Hamas nearly gone?

[mids2019]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gk79xlzwjo

This is important. Hamas are nearly defeated and so is it in Israel's interests to finish the job? It will be interesting to see if Hamas actually have authority when it comes to negotiations or whether they are a busted flush outrageously demanding concessions when they are defeated.

It seems Palestinian society is descending into a barbaric chaos and I don't how these armed gangs will be represented in future Gazan governance unless it is broken up into clan fiefdoms?

Ah OK, misinformation is allowed 😨
God I'm always so careful not to post actual lies and have had to admit I'm wrong sometimes too... its just such an outright lie.
Accept the mods can't be fact checkers though so I guess it makes sense.
Frustrating.

I think people often just believe stuff that isn’t true. I saw an interview where a young women claimed millions of Gazan children have died, the presenter had to gently correct her by pointing out that there were only 2 million people in Gaza. She genuinely believed what she had been saying.

I thought the actual death toll of children (and children with life changing injuries) is sad enough without embellishment tbh.

I‘ve seen that interview too.
I do wonder if for some reason more people are willing to spread wild claims when it comes to this particular conflict?
I haven’t seen anything like that in relation to the war in Ukraine for example.

@User37482

"I think for genocide ypu have to show the intent is to actually genocide a people. The British weren’t trying to kill all Germans when they dropped a bomb on Dresden they were trying to win a war"

But if the basis for the claim that Israel is committing genocide by dropping bombs on civilian areas in Gaza then surely the British are equally guilty of genocide for dropping bombs on German cities.

But if the basis for the claim that Israel is committing genocide by dropping bombs on civilian areas in Gaza
That's not the sole basis for the charge of genocide in Gaza

Gaza is home to nearly one million civillian people.

Please can you post the authorities here where it states most of those people have been killed?

@ComeAsYouAreAsAFriend

"That's not the sole basis for the charge of genocide in Gaza"

Genuinely grateful if you could tell me what the other grounds are?

Well China hasn’t signed up to the ICC so that one is easy.

Overall though, the deflection tactic doesn’t work any more. “Maggie sunk the Belgrano” is not going to fly as a justification nor as a defense against the charge of genocide. And the fact that you think it will shows… which of us as naive?

Netanyahu might never be brought to court, but I do know that shouting Everyone Else First, will have zero impact on a tribunal. They’re not actually answerable to him. He would be answerable to them for his actions.

Do you mean for others to draw the inference that you support Bibi to the hilt, even if it is shown subsequently to be genocide? Or should the inference be that Nuremberg was political and therefore morally tainted in some way? Because you definitely do not have the same standards for Actions-That-Might-Be-Genocide depending on whether or not they were committed by Israel. You really do need to read the Yugoslav tribunal reports/decisions and ask yourself some questions, about how Israel can justify its actions in the face of those convictions.

It's a long read

https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf

@ComeAsYouAreAsAFriend

You're right it is a long read, but nonetheless very helpful to the debate.

The introduction neatly sums up the charge of genocide as:

"The acts and omissions by Israel complained of by South Africa are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group, that being the part of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip ("Palestinians in Gaza"). The acts in question include killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. The acts are all attributable to Israel, which has failed to prevent genocide and is committing genocide in manifest violation of the Genocide Convention, and which has also violated and is continuing to violate its other fundamental obligations under the Genocide Convention,"

With the key part being "they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group, that being the part of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip ("Palestinians in Gaza").".

Now given that so far less than 2% of the 2.1 million Gazan national, racial and ethnic group has been killed whereas 6.8% of the 80 million German national, racial and ethnic group were killed by the allies, I would argue that a far greater or substantial part the German national, racial and ethnic group were destroyed than what is happening in Gaza. Secondly at exactly what percentage of deaths of a country's population mean that it is genocide?

So I then return to my original point of why is the Israeli attacks on Hamas and Gaza considered a genocide despite much lower numbers when the Allied attacks on the Nazis and Germany is not considered a genocide. The obvious answer has nothing to do with the figures and everything to do with political motivation in that the Allies won.

@1dayatatime Genocide doesn’t have to do with the numbers. it has to do with intent. It’s not just bombs and direct deaths, it’s the systematic destruction of the necessities of life that they are being accused of.

The falklands isn’t great example to be honest - no war crimes at any kind of scale. But if we look at Afghanistan and Iraq, where clear war crimes were committed by the UK. The UK dealt with this internally through its own legal systems. They persecuted individuals. They held enquiries and changed procedures. So the action of the international courts wouldn’t be warranted. Although was there real accountability? Or is the UK too powerful to truly investigate. I would certainly agree that there is a bit of politics involved when it comes to these international courts.

Despite that I think the legal reasons behind the warrant are sound.

I also thought that this warrant was a step forward for the ICC as it’s the first time an ally of west has been accused.

The ICC warrant and the ICJ genocide case are two different things. Netanyahu himself isn’t being warranted because of genocide, it’s war crimes.

@GuevarasBeret 100% it’s an argument that came right out of Netanyahu’s mouth. If you have to reach back to WW2 to justify what’s happening then you are reaching into a very dark place.

Well yes, but thats only if it’s considered that the motivation is to destroy an entire people right? Dropping bombs on a civilian population when the only target is civilians and not combatants may be a war crime but may not be genocide. Words matter, they have specific meanings.

Where the Burmese trying to push every single Rohinyga out of Myanmar, well yes, we saw the evidence and they also clearly said they were getting rid of them. Were the Germans trying to eradicate Jews, well yes, they weren’t expelling them, they were collecting them and murdering them. Those are clearcut cases of ethnic cleansing or genocide. I think whats happening in Sudan is probably genocide on the part of the “arab” sudanese RSF forces towards “african” sudanese.

I genuinely think whats happening in Gaza is not as clear cut. There may be some war crimes to answer for (not because Israelis are particularly prone to this but because in war, crimes happen, I’d like to see Hamas members answer for terrorism, rape, mutilation and murder as well). we’ve seen genocide before and I really think this is a brutal war in a densely populated urban area with an enemy that routinely uses human shields and uses schools and hospitals as bases (there is plenty of evidence of that). I imagine the Israelis have carefully documented all this to present at a later date.

From the river to the sea, Hamas loves the BBC

Thats the South African case

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3g9g63jl17o

This is a clarification of what the wording means.

@User37482

Thank you the BBC article is a useful clarification of the wording.

Sadly views on both sides are so entrenched that statements on the ICJ ruling on South Africa's claim will be twisted and misinterpreted to suit pre existing views.

@User37482

"I think whats happening in Sudan is probably genocide on the part of the “arab” sudanese RSF forces towards “african” sudanese. "

I would also argue that the expulsion of 4 million Afghans from Iran dumping them in the Afghan desert in 52c with no water or food is also probably genocide.

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jul/07/iran-rushes-deportation-4-million-afghans-deadline-women-repression

Or the expulsion of 2 million Afghans from Pakistan could also be argued to be genocide:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c74z19pl7wgo.amp

Or the Chinese persecution of 12 million Uighurs is highly likely to be genocide.

www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/chinese-genocide-of-uyghurs-in-xinjiang-continues

But why is nothing heard of this why are there no protests about this?

This is just not true though. The vast majority of people who are oppressed one way or another, in poverty or living with restricted rights do not blow up school buses. I understand you mean well, but this is the racism of low expectations.

It also denies the point. Hamas didn't invade Israel to get rights for Palestinians. In actual fact, Hamas control the vast majority of the "rights" Palestinians have and they denied their population:

freedom of movement (they charged extortionate fees for exit visas)
freedom of press
freedom to expression
freedom from torture
right to a fair trial
right to equality under law regardless of religion, sexual orientation or gender
freedom from arbitrary detention
political participation in elections
adequate health, food, housing

Israel was not denying those things. Hamas was. So their invasion on 7 October wasn't to gain freedom from oppression. It was to kill Jews and annihilate their country so they could turn it into a slightly bigger terrorist dictatorship!

Palestinians would have been much better served by stopping the killing and violence, stopping vowing to annihilate Israel and building peace than they would be trying to indiscriminately kill Israelis which is what led to the blockade to begin with.

It is simply nothing like the Ireland situation and it's not a hard luck story, but more a case of making choices. Plenty of people have been displaced, myself included. It isn't a given that you will decide to kidnap people, and it certainly isn't natural.

If there is going to be anything like peace between Paelstinians and Israel you need to reduce the fear of the Israelis and the animosity of Palestinians and this is going to be long hard slog. The Palestinians now have to stop becoming a population of for ever grievance and look to support ideas of statehood and respecting the sovreignty of Israel. Reducing the grievance of the people of Gaza will ultimately prevent the support of future groups like Hamas and the reintroduction of Islamist terror. German views of Jews changed after WW2 and so if a society is willing anti senitism can be motivated even after holding horrendous views. At the core any Palestoanain autonomous state cannot have an ideology of the destruction of Israel at its core.

For Gaza this repudiation of violence is important as no country will be willing to invest in the massive reconstruction needed if there is scope for future conflict with Israel and would leave a population in a permanent refugee camp which in reality is no basis for statehood.

Israel for its part needs to limit settler expansion so borders with a Palestinian state can be established.

Hard agree.

+1

If there is going to be anything like peace between Paelstinians and Israel you need to reduce the fear of the Israelis and the animosity of Palestinians

Israelis are afraid. Palestinians are just really hostile. What a balanced view.

Excellent post.

Completely agree @ForgesOfEmpires