> Sure, but the latest trend of accusing everyone you don’t like of genocide
Personally I only pay attention to accusations levelled against those killling significant numbers of non combatants and journalists, and made by a reasonable number of international bodies.
It adds further weight when, say, you have experts on the Holocaust, those considered a leading authority on genocide, chime in and say that something else is also a genocide.
That said, returning to my comment in response to yours - that was motivated by the ankle deep shallowness of a green account quip "War isn’t genocide"
What exactly is that supposed to mean? That the war waged by the post Weimar Republic was not or did not include any genocide?
By the criteria used against Israel every war would be a genocide.
Nazi Germany was at war while also carrying out a genocide at the same time. But by the definitions used against Israel, every country that fought in WWII was committing genocide.
A significant number of non-combatants have been killed in every single war that has had a significant number of casualties. Ever.
The fantastical utopian war is Israel is expected to wage, where only militants get killed doesn’t exist. The closest thing in history we have to that is Israel’s beeper operation against Hezbollah, but that is a one-off that isn’t easily repeated.
That's one single criteria, another is the espression of intent, there are more.
See, for example:
By May 2024, the Israel Defense Forces had ordered about one million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah — the southernmost and last remaining relatively undamaged city of the Gaza Strip — to move to the beach area of the Mawasi, where there was little to no shelter. The army then proceeded to destroy much of Rafah, a feat mostly accomplished by August.
At that point it appeared no longer possible to deny that the pattern of I.D.F. operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders in the days after the Hamas attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had promised that the enemy would pay a “huge price” for the attack and that the I.D.F. would turn parts of Gaza, where Hamas was operating, “into rubble,” and he called on “the residents of Gaza” to “leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere.”
Mr. Netanyahu had urged his citizens to remember “what Amalek did to you,” a quote many interpreted as a reference to the demand in a biblical passage calling for the Israelites to “kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings” of their ancient enemy. Government and military officials said they were fighting “human animals” and, later, called for “total annihilation.” Nissim Vaturi, the deputy speaker of Parliament, said on X that Israel’s task must be “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.” Israel’s actions could be understood only as the implementation of the expressed intent to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population. I believe the goal was — and remains today — to force the population to leave the Strip altogether or, considering that it has nowhere to go, to debilitate the enclave through bombings and severe deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation and medical aid to such an extent that it is impossible for Palestinians in Gaza to maintain or reconstitute their existence as a group.
My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.
This is not just my conclusion. A growing number of experts in genocide studies and international law have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza can only be defined as genocide. So has Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, and Amnesty International. South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
~ I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.
Israel born, Zionist raised, Jewish, former IDF soldier, Genocide Scholar, Holocaust historian Omer Bartov
Personally I only pay attention to accusations levelled against those killling significant numbers of non combatants and journalists, and made by a reasonable number of international bodies.
It adds further weight when, say, you have experts on the Holocaust, those considered a leading authority on genocide, chime in and say that something else is also a genocide.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omer_Bartov
That said, returning to my comment in response to yours - that was motivated by the ankle deep shallowness of a green account quip "War isn’t genocide"
What exactly is that supposed to mean? That the war waged by the post Weimar Republic was not or did not include any genocide?
As comments go, that seems ... vapid.