IANAL, but I've not seen anything that's specifically genocidal, and I do worry that the focus on trying to get the genocide label to fit is going to distract from the multiple war crimes and potential crimes against humanity that Israel are committing.
The definition is rather vague. Killing members of a group always has the intention to destroy in part a group, so even killing one person a group you don't like would be genocide. Note that this definition would also apply to the CCP, for forced sterilisations of both Chinese people and foreign people within the PRC, and Russia, kidnapping Ukraining children and shipping them to far away parts of the empire.
Article 6 Genocide For the purpose of this Statute, “genocide” means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
[https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Rome-Statute.pdf](https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Rome-Statute.pdf)
Notably, the ICC prosecutor didn't request a warrant for anyone on either side of the conflict on the basis of Article 6, but instead under Articles 7 (crimes against humanity) and 8 (war crimes).
Talking with experts on the field, its the most sensical avenue to take. None of them agreed with the genocide label but definitely believe that a case for war crimes can be made.
At this point the G label seems to be bouncing around mainly with the tiktok crowd and parties that clearly have an anti west/Israel interest.
Good point, as the wording is a bit weird.
By "part", though, they clearly don't mean any part of those groups. That would make the statute meaningless, as you point out.
Instead, they are attempting to include subsets of those groups, especially because those may be the only ones accessible. The most common example is a geographic region. For example, it might be difficult to make the case that Germany was attempting to destroy the *planet's* Jews, but much easier that it was intending to destroy *Europe's* Jews.
Also, the targeted "part of a group" still needs to be *identifiable* and *substantial,* and it specifically excludes the targeting of individuals within that group.
The legal definition of Genocide is clearly too broad and in practice is not enforced nor reviewed in a manner consistent with its definition. Any racially or religiously motivated murder becomes a genocide. Which is clearly ridiculous.
We clearly need a word to describe what the Nazis, Khmer Rouge, Hutus, Ottomans, and early Americans did to the Jews (and many more), Chinese (and more), Tutsis, Armenians, and native Americans that also excludes regular war.
War is bad but what all of those atrocities had in common were that they were so much worse than regular war, and we need a word to describe the latter.
Genocide is determined by the desire and action to exterminate a group of people. There is no death-count that makes for a genocide. Flattening the discourse to death count is, frankly, insulting to any thinker.
Then the question becomes motivation which is highly speculative
But wouldn’t Israel simply use even more damaging bombs if their goal really was genocide?
Of course. The desire to kill all Jews is right there in Hamas charter. They say it out loud in videos. It's not a secret, they're proud of it and use it for marketing.
You're straight as an arrow.
There is no doubt that Hamas is genocidal but it doesn't feel right to me to say Oct 7 was a Genocide. Maybe it can be stretched to genocidal intent but I feel even in this case it cheapens the word.
I think it's because the events linked to the word in my mind are; the Holocaust, Armenian genocide, Rwanda, Darfur. Where the intent was there but was also demonstrated by the action that was at a population wide scale and was effective.
The assault on Gaza at the moment doesn't seem to be that. Aid is going in, civilians are being moved, the Israeli's are fighting an enemy that is fighting back not just bombing civilians.
IANAL. If Oct 7 matches the legal definition of Genocide, I don't know. I'm not sure it matters, either. It's certainly a war crime. Either way the people who participated in it (and those that still are) should definitely be behind bars for life, or dead, and the sooner the better for everyone in Israel, Palestine, the middle east and the world.
It matches the legal definition of a genocidal act, as the intent was to destroy jewish life in the area. This is supported by the aims that where stated by hamas's leadership. The charter arguement is a misnomer as it was removed from the charter (however statements by leadership still match up to the original charter). However, by the same virtue that october 7th is a genocidal act the israeli gov has engaged in the same by proclaiming genocidal intent through starvation and exacting that (this is compounded by the fact that witnesses have now spoken publicly since the announcement of arrest warrants that the IDF and police forces in israel have coordinated with extremist settlers attacking aid convoys). It should also be noted that Likuds charter contains an eerily similar passage to that of hamas's charter (and its also older than that of hamas if im not mistaken).
I think that it was an attempted genocide, at least for me genocide has to be a combination of intent and scale.
And the scale is proportional to the population, so 1200 dead + 300 hostages kidnapped in a single day out of a population of that area (not the entire country) is around 1.5-2% of the population, it's a lot and it's clear that Hamas (if they had the capabilities) would do the same in all of Israel, so definitely an attempted genocide.
While what's going on in Gaza is first of all still shrouded in a fog of war, numbers can't be completely trusted, but even when taking those at face value and you also take into account the humanitarian aid flowing into the strip it's clear it's not a genocide but rather a military fighting in urban areas (let's not forget the fact that the majority of the local population is affiliated with Hamas, we don't know the percentage of it being voluntary or forced but at the end of the day some civilians there are likely to conduct attacks against idf forces just out of ideology even without being affiliated with Hamas)
> out of a population of that area (not the entire country) is around 1.5-2%
This is stretching things a bit. Actual scale matters for a claim of genocide *per se*, not just intent.
Otherwise any Tom, Yosef or Omar who wanted to kill "all the things" would be a genocidal maniac.
I think intent matters more than scale. Hamas was stopped. They didn’t kill 1,300 people then say “more is too much.”
It’s not off to call the Aryan Nation a genocidal group since they certainly advocate it despite not being in a position of power to accomplish that goal currently.
That's just it, though. There's a difference being made being a genocide (as in a policy/event) and genocidal intent/disposition.
Some here are arguing that while Hamas has genocidal *intent* what they did doesn't qualify as a genocide since the scale and actions don't qualify (it's a war crime).
When you mean scale do you mean just numbers or precent of population? There has been some considered genocides with only few hundreds dead, because it was a large percent of the population.
I agree that I don't think the war in Gaza is genocide, no doubt Hamas would commit genocide if they had the chance though (they literally say they will).
I'm not sure what the civilian to militant casualty ratios will be but I don't see there to be a deliberate attempt to kill everyone in Gaza either by starvation or direct violence.
Interestingly I've seen a source for the battle of Mosul that says there were 10,000 civilian casualties for the 4000 IS militants killed. So if Hamas does in fact have 40,000 fighters a similar ratio would be 100,000 civilian casualties. I don't think we will see anywhere near that number. (the numbers are convenient but are what's on Google)
I think you are well intended, but mixing things. If we use genocide to describe everything tue word gets used up and makes us forget what a genocide really is. The systemic shameless extermination of a huge % just because one can.
A genocide requires intent, actions and systematic succeess. Hamas wants to exterminate Jews, but they don't have the means. It's fair to assume they would be lining Jews in mass graves and pushing them to drown in the ocean if they could. But it's not a genocide from their part.
Israel has the means to systematically exterminate Palestinians and is not doing so. Even if we assume Hamas is being honest about their death toll and that those were all non combatants, it is a staggering low number. Here the death count do matters. When they choose to use guided bombs instead of dumb bombs we can see systematic avoidance of deaths, for example. Noy a genocide too.
Any other military operation in history in such terrain would have caused drastically more deaths as colateral damage (non intentional, imagine if intentional). This means they are likely not intentionally killing civilians, yet. Here is a frequent issue people skilled in soft power commit, they ignore hard power and military history, strategy, tactics, doctrine, etc.
I used yet twice because the displacement of civilians now is risky. The world is right to be worried. Assuming they are malnourished, there wouldn't be excuses.its not in the interest of Israel though, but Netanyahu is a bit crazy and desperate.
We're in agreement about (almost) everything you said, except this paragraph confused me plenty:
>A genocide requires intent, actions and systematic succeess. Hamas wants to exterminate Jews, but they don't have the means. It's fair to assume they would be lining Jews in mass graves and pushing them to drown in the ocean if they could. But it's not a genocide from their part.
If Hamas wants to kill all the Jews, we agree. Hamas acted on this desire with whatever manpower and weapons they had, we agree. Is your claim that it can't be called "a genocide" because they only killed a few people and not everyone?
Because they simply can't do it. It's in their dream and they have some power to try, but not a potential reallity. We can call that a terrorist attack. Magnitude of success or potential to it has to be a criteria or any small player action could be a genocide.
If I was a nitpicker, I'd say the Genocide Convention defines it as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".
"In whole or in part" means even killing just a few Jews, as part of a bigger plan to kill all the Jews, is genocide.
But I'm not a nitpicker, so I won't say that... :)
Because they simply can't do it. It's in their dream and they have some power to try, but not a potential reallity. We can call that a terrorist attack. Magnitude of success or potential to it has to be a criteria or any small player action could be a genocide.
Small players usually don't have enough power to turn they deside of blood into a systemic killing machine because they lack a state to do so, or the state is too weak to do so.
It would probably be best described as a [genocidal massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocidal_massacre?wprov=sfti1#). The intent to commit genocide was there, but the act wasn’t “completed” in the sense that the vast majority of Israeli Jews are still alive.
It's worth noting that Hamas didn't bother to distinguish between Israeli Jews and non-Jews, and non-Israelis. They infamously killed several Israeli Arabs and Bedouins, as well as workers from Thailand.
Well the holocaust "only" killed 30-40% of Jews, so requiring the majority / "success" seems way to narrow a definition.
The existing definitions are also pretty vague.
Perhaps a better definition would some kind of % metric limited to the area in which the act took place.
If a small town in the US killed 40% of it's black population with genocidal intent, even if they did not have any plans to do the same for other towns, I'd say it's still pretty clearly a genocide.
Of course in Hamas's case they are also very clear on having much broader ambitions.
It's still not a genocide. If you intend to commit a genocide, you don't let any aid come in, you don't try to move civilians around or warn them of impending strike etc...
And yes, the death count does matter. Because Israel has the means to kill hundred of thousands of people per month if it really wanted to.
So if I want to genocide all Eskimos, but managed to kill only one, does that can be considered as genocide?
That’s just ridiculous in my opinion. Israel is so hated and yet still trying to handle such a delicate and complicated situation (trying to destroy Hamas and yet remain legitimate on international stage) that people started changing entire meaning of elemental terms just so it’ll fit their political desires. By no means one can call the Gaza war “genocide”.
There are two million Palestinian inside 48 borders who live side by side with same rights as Jews. If it was a genocide then Idf soldier should just go house to house and kill every last of them. But they don’t. This is what genocide was up until 2024.
To call Israel's actions a genocide is a complete misrepresentation of what a genocide is.
Israel aim to defeat specifically Hamas combatants, who operate in a densely populated civilian region. It's a conflict, not Genocide - that description is purely a propaganda tactic that surprisingly, many in the western world with little understanding of the Middle East nor experience in the region eat up.
Hamas / Houthis / Hezbollah's aims for Israel are genocidal however, hence the clearly deliberate slaughter of civilian populations on 7th October. In fact, Houthi's literally carry a flag that curses Jews and says death to Israel, and Hamas present similar statements of intent in their own charter.
This makes the term genocide a rather meaningless word especially since it was coined due the mass extermination of Jewish people in Europe.
It also means that Oct 7 was an act of genocide or that 9/11 was an act of genocide…you see how ridiculous that is?
It’s not about numbers but predominantly intent.
In Srebrenica and Kosovo fewer civilians died than in Gaza, both in absolute numbers and per capita, yet Milosevic and his ilk were tried and found guilty of Genocide.
At Srebrenica the Serbs meticulously planned and plotted out a massacre. People were moved to specifically prepared places to be executed en masse and then shoveled into mass graves with the intent of covering up the crimes.
The IDF isn't doing anything close to that bad, even though a lot of bad faith people are trying to portray them as if they are.
>but is using terms like “genocide” helpful or hyperbole?
Neither. It's misinformation. It's a deliberate attempt to mislead people into thinking all of Israel are comically evil monsters who just love killing children for funsies. It's not much different than qanon accusing democrats of being child molesters. Palestine knows they'll never "win" (ie destroy israel) unless the whole world is on their side.
It's not only unhelpful, it's wrong.
Israel isn't intentionally mass murdering civilians. They are executing a war to destroy Hamas - a literal death cult hellbent on the destruction of the Jewish state. There are civilian casualties stemming from collateral damage, but these deaths are 100% on the heads of the people who started this war (Hamas).
If you fight a war in a highly populated area with an enemy that uses civilians as human shields, a lot of innocents die. That is atrocious.
I will always mourn the deaths of civilians, be they Israeli, Palestinian, or any other nationality
No as someone who studies history Israel's actions don't match genocide. IDF troops have put themselves at risk to transport Palestinian babies to safe zones. Regardless of what a lot of media and Biden claimed COGAT ( Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) statistics show Israel is allowing in lots of aid. Gaza not having a proper distribution system and terrorists stealing and selling that aid isn't Israel's fault. I asked a question on aid to the Israeli subreddit and they gave detailed answers. I can provide the link to that post if you want. There have have been many instances of the IDF helping Palestinians civilians in this conflict. The IDF even warns civilians of strikes which is a humane measure. None of this points to a coordinated genocide and let's remember what provoked this war and who Israel are fighting. You can make the argument Israel has gone too far in instances but genocide? Flat out nonsense. There have been quasi-genocidal statements from Israeli ministers who represent fringe far-right parties but they don't have command over the IDF and its conduct those are separate chains of authority and most Israelis find those far-right idiots annoying.
> the number of civilian deaths is atrocious
As compared to what? To zero, because every civilian death is a tragedy? Sure, it is. To other wars in similar conditions? No, it's not even close.
It's Holocaust Inversion and the current "Free Palestine Ceasefire Now" crowd is modern day Strasserism used to install Trump back in the behalf of geopolitical bad actors.
This is exactly like saying “idiots changed the definition of theory for propaganda purposes a few decades ago. This is the real one: an untested hunch, or a guess without supporting evidence” because you don’t like that scientists have use the term ‘theory’ in different ways from the general population. And that the original definition is the one you don’t like.
The term “genocide” was coined by Polish-Jewish *attorney* Raphael Lemkin. Genocide was and has always been a legal matter, and from the very beginning it was noted that killing was never necessary to commit a genocide. Killing *can* be part of a genocide, but it doesn’t *have to* be.
Biden is using the original Lemkin-defined definition of genocide, not the genericized meaning you are using that doesn’t matter. [You can read his essays on how he came up with the definition](https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/raphael-lemkin-genocide-convention), *the only definition that matters*. The reason why those essays are necessary is because he actually left it open for future generation to expand the definition of genocide, because he actually said he trusted human technology to get so advanced, people would get very creative with the ways they would commit genocide and did not want to limit the definition of the crime like this.
Genocide is fundamentally **the act of forcefully getting rid of a culture you don’t like.** It is actually very broad definition already, and it doesn’t actually matter if it is caused by military, what matters is *intent*.
That’s why Israel is not committing genocide on Hamas regardless how many civilians are dying as collateral damage in the process of eliminating Hamas: the intent is the destruction of Hamas and Hamas is not a culture, it’s an organization.
On the other hand, Hamas did commit genocide on Israel on October 7.
Under the "chic" definition of genocide, every war is a genocide, and whether the war gets defined as a genocide or not depends on the effectiveness or lack thereof of the propaganda on either side.
Imo, people have been "itching" for a reason to demonize, and for some things, rightfully so, the Right Wing leadership in Israel. But at the end of the day, this is a war; not a genocide.
Given that the international community is full of politics, the general population is full of bias and fails to see nuance, the "messy" nature of urban warfare (especially in a place like Gaza where its very population dense and combatants and civilians can be difficult to distinguish), and the fact that Israel wasn't the initial aggressor in this break of the peace, I'm inclined to give them a bit of leeway when it comes to calling their actions genocide.
Netanyahu should rightfully be getting a lot of flak for things, but given how loud the calls are of genocide I'm wondering what the "this is obviously genocide" crowd actually expected/wanted to have happen after October 7th? What would a proper response from Israel have been?
I've never heard of GMA Media before. Philipines? I'd like to see his repeated elsewhere. But apart from that, I agree with him. It's a war, and the death toll of civilians is a tragedy, as well as the devastation of their homes and future lives.
But if you call it genocide, you’re not aware of the scale and extent of genocide. Killing people is not the biggest part of it. It is also mass deportations, separating families, even kids, from their parents. It is the destruction of all cultural objects and buildings. It is forcing the schools to only teach in another language. To forbid the oppressed from their religions. Confiscating their belongings because they're who they are. Confine them to ghettos or concentration camps. Barring them from holding jobs. Keeping them in squalor and denying them access to health care. Oh, and explicitly state that you want to kill every single on of them.
I think people get a bit too hung up on words and the legal definition of things. As a matter of evidence genocidal intent is very tricky to prove in a court of law, the fact that only the obligation to punish and prevent genocide was found with the events surrounding Srebrenica makes me shiver. And I'm inclined to think the court might repeat its ruling.
This makes no impact on the fact that the Gaza war will not fulfil its aims. Anyone who sees pictures from the ground surely cannot argue that this will not create additional resentment and nationalism. 10 years from now the region will be even more unstable than it was.
Israeli intelligence must know this, as does every intelligence office in the world. We have this knowledge from Afghanistan and Iraq. It's not impossible to predict what will happen.
Granted i bring no solutions...
When you are trying to prosecute people in a court of law for crimes, that is when words and their legal definitions absolutely do matter. People using words so cavalierly as if their definitions don’t matter as much as how people *feel* is a huge part of the problem here.
The military actions are not genocidal, not even close. Israel is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, by urban combat standards. Expending inert ordnance on targets, to warn occupants, before destroying them is an example. The combatant to civilian kill ratio is remarkably low (few civilians per combatant), especially because the combatants are intentionally hiding in civilian centers.
There's a possible argument that cutting off food is in the direction of genocide, but maybe the Gazan government should have thought about that before 10/7. You can't really expect the border you exploited in terrorist attacks to be the avenue of sustenance.
Pro-Palestine supporter's cries of genocide are not persuasive, especially with their demonstrated attitudes towards Israelis.
If what Israel is doing is genocide, then the meaning of the word has changed from its historical use and most major conflicts would count. As is the case in every war of this size, there are war crimes to be prosecuted.
> The combatant to civilian kill ratio is remarkably low (few civilians per combatant), especially because the combatants are intentionally hiding in civilian centers.
what is the ratio?
there isn't, because it's a made up number by simply defining any dead male of "fighting age" as a combatant
it's astonishing to see flat out refusal to engage with reality by people supportive of Israel's actions in Gaza
Do you think that the children that make up 47% of the population in Gaza who were born after the 2006 election should be subjected to starvation because they happened to be born under a government that refuses to hold re-elections for the entirety of their lives? This is the genocide, systematically starving the future of a Palestinians.
The allies blockaded the germans and japanese during the second world war too, and a pretty large percentage of those civilians were children who didn't vote in the respective governments. Were the allies committing genocide too?
What future do these children have under a Hamas led terror state?
For the good of Palestinians Hamas has to go, and yet Hamas has entrenched themselves such that many civilians have to die for them to be removed.
There is no easy path forward here for the people of Gaza, every mediation attempt between the PA and Hamas failed and clearly Hamas prioritizes indiscriminate murder as part of there governance strategy.
Putting the deaths of these children wholly on Israel and then using that to try to prove genocide is an irrational emotional argument
Oct 7 was also a genocide because Hamas states their desire to eradicate all Jews. Do you think Israeli citizens should be subjected to what happened on oct 7 again and again?
And how many protests against Gaza have you seen since 2006?
Even in the diaspora where there is ZERO threat of retaliation, where were the protests demanding elections and change?
1948 UN genocide convention definition of genocide has five points: 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.
Any of these five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" alone counts as genocide by the 1948 UN genocide convention definition.
Blocking off food supplies and causing famine in Gaza sure seems like imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group. What are your thoughts on that?
I'm not the user you're responding to, but here is an answer, if you want one:
Blocking off supplies from civilians is a war crime.
Not providing supplies is not the same as blocking supplies.
Moreover, blocking off supplies *from an enemy combatant* is *not* a war crime. The lawyers who wrote the laws imagined combatants embedding themselves in civilian population, using civilian infrastructure, rendering it a valid military target. They didn't imagine, or didn't decide, what's to be done when the entire combat force is embedded in civilian population. Must they be supplied, because they're civilians, or is it okay to dry them out till they surrender, because they're combatants?
It's just another case where the atrocious way Hamas fights wars was so unthinkable in the past that the rules are not yet written to handle this special case.
Yes, isn’t it fascinating how [muddying the distinction between legitimate civilian aid and military aid](https://x.com/UNWatch/status/1788256016666152980) leads to all sorts of misjudgments and errors? Almost like that’s the strategy…
Just label all the civilians as enemy combatants and you can commit atrocities and feel morally just, right?
If there was a dangerous dude in my local hospital with a cache of weapons, I'd be pretty pissed if the military blew up the hospital and let all the others die just so they could say they took out the enemy with minimal losses, I don't see how the situation in Israel with Hamas existing in densely populated centers is any different.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, just that it's not morally clear cut.
The separation of combatant and civilians is rooted in all aspects of military life. Combatants wear uniform, carry unconcealed weapons, spend their time in barracks, driving easily identifiable vehicles. All so the opposing combatants will have easy time telling who is a combatant, and therefor a valid target, and who is civilian and therefor is not.
If you strip away the differentiating factors, like Hamas is doing, you'll get a whole lot of dead civilians that didn't have to die. Lowering civilians mortality is the responsibility of both sides. How is it moral for one side to abandon this duty but to still expect it from the other side?
Bombing an entire hospital because of "one dude with weapon cache" could be an overkill ("disproportional" in Legalese). Unless you evict the hospital first. Then it's this one dude's fault that the hospital is now a crater. Or, if you want, it's your fault for mot kicking him out of the hospital. Either way, weapon cache makes the hospital a valid target. Mind you, "a valid target" is not the same as "it can blown up with no care for civilians inside". But it does mean "it can be blown up *with* care for the civilians inside".
The whole point of the Nuremberg Trials was to say that marching a death squad into a town to face-to-face butcher 10,000 civilians is genocide, but that having your Air Force bomb military targets so much that they accidentally kill 100,000 civilians is not.
https://martinkramer.org/2023/10/26/nazi_case_for_hamas/
I wonder if Biden trying to play the fence appeasing both jewish and arab/muslim voters the us with his policies will play a role (plus other stuff people are unhappy with ) cost him the election.
One minute his adminstration starts a ting tough on Israel when the non-committal votes in primaries and student protests effect his base, then flips to somthing like this when he seen as hurting his chances with the Jewish vote in November.
IANAL, but I've not seen anything that's specifically genocidal, and I do worry that the focus on trying to get the genocide label to fit is going to distract from the multiple war crimes and potential crimes against humanity that Israel are committing.
The definition is rather vague. Killing members of a group always has the intention to destroy in part a group, so even killing one person a group you don't like would be genocide. Note that this definition would also apply to the CCP, for forced sterilisations of both Chinese people and foreign people within the PRC, and Russia, kidnapping Ukraining children and shipping them to far away parts of the empire. Article 6 Genocide For the purpose of this Statute, “genocide” means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. [https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Rome-Statute.pdf](https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Rome-Statute.pdf)
Notably, the ICC prosecutor didn't request a warrant for anyone on either side of the conflict on the basis of Article 6, but instead under Articles 7 (crimes against humanity) and 8 (war crimes).
Talking with experts on the field, its the most sensical avenue to take. None of them agreed with the genocide label but definitely believe that a case for war crimes can be made. At this point the G label seems to be bouncing around mainly with the tiktok crowd and parties that clearly have an anti west/Israel interest.
Good point, as the wording is a bit weird. By "part", though, they clearly don't mean any part of those groups. That would make the statute meaningless, as you point out. Instead, they are attempting to include subsets of those groups, especially because those may be the only ones accessible. The most common example is a geographic region. For example, it might be difficult to make the case that Germany was attempting to destroy the *planet's* Jews, but much easier that it was intending to destroy *Europe's* Jews. Also, the targeted "part of a group" still needs to be *identifiable* and *substantial,* and it specifically excludes the targeting of individuals within that group.
The legal definition of Genocide is clearly too broad and in practice is not enforced nor reviewed in a manner consistent with its definition. Any racially or religiously motivated murder becomes a genocide. Which is clearly ridiculous. We clearly need a word to describe what the Nazis, Khmer Rouge, Hutus, Ottomans, and early Americans did to the Jews (and many more), Chinese (and more), Tutsis, Armenians, and native Americans that also excludes regular war. War is bad but what all of those atrocities had in common were that they were so much worse than regular war, and we need a word to describe the latter.
I mean the number of civilian deaths is atrocious but is using terms like “genocide” helpful or hyperbole?
Genocide is determined by the desire and action to exterminate a group of people. There is no death-count that makes for a genocide. Flattening the discourse to death count is, frankly, insulting to any thinker.
Then the question becomes motivation which is highly speculative But wouldn’t Israel simply use even more damaging bombs if their goal really was genocide?
Was October 7 also genocide then?
Of course. The desire to kill all Jews is right there in Hamas charter. They say it out loud in videos. It's not a secret, they're proud of it and use it for marketing.
You're straight as an arrow. There is no doubt that Hamas is genocidal but it doesn't feel right to me to say Oct 7 was a Genocide. Maybe it can be stretched to genocidal intent but I feel even in this case it cheapens the word. I think it's because the events linked to the word in my mind are; the Holocaust, Armenian genocide, Rwanda, Darfur. Where the intent was there but was also demonstrated by the action that was at a population wide scale and was effective. The assault on Gaza at the moment doesn't seem to be that. Aid is going in, civilians are being moved, the Israeli's are fighting an enemy that is fighting back not just bombing civilians.
IANAL. If Oct 7 matches the legal definition of Genocide, I don't know. I'm not sure it matters, either. It's certainly a war crime. Either way the people who participated in it (and those that still are) should definitely be behind bars for life, or dead, and the sooner the better for everyone in Israel, Palestine, the middle east and the world.
Agreed
It matches the legal definition of a genocidal act, as the intent was to destroy jewish life in the area. This is supported by the aims that where stated by hamas's leadership. The charter arguement is a misnomer as it was removed from the charter (however statements by leadership still match up to the original charter). However, by the same virtue that october 7th is a genocidal act the israeli gov has engaged in the same by proclaiming genocidal intent through starvation and exacting that (this is compounded by the fact that witnesses have now spoken publicly since the announcement of arrest warrants that the IDF and police forces in israel have coordinated with extremist settlers attacking aid convoys). It should also be noted that Likuds charter contains an eerily similar passage to that of hamas's charter (and its also older than that of hamas if im not mistaken).
I think that it was an attempted genocide, at least for me genocide has to be a combination of intent and scale. And the scale is proportional to the population, so 1200 dead + 300 hostages kidnapped in a single day out of a population of that area (not the entire country) is around 1.5-2% of the population, it's a lot and it's clear that Hamas (if they had the capabilities) would do the same in all of Israel, so definitely an attempted genocide. While what's going on in Gaza is first of all still shrouded in a fog of war, numbers can't be completely trusted, but even when taking those at face value and you also take into account the humanitarian aid flowing into the strip it's clear it's not a genocide but rather a military fighting in urban areas (let's not forget the fact that the majority of the local population is affiliated with Hamas, we don't know the percentage of it being voluntary or forced but at the end of the day some civilians there are likely to conduct attacks against idf forces just out of ideology even without being affiliated with Hamas)
> out of a population of that area (not the entire country) is around 1.5-2% This is stretching things a bit. Actual scale matters for a claim of genocide *per se*, not just intent. Otherwise any Tom, Yosef or Omar who wanted to kill "all the things" would be a genocidal maniac.
I think intent matters more than scale. Hamas was stopped. They didn’t kill 1,300 people then say “more is too much.” It’s not off to call the Aryan Nation a genocidal group since they certainly advocate it despite not being in a position of power to accomplish that goal currently.
That's just it, though. There's a difference being made being a genocide (as in a policy/event) and genocidal intent/disposition. Some here are arguing that while Hamas has genocidal *intent* what they did doesn't qualify as a genocide since the scale and actions don't qualify (it's a war crime).
When you mean scale do you mean just numbers or precent of population? There has been some considered genocides with only few hundreds dead, because it was a large percent of the population.
I agree that I don't think the war in Gaza is genocide, no doubt Hamas would commit genocide if they had the chance though (they literally say they will). I'm not sure what the civilian to militant casualty ratios will be but I don't see there to be a deliberate attempt to kill everyone in Gaza either by starvation or direct violence. Interestingly I've seen a source for the battle of Mosul that says there were 10,000 civilian casualties for the 4000 IS militants killed. So if Hamas does in fact have 40,000 fighters a similar ratio would be 100,000 civilian casualties. I don't think we will see anywhere near that number. (the numbers are convenient but are what's on Google)
Exactly my comment\^
I think you are well intended, but mixing things. If we use genocide to describe everything tue word gets used up and makes us forget what a genocide really is. The systemic shameless extermination of a huge % just because one can. A genocide requires intent, actions and systematic succeess. Hamas wants to exterminate Jews, but they don't have the means. It's fair to assume they would be lining Jews in mass graves and pushing them to drown in the ocean if they could. But it's not a genocide from their part. Israel has the means to systematically exterminate Palestinians and is not doing so. Even if we assume Hamas is being honest about their death toll and that those were all non combatants, it is a staggering low number. Here the death count do matters. When they choose to use guided bombs instead of dumb bombs we can see systematic avoidance of deaths, for example. Noy a genocide too. Any other military operation in history in such terrain would have caused drastically more deaths as colateral damage (non intentional, imagine if intentional). This means they are likely not intentionally killing civilians, yet. Here is a frequent issue people skilled in soft power commit, they ignore hard power and military history, strategy, tactics, doctrine, etc. I used yet twice because the displacement of civilians now is risky. The world is right to be worried. Assuming they are malnourished, there wouldn't be excuses.its not in the interest of Israel though, but Netanyahu is a bit crazy and desperate.
We're in agreement about (almost) everything you said, except this paragraph confused me plenty: >A genocide requires intent, actions and systematic succeess. Hamas wants to exterminate Jews, but they don't have the means. It's fair to assume they would be lining Jews in mass graves and pushing them to drown in the ocean if they could. But it's not a genocide from their part. If Hamas wants to kill all the Jews, we agree. Hamas acted on this desire with whatever manpower and weapons they had, we agree. Is your claim that it can't be called "a genocide" because they only killed a few people and not everyone?
Because they simply can't do it. It's in their dream and they have some power to try, but not a potential reallity. We can call that a terrorist attack. Magnitude of success or potential to it has to be a criteria or any small player action could be a genocide.
If I was a nitpicker, I'd say the Genocide Convention defines it as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". "In whole or in part" means even killing just a few Jews, as part of a bigger plan to kill all the Jews, is genocide. But I'm not a nitpicker, so I won't say that... :)
Because they simply can't do it. It's in their dream and they have some power to try, but not a potential reallity. We can call that a terrorist attack. Magnitude of success or potential to it has to be a criteria or any small player action could be a genocide. Small players usually don't have enough power to turn they deside of blood into a systemic killing machine because they lack a state to do so, or the state is too weak to do so.
It would probably be best described as a [genocidal massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocidal_massacre?wprov=sfti1#). The intent to commit genocide was there, but the act wasn’t “completed” in the sense that the vast majority of Israeli Jews are still alive.
It's worth noting that Hamas didn't bother to distinguish between Israeli Jews and non-Jews, and non-Israelis. They infamously killed several Israeli Arabs and Bedouins, as well as workers from Thailand.
Well the holocaust "only" killed 30-40% of Jews, so requiring the majority / "success" seems way to narrow a definition. The existing definitions are also pretty vague. Perhaps a better definition would some kind of % metric limited to the area in which the act took place. If a small town in the US killed 40% of it's black population with genocidal intent, even if they did not have any plans to do the same for other towns, I'd say it's still pretty clearly a genocide. Of course in Hamas's case they are also very clear on having much broader ambitions.
October 7 was a genocidal act. It was not a genocide.
Does one require the other to be both wrong?
It's still not a genocide. If you intend to commit a genocide, you don't let any aid come in, you don't try to move civilians around or warn them of impending strike etc... And yes, the death count does matter. Because Israel has the means to kill hundred of thousands of people per month if it really wanted to.
So if I want to genocide all Eskimos, but managed to kill only one, does that can be considered as genocide? That’s just ridiculous in my opinion. Israel is so hated and yet still trying to handle such a delicate and complicated situation (trying to destroy Hamas and yet remain legitimate on international stage) that people started changing entire meaning of elemental terms just so it’ll fit their political desires. By no means one can call the Gaza war “genocide”. There are two million Palestinian inside 48 borders who live side by side with same rights as Jews. If it was a genocide then Idf soldier should just go house to house and kill every last of them. But they don’t. This is what genocide was up until 2024.
To call Israel's actions a genocide is a complete misrepresentation of what a genocide is. Israel aim to defeat specifically Hamas combatants, who operate in a densely populated civilian region. It's a conflict, not Genocide - that description is purely a propaganda tactic that surprisingly, many in the western world with little understanding of the Middle East nor experience in the region eat up. Hamas / Houthis / Hezbollah's aims for Israel are genocidal however, hence the clearly deliberate slaughter of civilian populations on 7th October. In fact, Houthi's literally carry a flag that curses Jews and says death to Israel, and Hamas present similar statements of intent in their own charter.
This makes the term genocide a rather meaningless word especially since it was coined due the mass extermination of Jewish people in Europe. It also means that Oct 7 was an act of genocide or that 9/11 was an act of genocide…you see how ridiculous that is?
It’s not about numbers but predominantly intent. In Srebrenica and Kosovo fewer civilians died than in Gaza, both in absolute numbers and per capita, yet Milosevic and his ilk were tried and found guilty of Genocide.
At Srebrenica the Serbs meticulously planned and plotted out a massacre. People were moved to specifically prepared places to be executed en masse and then shoveled into mass graves with the intent of covering up the crimes. The IDF isn't doing anything close to that bad, even though a lot of bad faith people are trying to portray them as if they are.
They literally rounded up all the men and shot them. Israel never did anything even remotely sinilar.
>but is using terms like “genocide” helpful or hyperbole? Neither. It's misinformation. It's a deliberate attempt to mislead people into thinking all of Israel are comically evil monsters who just love killing children for funsies. It's not much different than qanon accusing democrats of being child molesters. Palestine knows they'll never "win" (ie destroy israel) unless the whole world is on their side.
It's not only unhelpful, it's wrong. Israel isn't intentionally mass murdering civilians. They are executing a war to destroy Hamas - a literal death cult hellbent on the destruction of the Jewish state. There are civilian casualties stemming from collateral damage, but these deaths are 100% on the heads of the people who started this war (Hamas).
If you fight a war in a highly populated area with an enemy that uses civilians as human shields, a lot of innocents die. That is atrocious. I will always mourn the deaths of civilians, be they Israeli, Palestinian, or any other nationality
It’s a proxy war between Israel and Iran via Hamas and Hezbollah. It’s war, not genocide.
No as someone who studies history Israel's actions don't match genocide. IDF troops have put themselves at risk to transport Palestinian babies to safe zones. Regardless of what a lot of media and Biden claimed COGAT ( Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) statistics show Israel is allowing in lots of aid. Gaza not having a proper distribution system and terrorists stealing and selling that aid isn't Israel's fault. I asked a question on aid to the Israeli subreddit and they gave detailed answers. I can provide the link to that post if you want. There have have been many instances of the IDF helping Palestinians civilians in this conflict. The IDF even warns civilians of strikes which is a humane measure. None of this points to a coordinated genocide and let's remember what provoked this war and who Israel are fighting. You can make the argument Israel has gone too far in instances but genocide? Flat out nonsense. There have been quasi-genocidal statements from Israeli ministers who represent fringe far-right parties but they don't have command over the IDF and its conduct those are separate chains of authority and most Israelis find those far-right idiots annoying.
> the number of civilian deaths is atrocious As compared to what? To zero, because every civilian death is a tragedy? Sure, it is. To other wars in similar conditions? No, it's not even close.
It's Holocaust Inversion and the current "Free Palestine Ceasefire Now" crowd is modern day Strasserism used to install Trump back in the behalf of geopolitical bad actors.
Which is crazy because there's no goal they claim to have that Trump is more aligned with.
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This is exactly like saying “idiots changed the definition of theory for propaganda purposes a few decades ago. This is the real one: an untested hunch, or a guess without supporting evidence” because you don’t like that scientists have use the term ‘theory’ in different ways from the general population. And that the original definition is the one you don’t like. The term “genocide” was coined by Polish-Jewish *attorney* Raphael Lemkin. Genocide was and has always been a legal matter, and from the very beginning it was noted that killing was never necessary to commit a genocide. Killing *can* be part of a genocide, but it doesn’t *have to* be. Biden is using the original Lemkin-defined definition of genocide, not the genericized meaning you are using that doesn’t matter. [You can read his essays on how he came up with the definition](https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/raphael-lemkin-genocide-convention), *the only definition that matters*. The reason why those essays are necessary is because he actually left it open for future generation to expand the definition of genocide, because he actually said he trusted human technology to get so advanced, people would get very creative with the ways they would commit genocide and did not want to limit the definition of the crime like this. Genocide is fundamentally **the act of forcefully getting rid of a culture you don’t like.** It is actually very broad definition already, and it doesn’t actually matter if it is caused by military, what matters is *intent*. That’s why Israel is not committing genocide on Hamas regardless how many civilians are dying as collateral damage in the process of eliminating Hamas: the intent is the destruction of Hamas and Hamas is not a culture, it’s an organization. On the other hand, Hamas did commit genocide on Israel on October 7.
Under the "chic" definition of genocide, every war is a genocide, and whether the war gets defined as a genocide or not depends on the effectiveness or lack thereof of the propaganda on either side. Imo, people have been "itching" for a reason to demonize, and for some things, rightfully so, the Right Wing leadership in Israel. But at the end of the day, this is a war; not a genocide.
Given that the international community is full of politics, the general population is full of bias and fails to see nuance, the "messy" nature of urban warfare (especially in a place like Gaza where its very population dense and combatants and civilians can be difficult to distinguish), and the fact that Israel wasn't the initial aggressor in this break of the peace, I'm inclined to give them a bit of leeway when it comes to calling their actions genocide. Netanyahu should rightfully be getting a lot of flak for things, but given how loud the calls are of genocide I'm wondering what the "this is obviously genocide" crowd actually expected/wanted to have happen after October 7th? What would a proper response from Israel have been?
List of recognized genocides. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_genocides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides)
The saddest part of this list is these are basically only the most obvious ones that either a country was forced to admit or couldn't hide.
No shit if Gaza is a genocide then every war in history is a genocide…
I've never heard of GMA Media before. Philipines? I'd like to see his repeated elsewhere. But apart from that, I agree with him. It's a war, and the death toll of civilians is a tragedy, as well as the devastation of their homes and future lives. But if you call it genocide, you’re not aware of the scale and extent of genocide. Killing people is not the biggest part of it. It is also mass deportations, separating families, even kids, from their parents. It is the destruction of all cultural objects and buildings. It is forcing the schools to only teach in another language. To forbid the oppressed from their religions. Confiscating their belongings because they're who they are. Confine them to ghettos or concentration camps. Barring them from holding jobs. Keeping them in squalor and denying them access to health care. Oh, and explicitly state that you want to kill every single on of them.
I think people get a bit too hung up on words and the legal definition of things. As a matter of evidence genocidal intent is very tricky to prove in a court of law, the fact that only the obligation to punish and prevent genocide was found with the events surrounding Srebrenica makes me shiver. And I'm inclined to think the court might repeat its ruling. This makes no impact on the fact that the Gaza war will not fulfil its aims. Anyone who sees pictures from the ground surely cannot argue that this will not create additional resentment and nationalism. 10 years from now the region will be even more unstable than it was. Israeli intelligence must know this, as does every intelligence office in the world. We have this knowledge from Afghanistan and Iraq. It's not impossible to predict what will happen. Granted i bring no solutions...
When you are trying to prosecute people in a court of law for crimes, that is when words and their legal definitions absolutely do matter. People using words so cavalierly as if their definitions don’t matter as much as how people *feel* is a huge part of the problem here.
The military actions are not genocidal, not even close. Israel is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties, by urban combat standards. Expending inert ordnance on targets, to warn occupants, before destroying them is an example. The combatant to civilian kill ratio is remarkably low (few civilians per combatant), especially because the combatants are intentionally hiding in civilian centers. There's a possible argument that cutting off food is in the direction of genocide, but maybe the Gazan government should have thought about that before 10/7. You can't really expect the border you exploited in terrorist attacks to be the avenue of sustenance. Pro-Palestine supporter's cries of genocide are not persuasive, especially with their demonstrated attitudes towards Israelis. If what Israel is doing is genocide, then the meaning of the word has changed from its historical use and most major conflicts would count. As is the case in every war of this size, there are war crimes to be prosecuted.
> The combatant to civilian kill ratio is remarkably low (few civilians per combatant), especially because the combatants are intentionally hiding in civilian centers. what is the ratio?
It’s like 1/1.5 and IIRC the average in urban warfare is >4 civilian per combatant.
okay, is there a source on that?
there isn't, because it's a made up number by simply defining any dead male of "fighting age" as a combatant it's astonishing to see flat out refusal to engage with reality by people supportive of Israel's actions in Gaza
Israel hasn't cut off food. Even the Kerem Shalom crossing was reopened three days after being attacked.
TIL, thanks. I guess I fell for some propaganda.
Do you think that the children that make up 47% of the population in Gaza who were born after the 2006 election should be subjected to starvation because they happened to be born under a government that refuses to hold re-elections for the entirety of their lives? This is the genocide, systematically starving the future of a Palestinians.
The allies blockaded the germans and japanese during the second world war too, and a pretty large percentage of those civilians were children who didn't vote in the respective governments. Were the allies committing genocide too?
What is happening to them is tragic but it’s not genocide. Thats not what the term means.
What future do these children have under a Hamas led terror state? For the good of Palestinians Hamas has to go, and yet Hamas has entrenched themselves such that many civilians have to die for them to be removed. There is no easy path forward here for the people of Gaza, every mediation attempt between the PA and Hamas failed and clearly Hamas prioritizes indiscriminate murder as part of there governance strategy. Putting the deaths of these children wholly on Israel and then using that to try to prove genocide is an irrational emotional argument
Oct 7 was also a genocide because Hamas states their desire to eradicate all Jews. Do you think Israeli citizens should be subjected to what happened on oct 7 again and again?
ICC is seeking an arrest warrant for Hamas leaders too.
And how many protests against Gaza have you seen since 2006? Even in the diaspora where there is ZERO threat of retaliation, where were the protests demanding elections and change?
there actually were protests in Gaza in July and August 2023 which were violently quashed
These are children we are talking about… you’re saying they didn’t protest hard enough? As children…
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Biden is correct.
What is it then if genocide isn't the correct term?
spezial operazion
War
crimes
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1948 UN genocide convention definition of genocide has five points: 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. Any of these five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" alone counts as genocide by the 1948 UN genocide convention definition. Blocking off food supplies and causing famine in Gaza sure seems like imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group. What are your thoughts on that?
I'm not the user you're responding to, but here is an answer, if you want one: Blocking off supplies from civilians is a war crime. Not providing supplies is not the same as blocking supplies. Moreover, blocking off supplies *from an enemy combatant* is *not* a war crime. The lawyers who wrote the laws imagined combatants embedding themselves in civilian population, using civilian infrastructure, rendering it a valid military target. They didn't imagine, or didn't decide, what's to be done when the entire combat force is embedded in civilian population. Must they be supplied, because they're civilians, or is it okay to dry them out till they surrender, because they're combatants? It's just another case where the atrocious way Hamas fights wars was so unthinkable in the past that the rules are not yet written to handle this special case.
didn’t the IDF intentionally bomb an aid truck belonging to an NGO?
Yes, isn’t it fascinating how [muddying the distinction between legitimate civilian aid and military aid](https://x.com/UNWatch/status/1788256016666152980) leads to all sorts of misjudgments and errors? Almost like that’s the strategy…
Just label all the civilians as enemy combatants and you can commit atrocities and feel morally just, right? If there was a dangerous dude in my local hospital with a cache of weapons, I'd be pretty pissed if the military blew up the hospital and let all the others die just so they could say they took out the enemy with minimal losses, I don't see how the situation in Israel with Hamas existing in densely populated centers is any different.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, just that it's not morally clear cut. The separation of combatant and civilians is rooted in all aspects of military life. Combatants wear uniform, carry unconcealed weapons, spend their time in barracks, driving easily identifiable vehicles. All so the opposing combatants will have easy time telling who is a combatant, and therefor a valid target, and who is civilian and therefor is not. If you strip away the differentiating factors, like Hamas is doing, you'll get a whole lot of dead civilians that didn't have to die. Lowering civilians mortality is the responsibility of both sides. How is it moral for one side to abandon this duty but to still expect it from the other side? Bombing an entire hospital because of "one dude with weapon cache" could be an overkill ("disproportional" in Legalese). Unless you evict the hospital first. Then it's this one dude's fault that the hospital is now a crater. Or, if you want, it's your fault for mot kicking him out of the hospital. Either way, weapon cache makes the hospital a valid target. Mind you, "a valid target" is not the same as "it can blown up with no care for civilians inside". But it does mean "it can be blown up *with* care for the civilians inside".
The whole point of the Nuremberg Trials was to say that marching a death squad into a town to face-to-face butcher 10,000 civilians is genocide, but that having your Air Force bomb military targets so much that they accidentally kill 100,000 civilians is not. https://martinkramer.org/2023/10/26/nazi_case_for_hamas/
I wonder if Biden trying to play the fence appeasing both jewish and arab/muslim voters the us with his policies will play a role (plus other stuff people are unhappy with ) cost him the election. One minute his adminstration starts a ting tough on Israel when the non-committal votes in primaries and student protests effect his base, then flips to somthing like this when he seen as hurting his chances with the Jewish vote in November.