News

Ah, a wall of text. A typical attempt to imply nuance where none exists.

In contrast: Any government that intentionally withholds food, medicine, and potable water to a population it considers undesirable is a government intentionally committing genocide.

It's a lot simpler when you aren't trying to justify or explain the indefensible.

Now on to pointing out the errors that are so egregious they prove you're either arguing in bad faith/lying, or unbelievably ignorant.

I also don’t think this is a genocide. It’s “merely” the most televised (the word that would have been used in the past) war in history, one that overshadows far worse conflicts like the Sudanese Civil War in our public consciousness. The war in Gaza is the first war most people who are claiming that this is a genocide are closely following (if watching Russian, Chinese, Iranian and Palestinian propaganda on social media can be called closely following), thus the outrage. Most people have been isolated from the horrors of war, most, including on the Lemmyverse, have no idea how to process what’s going on, most have no idea about international law concerning warfare, shouting ignorantly that every single conventional act of war is automatically a war crime, provided it’s Israel who is doing it - and almost all people are completely blind to the wider geopolitical behind the scenes game that is at play here.

This is very televised, but that has nothing to do with the fact people care. It has far more to do with the wide diaspora of the Palestinian people, caused by Israel ironically enough. I'm not going to respond to the stupid attempts and pathetically obvious attempts to imply contradictory evidence is simply propaganda of other states. Come on, I expect better propaganda from genocide justifiers. But yes, this is more televised then the genocide against Yemen, and the criminally ignored genocide of the Tigray.

Just to name one aspect that I’ve rarely seen discussed, isn’t it odd that South Africa of all countries filed the frivolous lawsuit against Israel at the ICJ while at nearly the exact same time hosting Hamas and war criminals who have been far more credibly accused of committing genocide? This can only be partially explained by at best dubious historic analogies and past connections with the PLO.

It isn't odd at all to anyone with even a smidgen of historical knowledge. The ANC justifiably hates the Israeli government, who continued to trade with Apartheid South Africa when no one else in the world would. The Israelis did this even up to providing weapons to a white supremacist nation that they knew would use it to kill black people that wanted to be treated equally. There is even some evidence (Though not enough for it to be a certain thing) that the Apartheid South African government assisted the Israelis with testing their nuclear weapons as part of a quid pro quo. I like how you call the very pertinent historical aspects dubious without explaining it or justifying it. It makes it sound like you know what you're talking about while also actually avoiding the topic. You're not the individual that gets to decide what is dubious or not.

Note that I’m not denying that individual Israeli soldiers are committing war crimes. Of course that’s happening and they should be punished for it. Settler crimes are a huge issue as well and the Israeli state needs to come down hard on these people - but what these individuals with at most tacit approval from parts of the government are doing is at worst attempted displacement. I’m not denying the abhorrent conditions civilians in the Gaza strip are suffering from due to the war, but as the successful evacuation corridor created for Palestinian civilians and defended by the IDF against Hamas attacks has shown, there is a clear and obvious divide between this almost comically evil fictional IDF that people have invented and the actual actions of it as an organization, between it and Hamas.

Holy shit, there is a lot of evil in here to unpack.

I'm going to ignore the bit about the settler violence because I know that the only reason you're even willing to admit it (though you choose to use the morally vague term 'attempted displacement' even though the more commonly, correctly villianized term would be ethnic cleansing.) is that you and I both know that it is explicitly government policy, and you can't even pretend it isn't. Instead you imply that the government is doing something, if only not enough, with that whole 'the Israeli state needs to come down hard on these people' bit. Instead of, you know, recognizing that the IDF goes with the settlers to ensure their safety while they commit pogroms.

The phrase 'successful evacuation corridor' while implying it was Hamas militants attacking the population, instead of acknowledging the extremely well documented habit of the IDF bombing the routes they publicized as safe is morally disgusting even more then I thought would be possible from your previous obvious lies.

What I am extremely doubtful of is that there is a deliberate and systematic campaign of extermination against the Palestinian people. It just doesn’t add up. I’ve studied several real genocides and the patterns that unite all of them are completely different from this war. There is no legal disenfranchisement of Palestinians living in Israel - in fact, the opposite has happened in recent years. There is no drop in birth rates, like we are seeing in Xinjiang among the Uyghurs, with the Palestinian population growing at a far greater rate than Israel’s and consistently so. There is no systematic dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli media and education - at worst some far-right individuals are saying deplorable things which do not represent the consensus within Israeli society. An army committing genocide does also not spend an inordinate amount of resources on warning systems for civilians they are allegedly trying to exterminate. Why would they send flyers and text messages, call, hack TV stations, provide websites with info on which areas are less dangerous and even invent the costly and to the Israeli military detrimental warning method of roof-knocking if they were trying to kill as many Palestinians? It doesn’t make any sense.

You obviously haven't studied them at all, in that you make some very clear obvious mistakes. This is also the paragraph that makes me believe you're being paid for this, also. First of all, the most common and efficient method of genocide that humanity has ever discovered is simply starvation. This is the most accurate easiest definition of genocide it is possible to use. I'll state it again for others, since I know you won't care: Any government intentionally withholding food, medicine, and potable water from a population it considers undesirable is a government intentionally committing genocide. By the by, this is actually a more stringent definition then the ICJ uses.

Secondly, I can't even believe that you wrote out that there hasn't been a decline in birth rates since Oct 7th. It's also not true at all. Populations try to have as many babies as possible after a depopulation event. It's one of the reasons that the Palestinian population was so young. To be clear, I'm not calling previous Israeli aggressions against Gaza attempted genocides But they definitely caused mass causalities. Also, the whole birthrate argument is always used by those trying to deny genocide, including the Nazis, and neo-nazis. You're making this argument in company appropriate for what you're trying to justify.

You also apparently didn't even watch South Africa's case before the ICJ. There absolutely has been an intentional campaign of dehumanization language, at every level of the government. Not only is this the most televised genocide ever, it's also the most televised promotion of the intent to commit genocide ever. The Israeli government are basically bragging to the world of what they intend. The South African ICJ presentation gathered all the various statements for anyone curious, and that was quite a while ago, too.

They also didn't do the whole stupid 'roof knocking' or cellphone hacking this go around. You're trying to use past behaviors to hide the fact that the ROE was different this time around. This is also one of the things that makes me think you're being paid for this bullshit. I'm actually engaging with your bullshit, however, because implying something is paid for propaganda so you can dismiss it is just a cowards way out. Also, as previously addressed. There are no safe routes, as the IDF airforce would intentionally bomb the routes the IDF provided. The fact you aren't aware of this means you were either living in a bubble or are intentionally lying when you talk about safe routes. Also, it doesn't help to publish that shit to a webpage for a population that doesn't have power.

I'm ending this now due to a character limit. I'll follow up on the last two paragraphs of your intentional genocide justification in another comment.