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by brainwad 269 days ago
I more or less agree with you (if it were a _genocide_, you'd expect Israel to be equally targeting Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel proper), but the report does have some specific examples of things that seem to go beyond "just" urban warfare. For example, Israel denied shipments of baby milk powder, which can serve no legitimate military purpose (except trying to prosecute the war via starvation of babies, which is illegal). When combined with the public statements from Israeli government officials that denigrate the Palestinians in Gaza as animals, I think there's definitely _some_ crimes against humanity being committed by Israel.
6 comments

> if it were a _genocide_, you'd expect Israel to be equally targeting Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel proper

Genocide does not require equal effort in all areas subject to the perpetrators influence; both the required intent and the required actions that define genocide can coincide with taking opportunistic advantage of available political pretexts to try to retain support of, say, a third-party country with a UNSC veto that uses that veto to protect the perpetrator from consequences, but might not do so in the absence of some kind of palatable pretext for a sufficient segment of the third-party state’s population.

Genocide requires particular kinds of evil, it doesn't require stupid.

> you'd expect Israel to be equally targeting Palestinians in the West Bank

The Israeli government doesn't have to. They let settlers take care of that for them without any repercussions.

> if it were a _genocide_, you'd expect Israel to be equally targeting Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel proper

Genocide means trying to killing the group in whole or in part. Trying to kill the group everywhere isn’t necessary for it to be genocide.

If they leave so much of a group alone, it starts to suggest that the intended targeted group is a different, smaller one. In this case, residents of Gaza vs Palestinians as a nation. Especially in combination with the "siege" comments, the motive seems clearly military advantage.
By this measure, the Armenians were also not the subject of a genocide. Which of course, is the common opinion in Turkey, and almost no where else.
They’re forcibly mass starving people. That’s genocide. There are military objectives, sure. It’s still genocide.
> Israel denied shipments of baby milk powder

“Yesterday, armed individuals approached four trucks outside our compound in Gaza City that were getting ready to transport desperately needed Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) for malnourished children enduring famine." https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/statement-unicef-theft...

This must have been done by the Jews of Gaza. Wait...

This is a different incident (RUTF is not milk powder, it's enhanced peanut butter basically). Both sides are bad, and both should do more to alleviate the suffering of civilians in areas they occupy.
Nazi Germany had Jewish officials. I'm sure they didn't commit _genocide_ against Jews.
animals comment (iirc made by galant) is misused. it was refering to hamas/pji/pflp that raided Israel on Oct 7th and not to the whole population