• MxM111@kbin.social
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    6 months ago

    It is a war and an urban warfare with civilian to combatant death ratio less than 2:1, while according to civiliansinconflict.org, typical ratio is more like 10:1.

    You might want to argue it is an unjustified war, but genocide it is not.

        • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Some scholars, like Verdeja, say that debates on whether the current conflict can be called a genocide are a “bad use of focus.” Part of that is because proving whether something is a genocide takes time, and does not actually stop people from being killed. Hinton agrees, noting that because genocide is seen as the crime of all crimes, people focus too rigidly on defining a particular moment as such. May be, legal jargon could be restrained until a thorough investigation is conducted. But thorough investigations are rarely conducted when it comes to Israeli crimes in Gaza or anywhere else in Palestine. Segal clearly points to how the U.S. government refused to call crimes committed against the Hutus in Rwanda a genocide. Without sticking to the truth, we’ll never have a truthful reckoning of how we arrived at the seventh of October, and how we go forward,” Segal says. “We need to name it for what it is.” source

    • czech@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      You might want to make up definitions for genocide but 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. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.

      • JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Then technically, ALL wars are genocide.

        EDIT: so many downvotes, so little arguments against it. Predictable as it gets.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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          6 months ago

          The key feature is the first part about “intent to destroy.” Russia isn’t trying to destroy the concept of Ukraine, either as an ethnicity or a country (they just want it to be a puppet-state obedient to their dictates). The US wasn’t trying to destroy the concept of Vietnam or Vietnamese people.

          Other people could draw different conclusions I guess, but to me it’s undeniable that Israel’s goal is to steadily destroy the whole concept of Palestine, with maybe some isolated individuals of Palestinian ethnicity still surviving in some location inside or outside Israel, but with Palestine itself completely erased.

          • jaybone@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            They are forcefully removing children and telling them they are Russian. Which is exactly part of the quoted definition from the comment you are replying to.

            • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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              6 months ago

              Yeah, fair enough; maybe I picked a wrong example for one of my examples. I think most of the time, it’s not that way though. Not that I’m saying that makes war good or anything.

          • JimSamtanko@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            Putin absolutely wants to destroy Ukraine. The definition above defines all wars that have ever happened.

          • MxM111@kbin.social
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            6 months ago

            Actually, Putin does want to destroy the concept of Ukraine and he said it is not a real country.

      • MxM111@kbin.social
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        6 months ago

        Yes the intent matters. Israel intent is to destroy Hamas. That’s not genocide.

        • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          The precursors to genocide are actively unfolding before our eyes. On 10 October, the head of the Israeli army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell”. The same day, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza: “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, concretely says it is a “textbook case of genocide.”

        • goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org
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          6 months ago

          It is when they consider every Palestinian to be hamas (and anyone who they don’t like on a particular day)

          • MxM111@kbin.social
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            6 months ago

            And her we come back to civilian vs militants kill ratio, which is much lower than average numbers for urban warfare. You statement is just not supported by statistics.

        • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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          6 months ago

          Intent does not matter when the direct results of premeditated actions slaughter children and innocent civilians. These aren’t mistakes, they are literally being explained by Israel as the war rages on as collateral damage.

          If this is acceptable on the world stage, then the only people “winning” in the near future will be government officials and very high ranking military personnel. What’s the point of peace when it comes at such a cost?

          The amount of aid alone that Israel continues to block, and even destroy, is absolutely sickening.

    • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      genocide it is not.

      It wasn’t really in question when this was published back in October. It was genocide then and it continues to be genocide.

      “The UN Genocide Convention lists five acts that fall under its definition. Israel is currently perpetrating three of these in Gaza: “1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.””

      https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide

      • MxM111@kbin.social
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        6 months ago

        These are act of genocide. True, but the intent matters too (and I am sure it is described in the document you are linking to). And destruction of Hamas is not the intent compatible with genocide. If Israel wants to destroy citizens of Gaza as a group, then it is doing really shitty job, since somehow the civilian to military ratio is well below expectations for urban warfare.

      • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago
        1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.

        Which are also what Hamas perpetrated on 10/7.

        • SacralPlexus@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          But what about….

          Yes we know that Hamas is awful, evil, etc. That doesn’t give a moral pass to do just whatever to people who aren’t Hamas.

          • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            You’re right. Both sides are awful, and neither side gets a pass. Both sides have been accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes by the ICC.

            That said, neither side has been accused of genocide by the ICC. The difference between “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” is very important to some (for good reason), but not very important to others (also for good reason).

              • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                Hamas is not generally considered to have committed genocide, which suggests that the definition of genocide does not depend only on those three factors.

                • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  And how does that absolve Israel?

                  The precursors to genocide are actively unfolding before our eyes. On 10 October, the head of the Israeli army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell”. The same day, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza: “The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy.” Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, concretely says it is a “textbook case of genocide.” source

                  • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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                    6 months ago

                    Yes, I already know that people disagree on whether Israel is committing genocide.

            • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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              6 months ago

              I’m confused, why are you acting like anyone here is defending Hamas? One foul deed does not make up for another. Israel is figuratively and literally shooting through civilians in order to kill Hamas. How is that acceptable?

              Imagine if the police handled hostage situations like this. Some crazy guy pulls one of your loved ones away from you, puts a gun to their head, and threatens to fire… So the police just shoot them both.

              Would you accept that? Would you thank the officer that shot them both?

              • FlowVoid@lemmy.world
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                6 months ago

                I don’t think anyone is defending Hamas. The question is, did Hamas commit genocide?

                As evil as they are, I do not think they committed genocide. I think most would agree.

                But they meet the same of OP’s criteria as Israel. Hence, those criteria are not enough to establish that Israel committed genocide. (That does not mean Israel did nothing wrong!)

        • MxM111@kbin.social
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          6 months ago

          What Hamas did, was terror act, not genocide. What Israel does is war with Hamas in Urban territory where civilian to militant ratio 2:1 is considered to be much better than average urban warfare.

    • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It may be frustrating that these talking points don’t work on Lemmy. Better luck next genocide.

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Like if you squint at the numbers hard enough you cannot see starving children or murdered aid workers? Maybe that’s why I keep hearing about how they’re killing journalists.

    • negativeyoda@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Not sure where you’re getting those figures since the people keeping track of deaths were killed months ago.

      Fucking ghoul

      • MxM111@kbin.social
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        6 months ago

        There are Hamas estimates of total death (~35,000). UN estimates are just Hamas estimates. There are Israel estimates ~30,000. Hamas estimates are for all deaths (including from natural causes and including due to Hamas rockets falling in Palestine). So the numbers are quite similar. I have seen different estimates how many Hamas militants were killed. The smallest is ~13K. If we take the largest number for total population killed (35K) then it is 22K civilians and 13K militants, with the ratio less than 2:1.

        • Glytch@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Two questions regarding your assertions

          1. What are your sources(assuming they exist) for the estimates on militants killed?

          2. How are your sources (again assuming they exist) defining militants vs civilians?

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      Displacement based on ethnicity and combat also counts

      • MxM111@kbin.social
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        6 months ago

        In what sense? I am stating that less than two civilians are killed for every militant.