I started off deeply skeptical of claims about genocide. Israel’s actions over the last seven months have persuaded me that I was wrong. And while I think “colonialism” is the wrong description, it’s because colonialism is mostly a useful term to describe specific actions taken by specific European powers in the sixteenth through early twentieth centuries, and the more removed you get from those specific actions, the less it works as a descriptor. Its use as a metaphor is fundamentally flawed, but that doesn’t mean that other actions (such as Israel’s actions in Israel and Palestine) are ethical.
The use of the word “tankies” is stupid in this context: it’s an even worse analogy than “colonialists.”
And this is what baffles me. I think you’re a pretty smart guy, and I honestly have no clue how you arrive at this conclusion. It doesn’t make sense to me.
What does make sense to me are the Palestinian hardliners who believe that Israel’s very existence is a horrible crime because the whole land is Palestine and always has been, and so anywhere Israel is is automatically ethnic cleansing and genocide. I disagree with those people; I think they are wrong; but I can follow their logic.
Yours, I simply cannot.
The last seven months have convinced you that Israel wants to destroy the Palestinian people? Even the Gazan people specifically? WTF?
If that was what Israel wanted, wouldn’t they take steps to make that happen?
Why would Israel spend enormous effort to get civilians out of the areas of heavy fighting? Why would Israel warn civilians before striking targets, even at the cost of military effectiveness?
It’s honestly and genuinely baffling to me.
I did a bunch of research over the last couple weeks, because I was curious about the ideological backing for the protest movement. I read Students for Justice in Palestine newsletters, I read statements by professors who back them like Judith Butler, and I read articles and (parts of) books by Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein. (Perhaps that is worthy of another thread - What IS the cause of the Pro Palestinian Protestors?)
And I’m sorry if I’m being dismissive, but my takeaway from all of that was “West = Imperialist! Imperialist BAD! Zionism = West = Imperialism! Zionism = Bad!”. Hence, Tankies.
From my understanding, this is not a requirement for genocide. If some portion of the IDF is either in favor of, or ambivalent to, either killing all Gazans, or pushing all Gazans out of Gaza, and some of them are taking action with this in mind, that would be enough for a risk of genocide. Remember that the point of recognizing a genocide in progress isn’t to just record facts of history but to stop any actions contributing to (and/or prevent) a genocide. Definitions are purposefully loose and hazy to make sure potential genocides can be recognized and stopped.
So the Palestinian civilians are fully culpable for the actions of Hamas, so that they should suffer the same punishment. Also the goal of the war is to eliminate Hamas…
Please reconcile those beliefs in a way that doesn’t sound genocidy, I’ll wait here.
From whom? Certainly not anyone in this thread who have all repeatedly said they that what Hamas did was an atrocity. That doesn’t mean that Israel gets to commit its own atrocity in return, much less thirty.
I would say that you are focusing too much on the small number of people who are getting in front of microphones and cameras. At this point there are people protesting the war on several levels, including but not limited to: Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli war effort, and opposed to war in general. Thinking that everyone protesting the war is a tankie is like thinking that everyone who protested against Vietnam was a Commie. There were plenty of moms who didn’t want their sons to get killed in a rice patty for nothing. And right now, there are plenty of people who don’t want to see Palestinians killed for no apparent reason.
Please don’t take that last sentence as an invitation to relitigate the past 70 years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You may not like the fact that millions of Americans currently see Israel as the bad guy here, but they do. And for a lot of them, neither anti-Semitism, nor pro-Palestinianism is the root reason. They are just tired of seeing people getting bombed and starved to death and want it to stop.
You can call that simplistic and naive, or any other term you want to use. But it doesn’t change the fact that it is a reality.
You can also throw up your arms and say, well who needs you anyway. Which is also fine, for now at least. In reality, Israel doesn’t need the US’s support in Gaza. However, I think that is placing way too much focus on the current war, and not the longer term. As I mentioned before, I believe what happens after the shooting stops in Gaza is far more important than the current conflict. Similarly, Israel’s long-term role as a US ally could well be more important than whatever debating points are scored while the bullets still fly.
For fifty years, the US has supported Israel, but now there are millions of young Americans who previously didn’t have a strong stance that now don’t like what Israel is doing. That could all blow over, particularly if a real solution comes out of this. Or it could be the beginning of a sea change in how America views Israel. No longer a valued ally, but a regional bully who constantly creates messes we get dragged into.
All of which you likely find incredibly unfair, but as the great sage Will Munny once said, “deserves got nothing to do with it.”
So, if at least one IDF soldier named Racist Schmulik wouldn’t care much if the Gazans all left Gaza, and had that thought in mind when taking at least some actions, this would qualify as a risk of genocide, and we should recognize it as such?
Somewhere between one soldier and all of them lies the threshold. It’s not at all clear to me that this threshold isn’t being met, and if there’s even a 5% chance that we’re seeing a genocide in progress then that’s more than enough to be extremely worried about it.
I will just add that I think that perhaps you, and the person you are quoting, are too focused on the student protestors. LBJ didn’t care about the student protests, but when he knew he had lost Walter Cronkite he knew he was screwed. My college aged daughter never attended a single protest or said a thing about any river to any sea. She did however ask for people to make donations to UNICEF for Gaza for her birthday because she was horrified by what she has been seeing.
Debating extreme, radical, and revolutionary types is easy, and let’s face it, can be fun. On the other hand, justifying the killing of tens of thousands of civilians to someone who just wants the killing to stop, and really doesn’t care who started it or why, is a losing proposition.
Well, I’m sure there’s more than one Racist Schmulik, just like I’m sure the US Invasion of Iraq had more than one Racist Bubba who wouldn’t care one iota if all the Iraqis died or were displaced. But I think calling either a genocide is a big stretch.
Maybe you are right, but why would I argue with people who don’t call me a genocider or act like I have no right to live in my ancestral homeland? I have no problem with actual aid organizations or with people who want peace.
I want the killing to stop, too. Not just for a day, or a week, or a month; I want it to stop for good, and for Palestine to be a real country where people can prosper, rather than a place that shoots rockets at my home country and is occupied by Israel while chewing up both Israeli and Palestinian lives. And the only way that happens is a two state solution. Which will never happen while Hamas is in control.
Well, that is just it. You don’t need to argue with the people who aren’t calling you a genocider, or who genuinely want peace. But at the moment, a lot of those people who genuinely want peace are currently anti-Israel. You can spend all of your time arguing with the small percentage of radical people who you will never change the opinion of, or you can have reasonable conversations with the millions of people who now view Israel as evil, but may be convinced to rebuild, or create for the first time a level of value and trust with the Israeli people.
How much time have you spent on this site in the past few months going around and around with a handful of people whose opinions you will never change? And how much time have you spent having productive discussions? A lasting solution will come out of productive discussions.
This is exactly what I find so frustrating about this whole discussion. This is a sentiment that I, in some ways, agree with. We could absolutely have a deep discussion about things the IDF is doing that are not working, or ways it is screwing up, and compare that to ways it is doing well. Why did evacutating civilians from Rafah go so much better than the evacuations earlier in the war, for example? Are there lessons to learn from this going forward?
But all of that sort of discussion gets absolutely shut down by bullshit genocide accusations.
In a way, it’s a lot like a microcosm of the larger issue with a peace deal. Maximalist rhetoric.
…I asked for evidence to show that Hamas had compromised the entire civilian infrastructure to its own benefit.
And you show me a bunch of cartoons?
Hamas claimed they’ve built 500km of tunnels, and you simply believe them?
The actual text talks about perhaps 5km of tunnels, if that. There is a graphic that is clearly labelled “not to scale” which suggests that its a misrepresentation. A handful of photos of an empty tunnel, another of what we’ve already seen of Al Shifa.
And the rest is just illustrations. An artists representation of what they imagine the tunnels look like.
There are claims of 1500 tunnels discovered at the time the article was published. Yet, excluding Al Shifa, they only show one? They can’t even find a single tunnel shaft with climbing bars at the same scale as the illustration that takes several screens to scroll down?
Seven months of war. Claims of 500km of tunnels, claims of 1500 tunnels found, and all you’ve got for it is a couple of photos and a bunch of illustrations? IDF soldiers running around posting TikToks every single day documenting countless atrocities, but no tunnels?
We are talking about the systematic destruction of most of the significant infrastructure in the country. You’ve got to do better than this if you don’t want to get accused of multiple warcrimes.
So trolling it is.
This has never been how genocide has been determined, and you know this. And randomly throwing in other atrocities doesn’t diminish this one.
Bullshit. It isn’t a fucking competition. It doesn’t cheapen anything at all. There isn’t a “genocide league table.” It isn’t actual survivors that are running around complaining that the focus on Gaza cheapened what happened to them. Instead, they largely stand in solidarity.
None of which you quoted remotely equates to genocide, I happened to actually cite a real genocide which happened less than ten years ago which you seem to have conveniently forgotten.
Are you for fuckin’ real? It’s a Reuters article which goes into avid description of the way in which tunnel infrastructure has been established through out Gaza.
I don’t need to troll to prove you’re wrong
Random atrocities lol, the Yazidi genocide happened less than ten years ago in the same region by an organisation which follows similar tenets to Hamas.
No it cheapens the terminology by stating that lots of people getting killed = genocide without actual evidence of a deliberate and sustained strategy of Genocidal intent, for example, the Yazidis, which is why I brought it up in the first place.
Not held in an underground bunker or murdered outright after they’ve dealt with them after burning down Sderot, also funny how you said its not a competition yet pull this out immediately as if to put the IDF on a par with Hamas, pathetic.
You forgot none of the children in Gaza were kidnapped and forcibly converted to Judaism, like the Yazidis were, you know, a real genocide?