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I'm actually not and genocide doesn't have multiple definitions which is a thing that unfortunately people who claim to be progressive love to do... I'm progressive myself but I draw distinction between myself and many progressives by calling myself a moderate progressive. I don't try and redefine words to fit my ideology.
Genocide means to try and wipe out totally a people or an ethnicity through means of violence or deliberate actions. Things like the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide are good examples as is the Khmer Rogue terror in Cambodia.
However horrifying examples of violence on a grand scale like the rape of Nanking during World War II do not count because they are not attempts to eradicate an entire ethnicity or people nor do they end up having that impact whether the intention was or not.
If the rape of Nanking does not qualify as a genocide then there's no way in heck the Gaza war does. I need you to be honest and have integrity so that we can make the world better. As progressives we will only have ourselves to blame if we let emotion and passion override logic and truth. Because it WILL make the world worse long-term.
I'm in favor of a ceasefire at this point but it is absolutely not a genocide nor was it ever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_Convention#Definition_of_genocide
Note the words "acts committed with **intent **to destroy, in whole or in part"
Also "Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;" There is evidence of Netanyaho and other ministers doing this. Just now some minister was talking about settling Gaza, again implying the total removal of Palestinians.
This is Israel's stated intent! If we let them continue, that is what we have to assume will happen! 1.5 million refugees inside Gaza, locked in, no power, not enough food and water, most hospitals bombed, population density of new york. What do you think is going to happen?
It's called the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide", not the "lets sit back and discuss the finer technical details until they are all dead before we judge" convention.
There is a story how all this is obfuscated at CNN but similar is happening in German public broadcasting. Germany admirably protests against the AfD, but the government is making Germany complicit in Genocide again.
So under this ridiculously broad definition any war whatsoever is genocide.
We both know that's not a good definition nor is it really an accurate one historically. Nor is it what the vast overwhelming majority of people think genocide means.
And if the vast overall majority of people think one thing of a word that it doesn't matter that a book says this is the actual meaning because people collectively decide what the meaning of words are.
Either way even this broad approach fails anyway because Israel is not trying to destroy Palestinians They're trying to destroy a terrorist group that routinely murders people en masse.
Ok. Do you think after this bombing campaign - one of the most intense in modern history - in your judgement if you look at what the 1.5 million Palestinians are going through: Do you think there are now more or less of them wanting to fight for Hamas?
Hyperbole. Why don't you stick to the actual facts? It's okay to be wrong. In fact being wrong is an opportunity! It's an opportunity for growth and improvement! You literally cannot do either of those things unless you acknowledge that you're wrong at times.
No I'm genuinely curious. If those are the state goals of the campaign that justify all this slaughter, you must think this is eventually going to stop before it becomes a genocide? You must think eventually "oh we got the last hamas fighter, now we can leave!".
If you don't think that, honestly to yourself, then you must agree that at best the motivation is blind raging hatred (racism) or vengeance or political opportunism, or at worse the motivation is a "final solution" for the palestinian question.
I think the solution is a permanent occupation and annexation of Gaza using this as a pretext. This is something that I support because a two-state solution is not practical considering the geography of Israel and turns Israel into Swiss cheese when you look at the borders on a map.
Israel holds the high ground morally ever since they were attacked during the wars of the 20th century. There's not a shred of religious influence in my support. It's purely the fact that they've been the underdog throughout the 20th century and attacked endlessly by their neighbors yet they have been gracious to them in victory and yet all it has inspired is further enmity and war. That is why I side with Israel. When Egypt attacked them in the 1960s they took the entire Sinai peninsula and they gave it back out of Goodwill. How have they been repaid for their generosity in victory? They were attacked in a defensive war and then took enemy territory and then gave it back out of generosity. And what was the reward? Terrorist attacks and more war of aggression. Israel has made some mistakes in the way they've handled the Palestinian situation. There have been times when they have unnecessarily harm civilians and they certainly don't have blood free hands. But they are light years cleaner than all their neighbors. They are absolutely 100% the lesser of all evils in that area.
So I support the occupation of Gaza and I support the permanent annexation of Gaza. Its very clear to me that that's what this is about. But annexation and occupation do not equate to genocide. You can annex a territory and give it citizens civil rights. Over time they become more like the original state. They become israelized. Romanized. Americanized. Etc.
When Israel controls all of the territories within its borders including the West Bank then there will be peace. And they should give civil rights to those conquered peoples and treat them with respect.
A one state solution to create a Israel/Palestine and an end to Apartheid is the only sensible long term solution. I fully agree.
But we are further away from that than we ever were. Not even the most progressive voices in politics suggest that. I think you're very unaware how bad things have gotten in Israel, how far into fascism they have gone.
There are only few independent dissident voices that are not part of competing geopolitical camps (e.g. rt, aljazeera) but they exist: Democracy Now and The Majority Report w/ Sam Seeder. They interview actual experts or professors about these topics instead of pundits. I strongly suggest you search for "Israel" for articles from those channels to get a different perspective.
Look at the corruption of Netanyaho and how they removed the PLO and propped up Hamas for political gain. Look at their laws that criminalizes expressing support for Palestine (suggesting a one state solution would most likely get you arrested in Israel). Look at the fervent fascism blooming there. Look at all the war crimes, and look at how they occupied Gaza for more than 50 years and what that does to a people. Look at the talk about the biblical story of amalek.
And I don't think it makes sense to argue from history, e.g. why Israeli's deserve a homeland and why the arab states had a problem with that. But before 1950 there was apparently very little anti-semitism in arab states so the opposition is political. If you want to talk about the wars around the time, you'd also have to talk about how Israel came to live where Palestinians used to live before (Nakba). The Arabs had no hand in the holocaust. From there perspective Israel was a colonial enterprise by white European people that displaced the people who lived there for a millennium. Unfortunately that gets us nowhere.
Saying Israel holds the moral high ground and is somehow pure is absolute madness!
You can also argue that Israels geopolitical role in the region is to be a proxy for US empire interests - to destabilize and control Arab countries in the region and prevent democracy in Arab countries. Because that would make them much harder to control and exploit for resources. You can find much in declassified or even public documentation. This is at least partially true and has a major effect on the situation.
Israel effectively occupied and controlled Palestine for 50 years and had that long to turn things around. Using education, propaganda and stability to create a lasting peace. But they simply didn't and still don't want that, they want a country all to their own based on their identity as Jews and not be "outbred" by Arabs.
So how can you get to a one state solution when there are so many geopolitical and cultural forces pushing to the exact opposite direction? We do not even have mainstream press reporting accurately on any of this, so you can't even have a discussion based on reality.
For a working democracy you need modest prosperity, education and safety. The prerequisites are worse than ever for both parties.
BTW the US alleges that what China is doing to alter the culture of uyghur is a "cultural" genocide. Which btw was a reaction after the US funded radical Islamic separatists in China.
To stand by Israel and say "they wouldn't go that far" is not learning from history.
I will admit that I know nothing about Israel's current politics other than that Netanyahu is corrupt and if not for this war he'd likely have been impeached and ousted. I appreciate this post and all this information.
The British first started settling Jews in Israel when it was British Palestine.
It was British territory. You have to respect conquest and annexation. If you don't then I could make a case through roundabout historical arguments that Israel belongs to the Jews anyway because they were there thousands of years ago in 700 BC and Arabs were not! That would make us occupiers of native American land. Where does the madness end? An endless attempt to make things right in history by going back to the first peoples of the land? In that case all of England would need to be repopulated back in Northern Germany. Half of Northern Italy would need to be repatriated in Belarus.
We would somehow need to move all of South America into Spain.
Australia would become deserted and returned only to the aboriginals.
It's unreasonable to not respect conquest and annexation. Is it moral, no? We don't have the PHYSICAL capacity for perfect justice when it comes to a question of this large magnitude. I subscribe to realpolitik.
So if we're trying to maximize justice for those still alive and not judging up ancestral grievances of who conquered who... We need to focus on practical considerations only for the people currently alive not who was living there 100 years ago.
Furthermore I would say that displacing some Palestinians to give refuge to a people that were recently genocided on mass in World War II is a moral goal. Is it a perfect solution? No. Is it a reasonable and mostly good one? Yes.
How should it have been handled? They should have bought the land from Palestinians. In many cases they did. But that didn't stop false claims of colonialism.
I'm all in favor of giving Palestinians reparations but after that it needs to be in exchange for releasing all claims to the land. And they need to be resettled with equity and dignity in friendly Arab nations with a compatible culture.
You want to talk justice, it doesn't become easy, it gets very messy very fast and I'm fine with the taking on that approach. But I have the stomach for it and I'm not sure the vast majority of people do.
There's yet another solution that could be equitable for all. That of a UN protectorate. As far as I'm aware that's the only perfect solution. But it's the least practical and the most unlikely because it makes literally no one happy despite being what's truly just.
A UN protectorate would make sense anyway because technically the whole world has cultural claim to Jerusalem and the surroundings.
And it could lay the foundation for a sensible and accountable democratic world government.
But conspiracy nuts won't ever allow that. And there's other less fantastical reasons for opposition as well that are more grounded in self-interest and selfishness and monetary reasons.
Yeah that was my point, it's unproductive to dredge up the history, you have to find reasonable solutions to allow people a dignified life now. And the majority of Palestinians are actually on board with that.
But the current regime in Israel and the geopolitical strategies in the middle east are just... abominable. Long before Okt.7 Israel used genocidal tactics by creating a fascist legal system and try to push out and disenfranchise Palestinians more and more (e.g. Israel Escalates Genocidal Violence Against Palestinians In The West Bank - YouTube Jul.8th 2023)
If you want to know the lies and propaganda that is being used to fool the world around all this, read this: Israel’s Ruthless Propaganda Campaign to Dehumanize Palestinians - theintercept Feb.7th 2024. Or at least the beginning, it's long but in depth.
I'm not sure if you can seriously believe your justification for pushing out the Palestinians. Especially since you're constructing a narrative based on Jews "deserving" this because of holocaust - which justifies it based on ancient history again and makes it explicitly a European colonial project. Which it was. Anyway - displacing them is not an option, the "friendly arab neighbors" are a different ethnicity and don't want them. That again is racial bias to think "they are all the same".
So yeah the only viable solution would be a one state, and that AFTER Israel has been "denazified". Because that's what they are more or less now. Fascists who believe that there can never be peace between those "sub humans". They kept millions of people in occupied areas, and actively suppressed any peaceful movements in the illusion that this is somehow sustainable. FYI a modern definition of fascism is a belief in “Inequality through mythological and essentialized identity”. Israel now is basically the US after 20 years of Trump rule. We (US and EU) need to stop supporting them.
I've grown up with this propaganda in my head too that the arabs are just violence terrorist and bomb etc. And that the Jews need to be protected. But to say "never again" most of all means to prevent genocide. Israel's regime now calls everyone who criticizes them antisemitic and actively seeks to create anti-semitism for their own political gain.
And I would have loved to stand back and not get involved in this, but my government made my country complicit by aiding Israel perpetrate this genocide. I just hope it's not too late.
Some links:
An interview with the Author of the above intercept article: Jeremy Scahill on Israel's "Deliberate Propaganda Campaign" - YouTube
Report Finds “No Evidence” in Key Dossier to Support Israel’s UNRWA Allegations | Truthout
Israel’s free speech crackdown: ‘War inside of a war’ - The Washington Post Nov 12th, 2023
Israeli Kids Torment Principal Who Voices Empathy For Gazans - YouTube Jan 7, 2024
You've lost me entirely.
I need you to do better and read the actual definition before spouting off about it.
This is a waste of my time because you're not listening to what I'm saying.