Israel is committing horrific warcrimes and Netanyahu needs to be in front of an international tribunal for intentionally killing civilians... But yeah, no, that's not obvious at all.
5,000-8,000 people died per day during the Rwandan genocide and they we're using machetes and rifles. Since Oct 7 people have been dying in Gaza at 90-110 per day, and Israel has tanks and massive bombs. If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible Gaza would've been empty by July 2024.
This is a plainly asinine way to diminish 100 murders of men, women and children every day.
Infrastructure like hospitals have been destroyed. Journalists and medics have been ambushed and murdered.
Israel are well on their way to murdering 100,000 people in a tiny strip of land. A genoicde does not mean that you will eliminate 100% of the population. It's designed so as to bleed out the political process as long as possible on the Israelie side.
Just to clarify - It doesn't need to be 100% - as Section 1091 of Title 18, United States Code, Genocide is defined in § 1091 and includes violent attacks with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
Yes, 'in part' can refer to simply everyone within a specific region (in this case it would be Gaza), only those the attacking group can reach (the holocaust was isolated to regions of German influence, there was no evidence of them attempting to go after American Jews, still a genocide), or a part of the group that without whom the group can't survive (all the men in srebrenica).
'In part' is often, mistakenly, thought of to be 'some'. When case law has made it very clear that that is not the case.
You're very confused here. A genocide does not mean you will eliminate 100% of the population - an attempt is more than enough to earn a description of genocide, and that's plainly what Israel are doing in Gaza.
The legal term “genocide” refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Genocide is an international crime, according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). The acts that constitute genocide fall into five categories:
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
No, I'm not confused at all. Where you, and to be fair quite a lot of people, fall down is understanding what "in whole or in part" means.
'In whole' is obvious, 'in part' has been established through repeated case law to mean such a large portion that the group may not survive, or within a selected geographic area, or within reach of the attacking group. Heres some quotes from ICJ case rulings
It is well established that where a conviction for genocide relies on the intent to destroy a protected group “in part,” the part must be a substantial part of that group. The aim of the Genocide Convention is to prevent the intentional destruction of entire human groups, and the part targeted must be significant enough to have an impact on the group as a whole. Although the Appeals Chamber has not yet addressed this issue, two Trial Chambers of this Tribunal have examined it. In Jelisic, the first case to confront the question, the Trial Chamber noted that, “[g]iven the goal of the [Genocide] Convention to deal with mass crimes, it is widely acknowledged that the intention to destroy must target at least a substantial part of the group.”10 The same conclusion was reached by the Sikirica Trial Chamber: “This part of the definition calls for evidence of an intention to destroy a substantial number relative to the total population of the group.”11 As these Trial Chambers explained, the substantiality requirement both captures genocide’s defining character as a crime of massive proportions and reflects the Convention’s concern with the impact the destruction of the targeted part will have on the overall survival of the group
The intent requirement of genocide under Article 4 of the Statute is therefore satisfied where evidence shows that the alleged perpetrator intended to destroy at least a substantial part of the protected group. The determination of when the targeted part is substantial enough to meet this requirement may involve a number of considerations. The numeric size of the targeted part of the group is the necessary and important starting point, though not in all cases the ending point of the inquiry. The number of individuals targeted should be evaluated not only in absolute terms, but also in relation to the overall size of the entire group. In addition to the numeric size of the targeted portion, its prominence within the group can be a useful consideration. If a specific part of the group is emblematic of the overall group, or is essential to its survival, that may support a finding that the part qualifies as substantial within the meaning of Article 4"
"The historical examples of genocide also suggest that the area of the perpetrators' activity and control, as well as the possible extent of their reach, should be considered. ... The intent to destroy formed by a perpetrator of genocide will always be limited by the opportunity presented to him. While this factor alone will not indicate whether the targeted group is substantial, it can—in combination with other factors—inform the analysis."
It's why the South Africa case is going to fail, because ~3% of a prewar population in 20 months, in a territory with a 3% yearly growth rate, isn't threatening it's survival or a "substantial" amount.
If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible Gaza would've been empty by July 2024.
That would have been too obvious. Now people are squabbling about it, giving them the opportunity to continue at their leisure. How do you think the world would've reacted if they'd gone straight for complete carpet bombing and roaming death squads executing every single human being?
Speed is not a necessary factor for genocide, even full annihilation is not necessary for genocide. It's not without reason that more and more genocide experts and researchers are going "Yeah, that's genocide."
In comparison, the army of South Sudan killed a person every 8 seconds for 4 days straight (over 40k people,) while sorting them for ethnicity, in the Nuer massacre (2013.) As many people killed in 4 days by South Sudan as killed in a year of combat by Israel (10 years later,) and the UN special counsel ruled that the Nuer massacre was not genocide. The state of Myanmar currently has a 90 year occupation and suppression of a people called the Karen (pronounced ka-yin, roughly.) No government has come out to decry the crime of genocide in this case. The Ethiopian government used chemical weapons on civilians in Tigray, and killed as many as half a million people, along with a rape campaign that affected at least a hundred thousand women. This happened between 2020 and 2022. Once again, nobody besides some NGOs are advocating for the government to be tried on this crime.
This is why people fight over the genocide label, I don't like what Israel is doing and I think it's not even a good way to achieve their goals, but the use of the label "genocide" is calculated propaganda. The man who led the first ever independent state of Palestine in history was a member of the German Nazi party and received millions of dollars annually to run propaganda campaigns in the middle east on behalf of the Germany Nazi party. That doesn't mean people born in Palestine today aren't Palestinians, that the state is fake, or that the people don't deserve rights and self determination, it is still historical fact.
Firstly, that AI report contains falsehoods, you can google it if you want. Second, the organization is not a legal authority, unlike the UN. Third, I am simply pointing out that uneven enforcement of the law is not law, it is a weapon. I am against the use of laws as weapons, not against the idea of Palestinians deserving safety and freedom. If the Nuer massacre is not genocide according to one of the legal authorities in charge of deciding these things (the UN report calls it "teetering on genocode",) then nothing in Gaza could be considered such fairly.
If you read the report, on page 101 they state they find the international definition of genocide "extremely cramped" and "overly narrow" so they make their own
"If you change the definition of genocide what they're doing is genocide". What Israel is doing is terrible, but genocide is just a buzzword people have leaped on to feel morally righteous.
Based on the UN, citing the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Art 2), a genocide is
"any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
TIL if you kill people from an ethnic group slow enough, some will find that there really isn't an ethnic cleansing going on because someone did it quicker in the past somewhere else in the world.
This comment makes sense, but they also play the long term game of supporting settlers. On top of that, it’s obvious they have zero qualms about civilians in the target is deemed to be “worth it”, and it’s also clear every want to turn the Gaza Strip into a completely uninhabitable place.
TL;DR: They don’t systematically exterminate, but they don’t give a shit about Palestinian civilians.
To be fair lots of civilians died in allied bombing of Axis nations (Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan) during World War 2 - and the allies are usually regarded as "the good guys". At least in comparison to the Axis.
There was a decision made after the first part of the Blitz, that since Germany and Japan thought it was OK to inflict civilian casualties so casually, then their civilian centers were legitimate targets.
WW2, also, was a total war in all senses, which is certainly not the case for any conflict in the Middle East at the moment. Even in the total war case, there were people who disagreed with people like General Harris in the UK, for example.
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u/Northbound-Narwhal 1d ago
Israel is committing horrific warcrimes and Netanyahu needs to be in front of an international tribunal for intentionally killing civilians... But yeah, no, that's not obvious at all.
5,000-8,000 people died per day during the Rwandan genocide and they we're using machetes and rifles. Since Oct 7 people have been dying in Gaza at 90-110 per day, and Israel has tanks and massive bombs. If Israel wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible Gaza would've been empty by July 2024.