#ip conflict

On Genocide

I honestly can’t understand why anyone would accuse Israel of genocide. The word has a specific meaning: it refers to the deliberate, systematic extermination of an entire people. Nothing Israel has done even if you think its actions are too harsh or morally wrong remotely fits that definition.

If Israel wanted to commit genocide, it has had the military capability to wipe Gaza off the map in a matter of days. Instead, it has repeatedly warned civilians before strikes, dropped leaflets, made phone calls, and even paused operations to let aid in. No country in history has gone to such extremes to limit civilian harm while fighting an enemy embedded among civilians.

Hamas, on the other hand, has made its intentions absolutely clear. Its charter calls for the annihilation of Jews. Its entire strategy is built around ensuring maximum Palestinian civilian death by launching rockets from schools, hospitals, and densely populated neighborhoods. It uses children as human shields, recruits them as soldiers, and steals humanitarian aid meant for civilians.

When people call Israel’s self-defense a “genocide,” they’re not just misusing a word they’re inverting reality. The side openly calling for extermination (Hamas) becomes the victim, and the side trying to stop it (Israel) becomes the perpetrator. It’s Orwellian.

So yes I’m confused, because I can’t see how anyone could look at this situation, compare intent, methods, and outcomes, and still apply the word genocide to Israel. It feels like a moral hallucination a narrative so emotionally satisfying to some that it overrides facts, logic, and even the definition of the word itself.

Maybe this is the reason why people stick with “genocide”: the emotional investment that Gazans are good, and good must prevail, reality be damned. I’m listening to Abby Martin on the Piers Morgan Show, and she is repeating something I have heard a lot recently arguing that Israel should make concessions to Hamas on a moral basis. How does Hamas have the right to anything? Hamas did what they did on October 7, so it lost the moral right to anything, and then it lost the war it started, so it lost the practical right to anything. Why does Hamas have the right to anything? Her argument seems to be .... Israel bad, Gaza good. Israel must pay.

Many people say “hundreds of scholars and organizations have called it a genocide,” as if that ends the discussion. But if we’re being strict about law, evidence, and logic, there’s a real problem here — and it’s not about emotion or bias, it’s about method.

The UN Genocide Convention (1948) defines genocide as having three parts:

A protected group (ethnic, national, racial, or religious).

Certain acts such as killing members of the group, causing serious harm, or deliberately inflicting conditions meant to destroy them.

Specific intent — the conscious goal to destroy that group, in whole or in part.

Without proven intent, there is no genocide, no matter how terrible the actions appear.

Groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and figures like Norman Finkelstein have labeled Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. They cite civilian casualties, destruction, and wartime statements by Israeli officials. Those statements are treated as proof of genocidal intent. But that’s a major legal mistake.

The UN’s own court precedents — from the ICTY, ICTR, and ICJ — are clear that statements made during wartime cannot, by themselves, prove genocidal intent unless they are directly tied to concrete orders or policy actions. People say extreme, even horrible, things under the stress of war. Courts recognize this. Tribunals require clear evidence of a deliberate plan or pattern aimed at destroying a group, not just rhetoric or collateral damage.

It is also normal for acts that could be considered “genocidal” in isolation — killing, destruction, suffering to occur during wartime. Almost every war involves civilian deaths, property destruction, and atrocities of some kind. The Gaza war, tragic as it is, is not unique in that regard. What matters legally is intent to destroy a group as such, which is absent here. Israel’s stated and demonstrated goal is to defeat Hamas, not Palestinians.

This is where the reasoning collapses. Experts who should know better are treating emotion and destruction as if they were evidence of intent. They are counting wartime anger as policy. They are mistaking tragedy for genocide.

Under strict legal interpretation: – The protected group element is met (Palestinians in Gaza). – Some acts (killing, harm, destruction) are present. – But the intent — the defining feature of genocide — is absent.

You can argue that Israel’s response is excessive or cruel, but that is not genocide. If it were, every modern war with civilian deaths would also qualify, making the term meaningless.

Yet Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and Finkelstein continue to use the word “genocide” anyway. They know the legal definition. They know the UN rulings that warn against treating wartime speech as intent. And still, they do it.

Why?

Is it because “genocide” has become a moral weapon rather than a legal term? Because outrage now carries more weight than precision? Because they believe moral theater is more powerful than strict truth? Is it Jew-hatred? Or is it the current fashion of post-colonial studies, with its simplistic oppressor/oppressed lens reducing a complex and long history into a comic-book-binary of good versus evil?

Whatever the reason, it leaves us in a strange place. The very people who claim to defend international law are bending it. The ones demanding accountability are ignoring the standards that define accountability.

If the Genocide Convention is applied strictly, calling Israel’s actions genocide simply does not fit. That’s not denial of suffering it’s defense of logic, law, and historical nuance.

Original post for reference.

Okay, so it's a bit more complicated than that. And by "bit" I mean A LOT.

I think one of the central problems in the entire conflict, a major crux that is harming any and all attempts at reaching a solution is that we are trying to solve a literally ancient problem with modern tools. This is incredibly important to understand when we speak about the territories of "Israel" and "Palestine".

The short answer is that our (as in the popular laymen) definition of what "Israel" means in a historical view is completely wrong, and we were never alone here to begin with. There are certain aspects that I agree with you about, and there is a LOT of hypocrisy on the Palestinian side (as well as Western Leftists), but the fact is that they are very much indigenous to this land just like us. The problems is, like I said, what exactly do we call "Israel" in the first place.

Now, here is the long answer.

We need to break down the meaning of Israel first, and there are five of those:

Yaacov - First and foremost, the man, the legend, the asshole. Yaacov, or Jacob as English speakers might know him, was a biblical character that at a certain point in the story was given another name - Israel - and is considered to be the "father of the nation", which leads us to...

The people of Israel - the name that was given to the Hebrew people, or the Jewish people, after their legendary ancestor.

The Kingdom of Israel - one of the two ancient kingdoms of the Hebrew people*. (*I'm not gonna go into the question of whether the Israelites actually saw themselves as Hebrew and as a single People with the Judahites, because that's just way way way out of the scope of this tiny answer). This is the older, more powerful and more affluent kingdom that existed from around the middle of the 10th century BC until its destruction by the Assyrians in the Sargon II campaign of 720 BC, when many of its people were exiled, it completely lost its autonomy and was divided into 5 provinces, the most famous one of which being Samaria, named after the former capital of the kingdom (Shomron). At its prime, the kingdom's borders were these: On the Mediterranean shore in the west from around modern Rishon LeTzion north through Jaffa and all the way to Haifa. In the north the Galil and Ramat HaGolan. In the east it followed the Jordan river until about Beit Shean, where it veered east of the river to what is modern Jordan, to the Heights of Gilead (depending on the period and who won the most recent war of course...). And in the south it bordered the Kingdom of Judea, north of Jerusalem (probably around the area of modern Ramallah). Other major cities that were a part of this kingdom were Shechem, Jericho, the aforementioned Samaria, Dor, Meggido, Hazor.

The Land of Israel (Eretz Israel) - the geographical region that corresponds to the modern definitions of what certain people want the Full Israel to be and others want the Full Palestine to be. In this context, both of these names are stupid. This land is actually and more accurately called Canaan, as this is what the actual people who lived here and their neighbors called it, besides the specific names of kingdoms within it. Also, depending on your definition (weird modern, insane modern, normal ancient), this territory also includes certain areas in Jordan, Syrian and Lebanon. The names of this land were changed throughout the years by the people who conquered it, usually dividing it to different provinces, pahavot, and so on, until it was pretty much known just as Palestina by the Byzantine period (I think?? this is way out of my periods of expertise... I have seen the other side of the zero in like a decade).

The country of Israel - you know the one... the one we love to hate and hate to love... a country that exists in the modern world with... certain borders. Sometimes. Depending who you ask.

Now, that's Israel. But we need to talk about the other one. Yehuda (or Judea or Judah at different periods). This is the second of the two ancient Hebrew kingdoms. This is the smaller, weaker and poorer kingdom with infinitesimal local importance. None, actually, whatsoever. This tiny little thing throughout most of its history resided on the mountain area around Jerusalem, and not much more. But at its height it reached Lachish in the west (, the Dead Sea in the east, and Beersheba in the south. After the destruction of Israel it wished to spread north, to its sister kingdom's territories, and in certain periods (especially the Greek and Roman) it did. Judea sometimes also included the important city of Hebron.

There are two things that should be taken from my descriptions of the borders of the two kingdoms - first, that these are, in fact, kingdoms, and that the modern concept of borders should absolutely not be applied to them, as they constantly change and move and shift, both by inner and outer machinations. To an Israelite, the eastern Jordan is a 100% a part of their homeland. But the only people who would dare suggest such a thing today are not exactly on the normal side of the political scale, not even on the right wing of it. Which is probably a good thing...

The second thing that should be taken is the vary glaring absence of the entire southern (HaNegev) and south-western areas of modern Israel. That's because those weren't ours. In the south-west lived a people called Plishtim (or as they are known in English, Philistines. It's a little complicated calling them a people, as some scholars are veering off of that in recent years, but we'll leave it at that for this time). These were several city-states that rose and fell in different periods, and to the most part disappeared as an entity into the broad Canaanite identity in later periods. The main cities they controlled were Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath, Ekron and Gezer (depending on the period). In the south was the Kingdom of Edom, who also spread east into modern Jordan.

This Edomite kingdom in particular is important in relation to that one city I mentioned earlier - Hebron. Like I said, this city was sometimes in Judahite control, and sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes they saw themselves as Judeans, and sometimes they didn't. Why am I mentioning this? Well, because Hebron happens to be the "birth place" of a particular mythical character - Abraham. By "birth place" I mean the place the myth was created. Abraham is an autochthonous character of this city, which specific connections to a particular temple in Elonei Mamre, that predates all of these kingdoms by a lot. This character was adopted by the Judahites as an ancestor when they ruled the city, but when other people ruled it, they adopted the traditions as well. This is just one example (and a particularly important one that affected the course of world history and the development of certain religions) of the flexibility and dynamism of kingdoms, borders and even ethnic identities.

But of coarse, a certain rebellion came and went, and the second temple was destroyed in 70 AD. Any remnants of Jewish independence and autonomy in Canaan were erased, and most of the Jewish people were exiled. Then the second rebellion came, and most of the few that remained were exiled or killed as well. And then came the name change... I won't go into where the name Palestina came and why, because it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the fact that we were no longer the rulers (even if under the authority of bigger rulers) of any territory of this land. That's when other people came in. Some from other areas in Canaan, other from outside it.

The Palestinians themselves are probably, to some extent, descendants of both the Philistines, the Edomites, other Canaanites and Beduin, and yes other outside Arabs and other-other peoples who have moved through this land or even conquered it. They are probably also related to us as well. Like I said, ethnic identity and nationality were very very very flexible back then. Heck, we converted half of the northern territories of Israel (the former territories of the Kingdom of Israel, that were populated by exiles that were brought by the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians from other areas) during the reign of the Hashmonaim (Greek period).

So the thing is that when we say "Israel", what we mean is the Land of Israel, but that doesn't actually corresponds to our actual ancestral homeland, not entirely. It was also the home of other people, who are themselves the ancestors of the Palestinians. If you look at it like that, what you see is that actually, in an ancient sense (ignoring all modern context), we are colonizing some of their territories, like Ashkelon and Ashdod, and they are colonizing some of out territories, like Jericho, Shechem, and yes - Jerusalem.

And this is the thing that I absolutely agree with you on, and I really wish there was less hypocrisy about it from the other side. Like, I'm absolutely an atheist, and for all I care they can take it all if it means peace. and honestly I hate this city, but also, like, that's ours. That is indisputably, unquestionably, irrevocably an ancient Jewish city. The City. Unlike other cities, at no point in the entire existence of the entity that can be called Judea was this city in the hands of anyone else but us. Not even after the destruction of the first temple.

This is incredibly simplified and completely one-sided, but I can't help but imagine what if it weren't about Jewish people. Imagine that Italy was made of independent city-states and small kingdoms (like it used to). Imagine that India came and conquered it. Imagine that the Romans (as in the people of the city of Rome) decided to rebel. Imagine that it went horribly wrong. Imagine that most of the Romans were banished, exiled from Italia to roam the world. Imagine that the Indians also destroyed the Vatican, and in its place built a Hindu temple. Imagine that a few centuries later The Germans came. But its okay right? I mean their Europeans! What's the difference between Germans and Italians, right? So the Germans come and they fight the Indians for centuries, and they destroy the Hindu temple and build a new magnificent temple to Odin. Unbelievably beautiful. Many worshipers of Odin from all over the world come to see this temple. Imagine that 1700 years after they were exiled, the Roman finally have an opportunity to come to their homeland. Imagine that they do that, waging war against the Germans and the German-Italian city-states in Italia. Imagine that they win to the most part, and that they ask the Germans if they could come pray on the ground where once stood the holiest of their temples, the actual goddam Vatican. Imagine the Germans going full Horse-Loose-In-A-Hospital and screaming "if you even fucking look at the hospital, I will stomp you to death with my hooves" and calling the Romans "colonizers". Anyway, if a people that weren't Jewish would have returned to their homeland after more than a thousand years, there would have been outcries of Western Leftist circle to destroy the Odin temple... (which I am absolutely against, both in metaphor and in the real world, and will never support because I'm not out of my mind. Also, it really is pretty...).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has set Wednesday [July 1, 2020] as the date when he might begin a process of unilaterally annexing sections of the West Bank — land that Palestinians see as illegally occupied and the heart of their future state.

It is more than 2,100 square miles that has been fiercely disputed through decades of failed diplomacy, and many international experts see the potential annexation as a death knell to the two-state solution. Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan after it came under attack during the 1967 war, and has since blanketed  parts of it with settlements housing nearly 500,00 Israeli Jews. But under the Oslo Agreements of the mid-1990s, Israel and the Palestinian Authority divide governance in the area.

Netanyahu’s announced plan to formally exert Israeli sovereignty over the territory came after President Donald Trump in January unveiled his peace plan, including permission for Israel to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank. More recently, the White House has been sending mixed signals about its support for any such unilateral moves, nearly 200 pro-Israel members of Congress have signed a letter urging the Israeli government to reconsider.

...It remains unclear whether Netanyahu’s coalition will actually move forward, as defense and economic officials have been warning against annexation, citing the mayhem that could follow. The Palestinian leadership has promised to respond to even partial annexation by abandoning Oslo, forcing Israel to take direct responsibility for 2.7 million Palestinian residents of the West Bank.

...During this time of extreme uncertainty and anxiety, we asked six Palestinians to share their perspectives on this phase of the long-running conflict.

Mahmoud Hmedat, a civil engineer in the West Bank city of Jericho, does not like the term annexation.  “It’s re-occupation, not annexation,” he said.

For Hmedat, who is 26, the uncertainty of the moment is hard to bear: “It’s like something totally unknown hurtling towards us.”

Most of all he’s worried. Worried about the economic fallout – will farmers around Jericho be able to get enough water?  Worried about confiscation of Palestinian land.

Until Trump entered the White House, Hmedat said, he had held out hope that a two-state solution might being in reach. Now it seems like an impossible dream.

Whether a resolution comes in one-state or two-state form matters ultimately matters less to him at this point, he said, than what he calls “freedom for all people.”

“We want justice for everyone and by that I mean the Palestinians, the Israelis,” he said. “We need to offer everyone the same rules, the same services, the same conditions – that’s the only way peace will ever be possible.”

...Hamada Jaber, 37, who lives in the West Bank city of Ramallah and is the co-founder of the One State Foundation, sees opportunity in this moment. He is hoping the Palestinian leadership will adopt a new strategy and abandon the two-state solution in favor of one-state for two peoples, with equal rights for all.

...“Israel and now Trump is essentially telling everyone, there is no two-state solution,” he said.

“Netanyahu said even if he annexes areas where there are Palestinian inhabitants, we will not have any rights or citizenship in Israel. In my opinion this will create an officially kind of an apartheid state of Israel – an official one recognized by law as it exists as it is already.”

This is where the opportunity comes in, he argued, saying what should come next is that the Palestinian Authority dissolve. Jaber believes this would force Israel into an unflattering international spotlight of controlling Palestinians it does not enfranchise and force the hand of the only solution he sees as viable: one state for Jews and Palestinians.

“We live in it already — this one state reality, what we need to do is give equal rights to everyone,” he said. “That means the end of the Jewish state and the start of one democratic state with equal rights for all.”

How to make this palatable to Jewish Israelis? His answer: a strategy of non-violence in which the Palestinian Authority would not only stop governing parts of the West Bank but would also  turn in all Palestinian weapons and send the message that Palestinians don’t want to fight or kill anyone, but do demand their rights.

...Husam Jaber works as a tour guide in the West Bank city of Bethlehem — or he did until the coronavirus hit. After months being out of work because tourism has vanish, Jaber, 49, sees annexation only adding to the economic hardship of the moment.

“People’s main concern is the economy, they want to live in peace and have money,” he said.

“I don’t think there is much I can do,” Jaber added, “and I feel sad, helpless that on both sides people are suffering. If there is violence, more people will suffer.”

Jaber is also angry with the Americans:  “Americans OK’ing it does not make it legal,” he said of annexation. “What Israel is doing is illegal by all standards.”

He’s agnostic on the form a future solution should take.

“Identity is something constructed – I don’t think of nationality, I am more focused on whether or not my kids will have equal rights,” said Jaber, a father of four. “That’s better than having a nationality.”

...Ashraf al-Masri is  a 45-year-old taxi driver in the Beit Hanoun neighborhood of the Gaza Strip whose three-story home was flattened during Israeli bombing raids in 2013.  He said that he is still trying to hold onto the idea the Palestinians might have their own state alongside Israel, but that the increasingly real prospect of annexation is testing his resolve.

...“Palestinian land is the West Bank and Gaza, so if Israel takes the land of the West Bank, where does that leave us?” Al-Masri asked. “If Netanyahu does this, I only see war next, both in the West Bank and Gaza. From here in Gaza, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad will not let Israel steal the land for nothing.”

Palestinians like himself, in Gaza, will pay an economic price as well, Al-Masri fears. If the  Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank, dissolves itself the aftermath of annexation as President Mahmoud Abbas has promised, that would mean halting payments to workers and institutions in Gaza. If that happens, he worries that Hamas, the Islamist faction that rules Gaza, would be unable to pay thousands of people’s salaries and the economy, which is already in dire straits, could  completely crash.

..As mayor of al Aqaba, a town in the Jordan Valley, Sami Sadiq, 63, has a lot to lose if Netanyahu pushes ahead with annexation: his part of the West Bank is among the most likely to be annexed at some point.

“If Netanyahu wants peace – why is he doing this? Where are the Palestinian people supposed to go?” asked Sadiq, 63, whose family has lived in the small village for generations. “We want peace.”

He said he has been in a wheelchair since 1971 when, as a 16-year-old, he was struck by three bullets shot by Israeli soldiers training nearby.

“I don’t know what the future will be if Netanyahu constantly refuses to go towards peace,” he added, pointing to the guest house in his village, and explaining that he is always urging Israelis to visit — usually without luck.

“it’s me again; i looked up ‘zionism’ on your blog and i just wanted to let you know that i have no quarrel with jewish people, like really the people, living their everyday lives, even the ones who happen to agree with zionism. i’m angry towards the ones who order the bombing, and the soldiers who will shoot brown civilians. but the people are innocent to me, they just have an opinion. i think jewish culture is way more decent than christianity, but it doesn’t lack faults is all.

Can’t support oppressors because they’re oppressed too. Will support someone who is Jewish if they face antisemitism, won’t support their racism. One form of bigotry can’t cancel another.”

“Do you think we should support all Jewish people even if they’re racist” is such an invalid question I literally don’t know where to begin

do we support all muslims, even the antisemitic ones? - oh wait, that’s a question nobody fucking asks, ever, because it’s weird and incomprehensible

I’m answering your question to the best of my ability but like… tbh the fact that you felt the need to ask it in the first place? antisemitism

I don’t support anyone just because they’re Jewish just like I don’t support anyone just because they’re gay, I support Jewish people in the radical act of being Jewish in an antisemitic world. If somebody is being racist, I call them out (if it’s safe for me, which sadly, it isn’t always), but I don’t call them out despite them being Jewish? it’s got nothing to do with it. Judaism doesn’t have anything to do with racism, we all grow up in an inherently racist environment and have to unlearn things.

There’s this idea that Jews=white and that is just… literally, factually wrong. More than 50% of Jews in Israel are brown (Mizrahi) themselves. That isn’t to say that Mizrahi Jews don’t face discrimination, because they do, but the situation in Israel is just… incomparable to America. It’s not white vs. brown, it’s Jewish vs. non-Jewish Arabs, and that’s a very complex situation. Not to mention conflating Jewish people with white people, our oppressors for literally thousands of years, is fucking antisemitic. (Again: Jewish people can be pale, brown, black, or Asian and I personally went to school with Jews of every supposed “type”. In Israel.)

Aside from specific, isolated cases that are reprehensible in every way, nobody is going into Palestinian land and just killing people for no reason, nor are they bombing Palestinians for no reason. Historically, the IDF has been a defense army, and I will argue even in cases it technically attacked first it was still being defensive. It’s literally in the name: Israel Defense Forces.

I know this is surprising, but there’s a huge group of Jewish people and Israeli citizens who - gasp - don’t think that we should killing Palestinians at all, including myself. But the fact that we disagree with and even hate the way our country is run doesn’t mean we invalidate its entire existence in the first place. If Israel stopped existing, half the Jewish population of the entire world would very suddenly be in incredible danger, and with nowhere to fucking go.

Of course one form of bigotry doesn’t cancel another, but what antizionists are currently doing doesn’t actually fucking help. Instead of invalidating Israel - which just makes most Israelis take what they say with a cup full of salt - they should actively criticize it, work to change it. That’s what most Israelis do. We go to protests. We pay attention to laws. We vote. We get outraged. We try to make things better for everyone.

Most importantly, this whole thing should never have been about Israel in the first place. Because Jews deserve to exist as Jews and we shouldn’t be interrogated on our opinions about Zionism and Israel to make sure we’re good Jews. We should be allowed to exist, out in the open, shouting: “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re Jewish” without having to answer for the crimes of other people who just happen to share an ethnicity and/or religion with us.

And that’s my answer. I might have gone on a small tangent somewhere.

Far more effective to say hey this is a humanitarian crisis and it's really concerning that so many people have been forced into Rafah which is now being attacked, the lack of access to safe zones and medicine and food and clean water and electricity could possibly turn this into a genocide soon. That helps way more because then you can actually hear the alarm bells.

And hey, then maybe people might see more urgency to examine why there's this lack of access to critical resources. Maybe then more people will realise that Hamas has been stealing all aid resources and depriving Gazans of what they so desperately need.