Israel/Palestine Thread

I really don’t know how warped your world view has to be to be more outraged by chants at a march than actual dead children.

The extremists on both sides are calling for the destruction of each other. But to be more offended by songs that the side you don’t like sing, and to use that as a justification for daily attacks on innocent children for 2 years…

Is it really time to start talking about it? It would be a pretty quick discussion. They gained nothing. You could go back through the whole thread and I doubt you’d find anybody who claimed otherwise. You’ll still get people defending Israel though.

It almost sounds like you’re using what Hamas did as an excuse for the genocide on a civilian population which subsequently took place.

Do you also deny the Bosnian Genocide?

The number killed in that genocide is 8372. much smaller than in the Gaza Genocide so by your logic that doesn’t count?

See, here's the thing. Genocide is a legal definition and they need to prove not just the actions but premeditation.

However even if we assumed that it's not possible to prove that, the individual actions are still war crimes. ethnic cleansing, mass starvation, targeting civilians, indiscriminate killings, targeting hospitals etc.. these are all war crimes. And each one has been proven to have occurred.

There is a country that not so long ago (on the historic scale) lost half of its population, millions, to death by mostly starvation and displacement. And yet it is not considered genocide. Why? Politics. We may see now a shift in politics that will put pressure on these spineless scholars to stop considering Gaza war a genocide, because it now hurts the peace process.

And on your example, there are some of these scholars, notably Noam Chomsky, who don't agree that it was a genocide.

Yep. Hamas gained nothing. Since Israel has started attacking Gaza it's lost an awful lot of support and the world has viewed it's genocidal actions. Is Israel losing support Hamas's gain? Maybe. But as an organisation Hamas itself has definitely been a loser.

The Palestinian civilians have gained sympathy but that's because they lost tens of thousands of lives and the utter destruction of their homes. And I doubt any of they wanted the sympathy at that price.

How long before Isreal starts bombing again. I reckon 48 hours max.

So because the Genocide Convention is effective since 1951 no genocide happened during WW2 - are you sure you want to make this argument?

Do you realize that calling everyone nazi/Hitler you're actually devaluing those terms?

I go with the majority of experts. Like for climate change. Do you?

So dont go with the experts? Do your own research? On such a complicated topic you are just begging to be fooled.

It's a fair question but one could equally ask the pertinent follow up question: what did Netanyahu's two year "war" achieve? He failed to 'defeat Hamas', freed practically zero of the hostages and then had a ceasefire forced on him by Trump.

Why do you consider scholars who have spent their careers studying genocide and who identify what happened in Gaza as such as “spineless”?

Chomsky is not a genocide scholar. I have seen quotes of him discussing the Gaza genocide where he says

“This is a textbook case of genocide—Israel has been explicit about what it’s carrying out.”

Where has Chomsky argued that the Gaza genocide is not genocide?

Im sorry but this is another flawed argument.

Why do you and other pro IDF posters always want to go back to a time before the Geneva convention?

The term genocide came about because of the many grevious and mass killing acts that occured during WW2. The world came together and recognized this scale of death isn't the path humanity can go on and survive, so it came about to prevent us from doing it again.

Cherry picking instances before the Geneva convention and saying "why wasn't this genocide?" is meaningless pub talk tbh - the Geneva convention wasn't in existence. It's there now to stop us repeating old mistakes and punish those that do.

You wouldn't think today you can, I don't know, duel someone to the death on the street because they besmirched you and walk free, and use 18th century British law as the justification as to why there is nothing wrong with it.

You have to look at the acts that are occuring today and apply them to the legal definition of genocide that came about in 1948. Why not do this and present and argument?

Certainly, it's a valid question. Some analysts have speculated it was a last crazy 'throw of the dice' : they may have felt Gaza and Palestine was slipping down the global news agenda, with zero prospects of Palestinian statehood in the next few decades and they decided to do something provocative and outrageous to put Gaza back into the headlines. Clearly, the nihilistic two year response from the Israelis is something very few would have anticipated, not even many Israeli supporters (Hamas may have underestimated that Nethanyahu and his cabinet were just as extreme as they were, perhaps even more so).