the "accusation" of genocide against Israel has been rejected by every key member of the UN as baseless and without merit or evidence.
Well, Israel's allies (France, Germany, Hungary, Austria, U.S., and U.K., by my count) have objected, and most of the other Western nations have declined to take a stance. Meanwhile, more than 25 nations in the Middle East, Africa, and South America support the case. So, if you think that this case is meritless because, “key,” U.N. members don't support it, your ignoring massive international outcry and showing off your Eurocentric bias.
The only thing stopping those missiles from hitting Israeli civilians was the American Iron Dome missile defense system
the United States, who have, thanks to Iron Dome, protected the lives of countless innocent Israelis
Yeah, this is just wrong. It's not American, it's Israeli. We've contributed money and missiles to it, but it was designed and built by an Israeli defense firm and the IDF. Americans want to believe that Israel would be helpless without them, but Israel has a first-world economy and a very well-funded military. This isn't Ukraine; there would economic and political consequences for Netanyahu if Israel lost our support, but they don't need our support to survive. Biden could withdraw support to Israel due to human rights violations without creating an existential threat to Isreal.
We don't get to simply refine words until they mean what we want them to mean.
You're right, so let's look at the U.N.’s legal definition of genocide:
Killing members of the group (check); Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (check); Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (check); Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group (check); Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (...nope, not that one).
Any of these constitute genocide, and Israel is at 4 out of 5.
Finally, you seem very concerned with what could happen while ignoring what is happening. Yes, Hezbollah and Hamas could commit genocide against Israelis with enough support and resources. Yes, Israel could have much higher civilians casualties without the Iron Dome (which, again, is an Israeli creation). If these things happened, there should be international outcry and U.S. intervention. But Hezbollah and Hamas can't win a war against Israel, much less commit genocide, and Israel does have the Iron Dome.
But what is happening is that Israel is waging a campaign of destruction that has killed at least 1% of the population of Gaza. At a bare minimum, 64% of those casualties, 16,000 people, were civilians, and most of them were women and children. Their actions have been described as collective punishment and ethnic cleansing by human rights groups, and there is a genocide case against them before the ICJ.
These are not hypotheticals; this is what is happening right now. And they are happening with the support of the U.S. and, “one of the most, if not the most, progressive President we've had in modern history.”
So, if you think that this case is meritless because, “key,” U.N. members don’t support it
No, the accusation is meritless because there is little evidence to support it:
"This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life," South African lawyer Adila Hassim
There are upwards of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza alone, and if Israel's intention was to inflict destruction of Palestinian life, wouldn't there be far more than 20,000 of Palestinians dead? And, if the goal was genocide, why would Israel be only focusing Gaza and not the West Bank where there are upwards of 3 million? Not to mention the population of ethnic Palestinians who live or work safely and peacefully inside of Israel.
The world has seen genocide many times, from the American genocide of Native People, to the Armenian Genocide, to the Holocaust. Jews know first hand what a ethnic genocide looks like, and this ain't it.
It really doesn't matter who does or doesn't support accusations, or who are allies with who, because legal matters are not democratic and instead based on evidence.
Now when it comes to Hamas, on the other hand, they have made it easy by writing their genocidal intent directly into their founding language. They said their quiet part out loud on day 1, and while they've tried to legitimize themselves by moderating their official language, they clearly haven't moderated their actions. Their allies and backers have made it equally clear that their intent is the complete destruction of Israel and Israeli Jews.
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: (Genocide Convention, Article II)
Please don't omit the parts that hurt your argument, it's a waste of time and it doesn't work or help.
Remember when you said:
it’s not a, “two-way genocide,” if only side can actually commit genocide, right?
[...]
Genocide isn’t just a declaration in a charter, it is a specific series of actions against an ethnic group,
The Genocide Convention does not support your original claim that Hamas' actions cannot be considered genocide because they aren't capable. The part that you omitted is very clear that intent is everything.
Killing members of the group (check); Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (check);
What? By that definition alone, every war in human history could/should be labeled a genocide.
That doesn't pass the smell test, and its why you're not doing a service to your argument by omitting inconvenient parts of definitions. It's doing these things "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" that meets the criteria for genocide under the Genocide Convention.
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (check);
I'm not sure what you're citing here, as it links to an entire CNN news feed.
Not that it's relevant, because as we've just established, you've omitted important language from your mischaracterized version of the definition.
But to get back to it, it is Hamas whose intent (as expressed in their founding charter and many times since) and actions (as perpetrated on and after October 7th) most certainly meet the Genocide Convention standards for genocide that you've (at least partially) listed here.
Finally, you seem very concerned with what could happen while ignoring what is happening.
...You seem to have lost the thread on your own argument: that Hamas' actions cannot be considered genocide as the don't have the capacity to pull it off. (Which, again, is an ass-pull and not consistent with the Genocide Convention definition in the slightest.)
Hamas, combined with its allies and backers, absolutely have the capability to murder massive numbers of Israeli civilians. They have also all expressed genocidal intent against Israel at various points in time. Israel is facing attacks from multiple Islamic militant groups as we speak.
These are not opinions, but facts.
If not for Israel's ability to defend itself from these very real attacks, a direct result of ~$130 Billion of US military aide since its inception, we would be seeing massive numbers of Israeli civilians dead from the very real attacks on Israel during this war.
The fact that Israel is able to defend itself from most of Hamas attacks, has no bearing on the classification of this war as a genocide. American investment in Israeli defense has helped save countless lives of innocent Israelis from a daily volley of missiles from openly genocidal, Iran-backed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Anyway, you've really illustrated why the American centrist is so ridiculous. You honestly want to argue that a nuclear-powered (yes, Israel has nukes, even if they don't admit it) military with a $20 billion budget that is systematically destroying a civilian population couldn't possibly be committing genocide because none of their founding documents say, “genocide.” Meanwhile, you also want me to accept that a terrorist organization with homemade rockets, that controls an area the smaller than Detroit, with a military budget of $350 million, is just as capable of committing genocide. Not only that, any deaths they cause are a genocide, because their charter calls for genocide (which is obviously ridiculous; by this logic, Dylan Roof committed genocide). You are a deeply unserious person and I'm done with this absurd exercise.
Well, Israel's allies (France, Germany, Hungary, Austria, U.S., and U.K., by my count) have objected, and most of the other Western nations have declined to take a stance. Meanwhile, more than 25 nations in the Middle East, Africa, and South America support the case. So, if you think that this case is meritless because, “key,” U.N. members don't support it, your ignoring massive international outcry and showing off your Eurocentric bias.
Yeah, this is just wrong. It's not American, it's Israeli. We've contributed money and missiles to it, but it was designed and built by an Israeli defense firm and the IDF. Americans want to believe that Israel would be helpless without them, but Israel has a first-world economy and a very well-funded military. This isn't Ukraine; there would economic and political consequences for Netanyahu if Israel lost our support, but they don't need our support to survive. Biden could withdraw support to Israel due to human rights violations without creating an existential threat to Isreal.
You're right, so let's look at the U.N.’s legal definition of genocide:
Killing members of the group (check); Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (check); Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (check); Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group (check); Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (...nope, not that one).
Any of these constitute genocide, and Israel is at 4 out of 5.
Finally, you seem very concerned with what could happen while ignoring what is happening. Yes, Hezbollah and Hamas could commit genocide against Israelis with enough support and resources. Yes, Israel could have much higher civilians casualties without the Iron Dome (which, again, is an Israeli creation). If these things happened, there should be international outcry and U.S. intervention. But Hezbollah and Hamas can't win a war against Israel, much less commit genocide, and Israel does have the Iron Dome.
But what is happening is that Israel is waging a campaign of destruction that has killed at least 1% of the population of Gaza. At a bare minimum, 64% of those casualties, 16,000 people, were civilians, and most of them were women and children. Their actions have been described as collective punishment and ethnic cleansing by human rights groups, and there is a genocide case against them before the ICJ.
These are not hypotheticals; this is what is happening right now. And they are happening with the support of the U.S. and, “one of the most, if not the most, progressive President we've had in modern history.”
No, the accusation is meritless because there is little evidence to support it:
There are upwards of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza alone, and if Israel's intention was to inflict destruction of Palestinian life, wouldn't there be far more than 20,000 of Palestinians dead? And, if the goal was genocide, why would Israel be only focusing Gaza and not the West Bank where there are upwards of 3 million? Not to mention the population of ethnic Palestinians who live or work safely and peacefully inside of Israel.
The world has seen genocide many times, from the American genocide of Native People, to the Armenian Genocide, to the Holocaust. Jews know first hand what a ethnic genocide looks like, and this ain't it.
It really doesn't matter who does or doesn't support accusations, or who are allies with who, because legal matters are not democratic and instead based on evidence.
Now when it comes to Hamas, on the other hand, they have made it easy by writing their genocidal intent directly into their founding language. They said their quiet part out loud on day 1, and while they've tried to legitimize themselves by moderating their official language, they clearly haven't moderated their actions. Their allies and backers have made it equally clear that their intent is the complete destruction of Israel and Israeli Jews.
Please don't omit the parts that hurt your argument, it's a waste of time and it doesn't work or help.
Remember when you said:
The Genocide Convention does not support your original claim that Hamas' actions cannot be considered genocide because they aren't capable. The part that you omitted is very clear that intent is everything.
What? By that definition alone, every war in human history could/should be labeled a genocide.
That doesn't pass the smell test, and its why you're not doing a service to your argument by omitting inconvenient parts of definitions. It's doing these things "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" that meets the criteria for genocide under the Genocide Convention.
I'm not sure what you're citing here, as it links to an entire CNN news feed.
Not that it's relevant, because as we've just established, you've omitted important language from your mischaracterized version of the definition.
But to get back to it, it is Hamas whose intent (as expressed in their founding charter and many times since) and actions (as perpetrated on and after October 7th) most certainly meet the Genocide Convention standards for genocide that you've (at least partially) listed here.
...You seem to have lost the thread on your own argument: that Hamas' actions cannot be considered genocide as the don't have the capacity to pull it off. (Which, again, is an ass-pull and not consistent with the Genocide Convention definition in the slightest.)
Hamas, combined with its allies and backers, absolutely have the capability to murder massive numbers of Israeli civilians. They have also all expressed genocidal intent against Israel at various points in time. Israel is facing attacks from multiple Islamic militant groups as we speak.
These are not opinions, but facts.
If not for Israel's ability to defend itself from these very real attacks, a direct result of ~$130 Billion of US military aide since its inception, we would be seeing massive numbers of Israeli civilians dead from the very real attacks on Israel during this war.
The fact that Israel is able to defend itself from most of Hamas attacks, has no bearing on the classification of this war as a genocide. American investment in Israeli defense has helped save countless lives of innocent Israelis from a daily volley of missiles from openly genocidal, Iran-backed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Oh, I wasn't ignoring the intent to eliminate an ethnic group; I know that it's necessary for for proving a genocide, and will be the most difficult part of South Africa's case. Maybe they'll find something that can clarify Israel's intent, like an official calling for Gaza to be completely reduced to rubble, or a member of the Iraeli parliament calling on for nuclear strikes to, “crush Gaza,”, or a cabinet official calling what's happening in Gaza an ethnic cleansing, or an Israeli minister calling for settlers to illegally take control of the territory. (Of course, this is just a few recent examples from this war. You could go from the Nakba all the way to the illegal West Bank settlements if you wanted to give the intent in a historical context.)
Anyway, you've really illustrated why the American centrist is so ridiculous. You honestly want to argue that a nuclear-powered (yes, Israel has nukes, even if they don't admit it) military with a $20 billion budget that is systematically destroying a civilian population couldn't possibly be committing genocide because none of their founding documents say, “genocide.” Meanwhile, you also want me to accept that a terrorist organization with homemade rockets, that controls an area the smaller than Detroit, with a military budget of $350 million, is just as capable of committing genocide. Not only that, any deaths they cause are a genocide, because their charter calls for genocide (which is obviously ridiculous; by this logic, Dylan Roof committed genocide). You are a deeply unserious person and I'm done with this absurd exercise.