The Israel genocide debate thread

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The vast majority of WP members contributing to this topic are neither Jewish, Muslim, live in the region or know people who live in the region. Same is probably true for those defining the term or saying Israel is or is not committing genocide. I don’t see why you should be an exception.

I'm against all the woke junk as much as anybody who is sane enough to see how problematic it has become. But my point was that we the outsiders are becoming just as quick to pass judgement over this mess in the middle east due to our own feelings of outrage, which like I've also pointed out is being exploided by the media.

Why should the people who have no control over what goes on over in these war zones keep getting outraged? If the US is indeed an oligarchy like everyone says that means that regardless of which side Americans pick in this stupid war, our opinions, protests, or votes wont matter because in the end the government does exactly whatever they want to do.

And I've come to realize that Americans are incapable of doing the right thing in wars like this onw no matter what they choose to do. The world treats us like we're an evil empire no matter what. Hell if we stayed out of this war between Israel and Gaza I bet we would somehow get blamed for that too.

"Damned when you do and damned when you don't" is pretty much the code we live by.

While there is no accurate enough polling on this question I am pretty confident in claiming there is a worldwide consensus that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.

I disagree with the consensus. In short Israel’s main goal is to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians not to exterminate all of them. Killing so many, flattening their homes is a means to an end not the end.

The term genocide of course was coined to describe what the Nazis did to the Jews. The Nazis diverted men and resources from the war effort for this cause. Despite the German war situation becoming dire and thus more resources needed for the war effort the extermination campaign intensified. That shows an intent to exterminate as primary goal that there is little evidence Israel has.

Genocide: The word is everywhere. It hounds us on our screens, and it haunts us in our sleep. It inflames emotions like few other terms do.

"Genocide" simultaneously carries legal, moral, historical, comparative and strategic meaning. Does it fit the legal definition, codified by the United Nations in 1948 and incorporated into the 1998 Rome Statute, the legal basis for the International Criminal Court? Should one use the term out of moral integrity? Is it recognizably similar to genocides of the past or present?

But the one factor that seems common to anyone either employing or opposing the term is the strategic potential – they are hoping the argument changes minds. Does it work?

The shock and the paralysis
It's hard to tell, because the debate has become muddled and very extensive. In his long and pained essays, Omer Bartov, one of the world's foremost genocide scholars, first argued that the war in response to October 7 did not yield evidence of genocide in November 2023, but it does now. His claims launched waves of responses, from academic blogs with a judicious inquiry about what the debate has come to represent, to responses from New York Times' columnists ("no, it's not"). Haaretz has also hosted a vigorous debate over the issue – with Bartov, and additional voices, also the top thinkers and scholars, arguing and responding to one another.

Further, many groups or speakers engaging with the term fall somewhere along a tribal or ideological spectrum: Those who accused Israel of genocide on October 8 probably thought Israel was doing so before October 7, too. These are not good faith arguments.

Others, like Amnesty International, waited over a year from the start of the war, then in December 2024 published an extensive study nearly 300 pages long, for which it conducted over 200 interviews. But it was a report whose conclusion was never in doubt. The authors only briefly name-checked Hamas' October 7 attacks on Israel, having issued a seven-page summary also last December, promising a separate forthcoming report on the topic. Amnesty's genocide report sparked a clash with the local Israeli chapter of Amnesty, who disputed the conclusion. Amnesty International suspended the Israel branch for two years in response.

Just on the other side of the spectrum lies the recent report by Danny Orbach, Jonathan Boxman, Yagil Henkin, Jonathan Braverman for Bar-Ilan University, weighing in at 277 pages. This report is systematic, comparative and quantitative, also drawing on an extensive and transparent range of sources.

Yet similarly, the authors' conclusions were never in doubt: Most chapters conclude that the most incriminating observations about the devastation in Gaza from pretty much all sources – from international humanitarian agencies, war scholars, medical professionals and the entire global media are wrong, exaggerated, misunderstood or relatively normal compared to other wars.

The authors do note some problematic incidents and policy decisions on Israel's part, but since nothing is as bad as it appears, there is no genocide; one of their biggest concerns is that all these wrongful exaggerations lead to "a terrible image."

And of course, at the far end, Israel's most staunch defenders reject the notion that Israel could ever perpetrate genocide, and the only proof that's needed is talking points.

Interestingly, both Bret Stephens in the New York Times and the authors of the Bar-Ilan report expressed their concern about cheapening or trivializing the term.

"Rather than deterring aggressors and preventing atrocities, the term 'genocide' will lose its profound legal and emotional weight, becoming a political tool. In future crises, including those where deliberate, systematic efforts to annihilate a nation or group occur, the trivialization of genocide will serve as an excuse for future atrocities ... international laws meant to protect vulnerable populations could be severely undermined, with grave consequences for all of humanity," the Bar-Ilan authors wrote.

The logic is hard to follow: A genocidal criminal somewhere in the world plans to annihilate a group, but worries that he might be accused of genocide. Then he recalls that the word has been trivialized (after being applied to the case of Gaza which is ... trivial?) and can apply to any extreme wartime situation. Satisfied, he goes on to commit the atrocities with impunity, and the situation is repeated among all of humanity? Maybe I misunderstood.

Or maybe each side's arguments simply generate an emotional backlash and cause people to dig into their pre-existing convictions. What good is the debate in that case?

Making sense of the maelstrom
Since intention matters in a conversation about genocide, it's worth remembering what each side is trying to do: Those researching and writing about genocide in a serious way are desperate to stop it. Those who spend their skills and hours sifting through the vast horrors of Gaza to pick apart the suspicions of genocide are desperate to ... what?

It's impossible to shake the impression that ultimately the aim of people devoting such great efforts to dispelling the genocide charge are ultimately seeking to justify a war which frankly cannot be justified at this point.

Stephens of the New York Times argues that the term must be avoided because it fuels antisemitic tropes based on bad-faith accusations. That's a legitimate concern, but it summarily ignores all the serious genocide arguments by some of the world's best researchers, many of them Jewish Israelis, made with the only aim that matters: stopping the slaughter.

Here are two examples of extremely valuable, considered examinations of genocide. The historian Lee Mordechai has produced a terrifyingly a meticulous report about the catastrophic destruction in Gaza, with rolling updates, exhaustively sourced and easy to read – driven by his own conscience with no organizational or institutional agenda.

A. Dirk Moses, another one of the world's outstanding genocide scholars, argues compellingly that the international law definitions are inadequate anyway, because they were designed to be narrowly applied, so that states could commit horrific slaughter against an enemy in wartime.

The insight applies to other conflicts, such as Russia and Ukraine – and once again, the intention behind this argument is to re-think how the term is defined, in order to stop the crimes against human beings.

If the word genocide is too troubling for you personally, move on – focus instead on the relentless investigations by Haaretz's Nir Hasson, which answer questions like why so many Gazans are getting shot and killed trying to reach food centers, and how many are actually dying? Look at the pictures of starving children and stop worrying about what to call it: Focus instead on ending the war.

I understand Palestinians who feel abandoned by those unwilling to use the term. But right now, the verbal litmus test is less important than rallying all people who support an end to this war, using whatever language they are capable of employing. And while I may personally understand the emotional anguish that compels people to spend their days countering the genocide charge, the question remains: What side of history and humanity are you on?

Why are we having this conversation? If the word genocide haunts you, what should be haunting you is Gaza.

I don't remember anyone calling it "genocide" already on October 8, 2023, before Israel's counter-attack had even begun.

I do remember some people calling it "genocide" -- and referring to Biden as "Genocide Joe" -- in November 2023, within a few weeks after Israel began attacking Gaza. At that point, calling it "genocide" seemed to me to be premature.

But, by the time South Africa brought its formal charges of genocide, the term seemed to me to be justified.

20th Century
In 2010, historians Martin Shaw and Omer Bartov debated whether the 1948 Nakba should be regarded as a genocide, with Shaw arguing that it could and with Bartov disagreeing. Daud Abdullah, the former Deputy Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, has said: "Given the declared intent of the Zionist leaders, this wholesale destruction and depopulation of Palestinian villages fit[s] easily with the definition of genocide as cited in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." Historian John Docker has also written several papers detailing the Nakba as a genocide.Several scholars have written that Palestinians suffered ethnic cleansing during the Nakba, but that they did not consider the event to have been genocide.

Naska
Academic Clare Brandabur includes the Naksa (known as the 1967 Palestinian exodus) in the actions conducted by Israel that show a pattern that seeks the "destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group". This view is supported by later academics as well. The Naksa was the expulsion of around 280,000 to 325,000 Palestinians during and in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, including the razing of numerous Palestinian villages.

Sabra and Shatila massacre
In September 1982, between 460 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shia Muslims—were killed in Beirut's Sabra neighborhood and in the adjacent Shatila refugee camp during the Lebanese Civil War. The killings were carried out by the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon at the time. Between the evening of 16 September and the morning of 18 September, the Lebanese militia carried out the killings while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had the Palestinian camp surrounded.The IDF had ordered the militia to clear out the fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Sabra and Shatila as part of a larger Israeli maneuver into western Beirut. As the massacre unfolded, the IDF received reports of atrocities being committed, but did not take any action to stop it.

On 16 December 1982, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the Sabra and Shatila massacre and declared it to be an act of genocide.The voting record on section D of Resolution 37/123 was: yes: 123; no: 0; abstentions: 22; non-voting: 12.

That same year an independent commission headed by Seán MacBride investigated reported violations of International Law by Israel and four of its six members concluded that "the deliberate destruction of the national and cultural rights and identity of the Palestinian people amount[ed] to genocide". In its conclusion, the commission recommended "that a competent international body be designed or established to clarify the conception of genocide in relation to Israeli policies and practices toward the Palestinian people".

21st century

Blockade of Gaza
The restrictions on movement and goods in Gaza imposed by Israel date to the early 1990s. After Hamas took over in 2007, Israel significantly intensified existing movement restrictions and imposed a complete blockade on the movement of goods and people in and out of the Gaza Strip. In the same year, Egypt closed the Rafah Border Crossing.Many protestors across the globe called the blockade an act of genocide, with the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez recalling Venezuela's ambassador in Israel and calling Israel's attacks "genocide".
Israeli New Historian Ilan Pappé has argued that genocide "is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip".In his 2017 book, Ten Myths About Israel, Pappé wrote: "Israel's claim that its actions since 2006 have been part of a self-defensive war against terror. I will venture to call ... an incremental genocide of the people of Gaza."

2008 Gaza War
The 2008 Gaza War, also known as 'Operation Cast Lead'and the 'Gaza Massacre', was a three-week armed conflict between Gaza Strip Palestinian paramilitary groups and the Israel Defense Forces that began on 27 December 2008 and ended on 18 January 2009 with a unilateral ceasefire. The conflict resulted in 1,166–1,417 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths. Over 46,000 homes were destroyed in Gaza, making more than 100,000 people homeless.

American human rights lawyer Francis Boyle and historian Ilan Pappé both consider Israel's actions against Gaza in the 2008 Gaza War to be genocidal.

2014 Gaza War
The 2014 Gaza War, also referred to as Operation Protective Edge, was a military operation launched by Israel on 8 July 2014 in the Gaza Strip. Al-Haq, a Palestinian Human Rights organization, concluded in a report that serious violations of international law were committed in the course of the 2014 Israeli offensive against Gaza. The organization, along with other Palestinian human rights organizations the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and Addameer, submitted a legal file to the International Criminal Court encouraging it to begin an investigation and prosecution into the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the course of Israel's 2014 Gaza offensive. The crime of genocide was referenced as an Israeli crime by these groups. Additionally, dozens of Holocaust survivors, along with hundreds of descendants of Holocaust survivors and victims, accused Israel of "genocide" for the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza during the 2014 Gaza War. In a September statement to the United Nations, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas stated that the war amounted to a genocidal crime. Political analyst and diplomat Abukar Arman drew parallels between what he called the "genocide in Palestine" and the Darfur genocide, highlighting what he believes to be political motives for the international community labelling Darfur a genocide, but not Palestine

2021 Israel–Palestine crisis
During the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, a video circulated on social media showing Israelis celebrating at the Western Wall, whilst a tree near the Al-Aqsa Mosque burns in the background. A large crowd of Israeli Jews gathered around a fire near the mosque on 10 May, chanting yimakh shemam, a Hebrew curse meaning "may their names be erased". IfNotNow co-founder and B'Tselem USA director Simone Zimmerman criticized them as exhibiting "genocidal animus towards Palestinians — emboldened and unfiltered"

In an opinion survey of American Jews, commissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute following the 2021 crisis, 22 percent agreed that "Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians," and Matt Boxer in The Forward noted that the poll may have underestimated the percentage of American Jews who have a critical view of Israel because it undercounted secular Jews, who tend to be less attached to Israel.

I'm still following the ICJ case. It will be a while before it's adjudicated on.