A main reason why it’s taboo to call the war in Gaza “genocide” is that it’s a carbon copy of propaganda from original Nazis and Neo-Nazis. We have yearly neo-nazi marches to “memorize” the bombing of Dresden and other Allied attacks against German cities. Now, obviously from a modern standpoint these “strategic bombings” were a war crime. And so were the limitations on food supplies into Germany after the second world war. But that doesn’t change that there was no genocide. The Allies didn’t try to wipe us out. They just behaved like humans who are attacked do. and humans who were atacked are rarely kind. We also remember that the things done to us were were neglible compared to what our regime would have done if it had won.

So when we see Gaza we essentially see something similar to what happened to our grandparents. A population felt wronged, allowed fascists to take over and start a war and then suffered when the facists lost their war.

Now, there’s some important differences, Hamas fortunately never made remotely as far as the Nazis (one could say we see what should have happend in 1933 here) and fortunately the IDF isn’t using fire bombings (otherwise there’d be no Palestinians left, strategic bombing took hours to kill tens of thousands, not months), but there’s a lot of similarities here. Hence learning from our past means that we have to recognize that violence is unfortunately needed to stop regimes run by fanatics. and that this violence will always hurt countless inncocents and that even the better side will commit atrocities.

That of course doesn’t change that Israel should be continued to be pressured towards minimizing suffering - and that is done - Germany takes part in food aidrops and has condemned things like settlements for many years, but all that doesn’t change that Israel being the winning power is by a huge margin the lesser evil here. Hence when the choice is binary the Israeli government is supported against groups like Hamas.

They do both and there’s a lot of overlap between those. Israel was founded and untortunately continues to be needed as a save haven for a group that is persecuted in a lot of places in the world.

Same in Germany. But I wouldn’t be surpised at all if wiretapping agencies like the NSA manages to get most of the data anyway. Then again, the same can be said for phones which are supposed to only keep the data on the device.

they need hundreds of thousand of soldiers to enable a credible defence

And arm them with what? Modern wars are extremely expensive and Finland may have conscription but the country’s military spending as a portion of GDP is lower than that of many countries with professional armies. Conscription makes sense in Israel. But they get about as much in American arms donations as Finland spend on its entire military.

The whole setup looks Finland looks like the strategy is to copy Stalin’s tactic in the winter war: sacrificing soliders en masse.

Sure, without Nato and the EU there could be the scenario we now see in Ukraine: Hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid paying for weapons. But since Finland is in Nato it would get actual armies coming to its aid.

And I’m not even talking about the indirect costs of conscription. Diminishing your workforce by a percent also dimishes your GDP by (roughly) a percent. With that money you could create and maintain a serious nuclear arsenal, including second strike capabilities.

This isn’t about “depriving people of their freedom”

No, but depriving people of their freedom is what conscription does. It can be necessary, just as depriving people of their money via taxation is necessary, but you should be honest about what you’re doing.

Nobody can expect others to defend them if they won’t do the same. An integral part of the social contract in countries with conscription is that everyone accepts that duty to answer when called upon, and to defend their countrymen when necessary.

Yeah, but you’re using the opposite of the solidarity principle here. As I said, it’s reasonable to use conscription if you actually need a lot of people. I very much see the point in what South Korea or Israel are doing with conscription (albeit that they’re a bit sexist with it). But if 98% of the birth year cohort (and 99.98% of the entire population) get to enjoy their freedom while a tiny minority is forced to join the army, then that’s a serious injustice. Imagine doing taxation that way. Next time the state needs more income: Don’t raise income tax by 1% for everyone, just you could pick 1% of the population and raise it by 100% for them.

As long as the army doesn’t need (almost) everyone to have served, incentives paid for by everyone should be used to get enough volunteers.

No, it is forced labor and indeed a serious infraction on human rights, but it’s by no means slavery. Slaves can be sold and subjected to a bunch of other abuses.

Unlike slavery forced labor can be acceptable in certain conditions. I don’t think conscription in Western countries falls under that. It’s far too expensive (delaying people’s entry to the workforce by a year should cost more than 2% of GDP and you can buy a lot of advanced weaponry with that much money) and in most places getting enough people into the military should be doable by offering more benefits. But in countries like Ukraine or in the West when we’re talking about things like natuaral disasters it may be necessary to force people to work for the community.

As the service length will go up dramatically they expect the volunteering rate to fall somewhat, which means they expect somewhere between 500-1000 will be forced to join, whether they want to or not.

That’s fucked up. It’s one thing to talk about actual conscription if you actually need to enlist a lot of relunctant people, but if you can get 4000 voluntarily getting to 5000 should be easy by increasing the benefits (higher pay might work , or scholarships or …).

You’re depriving a thousand people of their freedom for a year to save maybe a hundred million kronor. That’s roughly the cost of a single modern tank.

Nope it is uncommon. Equal conscription only has been a thing for a few years in exactly two countries: Sweden and Norway. Neither Finland nor Singapore conscript women. Israel has conscription for women but it’s shorter.

I don’t see why not. I would personally prefer if they didn’t do that, but I’m also not a friend of religion and religious symbols and my personal preferences shouldn’t dictate what other people do.

Well, the atrocities against the Native Americans are indeed where the line becomes blurry. European settlers wiped most of the native population and took their lands, but it’s still up for debate which parts, if any, of that can be called a genocide. It’s also questionable whether cultural (e.g. what the Chinese are doing in Xinjiang or the Americans and Australians attempted with forced adoptions) count at all. There’s not even a consensus the trail of tears counts. That’s how high the bar is. You can murder countless, but as long as you “only” want to steal their land or kill them for any other reason it’s not a genocide. For genocide wiping the people in qusetion has to be the point, not just means to an end.

Hence clear cut genocides are indeed quite rare. The Shoa was one, so were the Armenian genocide and the Rwandan genocide, but wars rarely count, regardless how destructive they are.

Therefore considering what is happening in Gaza a genocide is - for now - a huge stretch. That’s why the ICJ didn’t even ask Israel to stop thier military campaign. The court merely affirmed it shouldn’t actually start a genocide.

All that said, what Israel doing clearly not being a genocide does not mean it’s entirely legal. The threshold for war crimes is a log lower.

You think genocide means that the whole populations is killed?

It means the intend to wipe out an entire people. Not necessarily by killing everyone (forced sterilzation etc. would work as well), but to be guilty of genocide you actually have to try to unexist a people and the fac that the Palestinians still exist is proof that Israel doesn’t want to do that to them. If someone has the means to do something and doesn’t that’s generally speaking proof that they don’t want to do it.

German media still refuses to talk about genocide in Gaza and calls those who do victim blaming

Because it’s very similar to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazi_marches_in_Dresden

Of course one should question how much force is necessary, but that doesn’t change that you can’t expect a country defending itself to not put the safety of their soldiers over that of the enemy’s population. And compared to the Allies Israel is fairly careful. With firebombings like back then we’d see 30k deaths per day, per quarter of a year. Calling the bombings of Dreseden or war in Gaza a genocide is asinine. In both cases it’s clear that the winning side merely wanted to eliminate a very real threat and may in some occassions have crossed the line while doing just that. But if it were a genocide neither I nor any Palestinians in Gaza would still be alive.

Just as Germany’s government back then Hamas has the ability to end the bloodshed immediately by issuing an unconditional surrender. The fact that it doesn’t makes it the entity that’s the most responsible for the suffering of the civilian population.

As far as I’ve read China is systematically discriminating against foreign companies via a biased justice system. To a lesser degree countries like the US do it as well.

Applying strict human rights standards could be a great way to counteract against these discrimiantions. Not just from China, even some American practices might be enough.

So they will go down the moment the American empire goes down. Or the USA changes its politics. Which could mean the same.

No, then they’ll get desparate. And a desperate Isarel may indeed become genocidal. Simply killing all Palestinians is one of the options that remain if there’s no longer a sufficient supply of precision ammunition. Napalm is dirt cheap and if you use enough of it you start a firestorm that wipes out the rest of the city. Alternatively they could use their nuclear arsenal.

As bad as this is, the danger here is not Israel being too strong, but it being too weak. My guess is that could work in the other direction as well. If America or Nato did directly aid with their troops there’d likely be far fewer civilian casualties.

it was the totallity of it

Yes, that was indeed part of the psychological effect. It’s also why I’d welcome it if Nato joined that war. Regarding Iraq and Afghanistan I read that you’d need about 1 occpying soldier for every 20 inhabitants to prevent any resistance gaining ground. Sending 100k soldiers to that place would work and would allow for tactics that lead to far fewer civilian deaths.

The giving chocolate is also something that works. If heard stories of aid from America from my grandparents more than 70 years after the war. When people are on the brink of starvation it’s quite cheap to buy their loyalty.

They did and succeeded. Let’s face it: A main reason why there was pratically no resistance after the surrender in Germany and Japan is that the Allies did make it clear that they wouldn’t hesitate to use means that make what Israel is doing now look like a picknick if necessary. I’m not sure about Japan, but the Nazis had elaborate plans for guerilla warfare after invasion. But brutaltiy of their defeat dissuadeded their supporters from actually committing to that.

Now, Germany and Japan also experienced a second step that made them rather peaceful today and that was an economic revivial that provided opportunties for everoyne and made it possible to rebuild the countries in a new image and we most certainly must strive to make that happen in Gaza, but it all started with a people beaten so badly that it realized that violent resistance was futile.

Edit: There really is a long list of terrorists movements being wiped out with brutal force. In many cases that’s not morally acceptable (take what China is doing in Xinjiang for example), but places from Czechnia to Sri Lanka are reasonably calm nowadays because governmetns litterally bombed their enemies into submission. The question is just whether the end justifies the means.

But still, humanitarian help is paramoun

Of course. But that doesn’t mean a ceasefire would help. Hamas needs to be removed. So not prolonging the war with a ceasefire might be the lesser evil.

This is the answer to most of the problems in most 1st world countries

A lot, but not this one. The rich are simply not rich enough to offset the demographic issues we have. In the last decades life expectancy rose months per year and even in America billionaires “only” own some 13k per person. With that you could offset ageing population and life expectancy changes for, two years maybe? It would be little more than a drop in the bucket.

That might work for full-on “let’s genocide the other races” Nazis, but for the far-right (i.e. everything to the right of classic conservatism) it would be suicide. There’s far too many people on that side to shame them. Your approach would only make sure that everyone who ever went in that rabbit whole is lost forever. I.e. they’d continue to gain members but not lose any.

Luckily a large part of the far right’s supporters are just people who are misinformed or didn’t think things through. There’s a reason that these parties are a lot less popular among educated people. That’s why these protests seem to work. They decrease the AfD’s poll numbers because they get people to realize that their vote isn’t a mere “fuck you” to politicians but something that could move them from the frying pan into the fire. These are people we should continue to talk to. Heck, I’d call them victims. No innocent victims, but victims who fell to propaganda and lies regardless.

If it were about a mere political idea, I’d agree with you. But here were speaking about a party that’s in the process of becoming outright fascist and facism isn’t just an “idea”, it’s also a crime against humanity.

Your employer denouncing fascism shouldn’t be any more concering than your employer telling you not to assault your coworkers. It shouldn’t be controversial at all but part of the basic consensus civilized society is based upon.