this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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Because what you said wasn't a serious statement.
Israel has been pushing Palestinians out of Palestine and the west bank for 20 years now, it didn't just start on Oct 7. That they are fully mask-off only really makes that reality crystal clear.
If tomorrow Hamas gave back all the hostages, those 30,000+ Palestinians don't magically come back alive, their cities and schools and hospitals and cultural landmarks don't all magically reappear. Even if it did, would Israel lift their travel restrictions (that existed before oct 7) and allow Palestinians freedom to return to their homes? Would they stop settling in the West Bank?
Genocide has an actual definition, and nowhere in it is there a caveat where it's allowed if the target group has something they want.
It absolutely is. Genocide is a terrible despicable thing and if you look up the actual definition what is happening doesn't qualify. We should support Israel in this particular conflict. I don't even like Biden but what he's doing the correct thing. There is still have zero chance I'm supporting trump just because of this conflict.
Have you looked at the actual definition?
Hundreds of Genocide Scholars have described this ethnic cleansing campaign as genocide because of the deliberate targeting of children/civilians and expressed intent by Israeli officials.
“A Textbook Case of Genocide”: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel’s Assault on Gaza
Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel) and Summery by the International Court of Justice
ICJ Order 28 March 2024
Law for Palestine Releases Database with 500+ Instances of Israeli Incitement to Genocide – Continuously Updated
AP News, Time, Reuters, Vox, CBC
KIlling members of the group: 30,000+ Palestinians dead most of which are civilians
Causing them serious bodily or mental harm: again 30,000+ dead, mostly civilians and many more injured with critical infrastructure destroyed
Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group: the destruction of universities, schools, hospitals and other typically off limits infrastructure and the prevention of access to humanitarian aid
preventing births: see above where giving birth in unsanitary conditions will dramatically raise mortality rates for women and children
forcibly transferring children out of the group: again see above with the deaths of babies and children and the absolute horror that is the "safe passage"
How can you fight a war and not have civilian casualties? Do you know how to do that? Are you saying Hamas should just get away with Oct 7th? What should be done? Don't pretend I'm defending civilian casualties I am absolutely not.
what you do is recognize why the war started in the first place and try to give back the disenfranchised people their humanity.
what's that? you're killing their children instead?
The current conflict started because of Oct 7th.
it absofuckdiddly did not
The way most other countries do it.
No one is stating it is a genocide because of unintentional civilian deaths.
You absolutely are defending the slaughter of civilians because Israels ROE are so horrible that the only logical conclusion is that the death of civilians is the point, not an accident. This level of slaughter of civilians has not been seen from other countries in a long time.
Israel likes to complain that it is singled out and treated with different standards and it's because of antisemitism. The truth is that Israel is singled out and treated with different standards, but are treated with special kid gloves that NO OTHER nation receives.
The issue is that Israel is terrified of taking causalities, a requisite part of actually fighting a war, rather than just slaughtering everyone.
Again, a good rule of thumb to determine if a country is committing genocide intentionally is if it is withholding food, medicine, and water from a population it considers undesirable.
I'm not expecting no civilian casualties, I'm expecting that enemy combatants killed should be far greater than the number of civilians killed. Currently the Israeli government has killed over 30,000 people and they admit that they have only killed about 12,000 Hamas combatants. So the other estimated 18,000+ are not combatants, and therefore civilians.
Do you know why that is the case? Because Hamas is setting up positions in civilian areas in hospitals in people's homes. They have hundreds of miles of tunnels underneath civilian populations. They are using this as a tactic. I've said this before but Hamas has said they want civilian casualties. Are you going to respond to my other question? Should they just not respond to Oct 7th? Burning babies in their cribs taking girls cell phones they had just murdered recording the scenes and sending the videos to whoever the mom was in their contact list. Like each side has done some horrible things here. It's not as clear cut as everyone here is making it out to be.
Where are you getting your information on Human Shields? Israel makes that claim a lot, for justification of astonishingly high civilian casualties. Yet if you consider independent sources such as human rights organizations and their investigations, it does not paint the same picture. Yet, even if all the Israeli claims about human shields were true, that does not mean they get a pass on international law.
The only independent verification back in 2014 (Amnesty link) is of Weapons (not rockets) hidden at a vacant school, situated btwn 2 UNRWA schools housing displaced people, by a Palestinian armed group.
The Guardian journalists had encountered a couple individuals in 2014 too.
HRW on Laws-of-War Violations 2009
Amnesty on Hamas War Crimes 2023
Yet none of those come remotely close to making hospitals and schools bombing targets. Even if all the IDF claims were true, that does not exempt those hospitals and schools as protected under international law.
Additionally, let's look at how the IDF uses Human Shields including Children (2013 Report), because the IDF use of human shields is well documented.
Hamas member, Ghazi Hamad on October 24, 2023: “Israel is a country that has no place on our land […] because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation.” (October 24, 2023, LBC TV (Lebanon)). He also vowed to repeat the October 7 attacks “time and again until Israel is annihilated,” and expressing a desire to “sacrifice martyrs” (referring to Gazan civilians) for Hamas’
https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/hamas-its-own-words
I learned about how Hamas using civilian positions from John Spencer. John Spencer is an award-winning scholar, professor, author, and combat veteran. He currently serves as the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, Co-Director of the Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project podcast. He is also a founding member of the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare. John served 25 years in the U.S. Army, having held ranks from Private to Sergeant First Class and Second Lieutenant to Major. He was an active duty Army officer during two combat tours in Iraq.
The ADL is a Zionist organization and conflates anti-zionism and antisemitism, it's unsurprising they provide no context and intentionally ignore historical facts that go against Zionism.
John Spencer is also not without bias. He works for the state department. I won't say all his work is bad, he has some comprehensive works such as The Mini-manual for the Urban Defender. But he does a very bad job on the Israel-Palestine conflict, because his position is the same as the US State Department, aligned with Israeli military Interests. The misinformation is blatant and not that difficult to debunk when you look for confirmation from historians and human rights organizations.
Have you read the reports by human rights organizations or books by new Historians on the subject? Because they have done on-the-ground investigations. They have a higher standard due to independent verifications from other human rights orgs and Historians respectively. This has been an apartheid for generations.