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It’s strange to me when otherwise intelligent people call this genocide. Genocide is an attempt to exterminate an entire people. Israel is a nuclear armed natio

It’s strange to me when otherwise intelligent people call this genocide. Genocide is an attempt to exterminate an entire people. Israel is a nuclear armed nation fighting against the equivalent of Dayton, OH. If genocide were the goal this war would have lasted one day. Collective punishment, or a long term ethnic cleansing would be much more accurate, but you’re just repeating what you read unthinkingly if you say genocide.

khazhoux 8mo ago
“Your honor and members of the jury: my client could have easily committed way worse crimes!”
propagandist 8mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humanitarian_and_human_rights_groups_accusing_Israel_of_genocide_in_Gaza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humanitarian_and_human...
wayeq 8mo ago
> If genocide were the goal this war would have lasted one day. You can't infer intent that way. Nuking Gaza isn't free, it would introduce an existential threat to Israel. They are toeing a dangerous line already, and using WMDs would align other countries against them really quickly. Putin isn't avoiding using nukes on Ukraine because he's a nice guy.
- neoromantique 8mo ago
  Why does israel use expensive precise munitions wherever possible rather than their stockpiles of much more deadly "dumb" ones?
  - NickC25 8mo ago
    because it would be admitting to the world that it has said weapons. Israel has always said it doesn't have nuclear weapons. They would have absolutely zero sympathy going forward from any major nation if they decided to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza, and they want that land so rendering that land uninhabitable might not be a good idea.
    - neoromantique 8mo ago
      by dumb munitions I mean older bombs vs JDAM and alike. Anyone who seriously speaks words 'nuclear weapon' and 'gaza' together is basically admitting he has 0 clue about the situation and is uninformed larper for either side.
    - thenaturalist 8mo ago
      The argument conveniently always goes such that Israel is the baddie. Curious how that goes, especially since Israels ulterior motives are always implied, they're not taken by their word. And Islamists, who share their motives openly with anyone willing to listen are ignored.
      - mattmaroon 8mo ago
        Genocide was literally in Hamas’s charter and yet somehow they’re the good guys because modern leftists can’t think past “colonialism bad”.
        NickC25 8mo ago
        I never said they were the good guys. Fuck Hamas. But let's not equate an inexperienced group of starved and impoverished guerilla fighters with a first-world, nuclear-armed genocidal ethnostate.
  - wayeq 8mo ago
    maybe because they are trying to act ethically toward a murderous neighbor that is conducting asymmetric warfare and those are the best tools to accomplish that. or, maybe because they came to the conclusion that the repercussions on the world stage of even more horrific media coming out of Gaza is too steep of a price to pay. i don't know which, but i do know it is naive to conclude that because they COULD end the war in a day and did not, they are driven by morality and ethical concerns rather than pragmatic ones.
    - mattmaroon 8mo ago
      I didn’t say they were driven by morality, though I’m sure they are more so than Hamas. I just think what they’re doing is ethnic cleansing (which is not a compliment) rather than genocide. I’m actually pretty sure that most of the people who call it by “genocide” don’t know the difference between the two.
  - tdeck 8mo ago
    Expensive for whom? US taxpayers?
- mattmaroon 8mo ago
  They have remotely guided bulldozers and enough non-nuclear weapons to do the job several times over conventionally too though.
superb_dev 8mo ago
How is long term ethnic cleansing different from genocide?
- mattmaroon 8mo ago
  Ethnic cleansing is the attempt to remove a people from the area. It can be accomplished by methods other than killing. Genocide is an attempt to kill them all. The Venn diagram has a lot of overlap for sure but they are not the same.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
zorked 8mo ago
Your are using an argument similar to the repugnant logic of Holocaust deniers. They use claims that Germany could have easily killed Jews /even faster/ as an argument to claim that they didn't commit genocide /at all/.
- erezsh 8mo ago
  It's a ridiculous argument. The Nazis went through a LOT of effort and resources to gather Jews from all the corners of Europe, and even more effort into exterminating them as fast as they could, within the logistical and economic constraints of fighting a 3 front war. There's no comparison at all to the ease with which Israel could just drop a couple of bombs on Gaza, had it decided to do so.
  - sosomoxie 8mo ago
    The only thing stopping Israel from doing that is international outrage. Israel is entirely dependent on its benefactor states like the US and, while it pushes the limits to the extreme, must at least contend with world opinion.
    - erezsh 8mo ago
      That's like me saying you're a murderer, but you just haven't killed anyone yet because you're afraid of going to jail. Maybe it's true, but it's a bit of a silly argument, isn't it? In western society, we judge people based on their actions.
      - sosomoxie 8mo ago
        Israel has murdered tens of thousands of people. Your argument doesn't hold.
        mattmaroon 8mo ago
        That’s not what murder means. They were attacked by a government and went to war.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
yosamino 8mo ago
Yes, there is a long term effort by the State of Israel to remove Palestinian life from Palestinian land. The term "genocide" noes not mean "kill every single member of a group", it refers to the destruction of the group itself by whatever means. > you’re just repeating what you read unthinkingly if you say genocide. Your policy of deeming everybody who does not have the same opinion as you to be too stupid, is smug, self serving and lazy. See, I could just also go ahead and tell you that you are too "unthinkingly" to know that "ethnic cleansing" is a euphemism for "genocide" and that "long term ethnic cleansing" is exactly congruent in meaning with "genocide" (look it up). Instead of doing that, I would like you to consider that when I say that the state of Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people, I have thought long and hard about whether that is the appropriate term, and without taking it lightly, I have for myself concluded that that is actually the correct term.
padjo 8mo ago
So by your logic if you slowly exterminate a people its not genocide?
- mattmaroon 8mo ago
  You cannot exterminate a people too slowly because they can (and do) move. Ethnic cleansing can happen over centuries (see the last 500 years of our hemisphere for examples). Israel has let tens of thousands of them out of the country. Nazis did not let injured Jews go to hospitals in other countries. Which, again, is not dismissing war crimes, or denying that any have occurred. Just pointing out, this is not genocide but ethnic cleansing. Israel has a vocal right wing faction that advocates for ethnic cleansing, and a vocal left wing that is against it.
  - manyaoman 8mo ago
    That definition of genocide is so narrow that it would also exclude the Armenian genocide, since many were allowed to flee.
    - mattmaroon 8mo ago
      I can't find any evidence that they were allowed to flee. They organize "mass deportations" that were really just dumping them into the desert without food or water to die. Some did flee, just as some Jews fled Germany and occupied countries during WW2. If you've got a source for that I'd love to see it, neither Google nor ChatGPT seem to agree.
      - manyaoman 8mo ago
        Please first tell me what kind of evidence you would consider sufficient, otherwise you’ll just dismiss whatever I present.
        mattmaroon 8mo ago
        I don’t know why I’d dismiss it, I’m not a shill for the Ottoman Empire and am interested in history. Any documentation from a historical record? Contemporary news articles?
aa-jv 8mo ago
>If genocide were the goal this war would have lasted one day. And the retaliation from the rest of the world in those circumstances would be swift and measured in hours, and there would be a smoking pile of rubble in that particular part of the world that would be uninhabitable for centuries. So instead, Israel is cooking the frog.
tdeck 8mo ago
This is one of the worst pro-Israel arguments; I can't believe people still make it. Israel isn't going to drop a nuke on the "holy land", where they want to start building Jewish settlements, a few dozen miles from Tel Aviv. No matter how much they hate Palestinians, people don't want to live in an irradiated wasteland.
- mattmaroon 8mo ago
  By nuclear-armed I’m pointing out that they’re a well-funded, first class military, not that they’re going to nuke the place. They’re arguably the second strongest military in the world. They could have achieved genocide very quickly with conventional weapons and boots on the ground too.

khazhoux 8mo ago

“Your honor and members of the jury: my client could have easily committed way worse crimes!”

propagandist 8mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humanitarian_and_human_rights_groups_accusing_Israel_of_genocide_in_Gaza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humanitarian_and_human...

wayeq 8mo ago

> If genocide were the goal this war would have lasted one day. You can't infer intent that way. Nuking Gaza isn't free, it would introduce an existential threat to Israel. They are toeing a dangerous line already, and using WMDs would align other countries against them really quickly. Putin isn't avoiding using nukes on Ukraine because he's a nice guy.

neoromantique 8mo ago
Why does israel use expensive precise munitions wherever possible rather than their stockpiles of much more deadly "dumb" ones?
- NickC25 8mo ago
  because it would be admitting to the world that it has said weapons. Israel has always said it doesn't have nuclear weapons. They would have absolutely zero sympathy going forward from any major nation if they decided to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza, and they want that land so rendering that land uninhabitable might not be a good idea.
  - neoromantique 8mo ago
    by dumb munitions I mean older bombs vs JDAM and alike. Anyone who seriously speaks words 'nuclear weapon' and 'gaza' together is basically admitting he has 0 clue about the situation and is uninformed larper for either side.
  - thenaturalist 8mo ago
    The argument conveniently always goes such that Israel is the baddie. Curious how that goes, especially since Israels ulterior motives are always implied, they're not taken by their word. And Islamists, who share their motives openly with anyone willing to listen are ignored.
    - mattmaroon 8mo ago
      Genocide was literally in Hamas’s charter and yet somehow they’re the good guys because modern leftists can’t think past “colonialism bad”.
      - NickC25 8mo ago
        I never said they were the good guys. Fuck Hamas. But let's not equate an inexperienced group of starved and impoverished guerilla fighters with a first-world, nuclear-armed genocidal ethnostate.
- wayeq 8mo ago
  maybe because they are trying to act ethically toward a murderous neighbor that is conducting asymmetric warfare and those are the best tools to accomplish that. or, maybe because they came to the conclusion that the repercussions on the world stage of even more horrific media coming out of Gaza is too steep of a price to pay. i don't know which, but i do know it is naive to conclude that because they COULD end the war in a day and did not, they are driven by morality and ethical concerns rather than pragmatic ones.
  - mattmaroon 8mo ago
    I didn’t say they were driven by morality, though I’m sure they are more so than Hamas. I just think what they’re doing is ethnic cleansing (which is not a compliment) rather than genocide. I’m actually pretty sure that most of the people who call it by “genocide” don’t know the difference between the two.
- tdeck 8mo ago
  Expensive for whom? US taxpayers?
mattmaroon 8mo ago
They have remotely guided bulldozers and enough non-nuclear weapons to do the job several times over conventionally too though.

superb_dev 8mo ago

How is long term ethnic cleansing different from genocide?

mattmaroon 8mo ago
Ethnic cleansing is the attempt to remove a people from the area. It can be accomplished by methods other than killing. Genocide is an attempt to kill them all. The Venn diagram has a lot of overlap for sure but they are not the same.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]

zorked 8mo ago

Your are using an argument similar to the repugnant logic of Holocaust deniers. They use claims that Germany could have easily killed Jews /even faster/ as an argument to claim that they didn't commit genocide /at all/.

erezsh 8mo ago
It's a ridiculous argument. The Nazis went through a LOT of effort and resources to gather Jews from all the corners of Europe, and even more effort into exterminating them as fast as they could, within the logistical and economic constraints of fighting a 3 front war. There's no comparison at all to the ease with which Israel could just drop a couple of bombs on Gaza, had it decided to do so.
- sosomoxie 8mo ago
  The only thing stopping Israel from doing that is international outrage. Israel is entirely dependent on its benefactor states like the US and, while it pushes the limits to the extreme, must at least contend with world opinion.
  - erezsh 8mo ago
    That's like me saying you're a murderer, but you just haven't killed anyone yet because you're afraid of going to jail. Maybe it's true, but it's a bit of a silly argument, isn't it? In western society, we judge people based on their actions.
    - sosomoxie 8mo ago
      Israel has murdered tens of thousands of people. Your argument doesn't hold.
      - mattmaroon 8mo ago
        That’s not what murder means. They were attacked by a government and went to war.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

yosamino 8mo ago

Yes, there is a long term effort by the State of Israel to remove Palestinian life from Palestinian land. The term "genocide" noes not mean "kill every single member of a group", it refers to the destruction of the group itself by whatever means. > you’re just repeating what you read unthinkingly if you say genocide. Your policy of deeming everybody who does not have the same opinion as you to be too stupid, is smug, self serving and lazy. See, I could just also go ahead and tell you that you are too "unthinkingly" to know that "ethnic cleansing" is a euphemism for "genocide" and that "long term ethnic cleansing" is exactly congruent in meaning with "genocide" (look it up). Instead of doing that, I would like you to consider that when I say that the state of Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people, I have thought long and hard about whether that is the appropriate term, and without taking it lightly, I have for myself concluded that that is actually the correct term.

padjo 8mo ago

So by your logic if you slowly exterminate a people its not genocide?

mattmaroon 8mo ago
You cannot exterminate a people too slowly because they can (and do) move. Ethnic cleansing can happen over centuries (see the last 500 years of our hemisphere for examples). Israel has let tens of thousands of them out of the country. Nazis did not let injured Jews go to hospitals in other countries. Which, again, is not dismissing war crimes, or denying that any have occurred. Just pointing out, this is not genocide but ethnic cleansing. Israel has a vocal right wing faction that advocates for ethnic cleansing, and a vocal left wing that is against it.
- manyaoman 8mo ago
  That definition of genocide is so narrow that it would also exclude the Armenian genocide, since many were allowed to flee.
  - mattmaroon 8mo ago
    I can't find any evidence that they were allowed to flee. They organize "mass deportations" that were really just dumping them into the desert without food or water to die. Some did flee, just as some Jews fled Germany and occupied countries during WW2. If you've got a source for that I'd love to see it, neither Google nor ChatGPT seem to agree.
    - manyaoman 8mo ago
      Please first tell me what kind of evidence you would consider sufficient, otherwise you’ll just dismiss whatever I present.
      - mattmaroon 8mo ago
        I don’t know why I’d dismiss it, I’m not a shill for the Ottoman Empire and am interested in history. Any documentation from a historical record? Contemporary news articles?

aa-jv 8mo ago

>If genocide were the goal this war would have lasted one day. And the retaliation from the rest of the world in those circumstances would be swift and measured in hours, and there would be a smoking pile of rubble in that particular part of the world that would be uninhabitable for centuries. So instead, Israel is cooking the frog.

tdeck 8mo ago

This is one of the worst pro-Israel arguments; I can't believe people still make it. Israel isn't going to drop a nuke on the "holy land", where they want to start building Jewish settlements, a few dozen miles from Tel Aviv. No matter how much they hate Palestinians, people don't want to live in an irradiated wasteland.

mattmaroon 8mo ago
By nuclear-armed I’m pointing out that they’re a well-funded, first class military, not that they’re going to nuke the place. They’re arguably the second strongest military in the world. They could have achieved genocide very quickly with conventional weapons and boots on the ground too.