Genocide

Luckily though, accusations of genocide are determined by the ICC not AIBU votes...

*the UK

I don't think anyone sane is claiming Hamas are justified or innocent. They are terrorists. You expect terrorists to behave like terrorists. But a state has to behave like a state, and respect international law and innocent life. What Israel is doing is as if, following an IRA bombing, they had blockaded the city of Derry so no-one could escape and then razed it to the ground. It is not acceptable. It is not proportionate. It is not justified. 160 children a day are dying in Gaza.

I’m voted yanbu but meant to vote yabu

It looks like genocide to me.

Genocide means attempting to wipe out a "race" and the numbers of that group will go down. Palestinians are not in any way a "race" they are a political construction of largely Saudia Arabian descent and their numbers are going up.

It is a war, it is horrific, it is sickening, people are dying, we all hate it, It isn't "genocide"

Exactly, how dare they deny it,

Certainly a number of knowledgeable people have signed letters, and many accusations have been made, especially in online/news sources that adopt a pro-Palestinian standpoint, but still, this is not a consensus position.

The reason for people not agreeing is that genocide requires the explicit intention to destroy a nation or ethnic group. It is easy to argue that Israel's response to Hamas is disproportionate, horrific and includes war crimes. It is difficult to argue for the specific crime of genocide (even though some of Israel's far right have certainly made comments in that direction) - because it is not commensurate with either the IDF's stated aim of fighting Hamas, not Palestinians as such, nor with their actions which resonate with that goal (warning civilians to leave buildings, trying to move civilian population out of the battle area in northern Gaza etc).

War is horrific. Indiscriminate attacks that kill large numbers of civilians should be probed as war crimes. But not every horrific war is a genocide.

See, for example:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/have-war-crimes-been-committed-in-israel-and-gaza-and-what-international-laws-apply

nowordsforthis · Today 05:34

I don't think that there is consensus among serious experts in international law that what is going on in Gaza right now is genocide.

The only reason I can think that you have reached that conclusion is that you've missed the large number of online and printed news, reports on radio and television and multi signatory letters the the press, from experts in international humanitarian law, who have said that it is and have set out their reasons for saying so.

I think ‘IDF could be more careful’ is the most disgusting minimisation of what is going on I’ve ever heard.

😂😂

(above post was edited to clarify one sentence)

Yes, AIBU is really the best place for a nuanced answer to this question... ;)

I don't think that there is consensus among serious experts in international law that what is going on in Gaza right now is genocide. 99% of the people using the word today are using it in a non-formal way to describe the severity of what they see, and within the narrative that they use to interpret the events.

Many Palestinians interpret what is going now as part of an ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, beginning with the 1948 Nakba and continuing with Israeli oppression and violence ever since.

The limitation of this interpretation of current events is that it frames the Palestinians only as victims, and in doing so it overlooks the 7 Oct attacks and doesn't address the continuing threat of Hamas and other regional allies against Israel - and Hamas's absolute lack of support for a ceasefire (and intentional endangering of their own civilians by placing Hamas military structures literally under and among the civilian population, then recklessly committing atrocities which they knew would invite an extremely strong Israeli response).

Some Israelis interpret Hamas's intentions as genocidal. Hamas leaders have in recent days clearly stated that the goal of the attacks was to bring Israel's borders to a permanent state of war, that they intend to repeat the Oct 7 attacks again and again, and that they want to destroy the Jewish state, (and also that they are not responsible for Palestinian civilians).

More widely though, Israelis interpret what is going on now as a war of no choice, (a) because it is simply impossible to continue to live alongside Hamas given their current capabilities and intentions (see above, capabilities proven in the Oct 7 attacks); (b) because Hamas on their own probably can't destroy the state of Israel but anything less than a robust response makes Israel extremely vulnerable to a regional war by their allies including Hezbollah which could certainly endanger the Israeli state, and (c) because Hamas is holding 240 Israeli civilians in Gaza and all efforts must be made to rescue them.

The bigger question here rather than genocide is proportionality, which in terms of international law is judged not in proportion to the number of Israelis already attacked by Hamas, but in relation to the future danger Israel is trying to prevent. I think that the consensus is that it is difficult to defend the proportionality of some of Israel's actions over the last month, but that the future danger is not negligible, and Hamas also shares a large responsibility for the harm to Gazan civilians, by having absolutely no regard for their safety, and in many places actively endangering them (preventing Gazans in the north from moving south, embedding military infrastructures within and under civilian populations such that there is no way to engage with them without massive damage to the civilian population).

Of course it's genocide. Have you looked up the ten stages of genocide? And noticed how each one of them has been happening to Palestinians?

Yes, IDF could be more careful

I really hope you are a bot. Because the idea that someone could speak about the mass slaughter of children in such cold terms is stunning.

Genocide isn't defined by the largest number killed, in some sort of competition. If that was the case, then the Srebrenica massacre would need to be demoted from an act of genocide, as a "mere" 7,000 were killed.

Genocide has a strict set of definitions in international humanitarian law and lawyers who work in that field are saying, overwhelmingly, that it is genocide.

Tik Tok?

Ffs 🙄

We are watching genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people taking place in 2023, this is exactly what is happening.

Get yourself over to Tik Tok and wake up.

Why is it not?

YANBU. It’s the same type of people who also throw around terms like ‘trans genocide’ and call everyone who disagrees with them a Nazi. Leaping to extremes gets attention but just renders language meaningless.