It’s a genocide if the goal is the wholesale extermination of a given race.
The boxcars were just efficient in the pursuit of exterminating the Jews.
I don’t see the Israelis trying to be efficient in rounding up Palestinians (including women and children) to be exterminated.
I’m not nitpicking. The UN defines it as (read to the bottom…bolding mine):
The United Nations first defined genocide in 1948 in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The treaty outlines five acts that can constitute genocide if they are done “with the intent to destroy an ethnic, national, racial or religious group”:
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm
Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births
Forcibly transferring children
To qualify as genocide, the actions must be done with intent to eliminate an entire group of people. Without provable intent, a group or individual can still be guilty of “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing” but not genocide. - SOURCE
It’s handy how there’s always a reason that Rwanda, Congo, Bosnia, Burma, Sudan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Armenia, and so many more can’t have been genocide because Nazi Germany was worse.
I’d agree Rwanda and Bosnia and Armenia were genocides (and Cambodia). I am not familiar enough with the others to say one way or another (a gap in knowledge I should fill).
Cambodia seems a bit different though. I don’t think they were after an ethnic group but just people the government didn’t like which could be anyone. Seems more akin to the French revolution’s Reign of Terror. Still horrific.
It was more a gripe about those who say only the Jewish part of those killed by Nazi Germany counts as a genocide and everything else is somehow just ethnic cleansing or something.
It wasn’t just some rando speaking at the UN. It was talking about this report.
And it isn’t just this one report. Historians. Scholars. I’ll provide a list of citations later when I’m not as unwell. But the evidence of genocide is overwhelming. It more than fits the definition you provided. The South Africa case made to the ICC that I’ve cited before goes over every single element in the definition and lays out the case.
And the thing is, things have gotten significantly WORSE since then.
Can I suggest, at the very least, you read the report referenced by the speech?
Did you read the treaty that defines genocide as a matter of international law I cited earlier? Literally the law as it stands today.
I think a disservice is done by using hyperbole. It makes people tune out. It diminishes the power of those words.
Ethnic cleansing is plenty bad. There is a lot of mileage to get out of that without resorting to ever more hyperbolic language.
And these words mean things.
This article compares ethnic cleansing with genocide. Since the 1990s, ethnic cleansing has become one of the most widely known forms of violence directed against groups. Ethnic cleansing is related to genocide, but ethnic cleansing is focused more closely than genocide on geography and on forced removal of ethnic or related groups from particular areas. The greatest overlap between ethnic cleansing and genocide takes place when forced removal of population leads to a group’s destruction. Ethnic cleansing is often a policy carried out by strong states to mould the population map, especially of border zones, but the breakup of such states also generates power struggles that can lead to ethnic cleansing. Another paradox is that partition or division of ethnically or religiously mixed states has been identified both as a cause of ethnic cleansing and as a possible remedy for ethnic cleansing. - SOURCE
The term ethnic cleansing refers to the forced removal of an ethnic group from a territory. A United Nations Commission of Experts investigating the former Yugoslavia defined it as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.” Unlike crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes, ethnic cleansing is not recognized as a standalone crime under international law. However, the practice of ethnic cleansing may constitute genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes.
Source: 1993 letter from the UN Secretary-General to the President of the Security Council
That is, I believe, the standard necessary to convict. Since Israel hasn’t been tried for genocide, you can’t point at the UN definition and say it rules out what Israel is doing as “genocide,” because the question of Israel’s intent has not been legally determined yet.
Is Israel using all its might to kill Palestinians as quickly as possible? They will kill them absolutely anywhere they find them. Or do you think Israel is slow-rolling their murder to make it seem less bad?
Also, are you suggesting Israel will kill anyone it deems a Palestinian? Of any age or gender? If soldiers see a three-year-old in the street they’ll shoot the kid (or cart them off to some warehouse to kill them less publicly).
The initial case for genocide, bought by South Africa to the ICJ. (I said ICC incorrectly in a couple of places) This one is important, because it goes over the terms of the convention you cited, one-by-one, with evidence for each. Since then, everything has gotten substantially worse.
I’m sorry, are you an expert on international humanitarian law?
I’ve cited the experts. You are just a rando on the internet who can’t even be bothered to read what I posted. You can share as many definitions as you like. What matters here is the evidence, and if the evidence fits the definition.
There is no hyperbole.
The evidence is overwhelming.
You just refuse to look at it.
Genocide denial.
Nobody is looking for “milage.”
What we are looking for is for people to get their heads out of the sand and actually understand what is happening in Gaza right now.
From the latest flash update:
Bolding mine.
I don’t know exactly what you are imagining is happening in Gaza right now. But every humanitarian agency on the ground are saying that what is happening in northern Gaza is making it unfit for human survival. Genocide is too polite a word. They are hunting children with drones. Taking men away in their thousands to be tortured, humiliated and in some cases raped in Israeli dungeons. This isn’t hyperbole. There are multiple reports. Video footage.
More from the flash update:
Food instability.
Water and sanitation.
I can’t emphasise enough: this is an incomplete picture. Because there are no foreign media organisations operating in Gaza (unless embedded with occupying forces). And Palestinian media have been systematically targeted and eliminated. The few remaining journalists have been labelled “terrorists” by Israel, wanting us to believe they do dual duties as "sniper, infantry soldier, fighter, captain, training coordinator and “propaganda.”
And humanitarian agencies have been targeted as well. We don’t have an accurate picture of what is happening on the ground. It will be significantly worse than what the agencies are able to report.
It’s utterly laughable that your entire argument is predicated on a strict definition of genocide, and then you post three random things that are not measured by the convention and say, “see? This is what genocide really is!”
In a race riot, you have an ethnic group that is not in power directing violence against the ethnic group that is in power. In a pogrom, you have the ethnic group that is in power directing violence against an ethnic group that is not in power.
I was just thinking that what the board is really missing is a thread about whether Israel is committing genocide or not.
Thankfully, we have this thread with its, sadly, off topic OP.