Genocide is an attempt to eradicate a group. The only group Israel is trying to eradicate is Hamas. They're not genociding Palestinians, they're genociding Hamas.
Are they killing an excessive number of civilians as collateral damage? Certainly seems like it. But collateral damage is not genocide.
If they wanted to genocide the Palestinians, they'd be shipping 'em to camps and gassing them, like the Nazis did. Looking at it another way: let's say that (hypothetically) Hamas stopped using people as humans shields by firing rockets from hospitals and building tunnels under schools. Do you think the number of non-combatants killed by the IDF would go down? Because I do, and to me that says Israel's goal is not in fact killing non-combatant civilians, even if they're killing far too many as is.
This professor says that what happens in Gaza is genocide because ...
That's very plainly not a fair description of what he was saying. He gives plenty of reasons beyond the small snippet you've chosen to zero in on.
It is interesting that every time someone is being asked to explain why they use the word "genocide" in the context of Gaza, they never talk about killing of people.
And this description is even more bizarre. People bring up the egregiously high civilian death toll all the time. It's not the only part of the genocide accusation, but certainly a major part of it.
It seems you aren't really reacting to what "people" are saying, just what you prefer to believe they're saying.
This argument merely serves to justify murder and is inhumane, in and of itself. Please re-consider your position on the subject of the wanton and willful murder of your fellow human beings.
Genocide is not a matter of scale, it is a matter of intent.
The definition fits: the people of Palestine are being genocided. The Nazi’s took years to murder 6 million Jews and other classes of humans they deemed undesirable - should we just wait until Israel catches up in terms of scale of magnitude, or should we stop trying to justify their actions and do everything we can to make sure the scale of the atrocity does not continue to sky-rocket, as it has done for the past 15 months…?
It is because genocide is a matter of intent that people in debates will disagree. Just taking a look on the war on terror. Was the intent to grab oil, revenge, fund the military complex, or was it to liberate people? Its been over 20 years and people are still debating the intent of all those wars that occurred after 9/11. Intent is really hard to prove, and that is even if we have proof of policies that defined every killed male over the age of 15 as terrorist regardless of situation.
We could just define all wars as genocide and be done with it. The definition do fit, with all wars ending up behaving as if the intent was the destruction of a people. If the genocide definition helps to reduce the scale of the atrocity being done then I am also for using it in any war which has that effect. However, if it is just used as a media tool in order to define which side is good or bad then Im unconvinced it will help to reduce atrocities.
The war on terror is a criminal farce, with the purpose of fleecing the Western states of, literally, trillions and trillions of dollars. It has not successfully defeated terrorism - in fact, the architects of the war on terror have only produced more terror, in more places around the world, than ever before.
It is important to define and use the word genocide when it happens because we have international institutions that were built - because of the genocide of the Jewish people in fact - explicitly to prevent the world from experiencing yet another holocaust.
But as we can see, we in the West would rather argue semantics and play tribal politics than hold our own war criminals to account for their heinous crimes.
> Intent is really hard to prove
In the case of the genocide currently happening in Gaza, alas, intent has been very, very easy to prove.
Did you actually read what I wrote? I completely agree that genocide is a matter of intent. That is why my comment was about intent, not about scale. in fact I specifically said Israel is killing too many non-combatants, indicating the scale is bad and if scale is what mattered I probably would call it genocide. But as you say, it is not about scale. That is why I made the point that the non-combatant casualties would almost certainly significantly decrease if one side of this conflict was not aggressively using humans as shields – that to me speaks to the intent of Israel/IDF.
The people ultimately to blame for the high civilian casualties are the people who 1. started the war and 2. insist on staging that war entirely in civilian areas. That is Hamas on both counts. I am certain that if tomorrow Hamas said "hey, let's have a pitched battle in the style of Middle Ages Europe, where we go to a field and send all our fighters against all your fighters and and the victor is the one left standing", the IDF would be happy to oblige.
But Hamas will not do that, because they want the destruction of Palestinian peoples more than Israel does. After all, it helps their cause much more than it does the cause of Israel (and they clearly can't actually win the war without the human shields).
Do you speak for the IDF? How is it then that you can also represent Hamas?
> insist on staging that war entirely in civilian areas.
Gaza is an open-air concentration camp which has suffered under Israeli military control for decades. Where else are they going to fight - specially constructed stadiums built for the purpose? Outside, in the no-mans land between Gaza and Israel? 2.1 million human beings have been uprooted from their homes and herded into a 360km2 area by their oppressors - should they escape the military barriers that surround them and bring the fight elsewhere?
> But Hamas will not do that, because they want the destruction of Palestinian peoples more than Israel does.
This position is duplicitous and preposterous. The Palestinian people want to be free from the oppression they have suffered for decades. Israel, a powerful nation, had many, many chances to make peace happen in Gaza - it didn’t happen because Israeli society is fundamentalist, militaristic and racist, and I challenge you to prove otherwise.
