To have reservations about a friendship with a woman who refers to Israel's actions in Gaza as a genocide?

[Oodiks]

I like this woman a lot, but we have very differing world views, specifically her belief that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

We work at a university and were coming back from lunch together when she commented that she was pleased the protestors hadn't come back. I agreed, noting how nerve wracking it must have been for Jewish students on campus to run the gauntlet of pro-Palestinian / anti-Zionist posters in the encampment.

We'd been talking about the American election over lunch, and I thought we'd agreed that Kamala Harris was the better candidate for her views on climate change, if nothing else, but then my 'friend' commented on Biden/Harris sending arms "to support the genocide" and I was left kind of speechless.

Am I being unreasonable to feel unsure about continuing this friendship?

And now they have started using this lame excuse to bomb the crap out of residential areas in Lebanon too.

You're not her friend (most of us don't even believe your scenario anyway). And quite frankly, stealing land and killing people (mostly innocent children) will never fare well no matter how much you try to justify it. There are rules of war, which Israel does not adhere to. The propoganda machine is no longer working

it’s clear they are the ones responsible for any resulting casualties

It’s clear to me that the people responsible for their deaths are the people who killed them. I’m troubled that this is not clear to you.

The Israeli civilians have lived there their whole lives. They are nurses, teachers, doctors etc who have their family homes there.

The Palestinian civilians have lived there their whole lives. They are also nurses, teachers and doctors who have their family homes there.

It's shit for everyone. It's not fair on any of the civilians and they are experiencing a conflict because of actions that happened in the past. You really cannot expect either side to all give up their lives and homes because of awful mistakes made by leaders of the past.

In my opinion the only thing that could ever work for the actual people who live there is for them to live side by side peacefully but unfortunately there are too many blood thirsty leaders who want to continue such an awful conflict that is going to continue and cause more and more death.

If we had a Time Machine we could go back in time and not make the terrible political decisions that caused this in the past. Same with Northern Ireland, Kashmir etc but we can't so we have to look forwards.

@Toothpegs well, yes. It's not genocide. It's a tragedy but they're not wiping out the entire people so calling it genocide seems a little hysterical.

Completely agree with above
To the original poster...If you were my friend I would think you are a dailymail reader who believes all the propaganda shoved at you.
What have we come to where people think genocide is ok

They aren't penned in by Israel. Obviously Israel isn't going to let Palestinian refugees flood into Israel. That would be fucking stupid. Especially when Palestinian civilians routinely carry out attacks in Israel. But why is Egypt keeping its border closed. It's Egypt that is penning in the Palestinian

This is no longer true - Gaza is surrounded on 3 sides by Israel since the IDF have occupied the de-militarised Philadelphi Corridor so that the Gaza-Egypt border effectively no longer exists - Egypt won't re-open the Rafah crossing until IDF leaves and honours the Egypt/Israel peace treaty
-> stalemate. The 4th side is the sea embargo'd by Israel for donkeys years

Why does Israel have a responsibility to provide the country it's at war with, with food, water and electricity?

Israel is not paying for the food water medical goods etc - it's supplied by humanitarian organisations all over the world

Israel is not expected to distribute this humanitarian aid - but they are expected by International Humanitarian Law not to impede it's distribution

It's obviously more complicated than that but that's the bottom-line

Of course it's genocide.

I reached that conclusion by seeing that the Israelis valued just one single Israeli so much that they were willing to release 1000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for him. But I think that was a mistake as, quite apart from releasing murderers like Sinwar back into society, it set a precedent.

Of course the hostages' families want them released at any cost. If one of my family had been abducted I expect I would think that too.

But I don’t believe that rationally it is ever a good idea to negotiate with kidnappers or reward them in any way - it just encourages them to carry out more kidnaps. And of course Hamas leaders are on record as saying that they will repeat the October atrocities again and again until they get their way.

Oh, sorry. What is your definition of genocide then if it's not targetting and trying to annihilate a race/culture?
Are you only asured it's genocide if 6 million are murdered?

So it’s Israel’s fault that Egypt won’t let them in. Ok…

@OneRarelySeesABrazierTheseDays they were annihilating a terrorist organisation.

It's not my definition of genocide, it's the definition of genocide.

You need to look at the definition of genocide. Trying to destroy or displace a whole people or culture does not require that you succeed in killing all of them to be described as genocide.

No, they are using that as an excuse

@Fruhstuck please stop being so simplistic. Palestinians do not want to leave their land. They have seen what has happened in the past. Netanyahu and the right wing members have more than hinted their plans. So perhaps yes. It is Israel's fault, at a simplistic level. There you are. You have got that out of me. You can go ahead and call me anti semitic.

Exactly
So when Israel was throwing white phosphorus on Gaza for the last 20 years
Btw white phosphorus is a powder that if landed on a car would set a car on fire
It cause burns on children and adults when it was thrown down
An American surgeon who went to Palestine couldn't believe the amount of white phosphorus on people at the hospitals.
It's a war crime
But then again who cares.
As long as we get more land for Israel eh.
Doesn't really matter about the Christians that have lived in Palestine for all those years.
Nah
I wonder what the situation would be if hamas was found in tel aviv???

@TriesNotToBeCynical the suffix -cide means killing. Not displacing, killing.

It's not difficult to see why Egypt won't let them in and then have the aggression and fighting within their own country and Israel attacking THEM.

Out of interest, how do you see this ending? Or rather, what is the preferred ending to this conflict? Egypt opening its borders so that Palestinians eventually all flee there and to surrounding countries, and Israel absorbing and settling Gaza?

It is a genocide. Its sick to think otherwise.

If Israel really wanted to "annihilate" the Palestinians, they could and would have killed more than 45,000 out of 5.8 million in the past year. That’s terrible, but less than 1%.

Re your unpleasant mention of "6 million": there were about 9 million Jews in Europe in 1933. So 6 million was a rather large percentage of them: over 65%. That’s what attempted genocide is.

Plus in recent weeks Egypt has accepted 1,3 million refugees from Sudan - Egypt is not a wealthy country already has millions of refugees and takes more than it's fair share as it is surrounded on all sides by wars

This creates political instability in Egypt

Then the correct conclusion you should have reached is that Netanyahu valued 1 soldier more than he values 100 civilians.🙄

I remember similar being said of Iraqis, Afghans, Syrians, etc in the wake of the war on terror. Yet millions of them worked with outside forces to attempt to remove the terror groups/governments from power.

I also remember any suggestion that western intervention would lead to widespread radicalisation and further terrorism was almost universally dismissed as insulting to the agency of the people of those countries.

What is different about Palestine/Palestinians?