[mylons]

is the destruction of gaza awful? yes. is it a genoicde? no. flippantly tossing words around devalues them and debases the conversation. https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/palestine/gaza

the 20 years leading up to trump, calling every republican a nazi, has completely destroyed the meaning of the word. trump is actually doing a lot of fascist leaning stuff this time around, and you could possibly use that word appropriately but it is currently meaningless.

[rafterydj]

"flippantly tossing words around devalues them and debases the conversation." Agreed- and that's exactly what you are doing with the word, "no."

Soldiers are murdering an entire population- or as many of them as they can, seemingly- for political purposes that desire that population to simply not exist anymore. To say that is _not_ a genocide devalues the meaning of the word.

[mcv]

They're not "murdering an entire population"; although many thousands of Palestinians have been killed, it's still a tiny percentage of the total population.

But it's not necessary to murder an entire population for it to count as genocide. Any attempt to destroy a people counts, including forced sterilization, re-education, mass deportations, etc.

But it's also clear that Israel has explicitly targeted civilians, help workers, journalists, refugee camps, food distribution, and I've even read about them shooting people hiding in churches. None of those are valid targets.

[mylons]

to say that is what is happening is completely disingenuous. seemingly something happened by the democratically elected government of Gaza on 10/7

[yibg]

A democratically elected government invaded Iraq and killed a lot of Iraqis.

If Iraq got some sort of super advanced technology that made them the superpower in the world, would they be justified if they:

- Started bombing US cities, including hospitals, schoolsetc and killing US civilians?

- Would they be justified in cutting off food and water supply to all of the US?

- Sniping kids and people waving white flags in the head?

[sir0010010]

You are missing that:

* Hamas keeps its missiles, arms and other military equipment inside or underneath schools and hospitals

* UNRWA was functioning as an arms dealer by putting arms inside of bags of flour or other food items

* Hamas generally has its fighters not wear uniform, but instead wear civilian clothes or even niqabs (where only the eyes are visible). Making it extremely difficult for the IDF to determine who is a combatant and who isn't- and guaranteeing mistakes will be made.

* Hamas also uses child soldiers or orders children to throw stones at IDF soldiers - again ensuring IDF soldiers have to always be afraid the person in front of them is going to kill them and that they have to make split second decisions on what to do about it

[yibg]

Ah yes, the human shield argument. Like the "tunnels" and graphics provided by the IDF. Convenient isn't? Every hospital, apartment block, school and refugee camp has hamas in them, so everything is fair game.

[mylons]

ya it's pretty FUCKED UP that HAMAS does that, and Iran funds it, isn't it? or do you think Israel just wants to slaughter people weaker than them because they can? if that was their aim why did they wait until 10/8 to start doing it? they could have done it any time in the last 30 years.

[dragonwriter]

> seemingly something happened by the democratically elected government of Gaza on 10/7

Gaza doesn't have a democratically elected government, and one of the reasons Palestine (of which Gaza is a region) does not have a democratically elected government is that Israel has exercised its power as an occupying power administering large parts of Palestine directly and controlling the rest indirectly to prevent elections which have been jointly agreed on by the two main factions.

And they’ve done that specifically to maintain the current violent and divided status quo, which they leverage as pretext to continue their long policy of genocide.

[ath3nd]

What happened on 10/7 was terrible but a terror attack doesn't make what Israel does to Palestine less of a genocide.

[dragonwriter]

There is a reason officials of both Hamas and Israel have been charged by the ICC.

[jama211]

I love how no one mentioned trump or nazis in this immediate thread but the fact that you brought it up unprompted paints a perfect picture of exactly what kind of person you are. I don’t need to call you any names, you’ve outed yourself all by yourself.

[drcongo]

It's genocide. And the reason we were using the word nazi for twenty years was to try to warn everyone what was happening, but nobody listened, and now you got nazis.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Calling everyone Nazis wasn’t to warn everyone. Fairly sure it was mostly just virtue signalling. Everyone using the word wasn’t around when WWII happened.

The result probably just desensitised people to what was going on since every little infraction the right did seemed to make them a nazi.

[tomrod]

The current campaign against Gazans satisfies the criteria for genocide.

Here is the UN definition for genocide. While you normally can't prove a negative, each jot and tittle of the definition is clear in the Gazans' case, so I leave it to you to figure out why you're so cautious to call a spade a spade and call a genocide a genocide.

> The word “genocide” was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It consists of the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. Lemkin developed the term partly in response to the Nazi policies of systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust, but also in response to previous instances in history of targeted actions aimed at the destruction of particular groups of people. Later on, Raphäel Lemkin led the campaign to have genocide recognised and codified as an international crime.

> Genocide was first recognised as a crime under international law in 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/96-I). It was codified as an independent crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention). The Convention has been ratified by 153 States (as of April 2022). The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly stated that the Convention embodies principles that are part of general customary international law. This means that whether or not States have ratified the Genocide Convention, they are all bound as a matter of law by the principle that genocide is a crime prohibited under international law. The ICJ has also stated that the prohibition of genocide is a peremptory norm of international law (or ius cogens) and consequently, no derogation from it is allowed.

> The definition of the crime of genocide as contained in Article II of the Genocide Convention was the result of a negotiating process and reflects the compromise reached among United Nations Member States in 1948 at the time of drafting the Convention. Genocide is defined in the same terms as in the Genocide Convention in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 6), as well as in the statutes of other international and hybrid jurisdictions. Many States have also criminalized genocide in their domestic law; others have yet to do so.

> # Definition

> Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

> ## Article II*

> 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:

> Killing members of the group;

> Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

> Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

> Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

> Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

> *Elements of the crime*

> The Genocide Convention establishes in Article I that the crime of genocide may take place in the context of an armed conflict, international or non-international, but also in the context of a peaceful situation. The latter is less common but still possible. The same article establishes the obligation of the contracting parties to prevent and to punish the crime of genocide.

> The popular understanding of what constitutes genocide tends to be broader than the content of the norm under international law. Article II of the Genocide Convention contains a narrow definition of the crime of genocide, which includes two main elements:

> 1. A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and

> 2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:

> 2a. Killing members of the group

> 2b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

> 2c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

> 2d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

> 2e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

> The intent is the most difficult element to determine. To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Cultural destruction does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a group. It is this special intent, or dolus specialis, that makes the crime of genocide so unique. In addition, 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.

> Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted - not randomly – because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention (which excludes political groups, for example). This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, and not its members as individuals. Genocide can also be committed against only a part of the group, as long as that part is identifiable (including within a geographically limited area) and “substantial.”

[0] https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition

[jama211]

Well said.