I myself feel that calling this a genocide is warranted, it fits the UN definition, Israels actions have been consistent with this definition for several decades. They do not allow Palestinians to return to their land, they do not give them peace to live on their inidgenous land, the ones that have a right to live on Israeli land have second rate citizenships without political rights, the ones living in the Palestinian territories have no legal rights whatsoever. They are being bombed and imprisoned, and starved to death. Israel has been destroying sources of fresh water, schools, hospitals, universities. Israel's current government has called them animals, called for their total annihilation, and is killing civilians to "suspected Hamas operatives" at a collateral rate of like 10 to 1 according to their own records. (I don't remember the exact number, I just remember it was shocking, I can look it up later).
And, the ICJ has said that it is likely a genocide, before their final ruling they can't obviously come out and state that it is one 100%, but from a court, this is pretty much the strongest wording they can use.
- The above is a satire. But come on what are we arguing about?
I'm sorry if the facts don't agree with your desires for something to be true. War is terrible and civilians die in all wars, especially those in urban areas where one party tunnels underneath civilian infrastructure to protect themselves while leaving civilians exposed to fire.
This does not mean that the ruling does not indicate that the court thinks a genocide is occurring.
If you simply look at the definition of a genocide and the facts on the ground, you should quite easily come to the conclusion that this is a genocide and it should end -- and that Palestinians should have legal rights to live on their indigenous land and have human rights. This is not a radical position in my mind, this should be the status quo of a person with a normative moral compass.
"This does not mean that the ruling does not indicate that the court thinks a genocide is occurring."
You've seen the video and are continuing to disagree with what the ICJ president herself has explicitly said. If you want to claim that Israel is committing genocide, you're free to do so, but don't continue to lie to yourself or others about what the ICJ has said now that you have been corrected.
"If you simply look at the definition of a genocide and the facts on the ground, you should quite easily come to the conclusion that this is a genocide..."
If you simply look at Israel government's military capabilities and the facts on the ground, should quite easily come to the conclusion that genocide is not the goal.
The Israel government's intention is clearly to kill enemy soldiers, even if it means killing civilians in the process. This is the same attitude that most countries have adopted in times of war.
The Allies did horrendously unethical things (like fire bombing millions of civilians) during WW2 but even that wasn't genocide.
Claiming that Israel's government is committing war crimes is a much more reasonable argument. It may not be true but it's not obviously false, the way the genocide claim is.
Ask yourself what Israel would do if every member of Hamas was willing to march out to a battlefield and meet them head-to-head in a large scale battle. Would Israel keep sending bombs at houses or would they target that battlefield?
Most people could be convinced that the right-wing Israel government is being unnecessarily brutal and hamfisted in their response to the Oct 7 attacks. If the goal was to convince more people to pressure Israel, that would be possible.
But the insistence upon specific word use ("genocide") is a transparent attempt at signalling in-group and out-group status. This has been a common pattern among political extremists for a long time. There's always some kind of rationalization about why its important but it's never the real reason.
Being divisive is the point.
Just like Trump's adherents signal their in-group status by pretending the 2020 Election was "stolen" so do the extreme left's adherents signal their in-group status by claiming Israel is committing a "genocide".
In both cases, the goal is not to actually convince people of something that is obviously false. The purpose is to have a loyalty test that can be used to differentiate friend and foe.
Flagged.
ICJ literally said it does NOT
If you want to get technical, sure the UN didn’t put the rubber stamp on it, but I think the more important thing is a strip of land where most buildings are reduced to dust, dozens of thousands of people are dead and millions starving. Even putting aside the morality for a second, what is the practical objective of all this?
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-undoubtedly-commit...