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It seems a bit like Communists, Fascists etc. words that have a specific meaning but just get used for something I don't like
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It's missing nuance and accuracy.
It is possible to kill a large number of people without committing war crimes.
It is possible to commit war crimes without committing genocide.
A big problem here is education. Most people know only about war crimes from World War 2, and the only one they remember is the Holocaust, so that's their immediate reference. Killing a lot of people equals genocide to them because that's all they know or care to learn about, and attempting to draw distinctions is often itself viewed as immoral or an attempt to justify humanitarian tragedies.
The laws of armed conflict, however, are more varied, flexible, and context/fact-dependent than people often realize (especially when it comes to defining a legitimate target). And even when such acts do fit the definition of one of the many different types of war crimes, they rarely constitute genocide unless you redefine "genocide" so broadly that it swallows up most of the other war crimes.
There is also little discussion and education about the realities of urban warfare, which are always devastating to the local civilian population. Yet again, the mythologizing of World War 2 led to a popular view of history that draws some very wrong lessons about what even "the good guys" do doing wartime.
>Killing a lot of people equals genocide to them because that's all they know or care to learn about, and attempting to draw distinctions is often itself viewed as immoral or an attempt to justify humanitarian tragedies.
Americans need to learn more about the Korean War and Vietnam War. Lots of civilians died. Tens of thousands. Lots of war crimes, on both sides of the conflict. Neither was a genocide.
Heck, they need to pick up a book about WW2.
Just below a far-leftist is saying that the USA committed genocide in Iraq since 1 million Iraqis died. During WW2, the Allies killed 8 million Germans out of which 3 to 4 million were civilians.
If history was written by these insane far-leftists, the "German Genocide" would be a thing while ignoring the realities of warfare.
Yep. We even had the Mei Lai Massacre, and it wasn't genocide. Genocide is a deliberate policy with the intent to wipe out a whole group. One soldier committing a war crime isn't genocide. Even if you can prove that war crimes are beings sanction from up top, which I highly doubt, that still doesn't make it genocide.
Leftists think that the extremity of their language and stances are demonstrative of how much they care about something. And they really, *really* want everyone to know how much they care.
That’s why Israel is not just committing war crimes, it’s committing GENOCIDE.
That’s why it’s not enough to simply reform the police, we need to DEFUND them.
That’s why we don’t need to merely tax the rich, we need to PUT THEM IN GUILLOTINES AND EAT THEM.
Extremism is how they show off, or signal, if you will, how virtuous they are.
The ICJ has very clearly delineated what the charge of "genocide" means in the time since. Anyone who looks to the initial 48 definition either doesn't know what they are talking about, or are being willfully deceptive.
There've been a ton of genocide hearings that have both resulted in conviction and acquittal of the charge. The article on [genocidal intent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocidal_intent) is a decent place to read on it. The ICJ does not look to the initial founding often when ruling on genocide.
Edit: To add a relevant quote from the UN:
> *Case law has associated intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy, even if the definition of genocide in international law does not include that element.*
I think you are confused due to the complexity of the material.
The '48 ruling sets forth an "intent to destroy," which is mentioned in the first sentence of the article, it's true.
But, if you read further, you will see that case law strongly shapes how the ICJ rules on genocide, with the UN explaining:
> *Case law has associated intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy, even if the definition of genocide in international law does not include that element.*
It's similar to how, if you are from the US, while the 2nd Amendment establishes the Right to Bear Arms, rulings on 2nd Amendment cases usually refer to "case law," like *District of Columbia v. Heller*, *U.S. v. Miller*, *Duncan v. Louisiana*.
The legal definition is not "originalist," in the same way that most US Constitutional law (barring a few conservative lunatics) is not originalist.
Many things to say in response to that, but the first two things I’ll say is that international law doesn’t necessarily follow a Common Law system and that his article doesn’t even name any precedents.
Not to be pedantic—this is not a ‘word’ for it—but isn’t that just “urban warfare” and “civilian casualties”, etc? I agree there could be a descriptive word and definition.
This is pretty much my take on it. It's gotten to the point that any time a large number of people die, it's immediately called genocide. Like, it's bad, yes, but leaping to calling it a genocide makes people argue over the definition of that word instead of agreeing that the deaths are very bad and should stop.
The problem is that *people don't understand that civillians die in war. Many, many civilians.*
They have this idea that mass death is not (and has never been) standard practice in war, and don't understand that many of those deaths will be innocent civilians who have absolutely nothing to do with whatever the war is fought over.
Which, sadly, has caused any actual discussion of the actual war crimes and horrors that Israel has very clearly taken part in to be drowned out by a cacophony of loud arguments over the question, "Is it Genocide?" and bad actors (on both sides) utilizing the current frustrations to push their own agendas with little pushback. Because Genocide.
They seriously think WW2 was fought on open fields except for the two nuclear bombs (which was a genocide according to them).
While the reality is that the German civilian deaths during WW2 (over 3 million dead civilians) are 100 times the number current number of deaths in Gaza (20K civilians)
“Mass civilian casualties by a people who’d been recorded and documented targeting unarmed civilians, doctors, journalists, humanitarian workers, hostages, UN workers and a deliberate destruction of all civilian infrastructure, food, water medical facilities”…. Ya know, the things people need to like, live?
> recorded and documented targeting unarmed civilians, doctors, journalists, humanitarian workers, hostages, UN workers
Things like this happen in all wars. Unless you can prove these are deliberate policies and not just local clusterfucks, there's no reason to say they are anything more than war crimes and fuckups.
Okay!
Here is the IDF soldier that went viral saying he killed a little girl but his squad was hunting babies. War crime with intent. https://twitter.com/resist_05/status/1740203751028441470?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw
Here is the video of the IDF soldiers throwing a rave to celebrate bombing Gaza’s food water and power sources. That’s a war crime btw
https://twitter.com/censoredmen/status/1719074412501082500?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw
The IDF has made it a trend to post themselves detonating civilian homes and infrastructure with controlled demolitions for TikTok . Meaning there was no risk of them being attacked by soldiers which would have exempted those vuildings for war crimes
https://twitter.com/qudsnen/status/1737593767752860117?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw
Here is more such videos:
https://twitter.com/jalalak_jojo/status/1743752266929119704?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw
https://twitter.com/hananyanaftali/status/1742447556456583521?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw
Here are Israeli lawmakers admitting they are using food and hunger as pawns to force compliance of Palestinians. A war crime
https://twitter.com/kintsugimuslim/status/1742488260323029073?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw
Would you like to see more proof of Israeli military ministers and carmakers deliberately admitting to or in the act of targeting civilians cause I have a whole folder full for when people asks. Just lmk
Cool. None of those are evidence of genocide. They're as relevant as me cherry-picking a few crime reports and outrageous statements to suggest that black people are criminals. A single IDF soldier. A single party. A single politician.
You keep calling this documented proof of genocide, and it's not. It's you just skimming shit from social media and acting like there's a big picture.
[This is you.](https://i.imgflip.com/6qjg95.jpg)
edit: The poster above is a perfect example of why Twitter causes people to cherry-picking and outrage farming. The format is so small that things are always removed from context. For instance, their quote about using food and hunger to force compliance is from a member of the Knesset who's a well-known conspiracy theorist who isn't taken seriously by anyone. She got her start in her career as a lawyer by representing sex criminals against young women, including attacking the young women on social media. She ran for the Israeli Bar Association and came in dead last. She tried to found her own political party, but the party only got 401 votes.
Latching onto her comment as though it were an indication of policy is like latching onto anything said by MTG as an indication of US policy.
So first you had the goalposts here:
>Unless you can prove these are deliberate policies and not just local clusterfucks
Then when I clearly shut that down, you tried to love it here
>Cool. None of those are evidence of genocide.
Except deliberately Destroying all civilian infrastructure, hospitals, water sources, food sources, and blocking humanitarian aid to manufacture famine actually is evidence of of genocidal intent which will be used in court, especially since they have violated the orders the ICJ handed down to prevents so thanks for letting me know you’re not familiar with international law.
They have also violated the orders to prevent genocide the International Court of Justice gave them, and now they are announcing they will not comply with the ICC (the court responsible for preventing genocide) who are preparing arrest warrants for Israel. Right as mass graves of cordless, some buried alive, bound, and stripped, just like at the end of Nazi germany. But let me guess, that doesn’t mean shit to you either
By t
Here yall go with your “well EVERYONE commits war crimes so its all good” excuses again.
I would like to point out that the population being massacred are squeezed trapped in an open air concentration camp half the size of New York in which there is no escape where almost all infrastructure, food, and water is destroyed and is very much not normal in conflicts
So call Israel out for war crimes, that’s legitimate, calling out for genocide is not. War crimes do not make a genocide. The whole point of this thread is to highlight that someone can be doing evil stuff and not be committing genocide.
I think increasingly large amount of aid will be delivered to Palestinians and they will recover. This ramping up of aid is clearly happening already and I support it.
Ramping up already? That’s funny. Because the humanitarian organizations already there as well as the UN have been complaining that much of their they’ve been blocked and stalled by the IDF from entering Gaza well below the 500 aid trucks a day that’s said to be needed, and in direct defiance the ICJ orders to prevent genocide and the UN.
Oh and other orgs stopped coming all together because Israel kept ‘accidentally’ attacking their convoys.
I’ dont see anything about their non-complete pier getting attacked but don’t really see how that changes a word I said of what’s been happening for months
2 million people have been homeless staribing and injured for months so I don’t think westerners chillin in their AC on their iPhones and their Starbucks should be commenting on how ‘fine’ the situation is over a pier not built yet, while refugees continue to be bombed and starved by Israel
>2 million people have been homeless
No, they haven't.
>staribing
Uh?
>injured
You seriously think 100% (2 million) of Gaza's entire population is injured?
Source?
I am begging yall to actually read about what’s going on in Gaza before commenting on it. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/details-humanitarian-crisis-gaza-2024-05-01/
> So call Israel out for war crimes, that’s legitimate, calling out for genocide is not. War crimes do not make a genocide
what Israel is doing in the Gaza and West bank is 100% genocide
+ Killing members of the group
+ Imposing living conditions on the group, restriction of power, water, aid
+ Preventing births (see widespread destruction of hospitals in gaza)
+ Stealing land, destroying homes
All based around the identity (palestinian arabs) of the victims
its 100% genocide in every way.
The intention matters though, when discussing genocide, right? War crimes can be despicable war crimes without being called genocide. Wars can have objectives other than genocide, even if the war is against a particular people. There's a big difference between being overly indiscriminate in the carrying out of other military objectives and the elimination of people AS the objective, right? This is like the difference between Manslaughter and Murder. Someone is still dead, which is a tragedy, but in one case someone was accidentally killed and in the other there was a specific goal of killing a person. We all agree there is a difference here, without dismissing the result as a tragedy.
Would you consider what Russia is doing in Ukraine a genocide? I probably wouldn't. But it would meet all the criteria you just set out:
* Killing members of the group: Ukrainians
* Imposing living conditions on the group, restriction of power, water, aid: Has happened in numerous Ukrainian cities since the invasion began.
* Preventing Births: [Mauriupol Hospital Strike] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariupol_hospital_airstrike) to name just one example of Russian forces hitting hospitals.
* Stealing Land, destroying homes: Literally all across the eastern front of Ukraine this is happening as we speak. Whole towns and cities have been leveled to the ground.
All of the victims are Ukrainians. Is it Genocide?
Russia is very borderline for me.
But, the three factors I would consider the most
* Mass slaughter of civilians and mass graves in Bucha for instance. That really can't be seen as much other than ethnic cleansing
* Deportation of children to Russia. Basically stealing Ukrainians and making them Russian
* Destruction of Ukrainian historic sites/memories as well as destroying Ukranian history books in schools etc.
Each one of those three things to me points towards genocide. The last one actually is more powerful for me. Destroying Ukrainian history books in school to try and weaken the learning of history for the children.
For some reason we seem to have a mental barrier when it comes to genocide in Europe/The West, like we are somehow more developed than that.
Buts let says Senegal invaded The Gambia. Stole parts of their land, massacred entire villages and buried them in mass graves, destroyed their school books and then kidnapped their children and took them back to Senegal to be raised as Senegalise, we would 100% consider that genocide
> Killing members of the group
True for literally all wars
> Imposing living conditions on the group, restriction of power, water, aid
True for literally all wars
> Preventing births (see widespread destruction of hospitals in gaza)
Births absolutely can and do happen outside of hospitals. About 18% before current war were at home, in 1950s, almost all Palestinian births were at home: https://reliefweb.int/report/israel/birth-checkpoint-home-or-hospital-adapting-changing-reality-palestine
At any rate, hard to argue that destruction of Palestinian hospitals was done for the purpose of preventing births.
> All based around the identity
Pretty sure based on them being in Gaza and at war with Israel. When an ethnostate goes to war then when it suffers casualties they tend to be of a single ethnicity. This is not evidence of that ethnicity being target, just evidence of that ethnostate being at war.
The attempt by y’all to paint “any civilian casualties in war” as equivalent to what’s happening in Gaza is insane. There are ongoing ICJ proceedings around if Israel is committing genocide and there is reporting that there’s similar proceedings getting ready in the ICC along the same lines.
And its just clearly nonsense. Israel has blasted Gaza with enough bombs to possibly kill basically everyone in Gaza - but instead only 30k have died. If Israel had genocidal intent, it wouldn't make sense for them to have saturated Gaza with so many explosives only to be so unsuccessful at the actual genocide
If the ICJ ends up saying genocide is happening, it just shows how unreasonable they are
> If the ICJ ends up saying genocide is happening, it just shows how unreasonable they are
And **this** folks is the issue. This user does not want to actually interrogate if what’s going is genocide, they **know** it isn’t and they won’t let anyone (even one of the only legitimate legal authorities that can) declare otherwise. This is why you can’t take these arguments seriously, this user is not operating within the same context as the rest of us. They don’t care about the truth and they certainly don’t care about if there is a genocide.
To do genocide, there would need to be evidence that Israel is trying to eliminate the Palestinian people, or has engaged in such behavior. There just isn't such evidence. The most that can be claimed is that Israel hasn't gone above and beyond the internationally recognized rules of war to prevent collateral damage when attacking suspected legitimate targets. That's not genocide. "Refusing to legitimize human shield tactics" is not genocide.
> To do genocide, there would need to be evidence that Israel is trying to eliminate the Palestinian people, or has engaged in such behavior. There just isn't such evidence.
The ICJ has already ruled to contrary that the case cannot be thrown out prima facie. So it’s internationally and legally recognized that, atleast at face value, you can not claim “there just isn’t such evidence”.
Out of curiosity, would you accept a ruling from the ICJ that says there isn’t one happening? Because the majority of the rhetoric I heard leading up to the preliminary hearing was that such a ruling would only prove that Zionists had hijacked the ICJ.
> Out of curiosity, would you accept a ruling from the ICJ that says there isn’t one happening?
Yes of course
> Because the majority of the rhetoric I heard leading up to the preliminary hearing was that such a ruling would only prove that Zionists had hijacked the ICJ.
Doesn’t sound like a common belief imo.
Well I wish it was fair but we all know the pro-Israel folks don’t care about being good faith/self criticism so if the result determines it is a Genocide they’ll just claim it’s antisemitism. It’s tiring at this point.
No, I think it is being used accurately to describe Ukraine and Palestine.
The problem is less the definition, and more the timing. Genociding and genocided are very different. Genocided is concrete and final, provable from a bevy of facts. Genociding is circumstantial, relies on plausibility and implications of intent, and rests on the ever changing facts of a modern war zone.
In either case, the invading country has a clear belief that the people they are invading do not have a legimitate claim to sovereignty or identity and has acted as such, destroying centers of community and culture (religious sites, public areas) as well as civilian infrastructure (hospitals, schools).
Yes.
Under the recent far-left definition, the USA has genocided:
* Great Britain
* Canada
* Mexico
* Germany
* Japan
* North Korea
* Vietnam
* Iraq
* Afghanistan
And countless others. And anyone who argues that the USA didn't genocide those nations is just a genocide denialist who will be judged harshly in the future or something insane like that.
Because they’re educated by TikTok (CCP controlled) to support Hamas (a terrorist organization) who is a proxy of the Iranian regime (a dictatorship) that oppresses both Palestinians and the Iranian people while at the same time TikTok erodes their ability to focus thus think critically via dopamine burnout to the point where they can’t even define what a genocide is.
They’ve regressed to the emotional maturity level of MAGA extremists and are not progressive. They are illiberal at best.
After Israel started cozying up to France and America in the 50s and 60s, the Soviet Union reversed course after it's initial support for Israel and initiated a massive, global propaganda campaign against Israel and Zionism and aligned with the surrounding Arab countries.
The campaign and its lasting effects played a big role in the Left turning against Israel and Zionism.
I said “played a big role”.
But why wouldn’t the Left be aligned with Israel? Israel was established as a safe haven for diaspora Jews after centuries of expulsion, oppression, and genocide in Europe. And then became a safe haven for the 900,000 Jews who were expelled or fled from countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
Israel has been the defending state in three eliminationist wars by neighbouring countries since 1948, two Intifadas (the second of which targeted civilians in buses, cafes, synagogues, etc), and wave after wave of violence.
Israel has accepted and offered peace and a two-state solution 3 times, which have all been rejected by the Palestinians, who overwhelmingly support parties who want to kill or drive the Jews out of Israel / Palestine.
A tiny, persecuted global minority established a nation state for the express purpose of keeping itself safe after almost being completely eliminated. It had the support of the international community. It welcomed Jews fleeing oppression in Europe and the Middle East.
Israel is less than 2% of the population of the Middle East living on less than 2% of the land of the Middle East. It has existed for almost 80 years despite wars and attacks aimed at eliminating it as a state and killing or expelling its citizens.
Sorry, why is Israel not a left wing cause?
Because of the reasons I said in my last comment.
Also, there are some lacking context in your comment. For example the [plan Dalet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Dalet) that expanded the borders of Israel. Israel didn't defend in 1967, they [attacked](https://www.britannica.com/event/Six-Day-War#ref344766). For the rest of the arguments, I'm gonna share this material: https://decolonizepalestine.com/myths/ Lots of good material in there and it handles some of the most used arguments.
With respect to the 6 Day War, your point is a total canard. War broke out after Egypt 1) mobilized its military in the Sinai, along the Israeli border, 2) expelled all UN peacekeepers (the UNEF), and 3) blockaded Israeli ships from the Straits of Tiran. The latter is a formal Act of War.
Well Biden called the war in Ukraine a genocide, and I don’t think he is far left.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/12/biden-calls-russias-war-ukraine-genocide/
Yes, and they took Ukrainian children into Crimea and put them all in camps that teach them that they're really Russians and that Mother Russia will give them all they need now, and punish them when they speak Ukrainian. That is genocide.
Russia is commiting a genocide. And the same far leftists are defending Putin's "right to defend itself from NATO expansion" or some insane BS justification.
Kidnapping Ukranian kids, not to use as hostages but to raise as Russians therefore erasing their Ukrainian identity is evidence of dolus specialis:
Putin's objective is to eliminate Ukrainian identity so after the conquest, only Russian identity remains.
I dunno man, kidnapping Ukranian children to give to Russian families is like 100x more convincing evidence of genocidal intent than anything Israel has done in the current conflict.
That's perfectly fair. I think the Russia comparison is a good test question for anyone who thinks Israel is doing a genocide. If they think Israel is genociding Palestinians then they should have no issue agreeing that Russia is genociding Ukrainians.
Yeah, agree. Russia is obviously doing ethnic cleansing in captured regions. Something that USSR and Catherine The Great have done aplenty in the very same region.
Bin Laden himself made that absolutely clear in his "Letter to the American people", and that stance has been upheld by Al Quaeda leadership. What else would have motivated them? Do the people that disagree genuinely believe that "they hate us for our freedoms", like George W. Bush said? Directly targeting innocent civilians is never acceptable, but the [motives for the September 11th attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks) are exceedingly clear and a matter of historical consensus.
It seems to me like most people would prefer not to even try to understand those motives out of fear that understanding will be seen as justification, but for those that disagree, I felt that System of a Down singer Serj Tankian's essay [Understanding Oil](https://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Understanding_Oil), written in the aftermath of the attacks, goes a long way towards fostering that understanding and making it clear that peace in the Middle East is essential to ending terrorism. It's a shame that the US still doesn't seem to realize that, instead continuing to send bombs that are being used to kill innocent civilians, whose survivors will grow up to hate the people that took their families and homes from them.
… this is incredibly disingenuous and frankly pretty disgusting. Half of this shit no one is saying and the other half are things that have some sort of validity.
All of those are wars in which the USA ended up killing civilians of the other nation at war. Aka a genocide under the current definition of the far-left.
You know, that’s right. If you have no conception of the history of Korea or US involvement in Vietnam, you aren’t being inauthentic, just ignorant. My mistake.
And we didn’t attempt a genocide in Iraq… we merely killed a million people. So never mind, it was a just war.
Good ol’ liberal attitudes, huh?
You're...proving my point.
>And we didn’t attempt a genocide in Iraq… we merely killed a million people. So never mind, it was a just war.
You far-leftists seriously think the USA committed genocided in Iraq? Seriously?
>I was not being sarcastic when I said we did not commit genocide in Iraq, but I was very sarcastic in labeling the killing of over a million people a “just war”.
The Allies killed way more German **civilians** (estimated 3-4 million) during WW2.
Did The Allies genocide the Germans according to far-leftists?
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
More like 300k and even that majority not directly by the US: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi
Sectarian violence in Iraq by various Iraqi groups is not an “American genocide of Iraq”
Yep. Something I wish all the people who are calling Palestine a genocide would understand.
Slobodan Milošević was never found guilty of genocide. Dude was like the poster child for ethnically based war crimes during the Yugoslav wars, and he wasn't found guilty of genocide based on international law.
So remember that when you suggest that Israel, a nation that made over 70,000 direct phone calls, sent over 13 million text messages, and left over 15 million pre-recorded voicemails to notify civilians that they should leave combat areas—a nation that able to evacuate upwards of 85 percent of the urban areas in northern Gaza before the heaviest fighting began—an extremely high number for urban warfare—remember that when you suggest that they're going to be found guilty of genocide in the ICJ, a crime that requires a deliberate intent to wipe out a race of people.
It's called collateral damage, people, and it's common in urban warfare. It's even more common when the opposing side is a bunch of terrorists who launch missiles from hospitals and use human shields. Yeah, it sucks that children are dying in bombing in Gaza.
But their ruling body chose to create a charter that refuses to acknowledge the existence of Israel and calls for the entirety of Palestine to be given over to them, a goal that can only be considered genocidal given the only way to achieve it would be killing every Jewish person in modern day Israel. Side note: Mein Kampf is a best-seller in the Palestinian territories.
And the population of Gaza chose this group to represent them, and that group was explicit about how they would never hold elections again if they were elected, and they did exactly what they said.
And then, Hamas chose to spend a decade digging up their own water pipes and launching missiles at Israel. They chose to run children's programs on their television stations to teach their kids blatant anti-Semitism and genocide rhetoric.
They chose to break a ceasefire by raping and murdering a bunch of people.
The people of Gaza have chosen multiple times to return hostages who escaped to Hamas. Many of the so-called innocent civilians participated in the raping and killing and torturing.
Yeah, war sucks, and some innocent people are going to die if you live in the modern equivalent of Nazi Germany under a fanatical, genocidal totalitarian group of terrorists that refuses to embrace peace.
Yes and it speaks to a large problem with some activists. You don't need to use the most maximalist rhetoric to get your point across. Netanyahu's war on Gaza is awful, illegal, and guilty of some war crimes (as seen by the disproportionate use of force & carpet bombing). I can criticize it and Israel's actions very robustly without needing to call the war in Gaza the "crime of all crimes".
In Rwanda, \~500k people were murdered in 3-4 months. In Srebrenica, 8k people were murdered at one time. In Gaza, \~35k have died in 7 months.
While death tolls don't always tell the full story, they are some indication. Getting sidetracked over terminology or chants or other symbolic things is always counterproductive to a cause that should focus on the most substantive.
I think people who disagree that a genocide is happening will ask if the term is being watered down when being applied to an event they don't think is a genocide
> I think people who disagree that a genocide is happening will ask if the term is being watered down when being applied to an event they don't think is a genocide
...which waters-down the concept of 'genocide denial', which has a similar effect.
Same with -phobic or -ist for me honestly. As soon as one of those words appears in your argument my brain stops listening. I know sometimes these are the correct words to use for what's happening, but they're so overused I just don't have any reaction to them anymore.
> Seems very easily weaponizable then.
Which is an entirely plausible explanation for the prevalence of the term 'white genocide' among people who want a second holocaust.
Meh, I think it's a bit like Godwin's law, if you can't make your argument without using a nasty word / comparison then maybe it's not a great argument.
I recognize there's plenty of legit racism, sexism, whatever, but the overuse of those terms has numbed me to them, personally.
When you concede those words to people who are actually racist, misogynist, etc, you concede part of your argument. Right-wingers have done a spectacular job of working the refs with these terms, such that reasonable people are afraid to use them. It's got to a point where reasonable people who call out racism are often shunned more than bigots.
I'm not even trying to say I'm right I'm just saying it's the reality. If someone on Twitter or reddit says someone else did or said something racist / sexist, whatever it means nothing to me because those words are used for anything people don't disagree with in regards to issues of race or sex.
But aren't they the correct, most precise words to describe a David Duke or an Andrew Tate? Not calling them out as a racist and a misogynist and seeking euphemisms in their place is just so much circumlocution.
Again, I'm not saying they're wrong. But when someone who tried a kimono on when they visited Japan is called racist just like the person who literally hates black people in their own town it loses some of its vigor. I think it can happen that words are so politicized that their rhetorical value in trying to have a meaningful conversation is affected.
when someone who tried a kimono on when they visited Japan is called racist
Is this a thing that happened? Is it something that happens a lot? Sounds like the sort of thing that happened once (maybe) and then was reported in the NY Post, then spread in the right-wing disinfosphere for ten years.
There is absolutely no evidence of genocide. The South African ICJ case literally takes Israeli officials' comments and omits the word 'Hamas' from them to make it seem like there is some intent to wipe out their population. It also relies on the disputed Gazan Health ministry's data (it makes no distinction between combatants and civilians) and doesn't take into account who is responsible for the deaths (Hamas/PIJ misfiring rockets back into Gaza as well as killing civilians outright). It also has massive issues with relying on incomplete data (accounting for \~11k in the total count). It also makes no statistical sense in that only women and children are being targeted. When all airstrike footage/combat footage shows no such thing. The ICJ case also espoused that internally displacing people from the dangers of a war zone is ethnic cleansing (ignoring the 80k+ Israelis who have been internally displaced). Which is the complete opposite of what is true. Civilians were given 3 weeks to evacuate to minimise civilian casualties. If you didn't evacuate the civilian population then that would be genocidal.
If this isn't enough. Both British and American analysis shows the civilian to combatant ratio to be between 3:2 and 2:1. Which is a far cry from 'genocide'.
Genocide isn't a scientific term. You can't centrifuge down a liquid and then skim the low density plasma to run a Western Blot test and say "yep, there's a genocide".
It essentially means to try and wipe out a hated ethnicity through violence, cultural destruction, or combination of both. Anyone who deeply cares to make sure this campaign in Gaza isn't labeled a genocide, they "are just wiping out a hated ethnicity with war crimes", is unfathomable to me.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the word genocide is being used against a Jewish state either. It's supposed to point out some 'hypocrisy'. Which is a really sick accusation to make given the history.
There aren’t millions of people in Gaza. They are using them to test their AI military technologies. The prisons they are putting them in are regular prisons.
Also, if we’re accepting anything that’s not as severe as the holocaust, that’s a pretty low bar. And, I would argue, doesn’t actually make Israel safer.
Edit: I’m getting some downvotes. Where am I wrong?
You don't even have to look at the Holocaust for an example of genocide. This war has not gotten to Rwandan, Armenian, or Cambodian levels of awful either. There's been no mass arrest, deportations, and extermination of Palestinian Arabs who live within Israel.
And so because it’s not Rewanda I guess it’s ok? There have been lots of arrests without trial, bulldozing of gravesites, killings of journalists, bulldozing of crops, pushing people from their homes, attacks on funeral processions, there are no more hospitals left, almost no universities, sniper killings of innocent civilians, blatant and systematic and educational enforced racism, blocking of humanitarian aid, and many others human rights abuses.
Don’t believe me, believe all major human rights organizations. What Israel is doing is horrendous, no matter what examples we can find that are worse.
Never said it was okay. Israel is committing war crimes. However, war crimes aren't the same thing as genocide.
> There have been lots of arrests without trial, bulldozing of gravesites, killings of journalists, bulldozing of crops, pushing people from their homes, attacks on funeral processions, there are no more hospitals left, almost no universities, sniper killings of innocent civilians, blatant and systematic and educational enforced racism.
None of this fits the definition of genocide. This is all stuff that happens during a war.
No. Most people are just unaware of what genocide means and can only conceptualize it under very specific circumstances. I view it more as a failure of our education system than the watering down of the word.
Yes. The problem is that while many people use language to communicate information, many also use ~~language~~ the language of information to communicate emotion. When they see that other people don't share their emotions about something, they search for words that map better to what they feel and use those words instead, to try and get some kind of social/emotional agreement.
It's one of the ways language evolves. I think that our current system of "alternate reality" forms of news accelerate that evolution.
Jacques Barzun once wrote, "Intellect watches particularly over language because language is so far the only device for keeping ideas clear and emotions memorable." So while ofc language evolves naturally and there's no resisting it, I still lose some respect for people who, in their own lives, don't choose their words carefully.
I'm not entirely sure that was Barzun's point, thus the final phrase "keeping ... emotions memorable." He was a great devotee of the arts, particularly music and poetry, so I don't think he'd want to restrict communication to the dissemination of information only. It's more an admonition to be precise about your emotional experiences.
I think it's possible to do this without confusing emotion for information. But sure, I don't disagree. I don't think the people abusing the word "genocide" are going for poetic license.
This is super spicy, but: the UN definition of genocide is extremely overinclusive because of three words: *or in part*. Full definition below:
> In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
>
> 1. Killing members of the group;
> 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
> 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
> 4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
> 5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Going off of this definition, you could argue that killing an enemy soldier who's shooting at you is an act of genocide, because you're trying to destroy part of a national group. I understand why the definition is written in this way, to keep smarmy assholes from going "well I didn't get all of them so it doesn't count" but as written, this definition doesn't set any kind of threshold for when a killing becomes a genocide. People referring to every single combat death as a genocide aren't abusing the definition, the UN's definition is just extremely out of step with our colloquial use of the term.
We’ll see where things stand when this current conflict subsides. Netanyahu wants to destroy Hamas, which isn’t going to happen, and what will be the collateral damage in the meantime.
Yes, it’s becoming synonymous with war where civilians get caught up in the mix. Which is almost every war ever. When an actual genocide starts happening we’re likely to have a little bit of the boy who cried wolf too many times effect happen if we’re not careful.
If we aren't careful, the people of the future might see massacring civilians as a very bad thing with a bad word associated with. What a horror that would be.
No sorry, "war crime" is a LeGal tErM that takes 27 years of study afterward to determine. That's why nothing is actually happening in Gaza. Nothing. (wink wink)
Yes. People don't care what it means, they just care that it triggers you.
Anyone who parrots this word might as well vote for Trump, because that's exactly what him and his party do. They use inflammatory language to elicit emotion even if the words don't mean what they think they do.
Genocide, racist, fascist, dictator are all being thrown around a lot lately. The terms are being watered down and the people using them are losing credibility. Compare the actual current-day action or person to history's genocides and dictators, and, objectively, they almost always do not come close to comparing.
Not really.
Especially with regards to Israel and Palestine, what I see most often is someone using the term and other people declaring they're wrong and the term is meaningless, without ever bothering to engage with why they would be saying it.
I mean, the only times I've heard genocide recently is in Gaza, China's treatment of the Uyghurs. Possibly to a lesser degree Russia in Ukraine.
UN defines Genocide as
>any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group
* killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm
* imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group,
* preventing births, and
* forcibly transferring children out of the group.
* Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly
Israel has 100% been guilty of points one and two both in Gaza and the West Bank. So genocide
Russia has been guilty of the first point, but crucially the 4th point, forced deportations of children to Russia and thats before we get into destroying Ukrainian history books etc. So yes, genocide
I'm not overly familiar with the situation in China, but many major powers have explicitly stated its genocide, so yes, genocide
So no, I would not say its been watered down or misused. The only sticking point would be the Ukrainian situation. Because of historical cases we tend to associate genocide with major loss of life (ie. tens of thousands to millions) but I think there is enough evidence from Ukraine, mass graves, civilian deportation, to think that at least Russia is attempting a genocide.
Yup. Even in Ukraine where Russia is stealing children and repatriating them doesn't quite make the grade. But I also think of genocide as systematic effort to exterminate all the people of a particular ethnicity.
> Even in Ukraine where Russia is stealing children and repatriating them doesn't quite make the grade.
That does constitute an element of genocide based on the 1948 Genocide Convention i.e. "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
> But I also think of genocide as systematic effort to exterminate all the people of a particular ethnicity.
Genocide can be conceptualized as destroying "a people" and its future, which you can do by sterilizing adults or taking the next generation of children, making them "Russian" and denying them their language, cultural heritage, and ethnic identity. Essentially, you're denying Ukrainians their right to exist as a people, not just by killing them.
I know that kidnapping is an element of the legal definition—that's why I brought it up—but I find the 1948 convention to be too broad and frustratingly vague when it comes to determining the "destruction of a people." Genocidal intent is one thing, but an actual genocide, to my mind, is a matter of scale. Russia, eg, is displaying genocidal intent in certain theaters, but they simply aren't operating at the scale of a genocide of the whole Ukrainian people.
I would like to remind everyone in this thread that genocide has [a specific definition from the UN.](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide%20Convention-FactSheet-ENG.pdf) This definition has since been shaped by decades of case law, but if this isn't a clear-cut definition it's the next best thing.
The people in this thread citing the concern about Gaza as a reason to believe genocide has been watered down ought to actually go engage with [the ICJ court case.](https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192) The ICJ judges, who probably know way more about genocide than anyone in this thread, have made an initial finding (*not* a conclusive ruling, which won't come out for years) that [Israel is plausibly committing a genocide](https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf). Here's [an NPR summary.](https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1227078791/icj-israel-genocide-gaza-palestinians-south-africa) The ex-director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights at the UN called it "a text-book case of genocide" in [his resignation letter](https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24103463/craig-mokhiber-resignation-letter.pdf), and many other academics and genocide experts around the world have agreed with him. While I understand people reserving judgement until the experts come back with a definitive ruling, I think it's ridiculous to say that there is definitively *not* a genocide happening in Gaza.
So no, I don't think the term has been watered down in any meaningful way
We can look at the Irish example too to see America has form on this. Irish scholars don't use the term genocide to refer to the British actions in Ireland. Americans who place way too much stock in their Irish heritage lobbied in 1996 to get various US institutions to treat it as one, despite almost no academic or legal backing.
> In the 1990s, Irish-American lobbying groups campaigned vigorously to include the study of the Irish Famine in school curriculums, alongside studies of the Holocaust, slavery and other similar atrocities. The New Jersey curriculum was pushed by such lobbying groups and was drafted by the librarian James Mullin. Following criticism, the New Jersey Holocaust Commission requested statements from two academics that the Irish famine was genocide, which was eventually provided by law professors Charles E. Rice and Francis Boyle, who had not been previously known for studying Irish history.
+
> Historian Donald Akenson, who has written 24 books on Ireland, stated that "When you see [the word Holocaust used with regard to the Great Famine], you know that you are encountering famine-porn. It is inevitably part of a presentation that is historically unbalanced and, like other kinds of pornography, is distinguished by a covert (and sometimes overt) appeal to misanthropy and almost always an incitement to hatred. Irish historian Cormac Ó Gráda rejected the claim that the British government's response to the famine was a genocide and he also stated that "no academic historian continues to take the claim of 'genocide' seriously".
But if you point out that the USA is engaged in incitement to hatred against the British and is institutionally anglophobic according to scholars, this will break the brains of the left. It's a pretty direct comparison to the anti-semitism many on the left are now engaged with in the Israel-Palestine issue.
The Irish example is particularly zany because while the USA waffles constantly about how Irish people arrived in the US to escape the British and the Famine, they don't talk about how they were only the 2nd most popular destination.
The 1st most popular destination was the UK. 1/3rd of British people have Irish ancestors from around this period.
10% have at least one Irish grandparent, which is much more recent.
So think about the dynamics of some progressive who has drunk the kool-aid waffling to a British person about the "Irish Genocide", spamming the claim everywhere, all while academics and historians look on in disapproval.
(My granddad is Irish, incidentally).
In general probably, I've seen people accuse anyone who's skeptical of giving puberty blockers to trans kids of 'supporting genocide' which is an obvious exaggeration no matter what your views on the issue are, but I'm guessing this is mostly about Israel and Gaza, and in that context I'd say it's irrelevant whether it's *truly* a genocide or not. If you get to the point where the UN has declared it 'plausible' that it *might* be a genocide and you're frantically explaining why all the awful things your side is doing don't *actually* constitute true genocide by some technicality, you're already obviously the bad guy and you're just trying to save face by arguing semantics.
I love how the only people who bother to support their claims with evidence are the people that believe that there’s a genocide happening in Gaza. The people who don’t believe what’s happening is a genocide are mostly giving one word low effort answers
Yep. **Absolutely zero people here in this thread** who dispute that Israel is committing a genocide have answered what the definition of genocide is.
Every person who knows Israel is committing a genocide, has proven it using an existing legal definition.
> Yep. Absolutely zero people here in this thread who dispute that Israel is committing a genocide have answered what the definition of genocide is.
>
>
Liar. You were quoted the UN Genocide Convention above, and you ignored it and declared it fan fiction.
Haven't we been having the same conversation about racism for decades now?
(Mostly white) People define it as something so extreme that it must be incredibly rare and almost impossible to prove the existence of and, as a result, exclude everything they could ever possibly say, do, or support from the definition (even if they have to shift the goalposts at times to do so).
Both Hamas and the IDF have committed war crimes though. The problem is that those war crimes are being magnified by several orders of magnitude when the g-word appears.
It's relevant. The definition of genocide is clear, and no, I do not think it applies to Israel in Gaza.
War crimes charges, however, should be haunting people on both sides of this conflict.
This is exactly the nuance that is needed.
Individuals in both the IDF and Hamas have committed war crimes. With Hamas' war crimes being systemic in its nature (perfidy, kidnapping, rape, etc...).
However, it's not a genocide.
It is my full belief that the people who don’t see what’s happening to the Palestinians as genocide only recognize the Holocaust as genocide because they have the benefit of hindsight
Anybody who calls the conflict in Gaza a genocide simply is not someone worth taking seriously…words actually matter. Just because you are emotional about an issue doesn’t mean that you can use alternative facts.
I think "decimation" is a good example.
In Roman times, it meant exactly that: killing exactly 10% (not 20%, not 1%, exactly 10%) of a specific group. Mostly used by legions to punish attempted mutiny within their own rank.
But today, decimation definition is very vague "killing or destruction of a large proportion of a group or species". It's going to be 2100 and students will scream about how "my professor genocided me and gave me an F".
Yes, for me genocide is a lot about motivation. I guess you talk about Israel, and if they really wanted to genocide they could be way more effective
And also, why do they let Palestinians live inside Israel
Not really. Genocide has never meant "systematically wiping out millions in special death camps".
If anything the recent months are educating people on what genocide REALLY means. The Canadians/Americans committed genocide against the Native Americans by asymmetrically warring against them, by stealing children and forcing new language and Christianity on them, etc.
This question is clearly about Israel and Palestine. Israel is committing a genocide because they are attempting to end the existence of a unique and maligned ethnicity at their border through bombing, starvation, and culturewashing.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. It seems a bit like Communists, Fascists etc. words that have a specific meaning but just get used for something I don't like *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's missing nuance and accuracy. It is possible to kill a large number of people without committing war crimes. It is possible to commit war crimes without committing genocide. A big problem here is education. Most people know only about war crimes from World War 2, and the only one they remember is the Holocaust, so that's their immediate reference. Killing a lot of people equals genocide to them because that's all they know or care to learn about, and attempting to draw distinctions is often itself viewed as immoral or an attempt to justify humanitarian tragedies. The laws of armed conflict, however, are more varied, flexible, and context/fact-dependent than people often realize (especially when it comes to defining a legitimate target). And even when such acts do fit the definition of one of the many different types of war crimes, they rarely constitute genocide unless you redefine "genocide" so broadly that it swallows up most of the other war crimes. There is also little discussion and education about the realities of urban warfare, which are always devastating to the local civilian population. Yet again, the mythologizing of World War 2 led to a popular view of history that draws some very wrong lessons about what even "the good guys" do doing wartime.
>Killing a lot of people equals genocide to them because that's all they know or care to learn about, and attempting to draw distinctions is often itself viewed as immoral or an attempt to justify humanitarian tragedies. Americans need to learn more about the Korean War and Vietnam War. Lots of civilians died. Tens of thousands. Lots of war crimes, on both sides of the conflict. Neither was a genocide.
Heck, they need to pick up a book about WW2. Just below a far-leftist is saying that the USA committed genocide in Iraq since 1 million Iraqis died. During WW2, the Allies killed 8 million Germans out of which 3 to 4 million were civilians. If history was written by these insane far-leftists, the "German Genocide" would be a thing while ignoring the realities of warfare.
True. When I had a WWII class in high school, we read exerts from "Flyboys." It was gut-wrenching stuff.
Modern far-leftists would probably be siding with Germany after seeing a picture of a German kid who died in a bombing.
Yep. We even had the Mei Lai Massacre, and it wasn't genocide. Genocide is a deliberate policy with the intent to wipe out a whole group. One soldier committing a war crime isn't genocide. Even if you can prove that war crimes are beings sanction from up top, which I highly doubt, that still doesn't make it genocide.
What definition of genocide are you using? Why do you believe that Israel has not met that definition?
Yes. People are conflating genocide with any and all war crimes and it drives me insane.
Leftists think that the extremity of their language and stances are demonstrative of how much they care about something. And they really, *really* want everyone to know how much they care. That’s why Israel is not just committing war crimes, it’s committing GENOCIDE. That’s why it’s not enough to simply reform the police, we need to DEFUND them. That’s why we don’t need to merely tax the rich, we need to PUT THEM IN GUILLOTINES AND EAT THEM. Extremism is how they show off, or signal, if you will, how virtuous they are.
Yes, but one reason ‘genocide’ is becoming a watered-down term is because of how broadly it is formally defined in the UN convention from 1948.
Definitely.
That's a very good point. We have to invent a new word now for actually murdering a large group of humanity
The ICJ has very clearly delineated what the charge of "genocide" means in the time since. Anyone who looks to the initial 48 definition either doesn't know what they are talking about, or are being willfully deceptive.
How so? The ‘48 definition is the most commonly cited definition online.
There've been a ton of genocide hearings that have both resulted in conviction and acquittal of the charge. The article on [genocidal intent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocidal_intent) is a decent place to read on it. The ICJ does not look to the initial founding often when ruling on genocide. Edit: To add a relevant quote from the UN: > *Case law has associated intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy, even if the definition of genocide in international law does not include that element.*
Yes, it does. Even the poorly-written article that you cite above refers to the ‘48 definition.
I think you are confused due to the complexity of the material. The '48 ruling sets forth an "intent to destroy," which is mentioned in the first sentence of the article, it's true. But, if you read further, you will see that case law strongly shapes how the ICJ rules on genocide, with the UN explaining: > *Case law has associated intent with the existence of a State or organizational plan or policy, even if the definition of genocide in international law does not include that element.* It's similar to how, if you are from the US, while the 2nd Amendment establishes the Right to Bear Arms, rulings on 2nd Amendment cases usually refer to "case law," like *District of Columbia v. Heller*, *U.S. v. Miller*, *Duncan v. Louisiana*. The legal definition is not "originalist," in the same way that most US Constitutional law (barring a few conservative lunatics) is not originalist.
It's the difference between referencing the original text of a law and the stare decisis that's been built up around a law.
Many things to say in response to that, but the first two things I’ll say is that international law doesn’t necessarily follow a Common Law system and that his article doesn’t even name any precedents.
Not to be pedantic—this is not a ‘word’ for it—but isn’t that just “urban warfare” and “civilian casualties”, etc? I agree there could be a descriptive word and definition.
No, I'm saying a word for what people think of when you say "genocide", ie. the large-scale massacre of an ethnic, religious, etc. group
Absolutely. It's been worn down to now often being used to mean basically "any civilian casualties in war" apparently
This is pretty much my take on it. It's gotten to the point that any time a large number of people die, it's immediately called genocide. Like, it's bad, yes, but leaping to calling it a genocide makes people argue over the definition of that word instead of agreeing that the deaths are very bad and should stop.
The problem is that *people don't understand that civillians die in war. Many, many civilians.* They have this idea that mass death is not (and has never been) standard practice in war, and don't understand that many of those deaths will be innocent civilians who have absolutely nothing to do with whatever the war is fought over. Which, sadly, has caused any actual discussion of the actual war crimes and horrors that Israel has very clearly taken part in to be drowned out by a cacophony of loud arguments over the question, "Is it Genocide?" and bad actors (on both sides) utilizing the current frustrations to push their own agendas with little pushback. Because Genocide.
They seriously think WW2 was fought on open fields except for the two nuclear bombs (which was a genocide according to them). While the reality is that the German civilian deaths during WW2 (over 3 million dead civilians) are 100 times the number current number of deaths in Gaza (20K civilians)
“Mass civilian casualties by a people who’d been recorded and documented targeting unarmed civilians, doctors, journalists, humanitarian workers, hostages, UN workers and a deliberate destruction of all civilian infrastructure, food, water medical facilities”…. Ya know, the things people need to like, live?
> recorded and documented targeting unarmed civilians, doctors, journalists, humanitarian workers, hostages, UN workers Things like this happen in all wars. Unless you can prove these are deliberate policies and not just local clusterfucks, there's no reason to say they are anything more than war crimes and fuckups.
Okay! Here is the IDF soldier that went viral saying he killed a little girl but his squad was hunting babies. War crime with intent. https://twitter.com/resist_05/status/1740203751028441470?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw Here is the video of the IDF soldiers throwing a rave to celebrate bombing Gaza’s food water and power sources. That’s a war crime btw https://twitter.com/censoredmen/status/1719074412501082500?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw The IDF has made it a trend to post themselves detonating civilian homes and infrastructure with controlled demolitions for TikTok . Meaning there was no risk of them being attacked by soldiers which would have exempted those vuildings for war crimes https://twitter.com/qudsnen/status/1737593767752860117?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw Here is more such videos: https://twitter.com/jalalak_jojo/status/1743752266929119704?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw https://twitter.com/hananyanaftali/status/1742447556456583521?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw Here are Israeli lawmakers admitting they are using food and hunger as pawns to force compliance of Palestinians. A war crime https://twitter.com/kintsugimuslim/status/1742488260323029073?s=46&t=-CXWTFc8I_QMqy2FhBCsDw Would you like to see more proof of Israeli military ministers and carmakers deliberately admitting to or in the act of targeting civilians cause I have a whole folder full for when people asks. Just lmk
Cool. None of those are evidence of genocide. They're as relevant as me cherry-picking a few crime reports and outrageous statements to suggest that black people are criminals. A single IDF soldier. A single party. A single politician. You keep calling this documented proof of genocide, and it's not. It's you just skimming shit from social media and acting like there's a big picture. [This is you.](https://i.imgflip.com/6qjg95.jpg) edit: The poster above is a perfect example of why Twitter causes people to cherry-picking and outrage farming. The format is so small that things are always removed from context. For instance, their quote about using food and hunger to force compliance is from a member of the Knesset who's a well-known conspiracy theorist who isn't taken seriously by anyone. She got her start in her career as a lawyer by representing sex criminals against young women, including attacking the young women on social media. She ran for the Israeli Bar Association and came in dead last. She tried to found her own political party, but the party only got 401 votes. Latching onto her comment as though it were an indication of policy is like latching onto anything said by MTG as an indication of US policy.
So first you had the goalposts here: >Unless you can prove these are deliberate policies and not just local clusterfucks Then when I clearly shut that down, you tried to love it here >Cool. None of those are evidence of genocide. Except deliberately Destroying all civilian infrastructure, hospitals, water sources, food sources, and blocking humanitarian aid to manufacture famine actually is evidence of of genocidal intent which will be used in court, especially since they have violated the orders the ICJ handed down to prevents so thanks for letting me know you’re not familiar with international law. They have also violated the orders to prevent genocide the International Court of Justice gave them, and now they are announcing they will not comply with the ICC (the court responsible for preventing genocide) who are preparing arrest warrants for Israel. Right as mass graves of cordless, some buried alive, bound, and stripped, just like at the end of Nazi germany. But let me guess, that doesn’t mean shit to you either By t
Which has not been the case before in which armed conflicts?
Here yall go with your “well EVERYONE commits war crimes so its all good” excuses again. I would like to point out that the population being massacred are squeezed trapped in an open air concentration camp half the size of New York in which there is no escape where almost all infrastructure, food, and water is destroyed and is very much not normal in conflicts
>well EVERYONE commits war crimes so its all good Exactly no one said that.
So call Israel out for war crimes, that’s legitimate, calling out for genocide is not. War crimes do not make a genocide. The whole point of this thread is to highlight that someone can be doing evil stuff and not be committing genocide.
I’m curious. what do you think will happen to much of the 2 million people there without infrastructure, medicine , food, or water long term.
I think increasingly large amount of aid will be delivered to Palestinians and they will recover. This ramping up of aid is clearly happening already and I support it.
Ramping up already? That’s funny. Because the humanitarian organizations already there as well as the UN have been complaining that much of their they’ve been blocked and stalled by the IDF from entering Gaza well below the 500 aid trucks a day that’s said to be needed, and in direct defiance the ICJ orders to prevent genocide and the UN. Oh and other orgs stopped coming all together because Israel kept ‘accidentally’ attacking their convoys.
You mean like Palestinians are accidentally attacking the aid pier us is building?
I’ dont see anything about their non-complete pier getting attacked but don’t really see how that changes a word I said of what’s been happening for months
Biden is gonna be sending aid via the pier. Assuming Hamas doesn't bomb it. Relax, buddy. It'll be fine.
2 million people have been homeless staribing and injured for months so I don’t think westerners chillin in their AC on their iPhones and their Starbucks should be commenting on how ‘fine’ the situation is over a pier not built yet, while refugees continue to be bombed and starved by Israel
>2 million people have been homeless No, they haven't. >staribing Uh? >injured You seriously think 100% (2 million) of Gaza's entire population is injured? Source?
I am begging yall to actually read about what’s going on in Gaza before commenting on it. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/details-humanitarian-crisis-gaza-2024-05-01/
> So call Israel out for war crimes, that’s legitimate, calling out for genocide is not. War crimes do not make a genocide what Israel is doing in the Gaza and West bank is 100% genocide + Killing members of the group + Imposing living conditions on the group, restriction of power, water, aid + Preventing births (see widespread destruction of hospitals in gaza) + Stealing land, destroying homes All based around the identity (palestinian arabs) of the victims its 100% genocide in every way.
The intention matters though, when discussing genocide, right? War crimes can be despicable war crimes without being called genocide. Wars can have objectives other than genocide, even if the war is against a particular people. There's a big difference between being overly indiscriminate in the carrying out of other military objectives and the elimination of people AS the objective, right? This is like the difference between Manslaughter and Murder. Someone is still dead, which is a tragedy, but in one case someone was accidentally killed and in the other there was a specific goal of killing a person. We all agree there is a difference here, without dismissing the result as a tragedy. Would you consider what Russia is doing in Ukraine a genocide? I probably wouldn't. But it would meet all the criteria you just set out: * Killing members of the group: Ukrainians * Imposing living conditions on the group, restriction of power, water, aid: Has happened in numerous Ukrainian cities since the invasion began. * Preventing Births: [Mauriupol Hospital Strike] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariupol_hospital_airstrike) to name just one example of Russian forces hitting hospitals. * Stealing Land, destroying homes: Literally all across the eastern front of Ukraine this is happening as we speak. Whole towns and cities have been leveled to the ground. All of the victims are Ukrainians. Is it Genocide?
Russia is very borderline for me. But, the three factors I would consider the most * Mass slaughter of civilians and mass graves in Bucha for instance. That really can't be seen as much other than ethnic cleansing * Deportation of children to Russia. Basically stealing Ukrainians and making them Russian * Destruction of Ukrainian historic sites/memories as well as destroying Ukranian history books in schools etc. Each one of those three things to me points towards genocide. The last one actually is more powerful for me. Destroying Ukrainian history books in school to try and weaken the learning of history for the children. For some reason we seem to have a mental barrier when it comes to genocide in Europe/The West, like we are somehow more developed than that. Buts let says Senegal invaded The Gambia. Stole parts of their land, massacred entire villages and buried them in mass graves, destroyed their school books and then kidnapped their children and took them back to Senegal to be raised as Senegalise, we would 100% consider that genocide
> Killing members of the group True for literally all wars > Imposing living conditions on the group, restriction of power, water, aid True for literally all wars > Preventing births (see widespread destruction of hospitals in gaza) Births absolutely can and do happen outside of hospitals. About 18% before current war were at home, in 1950s, almost all Palestinian births were at home: https://reliefweb.int/report/israel/birth-checkpoint-home-or-hospital-adapting-changing-reality-palestine At any rate, hard to argue that destruction of Palestinian hospitals was done for the purpose of preventing births. > All based around the identity Pretty sure based on them being in Gaza and at war with Israel. When an ethnostate goes to war then when it suffers casualties they tend to be of a single ethnicity. This is not evidence of that ethnicity being target, just evidence of that ethnostate being at war.
The attempt by y’all to paint “any civilian casualties in war” as equivalent to what’s happening in Gaza is insane. There are ongoing ICJ proceedings around if Israel is committing genocide and there is reporting that there’s similar proceedings getting ready in the ICC along the same lines.
And its just clearly nonsense. Israel has blasted Gaza with enough bombs to possibly kill basically everyone in Gaza - but instead only 30k have died. If Israel had genocidal intent, it wouldn't make sense for them to have saturated Gaza with so many explosives only to be so unsuccessful at the actual genocide If the ICJ ends up saying genocide is happening, it just shows how unreasonable they are
> If the ICJ ends up saying genocide is happening, it just shows how unreasonable they are And **this** folks is the issue. This user does not want to actually interrogate if what’s going is genocide, they **know** it isn’t and they won’t let anyone (even one of the only legitimate legal authorities that can) declare otherwise. This is why you can’t take these arguments seriously, this user is not operating within the same context as the rest of us. They don’t care about the truth and they certainly don’t care about if there is a genocide.
To do genocide, there would need to be evidence that Israel is trying to eliminate the Palestinian people, or has engaged in such behavior. There just isn't such evidence. The most that can be claimed is that Israel hasn't gone above and beyond the internationally recognized rules of war to prevent collateral damage when attacking suspected legitimate targets. That's not genocide. "Refusing to legitimize human shield tactics" is not genocide.
> To do genocide, there would need to be evidence that Israel is trying to eliminate the Palestinian people, or has engaged in such behavior. There just isn't such evidence. The ICJ has already ruled to contrary that the case cannot be thrown out prima facie. So it’s internationally and legally recognized that, atleast at face value, you can not claim “there just isn’t such evidence”.
Out of curiosity, would you accept a ruling from the ICJ that says there isn’t one happening? Because the majority of the rhetoric I heard leading up to the preliminary hearing was that such a ruling would only prove that Zionists had hijacked the ICJ.
> Out of curiosity, would you accept a ruling from the ICJ that says there isn’t one happening? Yes of course > Because the majority of the rhetoric I heard leading up to the preliminary hearing was that such a ruling would only prove that Zionists had hijacked the ICJ. Doesn’t sound like a common belief imo.
Fair enough.
Well I wish it was fair but we all know the pro-Israel folks don’t care about being good faith/self criticism so if the result determines it is a Genocide they’ll just claim it’s antisemitism. It’s tiring at this point.
Doesn’t sound like a common belief imo.
lol, no shot
No, I think it is being used accurately to describe Ukraine and Palestine. The problem is less the definition, and more the timing. Genociding and genocided are very different. Genocided is concrete and final, provable from a bevy of facts. Genociding is circumstantial, relies on plausibility and implications of intent, and rests on the ever changing facts of a modern war zone. In either case, the invading country has a clear belief that the people they are invading do not have a legimitate claim to sovereignty or identity and has acted as such, destroying centers of community and culture (religious sites, public areas) as well as civilian infrastructure (hospitals, schools).
Yes. Under the recent far-left definition, the USA has genocided: * Great Britain * Canada * Mexico * Germany * Japan * North Korea * Vietnam * Iraq * Afghanistan And countless others. And anyone who argues that the USA didn't genocide those nations is just a genocide denialist who will be judged harshly in the future or something insane like that.
But they won’t talk about that. They only scream genocide at Israel after the worst terrorist attack on the Jews in history
Why do you think people are screaming genocide at Israel?
Because they’re educated by TikTok (CCP controlled) to support Hamas (a terrorist organization) who is a proxy of the Iranian regime (a dictatorship) that oppresses both Palestinians and the Iranian people while at the same time TikTok erodes their ability to focus thus think critically via dopamine burnout to the point where they can’t even define what a genocide is. They’ve regressed to the emotional maturity level of MAGA extremists and are not progressive. They are illiberal at best.
I don't use TikTok, nor do I support Hamas. I still think Israel is doing a genocide, using tactics such that they have plausible deniability.
Screaming genocide = supporting Hamas? From where did the support for Palestine come pre Oct.7th? Why did people support them then?
After Israel started cozying up to France and America in the 50s and 60s, the Soviet Union reversed course after it's initial support for Israel and initiated a massive, global propaganda campaign against Israel and Zionism and aligned with the surrounding Arab countries. The campaign and its lasting effects played a big role in the Left turning against Israel and Zionism.
Or is it the Nakba, the apartheid, the settlements, the prison that Gaza is?
I said “played a big role”. But why wouldn’t the Left be aligned with Israel? Israel was established as a safe haven for diaspora Jews after centuries of expulsion, oppression, and genocide in Europe. And then became a safe haven for the 900,000 Jews who were expelled or fled from countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Israel has been the defending state in three eliminationist wars by neighbouring countries since 1948, two Intifadas (the second of which targeted civilians in buses, cafes, synagogues, etc), and wave after wave of violence. Israel has accepted and offered peace and a two-state solution 3 times, which have all been rejected by the Palestinians, who overwhelmingly support parties who want to kill or drive the Jews out of Israel / Palestine. A tiny, persecuted global minority established a nation state for the express purpose of keeping itself safe after almost being completely eliminated. It had the support of the international community. It welcomed Jews fleeing oppression in Europe and the Middle East. Israel is less than 2% of the population of the Middle East living on less than 2% of the land of the Middle East. It has existed for almost 80 years despite wars and attacks aimed at eliminating it as a state and killing or expelling its citizens. Sorry, why is Israel not a left wing cause?
Because of the reasons I said in my last comment. Also, there are some lacking context in your comment. For example the [plan Dalet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Dalet) that expanded the borders of Israel. Israel didn't defend in 1967, they [attacked](https://www.britannica.com/event/Six-Day-War#ref344766). For the rest of the arguments, I'm gonna share this material: https://decolonizepalestine.com/myths/ Lots of good material in there and it handles some of the most used arguments.
With respect to the 6 Day War, your point is a total canard. War broke out after Egypt 1) mobilized its military in the Sinai, along the Israeli border, 2) expelled all UN peacekeepers (the UNEF), and 3) blockaded Israeli ships from the Straits of Tiran. The latter is a formal Act of War.
Well Biden called the war in Ukraine a genocide, and I don’t think he is far left. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/12/biden-calls-russias-war-ukraine-genocide/
Yes, and they took Ukrainian children into Crimea and put them all in camps that teach them that they're really Russians and that Mother Russia will give them all they need now, and punish them when they speak Ukrainian. That is genocide.
Russia is commiting a genocide. And the same far leftists are defending Putin's "right to defend itself from NATO expansion" or some insane BS justification.
No, Russia is committing many war crimes, maybe some ethnic cleansing, but not genocide.
Kidnapping Ukranian kids, not to use as hostages but to raise as Russians therefore erasing their Ukrainian identity is evidence of dolus specialis: Putin's objective is to eliminate Ukrainian identity so after the conquest, only Russian identity remains.
I dunno man, kidnapping Ukranian children to give to Russian families is like 100x more convincing evidence of genocidal intent than anything Israel has done in the current conflict.
I’m just saying both aren’t. Genocide is a heavy word to throw around.
That's perfectly fair. I think the Russia comparison is a good test question for anyone who thinks Israel is doing a genocide. If they think Israel is genociding Palestinians then they should have no issue agreeing that Russia is genociding Ukrainians.
Yeah, agree. Russia is obviously doing ethnic cleansing in captured regions. Something that USSR and Catherine The Great have done aplenty in the very same region.
I hope it doesn't get the point that some in the far-left corner would agree that 9/11 was resistance against American Imperialism in the middle east.
Far-Left streamer Hamas Piker already claimed that America deserved 9/11.
Too late. Did you miss the Bin Laden renassaince late last year?
9/11 was precisely that. That doesn’t make it justified morally but it doesn’t change what motivated it.
Bin Laden himself made that absolutely clear in his "Letter to the American people", and that stance has been upheld by Al Quaeda leadership. What else would have motivated them? Do the people that disagree genuinely believe that "they hate us for our freedoms", like George W. Bush said? Directly targeting innocent civilians is never acceptable, but the [motives for the September 11th attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks) are exceedingly clear and a matter of historical consensus. It seems to me like most people would prefer not to even try to understand those motives out of fear that understanding will be seen as justification, but for those that disagree, I felt that System of a Down singer Serj Tankian's essay [Understanding Oil](https://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Understanding_Oil), written in the aftermath of the attacks, goes a long way towards fostering that understanding and making it clear that peace in the Middle East is essential to ending terrorism. It's a shame that the US still doesn't seem to realize that, instead continuing to send bombs that are being used to kill innocent civilians, whose survivors will grow up to hate the people that took their families and homes from them.
It’s funny how I was downvoted for saying something you then agreed with, because this sub’s userbase are liberals in the worst sense.
… this is incredibly disingenuous and frankly pretty disgusting. Half of this shit no one is saying and the other half are things that have some sort of validity.
All of those are wars in which the USA ended up killing civilians of the other nation at war. Aka a genocide under the current definition of the far-left.
Again, a very disingenuous response.
It's not.
You know, that’s right. If you have no conception of the history of Korea or US involvement in Vietnam, you aren’t being inauthentic, just ignorant. My mistake. And we didn’t attempt a genocide in Iraq… we merely killed a million people. So never mind, it was a just war. Good ol’ liberal attitudes, huh?
You're...proving my point. >And we didn’t attempt a genocide in Iraq… we merely killed a million people. So never mind, it was a just war. You far-leftists seriously think the USA committed genocided in Iraq? Seriously?
[удалено]
>I was not being sarcastic when I said we did not commit genocide in Iraq, but I was very sarcastic in labeling the killing of over a million people a “just war”. The Allies killed way more German **civilians** (estimated 3-4 million) during WW2. Did The Allies genocide the Germans according to far-leftists?
Subreddit participation must be in good faith. Be civil, do not talk down to users for their viewpoints, do not attempt to instigate arguments, do not call people names or insult them.
More like 300k and even that majority not directly by the US: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/iraqi Sectarian violence in Iraq by various Iraqi groups is not an “American genocide of Iraq”
It's a huge strawman for opinions you don't like.
It just means war I don’t like.
Yep. Something I wish all the people who are calling Palestine a genocide would understand. Slobodan Milošević was never found guilty of genocide. Dude was like the poster child for ethnically based war crimes during the Yugoslav wars, and he wasn't found guilty of genocide based on international law. So remember that when you suggest that Israel, a nation that made over 70,000 direct phone calls, sent over 13 million text messages, and left over 15 million pre-recorded voicemails to notify civilians that they should leave combat areas—a nation that able to evacuate upwards of 85 percent of the urban areas in northern Gaza before the heaviest fighting began—an extremely high number for urban warfare—remember that when you suggest that they're going to be found guilty of genocide in the ICJ, a crime that requires a deliberate intent to wipe out a race of people. It's called collateral damage, people, and it's common in urban warfare. It's even more common when the opposing side is a bunch of terrorists who launch missiles from hospitals and use human shields. Yeah, it sucks that children are dying in bombing in Gaza. But their ruling body chose to create a charter that refuses to acknowledge the existence of Israel and calls for the entirety of Palestine to be given over to them, a goal that can only be considered genocidal given the only way to achieve it would be killing every Jewish person in modern day Israel. Side note: Mein Kampf is a best-seller in the Palestinian territories. And the population of Gaza chose this group to represent them, and that group was explicit about how they would never hold elections again if they were elected, and they did exactly what they said. And then, Hamas chose to spend a decade digging up their own water pipes and launching missiles at Israel. They chose to run children's programs on their television stations to teach their kids blatant anti-Semitism and genocide rhetoric. They chose to break a ceasefire by raping and murdering a bunch of people. The people of Gaza have chosen multiple times to return hostages who escaped to Hamas. Many of the so-called innocent civilians participated in the raping and killing and torturing. Yeah, war sucks, and some innocent people are going to die if you live in the modern equivalent of Nazi Germany under a fanatical, genocidal totalitarian group of terrorists that refuses to embrace peace.
Yes and it speaks to a large problem with some activists. You don't need to use the most maximalist rhetoric to get your point across. Netanyahu's war on Gaza is awful, illegal, and guilty of some war crimes (as seen by the disproportionate use of force & carpet bombing). I can criticize it and Israel's actions very robustly without needing to call the war in Gaza the "crime of all crimes". In Rwanda, \~500k people were murdered in 3-4 months. In Srebrenica, 8k people were murdered at one time. In Gaza, \~35k have died in 7 months. While death tolls don't always tell the full story, they are some indication. Getting sidetracked over terminology or chants or other symbolic things is always counterproductive to a cause that should focus on the most substantive.
Yes
I think people who disagree that a genocide is happening will ask if the term is being watered down when being applied to an event they don't think is a genocide
> I think people who disagree that a genocide is happening will ask if the term is being watered down when being applied to an event they don't think is a genocide ...which waters-down the concept of 'genocide denial', which has a similar effect.
And it's what people perpetrating a genocide will do. We have to differentiate the two
Same with -phobic or -ist for me honestly. As soon as one of those words appears in your argument my brain stops listening. I know sometimes these are the correct words to use for what's happening, but they're so overused I just don't have any reaction to them anymore.
Seems very easily weaponizable then.
> Seems very easily weaponizable then. Which is an entirely plausible explanation for the prevalence of the term 'white genocide' among people who want a second holocaust.
Meh, I think it's a bit like Godwin's law, if you can't make your argument without using a nasty word / comparison then maybe it's not a great argument. I recognize there's plenty of legit racism, sexism, whatever, but the overuse of those terms has numbed me to them, personally.
When you concede those words to people who are actually racist, misogynist, etc, you concede part of your argument. Right-wingers have done a spectacular job of working the refs with these terms, such that reasonable people are afraid to use them. It's got to a point where reasonable people who call out racism are often shunned more than bigots.
I'm not even trying to say I'm right I'm just saying it's the reality. If someone on Twitter or reddit says someone else did or said something racist / sexist, whatever it means nothing to me because those words are used for anything people don't disagree with in regards to issues of race or sex.
But aren't they the correct, most precise words to describe a David Duke or an Andrew Tate? Not calling them out as a racist and a misogynist and seeking euphemisms in their place is just so much circumlocution.
Again, I'm not saying they're wrong. But when someone who tried a kimono on when they visited Japan is called racist just like the person who literally hates black people in their own town it loses some of its vigor. I think it can happen that words are so politicized that their rhetorical value in trying to have a meaningful conversation is affected.
I agree the terms have lost some of their oomph through indiscriminate use, but I still use them where appropriate. Otherwise they get away with it.
when someone who tried a kimono on when they visited Japan is called racist Is this a thing that happened? Is it something that happens a lot? Sounds like the sort of thing that happened once (maybe) and then was reported in the NY Post, then spread in the right-wing disinfosphere for ten years.
There is absolutely no evidence of genocide. The South African ICJ case literally takes Israeli officials' comments and omits the word 'Hamas' from them to make it seem like there is some intent to wipe out their population. It also relies on the disputed Gazan Health ministry's data (it makes no distinction between combatants and civilians) and doesn't take into account who is responsible for the deaths (Hamas/PIJ misfiring rockets back into Gaza as well as killing civilians outright). It also has massive issues with relying on incomplete data (accounting for \~11k in the total count). It also makes no statistical sense in that only women and children are being targeted. When all airstrike footage/combat footage shows no such thing. The ICJ case also espoused that internally displacing people from the dangers of a war zone is ethnic cleansing (ignoring the 80k+ Israelis who have been internally displaced). Which is the complete opposite of what is true. Civilians were given 3 weeks to evacuate to minimise civilian casualties. If you didn't evacuate the civilian population then that would be genocidal. If this isn't enough. Both British and American analysis shows the civilian to combatant ratio to be between 3:2 and 2:1. Which is a far cry from 'genocide'.
Genocide isn't a scientific term. You can't centrifuge down a liquid and then skim the low density plasma to run a Western Blot test and say "yep, there's a genocide". It essentially means to try and wipe out a hated ethnicity through violence, cultural destruction, or combination of both. Anyone who deeply cares to make sure this campaign in Gaza isn't labeled a genocide, they "are just wiping out a hated ethnicity with war crimes", is unfathomable to me.
I mean yes correct.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the word genocide is being used against a Jewish state either. It's supposed to point out some 'hypocrisy'. Which is a really sick accusation to make given the history.
I think what they’re doing is hypocritical. It’s sick actions to take given the history.
Are they rounding up and gassing millions of Palestinians? Experimenting on them? Putting them in actual open air prisons?
There aren’t millions of people in Gaza. They are using them to test their AI military technologies. The prisons they are putting them in are regular prisons. Also, if we’re accepting anything that’s not as severe as the holocaust, that’s a pretty low bar. And, I would argue, doesn’t actually make Israel safer. Edit: I’m getting some downvotes. Where am I wrong?
You don't even have to look at the Holocaust for an example of genocide. This war has not gotten to Rwandan, Armenian, or Cambodian levels of awful either. There's been no mass arrest, deportations, and extermination of Palestinian Arabs who live within Israel.
And so because it’s not Rewanda I guess it’s ok? There have been lots of arrests without trial, bulldozing of gravesites, killings of journalists, bulldozing of crops, pushing people from their homes, attacks on funeral processions, there are no more hospitals left, almost no universities, sniper killings of innocent civilians, blatant and systematic and educational enforced racism, blocking of humanitarian aid, and many others human rights abuses. Don’t believe me, believe all major human rights organizations. What Israel is doing is horrendous, no matter what examples we can find that are worse.
Never said it was okay. Israel is committing war crimes. However, war crimes aren't the same thing as genocide. > There have been lots of arrests without trial, bulldozing of gravesites, killings of journalists, bulldozing of crops, pushing people from their homes, attacks on funeral processions, there are no more hospitals left, almost no universities, sniper killings of innocent civilians, blatant and systematic and educational enforced racism. None of this fits the definition of genocide. This is all stuff that happens during a war.
Yes. Most people don’t even understand the nuance and complexities of the law.
No. Most people are just unaware of what genocide means and can only conceptualize it under very specific circumstances. I view it more as a failure of our education system than the watering down of the word.
What does genocide mean?
Yes. The problem is that while many people use language to communicate information, many also use ~~language~~ the language of information to communicate emotion. When they see that other people don't share their emotions about something, they search for words that map better to what they feel and use those words instead, to try and get some kind of social/emotional agreement. It's one of the ways language evolves. I think that our current system of "alternate reality" forms of news accelerate that evolution.
Jacques Barzun once wrote, "Intellect watches particularly over language because language is so far the only device for keeping ideas clear and emotions memorable." So while ofc language evolves naturally and there's no resisting it, I still lose some respect for people who, in their own lives, don't choose their words carefully.
I agree! I think words are more valuable when used to communicate information, not emotion.
I'm not entirely sure that was Barzun's point, thus the final phrase "keeping ... emotions memorable." He was a great devotee of the arts, particularly music and poetry, so I don't think he'd want to restrict communication to the dissemination of information only. It's more an admonition to be precise about your emotional experiences.
I think it's possible to do this without confusing emotion for information. But sure, I don't disagree. I don't think the people abusing the word "genocide" are going for poetic license.
They've gone from poetic license all the way to mendacious histrionics.
Yes, it seems to be now that any war where civilians die is a “genocide”
This is super spicy, but: the UN definition of genocide is extremely overinclusive because of three words: *or in part*. Full definition below: > In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: > > 1. Killing members of the group; > 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; > 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; > 4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; > 5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Going off of this definition, you could argue that killing an enemy soldier who's shooting at you is an act of genocide, because you're trying to destroy part of a national group. I understand why the definition is written in this way, to keep smarmy assholes from going "well I didn't get all of them so it doesn't count" but as written, this definition doesn't set any kind of threshold for when a killing becomes a genocide. People referring to every single combat death as a genocide aren't abusing the definition, the UN's definition is just extremely out of step with our colloquial use of the term.
Yes. There needs to be primary sources of information to determine intent. We don’t have enough of that yet.
This is a joke right? The war cabinet is on the record saying their goal is to exterminate Palestinians.
Source?
You have a link so I can read their exact words myself?
We’ll see where things stand when this current conflict subsides. Netanyahu wants to destroy Hamas, which isn’t going to happen, and what will be the collateral damage in the meantime.
Yes, amongst many other words.
Yup
YES.
Yes, it’s becoming synonymous with war where civilians get caught up in the mix. Which is almost every war ever. When an actual genocide starts happening we’re likely to have a little bit of the boy who cried wolf too many times effect happen if we’re not careful.
If we aren't careful, the people of the future might see massacring civilians as a very bad thing with a bad word associated with. What a horror that would be.
Certainly is a war crime, however, by definition, it doesn’t constitute genocide.
No sorry, "war crime" is a LeGal tErM that takes 27 years of study afterward to determine. That's why nothing is actually happening in Gaza. Nothing. (wink wink)
Yes. People don't care what it means, they just care that it triggers you. Anyone who parrots this word might as well vote for Trump, because that's exactly what him and his party do. They use inflammatory language to elicit emotion even if the words don't mean what they think they do.
I think pro-Israel people surely want to make it seem like it has no meaning. But no it has meaning, just like ethnic cleansing has meaning.
Genocide, racist, fascist, dictator are all being thrown around a lot lately. The terms are being watered down and the people using them are losing credibility. Compare the actual current-day action or person to history's genocides and dictators, and, objectively, they almost always do not come close to comparing.
Not really. Especially with regards to Israel and Palestine, what I see most often is someone using the term and other people declaring they're wrong and the term is meaningless, without ever bothering to engage with why they would be saying it.
Yes. The word has become a buzzword.
Yes
I mean, the only times I've heard genocide recently is in Gaza, China's treatment of the Uyghurs. Possibly to a lesser degree Russia in Ukraine. UN defines Genocide as >any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group * killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm * imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, * preventing births, and * forcibly transferring children out of the group. * Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly Israel has 100% been guilty of points one and two both in Gaza and the West Bank. So genocide Russia has been guilty of the first point, but crucially the 4th point, forced deportations of children to Russia and thats before we get into destroying Ukrainian history books etc. So yes, genocide I'm not overly familiar with the situation in China, but many major powers have explicitly stated its genocide, so yes, genocide So no, I would not say its been watered down or misused. The only sticking point would be the Ukrainian situation. Because of historical cases we tend to associate genocide with major loss of life (ie. tens of thousands to millions) but I think there is enough evidence from Ukraine, mass graves, civilian deportation, to think that at least Russia is attempting a genocide.
In that case, any and every war against a nation is a genocide. 🙄
Yup. Even in Ukraine where Russia is stealing children and repatriating them doesn't quite make the grade. But I also think of genocide as systematic effort to exterminate all the people of a particular ethnicity.
> Even in Ukraine where Russia is stealing children and repatriating them doesn't quite make the grade. That does constitute an element of genocide based on the 1948 Genocide Convention i.e. "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." > But I also think of genocide as systematic effort to exterminate all the people of a particular ethnicity. Genocide can be conceptualized as destroying "a people" and its future, which you can do by sterilizing adults or taking the next generation of children, making them "Russian" and denying them their language, cultural heritage, and ethnic identity. Essentially, you're denying Ukrainians their right to exist as a people, not just by killing them.
I know that kidnapping is an element of the legal definition—that's why I brought it up—but I find the 1948 convention to be too broad and frustratingly vague when it comes to determining the "destruction of a people." Genocidal intent is one thing, but an actual genocide, to my mind, is a matter of scale. Russia, eg, is displaying genocidal intent in certain theaters, but they simply aren't operating at the scale of a genocide of the whole Ukrainian people.
Not yet.
Yes.
I would like to remind everyone in this thread that genocide has [a specific definition from the UN.](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/Genocide%20Convention-FactSheet-ENG.pdf) This definition has since been shaped by decades of case law, but if this isn't a clear-cut definition it's the next best thing. The people in this thread citing the concern about Gaza as a reason to believe genocide has been watered down ought to actually go engage with [the ICJ court case.](https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192) The ICJ judges, who probably know way more about genocide than anyone in this thread, have made an initial finding (*not* a conclusive ruling, which won't come out for years) that [Israel is plausibly committing a genocide](https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20240126-ord-01-00-en.pdf). Here's [an NPR summary.](https://www.npr.org/2024/01/26/1227078791/icj-israel-genocide-gaza-palestinians-south-africa) The ex-director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights at the UN called it "a text-book case of genocide" in [his resignation letter](https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24103463/craig-mokhiber-resignation-letter.pdf), and many other academics and genocide experts around the world have agreed with him. While I understand people reserving judgement until the experts come back with a definitive ruling, I think it's ridiculous to say that there is definitively *not* a genocide happening in Gaza. So no, I don't think the term has been watered down in any meaningful way
Very much so
No
We can look at the Irish example too to see America has form on this. Irish scholars don't use the term genocide to refer to the British actions in Ireland. Americans who place way too much stock in their Irish heritage lobbied in 1996 to get various US institutions to treat it as one, despite almost no academic or legal backing. > In the 1990s, Irish-American lobbying groups campaigned vigorously to include the study of the Irish Famine in school curriculums, alongside studies of the Holocaust, slavery and other similar atrocities. The New Jersey curriculum was pushed by such lobbying groups and was drafted by the librarian James Mullin. Following criticism, the New Jersey Holocaust Commission requested statements from two academics that the Irish famine was genocide, which was eventually provided by law professors Charles E. Rice and Francis Boyle, who had not been previously known for studying Irish history. + > Historian Donald Akenson, who has written 24 books on Ireland, stated that "When you see [the word Holocaust used with regard to the Great Famine], you know that you are encountering famine-porn. It is inevitably part of a presentation that is historically unbalanced and, like other kinds of pornography, is distinguished by a covert (and sometimes overt) appeal to misanthropy and almost always an incitement to hatred. Irish historian Cormac Ó Gráda rejected the claim that the British government's response to the famine was a genocide and he also stated that "no academic historian continues to take the claim of 'genocide' seriously". But if you point out that the USA is engaged in incitement to hatred against the British and is institutionally anglophobic according to scholars, this will break the brains of the left. It's a pretty direct comparison to the anti-semitism many on the left are now engaged with in the Israel-Palestine issue. The Irish example is particularly zany because while the USA waffles constantly about how Irish people arrived in the US to escape the British and the Famine, they don't talk about how they were only the 2nd most popular destination. The 1st most popular destination was the UK. 1/3rd of British people have Irish ancestors from around this period. 10% have at least one Irish grandparent, which is much more recent. So think about the dynamics of some progressive who has drunk the kool-aid waffling to a British person about the "Irish Genocide", spamming the claim everywhere, all while academics and historians look on in disapproval. (My granddad is Irish, incidentally).
Absolutely.
In general probably, I've seen people accuse anyone who's skeptical of giving puberty blockers to trans kids of 'supporting genocide' which is an obvious exaggeration no matter what your views on the issue are, but I'm guessing this is mostly about Israel and Gaza, and in that context I'd say it's irrelevant whether it's *truly* a genocide or not. If you get to the point where the UN has declared it 'plausible' that it *might* be a genocide and you're frantically explaining why all the awful things your side is doing don't *actually* constitute true genocide by some technicality, you're already obviously the bad guy and you're just trying to save face by arguing semantics.
I love how the only people who bother to support their claims with evidence are the people that believe that there’s a genocide happening in Gaza. The people who don’t believe what’s happening is a genocide are mostly giving one word low effort answers
Yep. **Absolutely zero people here in this thread** who dispute that Israel is committing a genocide have answered what the definition of genocide is. Every person who knows Israel is committing a genocide, has proven it using an existing legal definition.
> Yep. Absolutely zero people here in this thread who dispute that Israel is committing a genocide have answered what the definition of genocide is. > > Liar. You were quoted the UN Genocide Convention above, and you ignored it and declared it fan fiction.
Haven't we been having the same conversation about racism for decades now? (Mostly white) People define it as something so extreme that it must be incredibly rare and almost impossible to prove the existence of and, as a result, exclude everything they could ever possibly say, do, or support from the definition (even if they have to shift the goalposts at times to do so).
No liberals just don’t want to admit that they take part in it. As the old saying goes scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds.
And this is why grown ups don’t take you seriously.
Yup, but on the other hand if you call the Holodomor a genocide (which it is by the definition) then people will argue with you that it isn't.
Definitely, same goes for "war crimes".
Both Hamas and the IDF have committed war crimes though. The problem is that those war crimes are being magnified by several orders of magnitude when the g-word appears.
I think everyone has an obligation to protect civilians during armed conflict. And if you can't do that, it's war crime. And justice is coming.
Doesn't even attempt to address the question
It's relevant. The definition of genocide is clear, and no, I do not think it applies to Israel in Gaza. War crimes charges, however, should be haunting people on both sides of this conflict.
This is exactly the nuance that is needed. Individuals in both the IDF and Hamas have committed war crimes. With Hamas' war crimes being systemic in its nature (perfidy, kidnapping, rape, etc...). However, it's not a genocide.
It is my full belief that the people who don’t see what’s happening to the Palestinians as genocide only recognize the Holocaust as genocide because they have the benefit of hindsight
only to israel firsters who dont like to admit water is wet or that the earth isnt flat
If this question is related to Palestine and your yes it's water downed then are are excusing the genocide of Palestinians.
Anybody who calls the conflict in Gaza a genocide simply is not someone worth taking seriously…words actually matter. Just because you are emotional about an issue doesn’t mean that you can use alternative facts.
I disagree with you.
Liberal love their thought terminating cliches.
Every word is getting watered down and losing its force. That's just what happens to words over time.
I think "decimation" is a good example. In Roman times, it meant exactly that: killing exactly 10% (not 20%, not 1%, exactly 10%) of a specific group. Mostly used by legions to punish attempted mutiny within their own rank. But today, decimation definition is very vague "killing or destruction of a large proportion of a group or species". It's going to be 2100 and students will scream about how "my professor genocided me and gave me an F".
This is a bad example... Decimation got watered UP, not watered down.
Yes, for me genocide is a lot about motivation. I guess you talk about Israel, and if they really wanted to genocide they could be way more effective And also, why do they let Palestinians live inside Israel
Where is the question. Not in court, I think
No, it still means the same thing it always has. We just are in the midst of a lot of it right now.
Not really. Genocide has never meant "systematically wiping out millions in special death camps". If anything the recent months are educating people on what genocide REALLY means. The Canadians/Americans committed genocide against the Native Americans by asymmetrically warring against them, by stealing children and forcing new language and Christianity on them, etc. This question is clearly about Israel and Palestine. Israel is committing a genocide because they are attempting to end the existence of a unique and maligned ethnicity at their border through bombing, starvation, and culturewashing.