-sided the slaughter in Gaza is, with Israel having almost no losses whatsoever since their invasion started, at least not from Gaza.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    What ethnic cleansing of the Arab world's entire Jewish population are you talking about, specifically? Just like in Europe, there have been many waves of better and worse relationships, from relative acceptance to Nazi-like persecution, in various places and at various times, even looking just at the last hundred years. Still, to a great extent, the biggest contributing factor to the current extremely low Jewish populations in the Middle East outside Israel has been migration or flight to Israel. For example, in Iran, even before the Islamic Revolution and the wave of antisemitic persecution that followed it, which could be described at least as ethnic cleansing if not outright genocide, there had been significant migration of Iranian Jews to Israel.
    - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - tsimionescu 2y ago
        I agree that the line can sometimes be blurry. But when you directly tell the vast majority of the population of a region (>80%) to flee their homes and migrate south on foot or be killed in bombings, and then still kill more than 20 000 women and children, there is no equivocation. This is genocide.
    - jedimind 2y ago
      The situation described in Iran after the Islamic Revolution did not even remotely constitute genocide or similar. Genocide is defined as the intentional action to destroy a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. While the Jewish community in Iran has faced discrimination, emigration, and instances of harassment and persecution, these conditions do not amount to genocide. The term genocide involves deliberate acts aimed at the physical extermination of a group, and this has not been the case with the Jewish community in Iran, despite the difficulties they have faced. The Iranian government officially recognizes Judaism, allows for Jewish religious practices, and Jews also have a reserved seat in Parliament. There has never been widespread killings or any organized campaign targeting Jews specifically for eradication in Iran, except for isolated cases against jews accused of spying for America and/or Israel. None of this was ethnic-cleansing or genocide. The establishment of Israel in 1948 and its Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to Jews worldwide, made Israel an appealing destination for many Jewish emigrants from Iran, that's why the overwhelming majority emigrated, but there were also substantial numbers who resettled in the United States, particularly in cities like Los Angeles and New York.
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
Genocide is violence that targets individuals due to their membership in a group, and has the goal of destroying that group. "They're not killing them fast enough" does not make it not genocide. I also think it's a bit odd to argue about the definition of the word. During this last escalation, Israel's government has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, including almost 17,000 children, and injured about 100'000 people in Gaza. Even if you come to the conclusion that this does not technically qualify as a genocide, that doesn't help any of the people living in Gaza. It doesn't help the Israelis, either, most of whom would probably prefer to live in peace. It seems callous and pointless to look at what is currently happening and take that as an opportunity to start arguing about the definition of a word.
- Manuel_D 2y ago
  [flagged]