I’m continually amazed at the contortions some people are able to do to convince themselves that, while bigotry is very, very bad, somehow one particular ethnic group (most commonly Gazans/Palestinians and Roma in my experience) has earned it.
Here’s a hint - no ethnic group has earned or deserves bigotry. They’re all just humans, with the same allotment of bad and good and in between as every other group.
Exactly. And we can see similar phenomena in American history:
Which groups in America have the worst representation in various economic, educational, criminal, and health statistics? Black Americans and Native Americans. Which groups in American history were treated, by far, most abominably? Black Americans and Native Americans.
This is basic stuff.
Very well said. I think both the major Arab parties in Israel recognize the existence of Israel.
Sadly, the best solution to the situation was to probably go back in time before the settlements and give Gaza and the entire west bank to Palestinians, and encourage neighboring countries to give full citizenship to any Palestinians living there. But thats probably too late now.
I’m a white man. When people look down on white men I don’t get defensive. Something like 60% of white men voted for Trump. White men are the backbone of fascism, and white men are the ones making life hell for LGBTQ, women, non-whites, foreigners, immigrants, etc.
We have the privilege of being all-but immune to bigotry, based on our society and our positions within that society. That doesn’t justify mass judgement and bigotry against Gazans (who don’t remotely have that same privilege).
But is it mass judgment and bigotry when Palestinians democratically elect terrorists who start a war, and when polls show the majority of Palestinians support attacks like 9/11 and Oct 7th?
When the UK and US were bombing Germany, why were the civilian deaths in Germany 100% the fault of the US and UK, and never the fault of all the German adults who democratically elected the Nazis? About 10% of Germany’s population died after the Germans started WW2, was that genocide?
You can claim Palestinians are fighting for freedom and autonomy. But from what I can tell, they are fighting for ethnic, racial and religious purity. The chant ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ was originally in Arabic ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab’ but they had to tone it down to make it appeal to westerners.
Yes, of course it is! An election 20 years ago (and likely at least half of those who voted are either dead or moved away) doesn’t remotely justify bigotry (much less starvation, mass destruction, and mass murder), and neither does an opinion poll of a people who have been highly, highly oppressed for decades.
That was a declared war between nations, with existential consequences for both sides.
Most Gazans aren’t fighting at all. They’re just being starved and made homeless and killed. An election 20 years ago and a poll option doesn’t remotely count as violence.
Your excuses for bigotry continue to echo white supremacists’. Please rethink this.
Umm, because the UK and US were bombing German civilians.
So if we turn it around, with polls showing the majority of Israelis supported what’s currently going on in Gaza in October 2023, and the majority of Israelis voted for the the ruling coalition - do we give anyone attacking them a pass for collective punishment, too?
Where did that statement originate, again?
But who cares about what you individually think? You’re a white man, the majority of white men voted for bigots and support bigoted policies, so obviously it is just and righteous to treat you exactly the same as those bigoted white people. You don’t personally hate women, queers, and immigrants? Doesn’t matter. We’re judging people by their demographics now, and you’re on Team Bad Guy.
Or is this one of those standards that only apply to other people?
Would you condemn Americans to genocide because “we” democratically elected someone who is wreaking all kinds of hell and suffering all over the globe? You think civilians here deserve to see their children murdered and killed? Because a) I didn’t vote for the fucker and b) most of those who did don’t have a fucking clue what they are doing. Do you think my son deserves to die because my neighbors voted for Trump?
You know where all that Gazan hate toward the US comes from? It isn’t arbitrary. They didn’t wake up one day and decide to hate Americans.
I didn’t celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk, but I know some who did, and I know even more who said he had it coming, and none of them deserve to die or for their children to starve to death because they had some strong feelings about a violent event which is to them a total abstraction.
What a ridiculous argument. It would be ridiculous even if I didn’t think that poll was probably nonsense.
Bill Maher made an argument like this when Chappell Roan spoke out against genocide in Gaza. Oh, he smugly said (he says everything smugly) they would kill you for being gay and you’re defending them.
First of all, there are gay people in Gaza who also deserve support. But second of all, you don’t diminish yourself by taking a retaliatory mindset. Maybe most Gazans don’t believe Americans are worthy of compassion, or Israelis (I’m willing to bet Israel has even more enemies in Gaza now.) Maybe many of them are misguided and even cruel. But that doesn’t mean we have to be. We can speak the truth, and we can hold multiple truths at once. A lot of Gazans 20 years ago celebrated 911, and, Israelis suffered a horrific and devastating attack from Hamas and deserve compassion, and Gazan civilians are enduring hell on earth at the hands of Israel’s government, and so on and so forth. We can acknowledge the complexity inherent in our global politics and our history and our humanity and spare some concern for starving children, regardless of whether they might grow up to hate us.
…can I ask where you learn stuff like this? Because it sounds like an unfounded stereotype. I could say the same thing about say…white people. As I said earlier in the thread over the last few years I’ve interacted with a number of Palestinians and none of them ever expressed any sentiment remotely like this. I think we should stop talking about Palestinians in ways we don’t talk about other people. They aren’t a monolith.
But I genuinely want to know where this comes from.
But it isn’t like that at all. As explained by the advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, Gaza and the West Bank are illegally occupied. Settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal. That Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza strip has not “entirely released it of its obligations under the law of occupation.”
Palestinians want to “kick out” what the international courts have determined are illegal settlements. That’s very different from white citizens never stopping to try and kick the Black guy out just because they are black.
Do you think that genocide should change things? If “the most vital ally in that region” were committing genocide, isn’t that a good enough reason to maybe consider theirs status as an ally?
But you don’t deserve it, right?
The difference here, and it’s an important one, is intent.
Genocide requires intent. More specifically, the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
The UK and US bombing wasn’t intended to destroy the German people. It was part of a strategic effort to win the war. Through a modern lens, some of that bombing might be considered a warcrime. But it wouldn’t be considered a genocide.
What the South African delegation to the International Court of Justice argued was:
"The above statements by Israeli decision-makers and military officials indicate in and of themselves a clear intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group “as such”. They also constitute clear direct and public incitement to genocide, which has gone unchecked and unpunished. The clear inference from the acts of the Israeli army on the ground — including from the vast number of civilians killed and injured, and the scale of displacement, destruction and devastation wrought in Gaza — is that those genocidal statements and directives are being implemented against the Palestinian people.
Formatting and bolding mine, from the SA case for genocide cited earlier.
At this stage it doesn’t matter what Palestinians are claiming to be fighting for. Hamas are responsible for some heinous warcrimes. They should be held accountable. Most reasonable people acknowledge this.
But this “war” doesn’t target Hamas. On average, Israel are killing 100 people a day in Gaza (that we know of). That’s 700 people a week. About 3000 people a month. I challenge you to show me how many of those people were Hamas terrorists. It should be relatively simple. The Gaza Health Authority have all of the names. They are recorded on the registry. We know where they died, when they died, and how they died. How many Hamas terrorists were killed in September?
Most humanitarian agencies and a broad consensus of genocide scholars agree this is a genocide. There are no “two sides” here. Genocide is the process of destroying a national, ethnical, racial or religious group for no other reason than people are part of that group. The people being genocided never deserve that. And the people committing the genocide have to be stopped.
I love the buzz words that people latch on to which, in this case, is “genocide”. These are the population statistics that I just looked up:
As of October 2025, estimates place the population of the Gaza Strip at approximately 2.1 million people. However, due to the ongoing war and humanitarian crisis, the population is highly dynamic and subject to rapid change. The population has decreased by approximately 10% since mid-2025 projections, a loss attributed to casualties and people fleeing the enclave.
“Genocide”? Hardly. Considering a significant part of that ten percent is people leaving as opposed to dying, it a very acceptable civilian loss considering the civilian population in question is harboring a terrorist group that has been openly attacking Israel.
Not this bullshit still- it very much is genocide. It’d still be genocide if it was only 100 people killed. Body counts don’t make a genocide.
And them leaving rather than dying very much is part of genocide, so that’s no get-out clause.
10% - Only 3% of Bosniaks were killed in the Bosnian genocide. You want to argue calling that a genocide is just using a “buzz word”[sic]?
Or will it only count when it hits that magical 30% Shoah ratio?
Well, no, it does.
Genocide: “The systematic killing of people on the bases of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status, etc.”
A) If the Israeli military was “systematically killing” those people, the death toll would be astronomically higher than 10%, even if you attribute none of the ten percent to departures. Considering Hamas hides munitions and other military hardware UNDERNEATH CIVILIAN HOSPITALS AND ADJACENT TO CHILDREN’S SCHOOLS, I’m amazed the death toll isn’t significantly higher than ten percent.
B) Israel’s military response in Gaza has nothing to do with the “ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status, etc” of the people there. It has to do with Hamas using it as a base of operation.
Explain Bosnia then…way less killed there.
Tell that to all those Israelis the genocide court case cited…
The discussion is about Israel’s military presence in Gaza.
The Israeli military was not in Bosnia, which was many miles and many years removed from the present discussion. If, however, you are alluding to the fact that Israel is suspected of selling arms in the region, remember that the biggest arms dealer in the world is the United States of America.
I thought this particular part of it was about how low body counts mean genocide is just a “buzz word”[sic]. That was your argument, right?
Who said Israel had anything to do with the Bosnian genocide? I know I didn’t.
I brought it up because you were arguing against the applicability of the word genocide. And that’s a close, recent and analogous example. It’s called the Bosnian Genocide.Regardless of the (by your standards) pitiful 3% death toll.
What does that have to do with anything? Was that some kind of attempt at tu quoque using America? At me? Talk about a swing and a miss.
Unfortunately there are lots of different types of genocides. They’re not all death camps. Mass starvation can be genocide, and Israel is overseeing mass starvation in Gaza. Mass atrocities against civilians that go ignored and swept under the rug can be genocide, and multiple IDF members have reported to media that they’ve witnessed or been ordered to take part in mass atrocities against civilians.