SpookyKitty

The word "systematic" does not appear anywhere in the UN genocide convention. Neither systematicity nor organization is a requirement for something to qualify as a genocide. Most genocides are very stochastic and disorganized efforts. Only very few, such as the Holocaust, are of a systematic and well organized nature. The reason that Vietnam does not qualify as genocide, although the US certainly committed war crimes there, is because there was no special intent by any part of US leadership to destroy the Vietnamese people as such. Here is what the IDF says happened that day: Source: https://apnews.com/article/israel-hostages-gaza-hamas-war-52fa9628e6284cdad6d7f7db6cc30742 So given that Israeli soldiers are ordered to "shoot anything that moves", and given that these types of incidents are almost never punished, I think it's safe to say that killing surrendering civilians is the de facto IDF policy. I wish that were true.

The process described in that post is not the definition of genocide and these steps are not required to happen for it to be a genocide. This is simply a description of how genocides typically occur and explains why it is not true that every Palestinian would be killed all at once or even quickly. I provided the definition of genocide under international law and presented evidence about how Israel's actions in Gaza fit them in previous posts. Hunting down the third victim and then killing him after killing the first two, even though it was absolutely clear that none of them were a threat and were surrendering, is not incompetence by any stretch of the imagination. Oh it absolutely does. The video goes into great detail about how Likud, Israel's biggest party, Netanyahu's party, cooperates with these lunatics, and also how many of these Messianics were incorporated into and white-washed by Likud. Is anyone here going to sit there and seriously tell me that 87% of the Knesset cannot form a government against the ABSOLUTELY INSANE 13%? If Israel were a sane country, absolutely none of the other parties would ever be caught dead in a government with these people. If, in any European country, a major party formed a government with Nazis, we would rightly denounce the entire government as Nazis. The truth of the matter is that ultra-religious beliefs are fully mainstream in Israeli society, and the only difference between Likud and the ultra-religious is that they are saying all the quiet parts out loud.

For what purpose? That was in response to AlexL's ridiculous claim that no genocide occurred because not everyone was immediately killed. I do not need to show evidence of all the other steps when we are clearly already at the extermination phase. Holocaust scholar Raz Segal has called Israel's attack on Gaza a "textbook case of genocide": Source: https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide What??? This is not an "error". This is systematic and has been going on for a long time. The only thing unusual about this case is that it happened to Israelis instead of Palestinians. Please watch the whole lecture before commenting about it. This is a strawman argument. I recognize the fact that in any large enough group of people you're gonna find some crazies, but this goes way beyond that.

No, my view is that STATE of Israel is evil because its ruling parties tolerate, endorse, and protect these insane extremists by shielding them from prosecution for their terroristic crimes and do not condemn or repudiate them. Watch the entire lecture before responding to me on this topic, because I know you sure as hell didn't watch the entire 90 minute lecture in less than 30 minutes. You're clearly all out of arguments. All you have left is racist memes and head-in-the-sand denialism. We're done speaking.

If anyone here is still misinformed enough to believe that Israel is anything but an almost indescribably evil, racist, genocidal lunatic state led by twisted, sick men who promulgate the most anti-man, anti-western ideologies imaginable, then watch this lecture by Israeli investigative journalist David Sheen wherein he describes the Israeli far-right "Messianic" movement and its connections to the Israeli government. He first talks about the beliefs of the religious far-right rabbis at Israel's top military academy. The religious far-right is fully in the mainstream of Israeli society. They constitute the second largest group in the Knesset. Remember that these people are TO THE LEFT of the messianic movement. The views of the religious far right are already so extreme that I cannot even begin to comprehend the sheer level of madness that is required to believe them. One of the rabbis wants to bring back slavery. Another describes his own ideology as explicitly anti-man and claims that Western values are the "true" holocaust. A third one describes Hitler as "the most moral person possible". This is the Israeli MAINSTREAM. THIS GARBAGE IS WHAT IDF OFFICERS ARE TAUGHT. But The Messianics are somehow even more extreme than this. How? How? It's so crazy it cannot be believed. Watch this video to fully understand what we are dealing with here and how this affects American politics:

I honestly don't know since I haven't really looked into those in any detail.

But I did. Did you not read my post? Here it is again: Your only response to this was that Israel's strikes against civilian might have been legitimate and that I would need special access to certain kinds of knowledge that I could not have in order to make the determination that Israel's strikes against Gaza are indiscriminate. I dismantled any such notions in my previous post. Thus far, you have not presented any counterargument to my claim, you're just claiming that my explanation doesn't exist when it is clearly in front of you. By the way, here is the source for my claims about international law: https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/10/09/questions-and-answers-october-2023-hostilities-between-israel-and-palestinian-armed

Firstly, It's not necessary to know that only civilians were in an area in order to conclude that civilians were deliberately targeted. It is only necessary to show that civilians were killed regardless of whether or not enemy combatants were also present. Israel has repeatedly dropped bombs on Gaza that level entire city blocks. These kinds of explosives are too powerful to be specifically directed at a military objective (as is required by international law according to the principle of distinction) in an area as densely populated as Gaza. (sources regarding my claims about international law will be provided later today since I'm writing this from my phone) Secondly, although civilian casualties are, to some extent, unavoidable in an armed conflict, the mere presence of Hamas operatives in a building or in an area is an insufficient reason to justify the targeting of a civilian installation. International law requires that belligerents adhere also to the principle of proportionality which requires that potential harm to civilians be proportional to the military advantages that may be gained from attacking a civilian installation. Thirdly, in some cases, such as in the case of Al-Shifa and other hospitals, we do not need to know whether or not Hamas operatives were present in order to know that these were not legitimate targets for Israeli strikes. International law requires that if there is any doubt about the nature of a civilian installation, it must be presumed to be civilian. With regard to specific intent to commit genocide, I believe that the quotes I provided to you earlier are sufficient. Within that context, it is no longer necessary to prove that Israel is destroying residential areas with the intent to prevent Palestinians from returning there. Rather, we can safely conclude that Israel's illegal destruction of residential areas is itself evidence of their intent to depopulate Gaza.

I never said that the bombing was "blind". I do, however, claim that it is "indiscriminate" which means that it does not distinguish between civilians and enemy combatants. Some of the ordinance is deliberately dropped on civilians. Most of it is dropped on civilian infrastructure after most civilians have fled in order to make it as difficult as possible for those civilians to return. The Israelis know very well that if they "blow their load" (to put it crudely) all at once, they risk alienating the entire international community. So instead, they are steadily escalating the level of violence against civilians as the genocide drags on. If you recall, at the beginning of the conflict, the hasbarists were claiming that it was OUTRAGEOUS to suggest that Israel could have bombed Al-Shifa or any hospital full of civilians. That was 20 hospitals full of patients ago.

Sorry, i forgot to address that. But it must be addressed because it's very important and also a common form of genocide denial. Genocides almost never occur in an all at once fashion. Genocide and holocaust scholars recognize that genocides happen in stages of escalating hate and violence: The stages are: Classification – The differences between people are not respected. There’s a division of ‘us’ and ‘them’ which can be carried out using stereotypes, or excluding people who are perceived to be different. Symbolisation – This is a visual manifestation of hatred. Jews in Nazi Europe were forced to wear yellow stars to show that they were ‘different’. Discrimination – The dominant group denies civil rights or even citizenship to identified groups. The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship, made it illegal for them to do many jobs or to marry German non-Jews. Dehumanisation – Those perceived as ‘different’ are treated with no form of human rights or personal dignity. During the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Tutsis were referred to as ‘cockroaches’; the Nazis referred to Jews as ‘vermin’. Organisation – Genocides are always planned. Regimes of hatred often train those who go on to carry out the destruction of a people. Polarisation – Propaganda begins to be spread by hate groups. The Nazis used the newspaper Der Stürmer to spread and incite messages of hate about Jewish people. Preparation – Perpetrators plan the genocide. They often use euphemisms such as the Nazis’ phrase ‘The Final Solution’ to cloak their intentions. They create fear of the victim group, building up armies and weapons. Persecution – Victims are identified because of their ethnicity or religion and death lists are drawn up. People are sometimes segregated into ghettos, deported or starved and property is often expropriated. Genocidal massacres begin. Extermination – The hate group murders their identified victims in a deliberate and systematic campaign of violence. Millions of lives have been destroyed or changed beyond recognition through genocide. Denial – The perpetrators or later generations deny the existence of any crime. Source: https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/what-is-genocide/the-ten-stages-of-genocide/ The argument that "Well, they didn't kill them all at once, so no genocide occurred," can be made at almost any point during the extermination of a people. We must recognize and condemn genocide BEFORE the victims are all exterminated.

Horror. It is as if the IDF is determined to make my arguments for me. Only a few hours after David Azoulai, head of the Metula Council, claimed that Israel should make Gaza resemble the Auschwitz concentration camp (source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-778367), the IDF blew up the maternity ward in Nasser Children's Hospital. Source: Dear reader, ask yourself what sort of person considers the horrors of the Auschwitz concentration camp an ideal to aspire to? Do not let such monsters shame you into silence for calling out evil when you see it.

Did I? I thought the quotes I provide were very clearly racist in nature. Do you claim otherwise? No. I refer to all Palestinians. Those in Gaza as well as those in the West Bank. I believe that a very strong case can be made for the claim that Israel is guilty of genocide in both cases. To be clear, in the case of Gaza, I believe that Israel is guilty of (a) (b) (c) and (d) listed above, and that it is guilty of (a) (b) (c) and (e) in the West Bank but to a much less extreme extent. A legally actionable guilty verdict can only be given by some court of law. However, it is absolutely our epistemological and moral responsibility, as individuals, to determine for ourselves whether or not Israel is committing a genocide against the Palestinians. This responsibility is inescapable. Even if a court were to rule on this one way or the other, we would still have to determine for ourselves whether or not we can trust its rulings. The giving of warnings, specification of evacuation routes, etc. is not at all inconsistent with the objective of genocide. First, we must take into account the possibility that Israel is using these practices only as a means of maintaining plausible deniability without regard to civilian casualties. Israel believes that international moral support is necessary for the success of its mission in Gaza. This support could be jeopardized if they don't at the very least create the appearance of trying to minimize civilian casualties. Second, even though Israel has given evacuation orders, indicated safe zones, and so on, it has continuously attacked those same safe zones, convoys of evacuating civilians, hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, you name it. Any place that civilians might be reasonably expected to take shelter, Israel has attacked. Most egregiously, at the beginning of Israel's attack on Gaza, they ordered Gazans to evacuate to the south. Then, when Gazans were all concentrated in the south, they started bombing the south as well without allowing the civilians to evacuate to any safe zone in the north. Israeli snipers have also targeted journalists who were clearly marked as "Press". Further, they have deliberately and repeatedly targeted civilians who presented no threat whatsoever and who were very clearly and unmistakably attempting to surrender to the IDF, including, most recently, three Israelis who tried to surrender to the IDF after escaping from Hamas captivity. All of these actions point to the obvious conclusion that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza and is merely using evacuation orders and the like as a cover for its true goal of exterminating the Palestinians.

I have not gone too far. Genocide is defined as: "In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such : (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." Source: The UN resolution in 1948 that defined the crime of Genocide: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume 78/volume-78-I-1021-English.pdf That Israel is guilty of at least (a), (b), and (c) is beyond question at this point. The difficult part in cases such as this is proving intent. Thanks to Benjamin Netanyahu, this is now easy. In a recent speech, Netanyahu said "You must remember what Amalek has done to you," quoting the Bible. For those that don't know, the full quote is Source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/11/benjamin-netanyahu-amalek-israel-palestine-gaza-saul-samuel-old-testament/ Netanyahu is neither unusual for an Israeli politician and government official, nor as this even new for him. There is a long-standing pattern of genocidal rhetoric within the Israeli government: Source: https://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/attach/2016/10/Background on the term genocide in Israel Palestine Context.pdf

Israel is definitely engaging in a racist and genocidal war of extermination against Palestinians. It is not in any real sense opposed to totalitarian Islam, though one wishes it were. To oppose Islamic totalitarianism effectively, naked brutality is both insufficient and ineffective. Instead, one must attack totalitarian ideologies at their very core by rejecting the very premises on which they base their conflicts. Concretely, this is accomplished through the building of a secular alternative to radical Islam that actually respects the rights of all individuals. Israel implicitly supports radical Islam by accepting its premises but in reverse. Islamists want to create a Muslim state and eradicate all other modes of worship and thought and their supporters. Israel does the same in the name of an undefined and ever expanding need for "security". If Israel wants to be a ray of hope for the Middle East, then it will have to absolutely and unequivocally reject the "It's us or them," mode of thinking that is at the root of all the violence today. Addendum: Recently, three of the Hamas hostages managed to escape their captivity. The three men were shirtless and waving white flags when they encountered the IDF. An IDF soldier, who apparently thought they were Palestinian civilians, opened fire on them, killing two of them. The third one ran away into a building. Then, a second soldier followed him inside and killed him, too. They only found out that the three men were Israeli hostages because they decided to check out who they were because one of them had a "western appearance". Absolute madness. The very people who were supposedly sent in to rescue these men ended up murdering them out of their own racist fears. What a perfect microcosm of the whole situation that racist irrationality breeds.

Go back to stormfront and don't come back.

Your morality is radioactive ass cancer and your mind is a swarm of retarded flies. What makes you think I would lower myself to discuss anything with you? You deserve nothing but derision and mockery. Do me a favor. Find the world's most prolific pedophile, bury yourself up to your nose in his rancid shit, and then meditate for three days on the stench. Then you will be one one millionth of a step closer to understanding how awful you truly are.

And here we go with the race realism, or, as most people call it, real racism. Then you are both disgusting pieces of murderous garbage. Vile filth.

whyNOT, you are in absolutely no position to be calling ANYONE else any kind of idiot. The only ones who place no value in the lives of the Palestinian people are those calling for their eradication and those who are indiscriminately killing tens of thousands of them right now. You are just projecting your own vile hatred, racism and blood lust onto others. You mindlessly bootlick for fascism and genocide, while ignoring any reasonable argument against your position. You are an absolute miserable failure of a human being, let alone an Objectivist. You are a moral coward and an empty-headed waste of space. Go sack a village or whatever vile shit you do and quit wasting my time.

I am no fan of any kind of religion, let alone Islam. Your implication that I wish for the eradication of any people by any other is disgusting, considering that you're the one pining for the blood of innocent Palestinians. Unlike you, I believe that all human life has value, Israeli lives as well as Palestinian lives. You cannot understand this because you are an utterly depraved, foaming at the mouth, Attila wannabe.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, Israel has just murdered three of the Israeli hostages while they were being moved because they mistakenly thought they were Palestinian civilians.

We were having an intellectual exchange and then you ignored all that in favor of name-calling and scare-mongering. XD Really? Are you sure it's not the Mormonist-neo-Ricardians? I must warn you, I can string random words together, too.

Yes, how evil of me to ask Israel to sacrifice "higher" values such as oppression, systemic murder, property and land theft, racism, and religious discrimination to "lower" values such as justice, equality, and peace.

Israel will continue with its crimes, and, as usual, taxpayers in the West will be forced to foot the bill. Nothing unusual here, except now the West will be expected to pay with its own blood, too. I am so thankful to Israel for making all of us safer.

And if this hypothetical US was also subjecting Jews in occupied territories to arbitrary arrest, indefinite detention, and military tribunals with no recourse to legal defense, I imagine that wouldn't go too well either?

Agreed. Again, would the task be easier or more difficult if the US illegally occupied a part of Israel?