Iraq to lower the ‘age of consent’ for girls to nine

[Waitingforfriday75]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/iraq-poised-to-lower-the-age-of-consent-for-girls-to-nine/

Posted here as it gets the most traffic. This is by far the worst news I’ve heard all year. Imagine at the age you were meant to start secondary school instead being forced to marry and have sex with an older man. Completely disgusting!!!

I still don't get why you hate Israel so much when Assad killed hundreds of thousands more people. Shouldn't you be pushing action against him a great deal more?

Given the general tenor of your posts throughout this thread and the absolute lack of acknowledgement of the worse atrocities committed by Assad, it's impossible to think of your posts as anything other than anti-Semite and pushing an agenda of hate.

If you were posting in anything like good faith you'd have a sense of proportion.

@Fizzle1 Thank you for your considered and very interesting posts.

Do you know me? How do you know I haven’t? You show your ignorance repeatedly. Why do you hate Muslims so much? Criticising a country for committing a genocide is a human beings duty. All people with empathy, compassion and a strong moral compass will call out all genocides occurring in the world right now and doing some action to protest them. It is our duty. We are a community and should care for one another no matter what race, religion or minority you are. From things you have said in this chat I don’t think you feel the same way. You would only care if I looked like you right?
Further, why do you believe Israel should be held to a different standard than any other country? Why is criticising Israel anti-Semitic? If someone criticised UAE for Sudan, Saudia Arabia for Yemen I wouldn’t consider them islamophobic unless they were using those things to dehumanise all muslims.

I know the anti-semitism label has been used as a weapon to cancel people and silence them. Why is that necessary? If truth and justice is on your side why limit the flow of information?

You clearly spent too much time on TikTok!

genocide? Where! The only genocide here is the one that Arab states carried out on the Jewish populations.

Actually, many internationally respected experts consider that the actions of Israel in Palestine constitute genocidal acts with genocidal intent, including Professor Bartov of Brown University.

Not sure how a discussion about child marriage laws in Iraq ended up as yet another thread about the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon conflict, but here we are.

Jews, Christians, Muslims lived together peacefully in the Arab states for generations! Tell me more - I can’t find this on Google?

Why do you hate Muslims so much?

You are projecting significantly. I don't. I hate it when people who push an agenda against one set of people - when they foment distortions and make situations much worse rather than better.

Fortunately by now I think most reasoned people can see that what Israel is doing is absolutely terrible, and can also see that a lot of the pro-Hamas movement are trying to make things worse, and that people who speak like you are trying to stir hatred without balance.

Deary deary me, you really didn't look far did you? Or at all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism_in_the_19th_century
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_antisemitism_in_the_20th_century

People who are Jewish have been persecuted endlessly, first from the Christian side (after Christianity began), which has continued pretty well non-stop. The majority of attacks on Jewish people have been from 'Christians'.

However after Islam was founded, there have been a number of mass killings of Jews by Muslim leaders and countries.

I suggest you look at this line: ^1948–2001
Antisemitism played a central role in the Jewish exodus from Arab lands. The Jewish population in the Arab Middle East and North Africa has decreased from 900,000 in 1948 to less than 8,000 in 2001^ There were a lot of attacks in the 1940's and some later, plus of course the fact that some Arab nations tried to erase Israel by attacking it.

Now the vast majority of the Wiki pages emphasise that most prejudice and attacks have been carried out by Western people and entities. However, mass murders of Jewish people have been carried out by Arabs too.

Tell me, can you bring yoruself to condemn the absolute horrors of Hamas' attack on October 7?

I agree. That is why I spoke up when Muslims were being demonised.

I looked for what you said: ‘genocide? Where! The only genocide here is the one that Arab states carried out on the Jewish populations’ and yet you now talk about the exodus. So you may twist and turn to prove your arguments true but we can see what you’re doing. You said one thing and proved something else. Unless the meaning of exodus changed to genocide? Please see
Francesca P. Albanese
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories
We are just normal people, she’s the expert.
My reasoning that you hate Muslims is that you support the genocide of the Palestinians and Lebanese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusation

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide

I agree that some people are pushing hatred but hatred of Muslims. Some self-awareness/reflection is necessary here.

And is it a coincidence that the exodus happened when Israel was created?

Yeah, you're the hate pusher from the start of this thread. Which you derailed.

Your agenda is more than obvious.

Do tell me; I'll ask again.

Can you bring yourself to condemn the absolute horrors of Hamas' attack on October 7?

How did this thread turn to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and why are posters at war with each other?

doesn’t matter who considers it genocide, it ain’t genocide.

For generations as dhmini? Paying jizya? lol

and where are those Jews now? Where are the Jews of the Egypt, Iraq and Libya?

I think if people have established expertise in a field and form evidence-based opinions on issues within that field, it might be worth listening to them...

Respectfully, you don’t get to decide that for others - just as others don’t get to determine that for you.

Currently of course as we all know, there is no formal ruling through the international court system of genocide. So legally speaking, there is yet to be a determination, however the courts obviously felt there was enough preliminary evidence that there could be possibility of genocide, enough so that there will be a case to determine if this constitutes genocide under the convention - and if there was absolutely no evidence at all the court would have dismissed the allegation.

As some posters above mentioned, there are many experts who do consider this a genocide, and generally speaking it does matter - as within the court system, reports and fact finding missions generated by experts can be admitted as evidence. In late October, South Africa filed evidence with the court to support the accusation of genocide which consisted of over 750 pages of written text, and supported by over 4000 pages of exhibits and annexes, and just today the UN special committee that was set up to investigate the practices of Israel within this conflict have released their findings, that they believe is consistent with genocide.

You’re absolutely perfectly within your rights to say that you don’t think it’s genocide, and I respect you right to that opinion, however opinion doesn’t create an absolute and other posters are also within their rights to say they think current practices do constitute a genocide.

Again only speaking for Iraq, I think both you and Justice have equally valid points.

Historically speaking Iraq has been home to a diverse group of ethnicities, religions and identities. Arabs, Muslims, Kurds, Turkmen, Yazidi, Jews, Zoroastrian, Christian, Armenian, there’s probably loads I’m not even aware of!

I’ll stick to Jews as that was the original comment, in the 20th century as reported by a prominent Iraqi Jewish (now Israeli / British) historian who was also born in Baghdad the Jewish community was deeply integrated into wider Iraqi society.

This changed completely following the Arab- Israeli conflict and what Arabs call the Nakba where 750,000 Palestinians either fled or were forcibly removed from their houses. Jews were persecuted by the Iraqi government systematically and continuously, including passing laws to strip Jewish Iraqis of government positions, laws to prevent them from leaving the country, forcing them to renounce their Iraqi citizenship if they did and pretty much every other discrimination you can think of (including public hanging). To this day, only a terribly small number of Jews are in Iraq - some figures say less than 5, some say a few hundred - I have no idea unfortunately.

I suppose an interesting conversation to have with someone with more information than me would be - was the catalyst for this persecution the creation of the state of Israel, so then the Iraqi state felt they suddenly had an “Option” to dispossess their Jewish citizens as now they had somewhere to go - thereby supporting the idea that the government at the time was just waiting for an excuse to persecute and remove Jews. Or, if this was a response to the Nakba and the forcible displacement, murder and various other heinous crimes committed against Palestinians (majority or Arab and Muslim identity) so the Iraqi government decided to “punish” a completely unrelated group (Jewish Iraqis) for the actions of an entirely different group of people.

I think either way, we as a global community should be using all these times in history as lessons of what not to do - which is punishing and committing Human Rights violations against a group of people because of perceived affiliations, religious and ethnic identities or as a way to get “back” for a previous crime committed.

If this is genocide, every single war in the history of humanity has been a genocide.

What's your reasoning there? Wars are horrible, but not always characterised by genocidal intent and genocidal acts. It is the presence of both of these, widespread and sustained, which means multiple experts from around the world have expressed that they consider this to be a genocidal campaign against Palestinians.

I’ll take this comment in good faith, as obviously if someone isn’t personally or professionally interested or trained in these areas then I can see how maybe the differences aren’t obvious however there is actually quite a specific difference.

War is generally categorised as one armed actor trying to destroy another armed actors power / resources and will to resist. So for example, the war on ISIS. ISIS, although not a state was/is an armed actor, and the American/ Iraqi coalition force as another armed actor had a goal to destroy the power and will of ISIS (as an armed actor) to resist.

However genocide is categorised as one armed actor working to destroy an UNARMED social group’s will to resist, and the key difference is that genocide is against an UNARMED group of people.

For example, the Srebenica genocide, where an armed actor (Bosnian Serb army of Republica Srpska) killed 8,000 unarmed Bosniak Muslim men and boys and committed the forcible transfer and abuse of maybe 30,000 Bosniak Muslim women, men, boys and girls - this has been deemed a genocide as the mass killing of 8,000 men and boys coupled with the forcible transfer of Bosniak Muslim individuals was an example of an armed actor looking to eliminate a group of unarmed people based solely on their collective identify as Bosniak Muslims.

The criteria for genocide are set in the genocide convention and if a full case of genocide is brought against Israel at some point - these will be the criteria that the plaintiff will look to prove.