As part of an angry response to a New York Times explainer on getting aid to Gaza, Alec Karakatsanis says this:
For example, "humanitarian aid" pier in Gaza wasn't a cynical fraud to cover for genocide (a PR ploy by U.S. to keep sending weapons that was then itself used in one of Israel's great massacres) but a "creative solution."
I wonder how many people believe this? It's as insane as anything on the MAGA right. It's obviously true that the Biden administration is an accessory in the Gaza war, but it's just as obviously true that Biden himself is sincere in wanting to get aid into Gaza. The floating pier may have been a bit of a Hail Mary, but there was nothing cynical about it. Quite the opposite: the pier has cost upwards of half a billion dollars and has highlighted the fact that Israel is blocking land routes. That's why the pier was built.
It is plainly the case that Biden—along with nearly all of Congress—prioritizes the destruction of Hamas above food aid to Gaza. Biden has pressed Israel to do better on aid but he hasn't threatened serious consequences if they don't comply. Nevertheless, that's quite a different thing than providing "cover for genocide," which could have been carried out more easily by the simple expedient of doing nothing.
And while we're on the subject: when are we going to stop with the genocide nonsense? Based on high-end estimates, Israel has killed about 1.5% of Gaza's population. It should be possible to keep two things in your head at once about this: (a) it's horrific, (b) it's not genocide. To keep pretending otherwise is revoltingly contemptuous of true genocide.
I predict that quite few of the people who ultimately comment on this post are among the people who believe that garbage. Maybe they'll tell you about it after they pontificate about how the existence of Israel is illegal under the League of Nations charter.
I didn't expect the very first comment to be such utter nonsense.
I did kinda expect the very first reply to have zero content.
You reap what you sow.
The comments threads here have been egregiously anti-Israel.
TBC, nobody has to like Israel or think they are right in the Gaza War or think their tactics are right. And there are certainly strong cases to be made against settlements and Netanyahu.
But a ton of people really do want to argue the existence of Israel as a live question, as if it is an appropriate and live question to advocate for the destruction of a 76 year old state because people want to relitigate population transfers that happened a century ago. Some people here basically seem to take the attitude that it isn't even possible for Israel to have a legitimate causus belli against Hamas. And a handful of people even offered justifications for nihilistic evil such as hostage taking and the attacks of 10/7.
So yeah, this comment section has not acquitted itself very well over this issue.
As one of the people who has repeatedly argued that the creation of Israel was illegal, I should make my position clear. Israel exists. It is going to exist. And, at this point, it should exist. Most modern countries were created in similar fashion.
There has to come a point at which the existence of a state is accepted. As it happens, there is a non-arbitrary point that can be used as the dividing line: 1949. That's when the 4th Geneva Convention was signed, and territorial expansion through conquest was made illegal, no matter who started the war.
So, Israel within the pre-1967 borders makes the cut. Their acquisitions in the West Bank and Gaza do not. Those need to be returned to the Palestinians.
> people want to relitigate population transfers that happened a century ago
Interesting. To what extent was it ever "litigated" in the first place?
By and large, to the extent that there are non-serious arguments made here (by which I mean facile and intellectually bankrupt), they're made by rabidly pro-Israel commenters who are, for the most part, troll or troll-adjacent.
I don't recall anyone in the comments here who have "offered justification for nihilistic evil" and the attacks on 10/7. I've seen some people say they can understand why the attacks occurred (...I think that's a bar that everyone should be able to clear before offering an opinion, and even Kevin clears this one despite his pro-Israel blinders), but nobody's trumpeted them. Maybe I missed it, which if it did occur and I did miss it... must not be too many. Nor have I seen anybody say that Israel doesn't have a legitimate cause to go to war with Hamas.
By contrast, I have seen people say that Hamas is a legitimate target but Palestinian civilians are not, which some people (you too, apparently?) take as an endorsement of Hamas.
The world is not either/or; dichotomies are often false and to use them in an argument is fallacious at best and in bad faith at worst. So which are you?
I've seen some people say they can understand why the attacks occurred
While I don't want to be reductive and say you can never provide reasons why bad actors act the way they do, there's a big difference between an explanation that says something like "Hamas feels that the Palestinian cause was stalled and wanted to provoke a reaction", which is an attempt to explain Hamas conduct, and saying something like "Hamas is akin to escaped slaves and has every right to strike back against its oppressors".
The latter may be pitched as "explanation" but is obviously an attempt to justify terrorism.
I have not seen that. I may have missed some things, but not enough to be unaware of "a ton of people".
I have not seen that at all.
Okay, I call bullshit on your whole comment.
You can call BS all you want but there are examples in this very comments thread.
If you do not provide a cited quotation, you are clearly just lying. To be clear: If you wish to claim you are not lying, provide a link to someone here justifying the Oct 7 Hamas war crimes. "Justify" means "show or prove to be right or reasonable."
Answers such as "they are everywhere", or "it is obvious" or "I won't do it it's so easy" are typical and transparent deflection and would indicate your lies are intentional.
+1
Serious question, at what percentage does it become genocide? Let's say that eventually 5% of the people in Gaza, mostly women and children, die from bombing, malnutrition, or lack of medical care. Would that be enough to cross the threshold? It's pretty clear that Israel's desired end result is for all of the people in Gaza to either be dead or someplace else, is it not genocide if they don't succeed?
Exactly right. The only successful result of the war for Israel is either killing or removing all Arabs from Gaza.
And for what it's worth, the definition of genocide doesn't include a requirement that a specific percentage of the targeted group be killed. I'm surprised that Kevin doesn't know that.
As the definition of genocide varies but if one goes to the root meaning, the attempted extermination of a population, then
Now of course if you transform genocide into having a meaning that is like the popular American usage of the word "literally" (that is literally meaning 'figuratively') and genocide means "doing something nasty to an ethnic group I am sympathetic to" then ... well a single
the Holocaust was quite literally (not the popular American usage of literally) genocide as it quite literally (again real meaning) killed upwards of 60-70% of Jewish European population and well nigh actual extermination levels of Eastern European jews, 90%
Single digit percentage of population killed is not genocide. It is horrific but not genocide.
Palestinians are not being wiped out.
Treated horrifically and grotesquely oppressed, yes, but wiped out, genocide, no.
What Israel is obviously aiming for though - well let us be balanced, the Netanyahu fraction i.e. the extreme right of Israel - is Ethnic Cleansing.
Which is not a synonym for genocide. And quite bad in itself
So rather than engaging in Internet Drama word escalation, the proper term can be used. Ethnic cleansing.
And to avoid any doubts, I am myself nor sympathetic to the Israeli actions nor do I see good justification, however it is not genocide. It is ethnic cleansing.
(of course the "serious question" is not actually a serious question at all but rather another internet drama rhetorical gambit, not a question but passive aggressive challene rather than making one's own actual case, relying rather on the threadbare pretence of "questions." )
You and Kevin seem to be making up your own definition of genocide. Look at the definition in Article II of the Genocide Convention: there is no requirement that a specific percentage of the targeted group is killed.
"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
I am applying reasoning
If genocide covers any level of deaths then the word loses all meaning.
Now of course internet drama rhetoric loves doing this to every word, emptying it of real meaning as drama oriented flourishes for rhetoric are more important than meaning.
Every problem is a "crisis" and then crisis merely means "something I wish to draw attention to"
"If genocide covers any level of deaths then the word loses all meaning." Because you're an idiot. A forced assimilation of a group is still genocide even if no one is killed.
When everything is genocide, nothing will be... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmSO2cz2ozQ
I was about to make a similar point to Lounsbury's.
The Article II (a) language from 1946 seems to include many actions we don't normally refer to as "genocide." For example, a mass shooting directed toward a particular group, say, at a synagogue, mosque, or Black church. We'd probably call that a "hate crime." If you called it "genocide," even if there's a technical reason that might be accurate, people would think you're overstating the case.
What Israel is doing may be far worse than committing the equivalent of a mass shooting, but it's also not nearly as bad as other events that people generally regard as genocide, e.g., the Holocaust.
Words like "atrocity" and "massacre" may not be legally defined but they seem a better fit for some of the actions that Israel is committing. I don't see how insisting on the use of the term "genocide" is helping the cause right now. It signals hyperbole to some people and ends up burning cycles on word definitions rather than potential solutions.
"What Israel is obviously aiming for though - well let us be balanced, the Netanyahu fraction i.e. the extreme right of Israel - is Ethnic Cleansing." This is genocide when there is no place for them to be relocated to.
This definition is quite broad in what it considers genocide, but in any case, it does require the acts be committed "with intent to destroy", and Israel has so far killed under 40,000 people in over six months. Looking at a real genocide, the Nazis killed 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar in two days while they were doing other stuff. Either you think Israel is wildly incompetent, or Hamas is putting up a spectacular resistance... I don't know. How are people getting the "intent to destroy" part? Just making it up?
Israel is obviously not attempting ethnic cleansing - there is no attempt to somehow push the Palestinians out of Gaza.
For actual ethnic cleansing, see what happened when the Israelis pulled out of Gaza and all the Jews had to leave because everyone knew that if they stayed the Palestinians would kill them.
"Israel is obviously not attempting ethnic cleansing - there is no attempt to somehow push the Palestinians out of Gaza." How far did you have to stick your head up your arse to say something that stupid. Israel really is indisputably tying to push them over the border into egypt. The reason they have not succeeded so far is that the Egyptians would gun the Palestinians down if they tried to enter egypt and because the Palestinians are willing to die to preserve a hope for a future Palestine.
Obviously Israel isn't trying for ethnic cleansing. Why, that's absurd!
https://www.972mag.com/palestinians-west-bank-settler-pogroms/
From Slate:
"These issues are crucial. Ben-Gvir wants Israel not just to stabilize Gaza but to occupy it, for good—to build “Jewish settlements” throughout the Gaza strip and to force Palestinians out. This view of a “Greater Israel” is seen by many as a “mirror image” of Hamas’ desire for a “free Palestine” stretching “from the river to the sea.”"
I had a similar thought--1.5% of a population killed in a bit more than half a year is pretty awful.
FWIW, under US criminal law (which of course doesn't directly apply to what another country does to a different population, but might be relevant for what folks in America call it), genocide is defined as (1) killing, (2) causing serious indury to, (3) causing permanent impairment of the mental faculties of, (4) subjecting to conditions of life intended to cause physical destruction, (5) imposing measures intended to prevent births, or (6) transfering by force the children of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, with the intention to "destroy, in whole or in substantial part," said group.*
So, at least under our law, the number of people killed (or the percentage of people killed) isn't really the determinant of whether or not genocide is being committed--doing the damage is part of it, but the other part is the intent. Does Israel/its leadership/its military intend to destroy in whole or substantial part Gazans? I don't think that's nearly as clear-cut a question as Kevin makes it.
__________
*18 U.S.C. § 1091
"It's pretty clear that Israel's desired end result is for all of the people in Gaza to either be dead or someplace else, is it not genocide if they don't succeed?"
Citation required.
You don't need a citation for something as obvious as black is black and white is white.
Well, there's: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/17/middleeast/israel-far-right-gaza-settler-movement-cmd-intl/index.html
The challenge, for me, with the genocide argument is multifaceted.
1. There are approximately two million Palestinians in territorial Israel, three million in the west bank, and another six million or so in other countries such as Jordan. If you look at Oxfords definition of genocide it includes "...with the aim of destroying that nation or group." Hard to see how killing something like .3% of a ethnic group is genocide.
2. If your goal was genocide, I imagine, one would not take steps like texting people, prior to dropping a bomb.
3. If genocide was is Israel's goal, I believe military they are capable of that horrid task.
Rather, this is a horrid war, in a densely populated area, where Hamas dresses and hides in the civilian population. Civilian death is a tragic consequence....
The problem is that Israel is well aware that the slaughter of 2 million people would make it a pariah nation. And so its approach is to see what it can get away with without becoming a pariah nation. It is impressive how much evil it can get away with without having become a pariah nation. This is what Ilhan Omar was reacting to in one of the comments that falsely got her labelled an anti-Semite. It is hard to imagine any nation slaughtering civilians with abandon the way Israel does (It inflicted one or 10/7s on Gaze every three years or so as a policy of keeping Palestinians too brutalized to act up) and yet remaining a nation in good standing.
But it hardly even seems like it should be controversial at this point that Israel is trying to destroy the Palestinians as a people in order to be able to have the only claim to the territory it wants.
It is not at all clear that Israel's desire is "for all of the people in Gaza to either be dead or someplace else," which are nice shorthands for genocide and ethnic cleansing.
I am not going to bother with refuting the genocide claim because it is foolish. As for ethnic cleansing, while some extremists have talked about it, Israeli policy really has not sought to move the Gazans away from Gaza and its been quite some time since the war started, so I don't think that claim is supported by facts.
The most likely Israeli desired end result based on what the Israelis are saying and doing is, surprise, destroying Hamas and getting the hostages out. Their reduced restraint in pursuing these goals is explainable by their exhaustion in dealing an enemy which sincerely DOES advocate the ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide of Israelis and the biblical levels of evil inflicted on October 7th. And Hamas' tactics are pretty much calculated to force the Israelis to kill and destroy non-combatants.
It amazes me when people seem to discount the psychological effects of Oct 7 in gauging the Israeli reaction. I don't think that there is a nation on Earth that would show much restraint if something like that happened to them.
"It is not at all clear that Israel's desire is "for all of the people in Gaza to either be dead or someplace else,"" For anyone who isn't an utterly dishonorable liar, that is as clear as it can get.
Really.
Man, there is something wrong with you.
As for ethnic cleansing, while some extremists have talked about it . . .
With "some extremists" meaning "multiple ministers in the Israeli government, including those in charge of the police and settlement policy."
Israeli policy really has not sought to move the Gazans away from Gaza
Even if I accept, arguendo, this about Gaza, shall we look at the West Bank? Because Israeli policy there is most definitely to remove Palestinians.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-03-12/ty-article/.premium/the-plan-to-subjugate-the-palestinians-goes-ahead/0000018e-32ae-d606-a5ff-7fbf31c80000
Their reduced restraint in pursuing these goals is explainable by their exhaustion in dealing an enemy which sincerely DOES advocate the ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide of Israelis and the biblical levels of evil inflicted on October 7th.
I'd be a lot more sympathetic to this argument if the Israelis had a principled objection to terrorism, but they don't. They are just fine with terrorism, and even encourage it, so long as the terrorists are Jews and their targets are Palestinians.
I don't think that there is a nation on Earth that would show much restraint if something like that happened to them.
Why do you give Israel a pass for committing war crimes because of the psychological effects of a criminal attack, but refuse to give the same consideration to the Palestinians?
1) There are some extremists in the cabinet. That is bad. But they are not controlling national policy and from what I understand, the odds are against them taking power for the foreseeable future.
2) I was talking about Gaza. What the Israelis are doing in the West Bank is wrong.
3) Why do so many of the usual suspects on this site's comment section seem to constantly condemn Israeli actions but say nary a word about Hamas actions?
I have seen pretty much everyone who is condeming Israel's actions at one point or another, often repeatedly, denounce what Hamas did. This includes me, and I do it again. Hamas committed atrocities and war crimes on Oct 7 and there is never any justification for such things.
Why would you expect to see more of that? Hamas did what it did over 8 months ago. Israel is committing its crimes daily, every day, right now with no sign of abatement. FFS, your question 3 is an embarrassing inanity, the most cynical use of whataboutism.
Drum's Principle, as applied to the Vietnam War:
It wasn't total war, so it wasn't a war at all. People should stop calling it a war.
I guess you didn't hear. Viet Nam wasn't a war. It was a "police action", which made it OK.
Genocide does not mean "the death of genes" and therefore the whole of a people.
It was coined and defined as a legal term post WW2 and has it's own very clear meaning you can read at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide.
It's a little irritating that it's Greek roots so clearly appear to define the simple elimination of a gene line when it's defined meaning is much more complicated - but that's what it is.
Israel is executing it's finak solution to the irritating problem of other people living on 'their' land, and it's quite proper, in a legal sense, to call that genocide.
And arguing over exactly how many they're killing as a proportion is an irrelevent obsfucation.
It may not be genocide per se but a lots Israelis including government officials have expressed a desire for the removal of Palestinians (“ethnic cleansing”). My surprised is thus the revolt for the proper semantics and not for the actual actions.
Sure... but not practical - where do you send them?
Countries in the Middle East are divided between those that despise Hamas and want nothing to do with anyone who may be involved with them (KSA, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, etc.) and those that support Hamas but would much rather the Palestinians die in place than flee and eliminate a problem for Israel (Iran, Syria, Houthis, etc.)
Not sure how whataboutism helps, Mr was-supporting-the-murder-of-pedestrians-who-complained-about-a-motorist-driving-his-car-into-a-crowded-crosswalk...
There are also multiple people in the Israeli government who deny that there is such a thing as a "Palestinian," and that all Arabs are indistinguishable from each other. Since Israel is only fighting a tiny percentage of all Arabs, they cannot be described as trying to destroy the Palestinian people, because there isn't any Palestinian people.
This is, in fact, one of the elements of genocide. It's an attempt to erase Palestinians from existence. The ICJ made it clear in its ruling that there is such a thing as the Palestinian people, and that they can be targeted for genocide. It's one of the ways in which the inability of right-wing Israeli to leave the quiet part unspoken is causing them significant legal problems.
What Israel is doing in Gaza is indeed not "genocide". However, it is "ethnic cleansing" which is only a tiny bit less monstrous and equally illegal.
How is it ethnic cleansing? How many Palestinians have been pushed out of Gaza?
How many of them are on their homes?
You seem to be moving goalposts. Much like the refugees are moving their tents to escape IDF bombing.
But to answer your question, Israel is keeping about six million Palestinians from returning Palestine. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2024-01-05/explainer-the-complicated-plight-of-palestinian-refugees#:~:text=Today%2C%20there%20are%20about%206,and%20the%20besieged%20Gaza%20Strip.
Once again, let's look at the West Bank. Since Oct 7th, at least 18 Palestinian villages have been abandoned due to terrorist attacks by Israeli settlers. That's ethnic cleansing.
"How many Palestinians have been pushed out of Gaza?"
Not to snark, but a few tens of thousands of them have been pushed out of Gaza into the morgue--does that count?
More than 1,000,000 of them are internally displaced, the vast majority of them have no homes capable of functionaling as such to return to. Gazans are not permitted to leave even when they are able. Israel will not take them. Egypt will not take them. If they take a boat further than 12 miles off the coast Israel will sink them.
You are truly a despicable human being, MF is a great user name for you.
Ethnic cleansing where there is no place to relocate is the definition of genocide.
“In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group.”
Israel is definitely doing 1–4, so yes, it’s genocide. The fact that they haven’t entirely succeeded doesn’t make it not genocide, just as you aren’t off the hook for murder if you don’t finish the job.
"just as you aren’t off the hook for murder if you don’t finish the job."
Technically, that's not quite true. Murder is one of very few crimes for which the penalty for attempted murder is less than for accomplished murder--the reasoning being the law wants to discincentivize somebody who, having taken a shot and missed, from figuring "in for a penny in for a pound" and taking a second shot.
Agree that limiting the definition of "genocide" to successful destructions of a people/group as opposed to attempted or ongoing actions in furtherance of that goal is counterproductive (and no solace to the people doing the dying).
Presumably then, the UN would be the entity to declare something a genocide under the definition. Has the ICJ gone ahead and ruled that what Israel is doing is indeed genocide? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa%27s_genocide_case_against_Israel suggests (and I may have missed something therein) that has not (yet) happened.
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml includes this bit:
We'd all be better off if we all followed Bob Dylan's "Don't criticize what you can't understand" rule, especially when the reason a person can't understand is because they don't want to understand (how many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see, and all that jazz).
For example, Kevin McCarthy was asked about his budget after he criticized Biden's budget, his response was to say, in essence, "I'm not comparing him to the alternative, I'm comparing him to the Almighty."
For anyone critical of Biden's Gaza policies, say what you would have done, and include a convincing argument that the unintended consequence won't be a Trump victory in November. The way I remember it (correct me if I'm wrong), Orange Jesus already said he was in favor of genocide in Gaza.
Keep in mind that Biden did not vote for Netanyahu, along with the fact that he does he have the power to rewire the neuronal connections causing Netanyahu's brain to think like a religious fundamentalist.
Israel has shown that it will be as evil as it can get away with in Gaza. The only limiting factor seems to be that Israel does not want to be a pariah state. Biden's policies with regard to Gaza have all been designed to protect Israel from being a pariah state. And that means it has increased what Israel can get away with.
A moral approach would have been to make clear from the outset that the US will not tolerate the use of US weapons in war crimes, with clear consequences for Israel when it violated that principle. A weaker approach, but still preferable to our actual approach, would be to simply not protect Israel from condemenation for its war crimes. We could stop vetoing UN resolutions demanding decency from Israel. We could stop pretending that Israel is pushing for a cease fire while its actual policy is to keep slaughtering Palestinians until there is too much push back from the world for that to be viable.
I am not sure why you think this would give the election to Trump. I don't think Americans are as sociopathic as you seem to assume. I think that Trump supporters may well be. But when a Democratic president is talking as if Israel is the good guys it is not surprising that people support Israel. If Biden made clear that the demands he was making of Israel were reasonable ones why do you think that voters would punish him for that? As it is there are at least some on the left who can't vote for him because of his policies regarding Gaza. Are you really sure that there are more on the center who support the slaughter of Palestinians?
We live in a hyperbolic emotive time. Colorful expression of one's feelings is priortized over factual accuracy.
I do not like this. Complaining about every instance of it I see feels a lot like trying to out shout a hurricane.
Why are you so intent upon insisting that it's not a genocide?
It's still a genocide, but the only people who even care about arguing about whether or not it's a genocide are not interested in good faith arguments about the conflict.
This post is just another example of how you're more interested in arguing that it's not technically a genocide you guys while being willfully ignorant of the crimes against humanity that are being committed under the cover of arguments like yours.
The definition of genocide depends very much on intent, not the scale of the killing.
If the intent is to exterminate a people- to eradicate their existence as a distinct group, with a distinct language and culture and identity- then the number of killed is irrelevant.
For example, the programs carried out against the Native Americans was very much a genocide, even though there wasn't the industrial scale slaughter we might think of.
What Israel is doing today is an open question, since they have steadfastly refused to say what their overall goal is. To be fair, the Palestinians have also refused to say how a "free Gaza" would accommodate Israelis so it would be fair to ask if 10/7 was the opening gambit of a genocide.
Which is part of why I get frustrated by the repeated invocations of the term, since not only is it not clear that it fits, but more importantly, it is never followed by any sort of statement about what the post-war peace should look like.
The word is just waved around as if it automatically justifies whatever one wants.
You're equating "the Palestinians" with Hamas.
You're trying to say that "free Gaza" has no meaning, when it definitely has SOME meaning even if the final state isn't defined right down to the very last detail. No definition of free includes genocide, and it's not like Israelis live in Gaza anyway - it's been their open air prison for decades, unlike the West Bank.
It is not "fair to ask if 10/7 was the opening gambit of a genocide", because Hamas does not and never did have the capability to do anything beyond terrorism/guerrilla warfare. This is like saying it's fair to ask if black slaves wanted to enslave white people, or that it's fair to ask if equal opportunity employment is just reverse racism against white people. I mean come on.
I should have written "Free Palestine" which is the slogan employed by the critics of the Israeli war campaign.
So it is fair to ask what "Free Palestine" means- What it means to Hamas, what it means to Al Fatah, what it means to the people of Gaza, what it means to American critics of Israel.
And yes, its perfectly fair to ask a similar question of what "peace" means to Israel, or the IDF, or American supporters of Israel.
It is not "fair to ask if 10/7 was the opening gambit of a genocide", because Hamas does not and never did have the capability to do anything beyond terrorism/guerrilla warfare. This is like saying it's fair to ask if black slaves wanted to enslave white people
This really gets to the nub of the problem here. Hamas isn't a bunch of escaped slaves, and whatever you want to say about what ethical rules apply to actual slave rebellions, there's a MASSIVE danger whenever you extend a principle that, for instance, is so extreme that it could potentially used in attempt to justify or excuse raping the Master's wife or daughter, to ANY situation other than a slave rebellion.
Specifically, Hamas is both a government (of Gaza) with an army and police forces and weapons and organized leadership. It also has money and gets support from various states (most notably Iran). And it is supported by mass social movements throughout the world.
If you think that Hamas can basically do anything they want no matter how bad because they are akin to escaped slaves, I cannot imagine any theoretical basis for that other than some notion that literally ANY army that is less powerful in a conflict has an inherent right to do anything it wants no matter how evil and destructive. It makes ZERO sense.
And I suspect the actual impulse here- which I can't even call a "theory" because it doesn't work as one- is simply that Israel shouldn't have been created 75 years ago, engages in bad acts against the Palestinians, and therefore, ergo, rape, murder, hostage taking, randomly attacking civilians in Tel Aviv with missiles-- I guess it's all good.
You have to hold Hamas to SOME sort of standard. There must be SOME things that they aren't allowed to do no matter how much they hate Israel. To take any other position is to just be standing up for straight-up nihilism and evil in warfare, and makes a mockery of arguments based on international law applied to Israel.
And that's before we even consider what Hamas actually is (an Islamist, illiberal group that would impose a theocratic government if it ever got control of Historic Palestine).
Why ate Palestinians required to state a space for Israelis in a free Gaza when there's no space for the existing Palestinians in a free Israel?
Seems like a double standard you're holding here.
I agree, it is completely fair to insist that Israel pursue a goal of accommodating Palestinians as full and equal people.
1.5% is not a high estimate but the number of identified dead from direct striks, ID numbers and all. It excludes persons presumed dead, e.g. still under rubble, dead from starvation, dead from preventable diseases, dead from denial of medical care, etc.
Also, that figure is ongoing. If killing 1.5% of the population of an ethnic group in the first 8 months of a still continuing war is not genocide, the Nazis didn't commit genocide in the first 8 months of WW II. Not to make the eternal Hitler comparison but to show how hollow the standard is.
Also, I cannot think of any recognized genocide in which almost every family became homeless so fast.
Drum is still stuck on this Biden as well meaning, which could be true, and is perfectly consistent, unfortunately with his providing cover for genocide. Because Biden's "well meaning" strategy is to quietly tell Netanyahu that he should stop what he is doing, while publicly gaslighting about Israel wanting peace.
It is certainly a ridiculous conspiracy theory to think that Biden built the pier so that Israel would use it as a step in carrying out a massacre. But it is not at all a conspiracy theory to note that Biden built the pier as an alternative to loudly criticizing Israel for creating a famine that threatens the life and health of 2 million people. It is not a conspiracy theory that Biden is currently touting the Israeli ceasefire plan despite the fact that Israel rejects the "Israeli ceasefire plan" while Hamas has been accepting equivalent ceasefire plans for months. Meanwhile Biden administration figures keep blaming Hamas for not accepting the plan, because Hamas refuses to act on the plan until Israel actually agrees to abide by it. The point of this gaslighting is to protect Israel from criticism, and Israel uses that protection to continue its assault on Gaza.
As far as whether it is genocide, the answer is it likely is by the international legal definition which is the attempt to destroy a people. That is what Israel is trying to do, to reduce the Palestinians to Arabs so as to take away the better claim on the territory that Israel wants. It has done so through abuse, ethnic cleansing, mass slaughter, and the destruction of hospitals and schools. It does not fit the less technical sense of genocide in which it is limited to an attempt to kill every member of a group, which limits it to pretty much just the Holocaust.
But even if we don't agree that Biden is providing cover for genocide, we should be able to agree that he is providing cover for moral atrocities. I suppose that is still consistent with him being a decent person who simply has a warped sense of the conflict.
Kevin (and others) are intent on redefining the word genocide to mean something worse than whatever happpens in Gaza. Likely this redefinition is necessary so that they can feel better about the US approach and their own feelings about the 'situation' in Gaza.
Nobody wants to be supportive of or even ambivalent about genocide, so its best to explain away this problem by redefining. It aint real genocide if I can imagine a worse genocide!
Really, really silly.
There is no "attempt" by Drum - rather it is the Lefty drama internet that is dragging the word
When the word is used in broad non-activist usage, the holocaust or the Rwanda genocide comes to mind. Rwanda, to use a non-european reference, 70-80% of the Rwanda resident Tutsi were killed.
No ambiguity in intent - very demonstrable. Same in holocaust. Even the more ambiguous Bosnian case, the Serbian militias made rather demonstrable evidence of their actual genocidal intent with targetted mass killins of civilians
"likely to feel better" has fuck all to do with it, it is application of proper reasoning and aversion to dilution of the meaning of the word and thus empting it of its real meaning.
The international courts seem to disagree with you on this point. But what do they know.
That!a like saying there's no such thing as attempted genocide, Lounsbery.
Lol, poor Lousbury. No matter what the topic is, hes waging his personal war with the LEFTY DRAMA QUEENS!
EVERYTHING MUST BE SQUEEZED INTO THIS NARRATIVE FOR LOUSBURY TO DEMONSTRATE HIS SUPERIORITY!
lol, rage on!
You insisting that this is because of your 'proper reasoning' and therefore your redefinition is acshually a good thing makes my point for me.
What percentage of a population crosses the genocide threshold, 10%? 50%? Was the Holocaust not a genocide until they hit some magic number, and then it was? Playing these kind of linguistic hair-splitting games is more than a little offensive, Mr. Drum.
The only true genocide is in German-occupied Poland, otherwise it's just sparkling something that's too bad but what can you do, really?
That thing you're worried about (massive punitive civilian death in Gaza)? It's not a big deal to Kevin Drum.
just because there is no exact % doesn't mean the % doesn't matter. if the entire war consisted of ben gvir killing one gazan, would that be a genocide?
Once the occupation takes hold and the disappearing begins I guess that'll just be administrative erasure...or some other euphemism.
The pier provides cover for the cover of providing the arms for Israel to eliminate Hamas while Israel uses those arms and the pier to commit genocide. All syntheses produce outcomes to increase dominance over the targets of capitalist covetousness.
My free association word salad: Military competence is an oxymoron when one considers our DOD’s inability to deliver significant amounts of aid to Gaza; the questionable weapons systems we’ve invested in; basing expenditures on where something is manufactured not the weapon’s usefulness or cost effectiveness; the screwed up retreat from Afghanistan; and all the failed audits of expenditures. And our congress, many if not most recipients of large campaign contributions from arms companies, wants to spend a trillion next year on the military while complaining of the deficit, one party wanting to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy….. guess who they want to pay.
I'm in general agreement with Cycledoc's comments except for "the screwed up retreat from Afghanistan". It was one of the best retreats in history. Something like 130,000 withdrawn in a few days with minimal loss of life.
The orange fuehrer's plan was to withdraw the 2500 troops left in country in early 2021 and, maybe, some of the State Department people. He didn't plan to get any Afghans out.
The alternative to the evacuation was to send in 30,000 to 50,000 US military personnel and keep the conflict going forever. Biden was man enough not to do that. By the way, he told Obama the surge would accomplish nothing.
Oh FFS Kevin, here's what YOU wrote when the pier was announced:
"At the same time, he (Biden) has slowly but inevitably come around to the view that Israel is deliberately starving the Gazans and the US can't allow that to happen."
And here's one of the criteria for a genocide: "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;"
Those line up pretty perfectly. And as others have pointed out, the act and the intent is what matters, not the number of people who are killed.
https://jabberwocking.com/biden-plans-to-flood-the-zone-with-aid-to-gaza/
Kevin, you don't need to kill anyone for it to be genocide.
Displacing them counts.
They're displaced.
is eminent domain genocide?
If you do it persistently, with the goal of forcing an ethnic group out of its home, then, yes, it is.
This isn't even a hypothetical. Eminent domain is essentially what Israel does in the West Bank. The settlement process relies upon a gross misreading of the Ottoman Land Law of 1858. The way it works is that they take Palestinian land, and unilaterally change its status to that of "state land," i.e. owned by the state of Israel. That is a necessary legal basis for issuing construction permits and allowing banks to approve mortgages in the new settlements. (Though, it's recently come out that a number of settlers, including the current Minister of Finance, obtained mortgages to build homes on state land, and then built it somewhere else that was not state land, making the entire process illegal under Israeli law.)
What israel is doing in the west bank is terrible but no one is seriously claiming that there is a genocide in the west bank. As for gaza, temporarily moving a population for their own safety or moving them a short distance away for a legitimate military reasons is not genocide. If you think it is genocide, then the US and Iraq committed genocide against iraqi civilians in mosul during the fighting against Isis.
"As for gaza, temporarily moving a population for their own safety or moving them a short distance away for a legitimate military reasons is not genocide. "
MAGA level tolerance of cognitive dissonance is require to see what is happening in Gaza and describe it this way.
Mens rea.
There is no percentage threshold; it is the establishment of the state of mind to commit such crime and evidence of that crime.
When people talk about genocide, we -- most of us -- are using the term colloquially/casually.
And this is why I've mostly stayed away from commenting on this topic. No amount of reasoning will change anyone's mind. No one gives two shits about mens rea except lawyers.
so intending to destroy part of a national group would be genocide? does this include in 1942 killing all Germans who joined the Nazis?
Do you want a technical explanation or a reasoned one?
the straightforward reading of the genocide definition leads to some ridiculous conclusions. so clearly, deciding whether something is genocide requires more than just repeating the definition.
Shorter you: We have to interpret from the Rome Convention, what is "genocide".
So, which answer do you want from me -- the technical or the reasoned?
They've killed 1.5% of the population, but are attempting to starve the rest. It shouldn't be genocide only after you've killed everyone; it should be genocide while you are working on killing everyone.
Without serious consequences, everything Biden says is unserious. Netanyahu and his cronies know quite well who is in charge, and it isn't us.
Instead of "genocide", how about "massacre by an insensate Israeli war machine that has now exceeded the moral depravity of Hamas in its depraved indifference to the lives of noncombatants (civilians, aid workers, food deliveries), and horrific excesses of killing, destruction, and inhumanity"?