Israel-Hamas war, Gaza genocide

[Zkuq]

SvennoJ said:

Zkuq said:

I have very much to criticize Israel about, but genocide is not among my critique. Yes, there are terrible atrocities against the Palestinians by Israel, but nothing I've seen - although admittedly, I haven't followed the situation all that closely - even hints at a genocide. I expect other definitions to roughly match Wikipedia's description, but in short, here's what Wikipedia has to say about genocide: "Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part." I'm not seeing any of that at play here (on a systematic level). And again, I'm not trying to defend the atrocities commited by Israel by any means, but genocide doesn't seem like the correct term to me (at least at the moment - not saying genocide couldn't come into play at some point).

The court can decide but many experts have already weighed in

https://time.com/6334409/is-whats-happening-gaza-genocide-experts/

Scholars add, however, that many social scientists define genocide in a broader way. “[The current legal definition] identifies a very narrow set of categories of victims: ethnic, racial, national, religious, but it doesn't take into account people being targeted because of their socioeconomic status, or their political identity, or whatnot,” Verdeja says.

Hinton adds that the more colloquial definition for genocide focuses on the idea of “large scale destruction and acts perpetrated against a population.” Many may point to the Holocaust as the best example of this, though genocide, based on this broader definition, has happened many times over since, in places like Rwanda and Guatemala.


https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/israel-clearly-committing-three-of-five-acts-defined-as-genocide-palestinian-american-lawyer/3073787

She said Israel’s actions fit the legal definition of genocide under the Rome Statute and also the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, also known as the Genocide Convention.

“Genocide requires intent and action. Not only have there been over 100 statements of genocidal intent expressed at the highest levels of Israeli military and government since Oct. 7, but they are also clearly committing three of the five genocidal acts under the international treaties,” said Elborno.

The convention defines genocide as five acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” according to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect.

As Elborno explained, Israel is guilty of three of the five acts: “Killing members of the group,” “Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” and “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

“This is not my opinion. This is the opinion of over 800 genocide scholars, 47 state crime scholars and numerous scholars of genocide who have come out in this moment and said that Israel is committing genocide. Not only that, but the annihilation phase of genocide,” she said.

My conclusion from the first link is that it's debatable, but it could be genocide. The second link provides a more clear conclusion, but it seems to be from a Turkish site, and it's heavily based on the statements of a Palestinian-American lawyer. My understanding is that media is more or less state-controlled in Turkey, and Turkey has very clearly picked a side in the conflict, and the risk of bias of the cited lawyer should be fairly obvious from her background. I don't think the second link seems at all trustworthy. Hence my impression is that it could be considered a genocide, but it would probably require an expanded definition of genocide. I'm personally quite hesitant to modify definitions of existing terms because it seems like it would be prone to twisting the truth, and hence at this point I would personally still argue against calling this a genocide. That said, it seems to be debatable, so I'm not sure I have much to add here.