At the moment many of us are watching the news with bated breath. New sites, facebook and twitter feeds are filling with images of civilian deaths and the leveling of Gaza. There is growing sentiment that the ‘targeted’ operations in Gaza by the IDF have been willfully indiscriminate- with example upon example of civilian safe havens being directly targeted (4 UN schools in 4 days, 46 schools in total, 56 Mosques and 7 hospitals). The UN has called for an investigation of war crimes by Israel, and there is a growing international public movement to protest the killings- in the face of almost universal silence by major world leaders on the issue.
One question that has not been consistently raised is why the term ‘genocide’ is not being used to describe the activities of Israel in Gaza. It seems that only ‘extreme’ activist groups or Hamas and the Palestinian Authority themselves would accuse Israel of genocide, with the rest of the international community preferring to qualify their criticisms using terms like ‘indiscriminate’ ‘disproportionate’ or ‘criminal.’ The politics of Israel and Palestine have become so muted, so tangled with discursive landmines that it is difficult to even pose such a question. Yet one does not need to be a radical to at least try to evaluate Israeli actions against the established UN definition of genocide. Serious questions about the end goal of the current military actions, along with longstanding Israeli policies and their impact on the ability of Palestinians to exist require attention.
It is worth quoting the following section from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide- not only to assess whether the current military offensive constitutes a genocide, but also to reflect on the international community’s ‘punishable’ role as actors ‘complicit’ to a genocide.
“Article II: 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.
Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide. “
There is a need to at least consider the term genocide and its application to Israel and Palestine. Even a brief glance at recent events calls for this: Palestinian civilians are dying as a result of their schools, hospitals, and religious buildings being destroyed; Palestinians are being asked to leave their homes both to avoid the military offensive in Gaza and to accommodate Israeli settlements in the West Bank; there are reports of psychological warfare being used by both sides of the conflict; there have also been several explicit calls for the elimination or conquering of Palestinians- as a people- in Gaza. Such calls include: Israeli parliament member and law-maker Ayelet Shaked- referring to Palestinians- called for the mothers of ‘terrorists’ to be killed “so that they cannot bear any more terrorists”; Israeli academic Mordechai Kedar argued that rape was “the only thing” that would stop terrorists from attacking Israel; and, Moshe Feiglin, deputy speaker of Israel’s parliament and a member of Prime Minister Netanyaho’s Likud party, called for a “total siege” on Gaza “with no other considerations” besides minimizing harm to IDF soldiers.
It is time for an honest assessment of Israeli actions- not just in this recent Gaza ‘offensive’ but in terms of its entire method of occupying and controlling Palestinians and their land. Those of us studying international relations and international law have an obligation to try to transcend the discursive politics and the growing pressure to avoid, qualify or stifle our expressions and reactions to the politics of the region.
Megan, I’m not sure taking the rhetoric of extremists and marginalized individuals is an example of a state seeking to commit genocide. In any event, and if I’m reading you right, what, specifically, is Israel doing that you think might constitute genocide? The specific examples of destruction of schools, hospitals, etc during a war while the enemy is operating amidst these structures doesn’t seem to count, so I’m wondering if there are others.
Finally, in the interests of fairness (though this may contradict my first point), we should probably also use Palestinian examples of genocidal intent (see: Hamas charter, recent statements by Hamas leaders) and not just Israeli ones.
I agree with Brent here. This question also highlights one of the difficulties in identifying genocide as such, which stems from what we call genocide. To illustrate a few issues: there is small (and perhaps important difference) between politically-motivated violence that targets members of a group because group differences are the salient cleavage in the politics or conflict of a place, on the one hand, and acts of violence with genocidal intent on the other, wherein the perpetrators seek to eliminate a group as such. The latter can stem from political conflict, as in the first case, but the acts of violence have the intent of wiping out a group rather than removing members of that group from — for example — positions of power. (Romeo Dallaire appears to have had a shift in his view of what was going on in Rwanda from the former to the latter as it became clearer that all Tutsis, and Hutu moderates, were being targeted as such, rather than only those in government positions). There is also the difficulty of whether a motives/intentions distinction should matter, i.e., should the label of genocide be assessed in terms of consequences (i.e. the perpetrators do not need to intend to eliminate a group, and it only matters that this is the consequence of violent action), or must there be a genocidal motive? And so on.
Quite frankly, this article is terrible and I’m shocked to see it published here. First of all, this article misconstrues what Mordechai Kedar says. According to the very same link, Kedar says:
“‘We can’t take such steps, of course,’ Kedar told the programme.’I’m not talking about what we should or shouldn’t do. I’m talking about the facts. The only thing that deters a suicide bomber is the knowledge that if he pulls the trigger or blows himself up, his sister will be raped.'”
How does an Israeli academic speculating about policies that even he thinks Israel isn’t and shouldn’t be implementing at all evidence that actual Israeli policy is genocide? The article calls this one of several “explicit calls for the elimination or conquering of Palestinians.” If an undergraduate did this in a paper, they’d probably be called out for academic dishonesty. In fact, the op-ed[1] that Feiglin wrote is also misconstrued to a lesser extent. He talks about an IDF operation that would have “no other considerations” *after* laying out several explicit hypothetical steps Israel should take to get civilians out of the area. It’s fair to call his stance far fetched and wrong; it’s dishonest to say that he has said Israel shouldn’t consider civilians, as this article implies. Does the Duck regularly publish articles where quotes are misconstrued like this?
More broadly, none of the items listed in that paragraph come even close to meeting the definition of genocide. Since when were states held accountable for things that extreme (and in Shaked’s case, formerly obscure) lawmakers called for that were never implemented? Is the US guilty of threatening genocide because Tom Tancredo said we should nuke Mecca in response to a catastrophic terrorist attack? And how is that sentence about psychological warfare even related to the definition of genocide?
The only thing in this entire argument that’s even relevant to a judgement of Israeli policy is the claim that IDF policy has been willfully indiscriminate. That’s hardly a slam-dunk argument. The UNHRC has a track record of politically-motivated investigations, and the Democracy Now article cited fails to mention that even the UN agrees that Hamas was operating out of many of the otherwise civilian targets it mentioned, and that Hamas fire has also hit civilian targets. The UN has claimed that about 70-80% of those killed are civilians. That number could be high (since Hamas often disguises itself as civilians), or could be about accurate. Even assuming it is accurate, it’s actually on par with reasonable estimates of NATO’s bombing campaign in the former Yugoslavia or the first Battle of Fallujah.
Moreover, even if one was certain that Israel was being disproportionate or reckless in its attempt to achieve military objectives, that’s not a genocide. For a genocide to occur, the Israeli objective would have to “have the intent to destroy” the civilian population. Establishing that Israel is indifferent to civilian deaths does not establish this, especially when the Palestinian population is millions and the number of those killed– civilians and militants combined– is about 1000. Unfortunately the genocide definition doesn’t tell us how small “in part” can be, but it’s obvious from the term’s origin and usage it means a substantial part. Otherwise, if we accepted the logic used here, just about every armed conflict in the world would be a genocide. And that would defeat the point of the term.
[1]Note where Feiglin explicitly calls for civilians to be warned, exact targets to be hit, and exit from Gaza to be allowed/encouraged. Again, this is not a pretty suggestion, but it contradicts this article’s claim that “Feiglin… called for a .total siege. on Gaza .with no other considerations. besides minimizing harm to IDF soldiers.” https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15326#.U9XDD_ldWh3
lol @ the Hasbara crowd shocked that public opinion is turning against Israel and their ‘it’s all those bad Arabs fault’ cry finally begins falling flat after Israel repeatedly decimates a civilian population, using many of the same tactics as Assad in Syria (it was probably a bad idea for the Israelis to compare themselves so favourably to their neighbours so recently, since the comparison is too similar to ignore now).
On the post; genocide no, ethnic cleansing; most definitely.
How can it be ethnic cleansing when Israel isn’t encouraging or making it easy for Palestinians to permanently leave Gaza? I can see the term applied to 1948, but not 2014.
Prisoners are deported to Gaza from Israel/WB following detention. Palestinians who leave the WB (without possessing a foreign passport and only the ‘green id’) are liable to be denied the right to return to their homes. Palestinians resident in Jerusalem who leave temporarily are liable to have their residence permit (the ‘blue id’) revoked and their ability to return to any of Palestine denied. House demolitions in Jerusalem and the WB displace populations to enable the expansion of Jewish settlements. Gaza is part of Palestine; a ghetto for past and present victims of ethnic cleansing. The ideal plan (the ‘no-state’ solution) for the Israelis involves creating several similar ghettoes in the WB connected via corridors to Jordan surrounded by settlements (which will become ‘Israel’). This plan is openly advocated for by members of the Israeli government and society (c.f. Benny Morris).
If you’re claiming that Gaza is where Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians *to,* then it doesn’t make any sense to claim that bombing Gaza is ethnic cleansing. So your comments seem unrelated to the article.
Judging from your last to comments, I take it you see every article about Israel/Palestine as a moral judgement of Israel, regardless of the actual issue being discussed. I guess you can’t imagine that someone could simultaneously be disappointed in an article using terrible logic and dishonest quotations to make a negative point about Israel without being someone who always thinks Israel is in the right.
Er, it does make sense, actually (since I didn’t claim the bombing was intended to cause ethnic cleansing). The logic behind Israel’s brutalisation of Gaza is one of collective punishment for resistance against its policies of ethnic cleansing. My point in bringing up ethnic cleansing is simply that it is the more suitable lens to view Israel’s actions across Palestine through.
I do see every article about Israel/Palestine as intrinsically ethico-politically involved, however; on this point you are correct.
Your defense of the quotes used in the article is perverse, however. Kedar’s remarks, for example, are reprehensible whatever his qualifications because they open up a discursive space in which such notions of ‘deterrence’ are considered thinkable; much as in the same way that the discourse of nuclear deterrence made nuclear war thinkable even though nobody wanted it. You can claim as much as you like that these people are ‘fringe’ elements but given the pathologies of Israel society, its history of ethnic cleansing (even if you only acknowledge 48/67), and its *increasing* use of violence, then we should be deeply, deeply alarmed by the fact that these voices exist in Israel society (from MKs nonetheless) and that they are not forcefully condemned; they are the norm. People march through the street shouting death to Arabs, IDF soldiers post photos on instagram with bullets spelling out death to Arabs. Does none of this alarm you, don’t you think this evidence makes it legitimate to think Israel as a state is capable of even more horrific violence than we have already seen (especially given its increasing lack of legitimacy only pushes its psychology toward a more insular and self-righteous attitude)? Where is the missed logic here?
I’m not “defending” the quotes. Nobody is saying they aren’t reprehensible, just that they’re misconstrued. It’s disgusting and creepy to pose rape as a punishment punishment and then saying it shouldn’t be used. However, characterizing that as advocating for rape as a punishment is still a falsehood. Reprehensible quotes aren’t interchangeable, especially when the author is trying to use them to support a thesis about what Israeli policy actually is. If the article was just about how disturbing certain Israeli voices are and how they may be evidence of dangerous trends in Israeli public opinion, I’d be in complete agreement– heck, just the other day I was making that argument myself in another forum. But that’s just not what this article is claiming. If someone were to fabricate or misconstrue a quote from, say, Kim Jong Un, I’d call them out for that too even though we’re (I assume) all in agreement that he’s reprehensible.
As for ethnic cleansing, I think your argument is a stretch because Palestinian “resistance” isn’t solely based on those Israeli policies. I agree that much of it probably is, and certain indefensible Israeli policies have hurt its security in the long term. But I don’t think it’s helpful to say that Israel is fighting this war to defend those policies when the immediate cause of Hamas’ attacks were the Israeli arrests of Hamas members in the West Bank. None of Hamas’ ceasefire demands have had anything to do with freedom of movement in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. You could make the argument that had Israel never instituted any form of ethnic cleansing from the beginning, it wouldn’t have these problems today. (Of course, you could make an equally convincing argument Israel would be in a worse position today, from a strategic standpoint.) But counterfactuals going back that far are just speculation, so while maybe ethnic cleansing is a lens that’s useful to examine certain parts of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I don’t see how it sheds much light on this particular military operation.
To be clear, Kedar doesn’t say it “shouldn’t be used.” He merely claims he “isn’t saying it should” while stating that it’s the only thing that would work.
He didn’t just say he “isn’t saying it should,” he said “we can’t take such steps.” That’s definitely not the same thing as advocating for it.
I’m astounded to hear you express “shock” at Megan’s “terrible” argument, while defending this Kedar’s remarks. Whether or not he openly calls for Israel to adopt a systematic rape policy, his causal argument invites it. And that argument is based on zero understanding as to how mass rape campaigns impact civilian populations and conflict dynamics so in my view it can only be an argument intended to put ideas in the minds of policymakers. Aside from being grossly immoral such a policy would not prevent attacks but would galvanize them, while turning Israeli soldiers into rapists. This guy is a blemish on academia and on his nation. And your defense of his argument is shameful as well.
As I have already mentioned several times, I’m *not* “defending” his argument. Bad arguments should be accurately characterized. To say someone has “called for” something when they have explicitly not called for it is wrong, however wrong that person’s actual statements are. If you and MacKenzie believe that his actual comment is evidence that Israeli policy makers or mainstream Israelis endorse a genocidal policy, then why not include his actual comment instead of mischaracterizing it?
Those of use studying international relations and international law also have an obligation not to conflate the horrendous urgings of extremists with the systematic policies of states unless we have strong evidence that such urgings are shaping policy. Ayalet Shaked, Moshe Feiglin, and Mordechai Kedar are awful human beings, and if they had their way, I’ll bet a genocide is exactly what would take place.
But they are not getting their way. The ongoing settlement project can arguably be treated as an act of ethnic cleansing; it is certainly a monumental and brutal injustice. And the great cost in innocent lives that the Palestinians in Gaza are paying as a result of Israel’s military operation against Hamas, revealed graphically in an unending stream of images depicting the dead, wounded, bereaved, and displaced, carries the prima facie implication of a major moral travesty. And yet, there is no evidence that the Israeli state is trying to physically destroy the flesh of all Palestinians – that the IDF shall ultimately be used to kill them all to a man, so to speak. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that the Israeli security executive does actually prefer to limit harm to Palestinian civilians. Some of this evidence can be found in one of my own publications [1]. We can surely say that this preference is not nearly high enough on their priority list, but we therefore have both an absence of evidence of genocidal intent and evidence of an absence of genocidal intent.
I join with Chris LaRoche elsewhere in this thread in also expressing concern that if we are too trigger-happy with the label ‘genocide’, we risk diminishing the moral potency of that label. Not all killing is equal, even if we agree that all killing is bad. I suggest we reserve the label of ‘genocide’ for, well, actual genocide. Such as what Ayelet Shaked actually wants to happen, rather than what is actually happening.
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546553.2012.657280#.U9XJzGPzx81
Thank you for the above comments. I’m interested that all chose to focus on discrediting the three opinions quoted- as if these were the only evidence I presented as possible indication of a genocide. I don’t understand how the full quote from Kedar changes the meaning of his words- but even if one ignores calls to kill mothers or rape civilians, what about the question of settlements, of indiscriminate killing, of destroying infrastructure again and again- making life nearly impossible for a group of people? I’m not drawing conclusions in my (I think) moderate call for debate. I’m asking why we don’t use genocide, why it seems we ‘can’t’ use genocide in the current political environment, and- under what circumstances we would use genocide with regard to Israel. At what point would you be comfortable calling these actions genocide? How many civilian deaths are required? What forms of restriction/obstacles to life ‘count’? I am not being sarcastic, I really am curious as to when do Israeli actions cease to be ‘self defense’ and start to become the strategic elimination of a group of people.
‘I’m asking why we don’t use genocide, why it seems we ‘can’t’ use
genocide in the current political environment, and- under what
circumstances we would use genocide with regard to Israel.’
Well, speaking only for myself, I do not use genocide because it doesn’t seem as though Israel is trying to kill all the Palestinians. In other words, none of the above crimes – indiscriminate use of force during military operations, destruction of infrastructure, colonisation – seem to fit the definition of genocide that you yourself set forth. At the very least, these crimes appear to stem from different intentions than those that led to the incontrovertible genocides of Rwanda, Kosovo, or the Holocaust. By implication, if I saw evidence that Israel was actually going about trying to kill all the Palestinians, I would then call their actions genocide.
As to the question of why we ‘can’t’ use genocide to refer to Israel’s actions under the current political environment, I would say, with some relief, that it appears as though the specialness of genocide as a category has been preserved. Despite the best efforts of people such as yourself, if I may be a little pointed.
‘I really am curious as to when do Israeli actions cease to be ‘self
defense’ and start to become the strategic elimination of a group of
people.’
Needless to say (but is it?), there are other possibilities than these two things. We can reject the argument that Israel’s actions are self-defence without needing to therefore accept that they are instead a genocide.
Edit: I meant Bosnia rather than Kosovo, as actually the latter is a more contentious example of a genocide than the former
Simon, the genocide definition doesn’t require that a group be trying to kill “all the members of another group.” It only requires that the acts (which include but are not limited to killing) be intended to destroy the group in whole OR in part. I wonder if you think a defensible claim could be made that Israel is trying to destroy Palestinians as a group “in part.”
I’m not saying “genocide” is the right term for this. The intent clause of the genocide definition is its real limitation and yes intent needs to be shown on the part of the government rather than in the words of extremist commentators. Another legal construct we might use to evaluate Israel’s actions is “crimes against humanity” which refer to a variety of acts carried out against civilian populations. Things don’t need to be called “genocide” in order to be terrible. Still, I think Megan’s question is certainly a helpful one and her point is that we shoudn’t shy away from these questions just because it’s this particular conflict we’re talking about.
Hi Charli, thanks for joining the conversation. I am aware that the definition of genocide can be satisfied by other actions than this; I was speaking more colloquially. I would say that the ongoing settlement of the West Bank has, at least among some though not all segments of its defenders, the hope that eventually the Palestinians will all just give up and leave. That appears, at first glance, to suggest that settlement policies might be an attempt to destroy a people. However, most of the pro-settlement people hold the view that Jordan is already a Palestinian state, and that all of the Palestinians in the West Bank can just go there. You hear the (quite maddening) trope from the right that ‘we already have a two-state solution: Israel and Jordan’.
In other words, the dominant view even on the relatively far-right is that the Palestinians should just go be Palestinian somewhere else. Punctuated, of course, by the odd patently genocidal bellicose rhetoric from marginal political elites trying to get attention. This seems to suggest that while we can call the settlements ‘ethnic cleansing’, and I’m certainly willing to call that a crime against humanity, it also suggests that genocide is the wrong word.
I apologise if I’ve misunderstood Megan, but I certainly detected an underdone to her post here that, you know, actually we really should call Israeli actions genocidal. I am deeply uncomfortable with this because by playing fast and loose with the label, we diminish its moral potency, and also because it is a frequent and false accusation which plays into the narrative of the Israeli right that the world will never understand or sympathise with Israel’s situation and thus that all international criticism should be ignored.
Megan, see comments by me, Chris, and others–we addressed other issues in your piece, as well. The reason, I think, there was an immediate reaction to the use of the quotes by those Israeli individuals is because it is such poor evidence for the argument. (Obviously I’m not talking here about contextualizing Kedar; there is no excuse of any kind for him.)
I also think there’s a simple answer to your question, why can’t we use genocide or debate it. And that is: it’s already been discussed many, many, many times already, and there’s simply no evidence Israel is committing it, intentional or otherwise. Occupation? Obviously. Violence? Of course. Are individual Israelis doing bad things? Unfortunately, yes. None of this adds up to genocide, particularly once you include the role and actions of Palestinians themselves–the leaders, the terrorists, and so on. In short, the debate has already taken place.
Sorry if my initial comment came off as overly harsh– I probably overreacted. As for the Kedar quote, you wrote:” there have also been several explicit calls for the elimination or conquering of Palestinians… Such calls include… Israeli academic Mordechai Kedar argued that rape was “the only thing” that would stop terrorists from attacking Israel.”
To “call for” something is to explicitly advocate for it according to every conceivably relevant definition I can think of; Kedar explicitly said that he did not believe Israel should actually use rape as a collective punishment. So while the sentence “Israeli academic… attacking Israel” is not itself false, including it as the second item of a list of multiple “explicit calls for the elimination or conquering of Palestinians” is wrong.
As for the larger issue, international law and general discourse have a fairly large vocabulary to describe human rights abuses. I think other commenters have already made the case better than I have that genocide should be reserved for instances in which the destruction of a civilian population is actually a goal of a state, and not merely a consequence which a state does not go far enough out of its way to avoid. Even Israeli actions that make life hard for Palestinians seem to be a byproduct of policies (like restrictions on travel motivated by security concerns, settlement construction, etc) rather than an end in themselves. Israeli leaders surely know that poverty increases birthrates and that desperate people are more likely to join insurgencies; Netanyahu himself said this as a justification for economic liberalization and the taking down of checkpoints in the West Bank near the beginning of his term. (Arguably a case of a broken clock being right twice a day…)
There’s one thing I should add, that nobody else has mentioned: I assume everyone is familiar with the plague of antisemitic criticism of Israel, which is a problem for Jews and legitimate critics of Israel alike. The abuse of Holocaust analogies are frequent manifestation of this. I’m *not* saying that this was your motivation, but calling this operation a genocide reminds a lot of people of the antisemitic rhetoric about Nazis and Zionists, and is another reason to be cautious about using the term.
I agree with a lot of what you’ve written on this thread, but (genuine question) do you think Israeli policy in building and maintaining the occupation has been the result of a complex mix of interests, motivations, policies etc combining to lead us to the situation we are in now ?Or do you think it has been more likely never really Isaeli intent to allow a viable Palestinian state, and so a more coherent position to extend the occupation to the point that now exists?
Thanks. And I think the first of those two options is accurate, with the caveat that there have always been a few groups that wanted a maximalist “greater Israel,” (like the original Revisionist Zionists) and there’s a large group of disaffected Israelis who support a 2ss in theory or under certain conditions, but are prepared to live with the status quo indefinitely. I think Netanyahu is probably on the conservative side of that spectrum, rather than in the completely anti-Palestinian state camp.
It seems to me that Hamas’ indiscriminate firing of rockets and plotting to engage in large-scale attacks on the Israeli civilian population (on the basis of their shared nationality, ethnicity, and/or religion) through its tunnel networks would also rise to the level of genocide, although Hamas’ inability to effectively do so on a large scale due to Iron Dome and the discovery of the tunnel networks would mean that they could only be considered to have conspired to commit genocide, incited Palestinians to commit genocide, and attempted to commit genocide.
So, yes, let’s discuss whether or not all parties are engaged in genocide in this conflict.
Brent, you might have a point in counting the rhetoric of marginalised individuals. We are all looking for rational analysis. In this regard, while blaming Hamas for being a religious extremist group, cant we ask whether the Israeli state is a secular one or not? While trying to find a rational way to end the conflict, can we rationalize the beginnings of it? I mean was the creation of a state in a religiously promised land inhabited by todays suppressed legitimate? As Ben Gurion asked it: “There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their (Arabs`) fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that? Why do we ahistoricize the problem to rationalize the very now?
Doesn’t genocide, the UN definition you cite not withstanding, require a certain scale of killing? It strikes me as more than just the deliberate targeting of civilians of a different ethnicity (a regrettably very common practice in human history). It’s an actual attempt to exterminate an ethnic group or at least large portions of that group. I think we want to reserve the term for very large scale actions. There is a real difference between killing hundreds and millions.
Obviously, with small groups one can reach the level of genocide with smaller absolute numbers, but neither the Palestinians nor Israelis are particularly small groups.
None of this is to condone or whitewash the deliberate targeting of civilians on any scale, but scale does matter.
It would appear that the author’s hyper-literal parsing of “in whole or in part” turns every hate crime into a genocide, attempted or successful. All the more so when the broad criteria that describe potentially genocidal acts, intentionally left so for the discretion of reasonable minds, are reduced to elements on a list. When reading such a broad list, one gets the impression that its compilers were working on something more like a Potter Stewart, “know it when you see it” kind of definition, allowing a genocide to be recognized by a confluence of basic characteristics. Not by any actor doing not nice things to another actor who happens to be part of a group, which applies to every act of violence, organized or otherwise, in the history of this planet.
Thankfully there are individuals capable of more holistic readings of (fairly vague to begin with) definitions of crimes that, by their very nature, are not meant to be slapped onto every ethnic skirmish.
Then again, if calling the (reprehensible but obviously subjunctive and hyperbolic) comments of Kedar a “call for the elemination of Palestinians in Gaza” is any indication, the author is rather a fan of decontextualized readings with a heavy dose of eisegesis. Perhaps a fun exercise in certain literary endeavors, but rather an insult to reasoned discourse on matters of fact where the result is to make teenaged draftees ordered to respond to a demonstrated security threat into the equivalent of nazi war criminals.
“There is a real difference between killing hundreds and millions.” Slow clap. Stalin would be proud. The chief difference, I would say, is in how long it takes to do the killing, and how long the stench lingers afterward. However, I believe the dead, were they capable, might beg to differ. Certainly their families would. I suspect they take little comfort that the bloody bodies of their dead are merely one of hundreds, vice millions. This is true both on both sides of the conflict – from the Israeli conscript ordered, willy-nilly to his death, to the Palestinian child who is the “accidental” victim of an airstrike on a school. One will be heralded as a “hero” – the other labeled “victim”, or “martyr” – in reality, they will both represent a genetic dead end, the potential of 60 or 80 years lost to a bullet, a piece of shrapnel, the mistaken idea that military force in the modern can break a people’s will to resist.
So if you and your interlocutor were having an argument over whether killing people is bad, you would have made some great points there, or well, a point anyway.
However, and following the trend of this blog post, reading comprehension failed to have its day. It seems these days it’s as elusive as a bilateral cease-fire.
The question was not whether killing hundreds of civilians as “collateral damage” of strikes aimed at a quarter the number of militants — certainly something that falls in the realm of debatable military proportionality calculus — is bad. The question was whether it is genocide.
Which is why the distinction between hundreds and millions mattered.
To be sure, if I shot the nearest stranger, or if you like, the nearest stranger who is a member of any ethnic group, it would make no difference to his family that he was one person, and not hundreds. But hopefully even the author of this blog post would not want to “broaden the discourse” over whether my single homicide was genocide. It seems almost mind-numbingly obvious that when discussing a crime most readily defined by its horrifying *scale*, numbers matter.
Genocide require some way to determine ‘intent’, whist Israel’s actions and subsequent civilians deaths are deplorable, (as is the brutalisation of the Palestinans) I don’t believe they intend to kill civilians. Every civilian death just gives them more problems. They’d rather the Hamas fighters could be isolated and directly targeted. However, we do know who, if they had the power, would engage in genocide, because they have stated their intent and refuse to repudiate it. There a reason Israel feels the need to maintain such a large military force, and IR people shouldn’t be surprised that they use it when groups who explicitly want to see their destruction use it. The fact that group doesn’t have the power to engage in the genocide they ‘intend’ is a direct result of the Israelis denying them that power through destruction of infrastructure, blockades and controlling their access to resources. For the Israelis the conflict is genuinely existential. It’s not for the Palestinians. Even on a worst case scenario Israel just want the land. You can argue that Hamas have that genocidal attitude towards Israel due to past policies of successive Israeli govt, and you might be right. But you don’t develop an approach to right the injustices of the past by advocating genocide. There aren’t any ‘good guys’ in this conflict.
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/07/28/sam-harris-on-the-israelpalestine-conflict/
Come on Colin, you can’t possibly believe that “for the Israelis the conflict is genuinely existential.” Even if Hamas had the intent to ‘destroy Israel’, they don’t have the capability and wouldnt be able to develop it under any plausible scenario.(even one without Israeli destroying their infrastructure and controlling access to resources)
Plenty of research has show that Hamas are a genuine socio-political movement with very pragmatic concerns, (of governance, retaining popular support etc)with factions that would be willing to settle on a two state solution, ammend the charter and accept the legitimacy of the Israeli state. Negotiations get you to the place where these changes occur, not hypebole.
Ronan, they don’t have the capability and Israeli’s believe because Israel has stopped them, that what the current round in the conflict is really about; degrading their capability. You also can’t know if they’d be able to develop that capability under any scenario, and Isreal has lots of them gamed; hence concerns over Iranian nuclear weapons. Hamas do provide socio-political benefits, but they also spend large sums of the money they get on arms, tunnels and generally trying to attack Israel. It is existential for Israel and maybe you think they are paranoid, but they are surrounded by states they believe want to push them into the sea, despite acceptance by some of their right to exist. Yes, amending the charter will be a start. But why hasn’t it been done yet? Agree that negotiations are the only way to resolve it, but like the repeated madness of firing rockets at a state you know will hit you back, and the equally repeated madness of attacking a territory you have brutalised and dispossessed, it hasn’t worked so far. The Palestinians need a viable and secure state and the Israelis need to feel secure (whether those two things happen under one state or two, I don’t care). We are along way from that situation at the moment and as long as Hamas has that in it’s charter Israel won’t negotiate with it, nor would I. You can’t negotiate with someone who is advocating genocide and you are the target.
LOL is this the Israel lobby posing as Colin?
Yes obviously. Constructive comments always welcome.
The charter will have to be ammended for any long term solution, but if you look at(say) northern Ireland all the expectations weren’t put on one party as initial demands to be allowed into the talks. (ie articles 2+3 in the South were part of the final agreement and put to referendum as part of the actual peace pocess, PIRA decomissioning came later) So it will have to be part of negotiations, and if the Israelis have any desire for a proper solution they will have to give ground to Hamas in return.
Rockets had *all but* stopped from Gaza in the wake of the 2012 ceasefire(not completly, but mainly)
Israel is not surrounded by states that want to destroy it. Its Arab neighbours have all shown themselves willing to cut long term peace deals with her.Iran is also not an ‘existential threat’, and Isael and Iran have had relatively decent relations in the past (before the gulf war upset the regional balance of power, afaik)
Not negotiating with Hamas because of its charter strikes me as ridiculous for any party that genuinely wanted a resolution. Perhaps the reason it hasnt been ammended is because Israel has not given Hamas any reason to do so ?And has consistently upset the organisational balance between the more militant and moderate factions through heavy handed tactics.
Do you know. The biggest problem with this dispute is the inability of both sides to put themselves in the shoes of the other. To dismiss Israeli security fears is to imply they do what they because they are basically evil. If that’s so there’s no solution. The IRA never suggested that all of the land the UK was on was claimed by them. That’s been Hamas’s position well beyond the charter and reiterated again in 2013 and earlier this year. You might believe the Arab states surrounding them have accepted their existence but the Israelis don’t. That’s why they have the 4th largest army in the world. You can try and deny their fears but their actions suggest otherwise. Whether they are right to be so concerned is a different matter. But for IR people not to see this as a security issue just seems bizarre to me. You won’t get Israel to engage in a much needed move towards a more progressive politics until they feel secure. You telling them they have no need to feel insecure won’t make a blind bit of difference.
I haven’t dismisssed their security fears. Ive dismissed the framing of them as an ‘existential threat’, rather than a glorified nuisance, as bizzare.
The IRA did have a goal(initially,and then at least rhetorically, a united Ireland) which wasn’t acheivable through armed struggle. The Irish government had that same goal(for symbolic purposes) witten into the constitution. The comparison is by no means perfect, but the evolution of PIRA strategy, how it developed within the organisation, the sidelining of armed struggle for political accomodation and the British ability to recognise and work with that reality, should give people pause when they claim that Hamas aspirations are static and the organisation a monolith.
Final thing. I don’t think ‘Israelis’ view the threats they face the way you claim. Look at any polling(or at the issues that have stirred Israelis to protest) and the main issues that concern them are economic, not security.
I dont even think the security establishment views the threats as existential(look at the consistent on the record views of security elites which push against that narrative) I think it’s a useful frame for certain political elites.
Either way, even if the population did view their security threats as existential it doesnt mean that we have to take their concerns seriously if the evidence pushes against that perspective(any more than accepting the one per cent doctrine as a resonable strategic posture, just because..)
That polling would obviously be a lot more centered on “security” during periods where sirens disrupt live in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, rather than just border towns in the Negev. Like, oh, three weeks ago. Hence this operation… do you think ordering a draft army into a ground invasion in a democracy is a politically astute move unless you have the backing of the people? Bibi does, because security is most certainly a concern.
You may be more correct about the security elite. In fact, I think you likely are. Perhaps Israel would be a much more progressive society were it a military dictatorship like its neighbors
Again I’m not saying Israel does not have security concerns and widespread support for the sort of operations now in play. I’m saying that by no reasonable measure are those threats ‘existential.’
also, afaik, although this operation does have support, Bibi didn’t want it (do you think that’s accurate?) Which implies he was willing to live with some level of rocket fire before this thing escalated.
mmm… this is where the haziness of narratives comes into play, cause you said “before this thing escalated” and when that happened is a matter of perspective.
If you had asked two months ago, does Bibi want a large scale military operatoin in gaza, even just air power with no ground invasion — I think the answer would be of course not, the low level of rocket attacks is more tolerable than calling up reserves, drawing international condemnation, and maybe even risking Israeli deaths in retaliation (let us assume as most people seem to that Palestinian casualties hardly enter his moral calculus except as a PR problem, which is plausible).
but as of the kidnapping of those three Israeli teenagers by a Hamas cell from Hebron who, it now seems, were disconnected from Hamas leadership but not lacking its approval (Hamas condemned the Fatah condemnation of their murder), a manhunt was declared lasting a couple of weeks that included a severe crack down in the WB. So you could locate the “escalation” at that point, since rockets increased during that crackdown, and some have proposed that this is because Hamas leadership in Gaza went underground fearing Israeli strikes, and ironically, were the main restraint on crazier elements in their neighborhood. I am not certain how true that is, but it’s plausible at least, and would mean that Hamas rockets were the indirect result of *increasing* pressure on Hamas, rather than maintaining the status quo. To add to the confusion, there is every reason to believe now that it was well known to the Israeli government that those three boys were dead the day they were kidnapped, and the few-week manhunt was a pretext to arrest Hamas operatives and conduct raids.
Still, as of that point, I would agree that bibi did not want any such thing as a ground invasion or even more than a handful of retaliatory air strikes. However, around the time the boys were officially pronounced dead, their funerals drew huge crowds of Israelis, and at least one retaliatory murder occurred, came a severe uptick in rocket numbers. I need to go back and check numbers/day to see exactly what day I would identify as a huge tipping point, but it was the same week as the funeral and the murder of muhammad abu khdeir. So to me, I would say that the first major upswing in rocket numbers is when Bibi felt he had no choice but to do what I’ve heard crassly referred ot before as “mowing the lawn,” which is the periodic Israeli incursion into Gaza to reduce Hamas stockpiles back near nil again while otherwise maintaining the status quo. Such has been their policy for years now.
What I gather has led to a more extensive ground operatoin has been learning just how busy Hamas has been over hte past few years with its subterranean activities. The tunnels constitute a new threat that the IDF certainly wants to deal with — ten terrorists apiece storming five separate kibbutzim through five separat etunnels, you’d be looking at the sort of massacre Israel hasn’t seen in decades.
So to answer your short question, yes, he was willing to live with “some” level of rocket fire, no, he wasn’t willing to live with a suddenly dramatically increased level, and no, he and the IDF certanly aren’t willing to live with the possibility of cross-border infiltratoin as long as those tunnels are up.
I agree with that. I think Colin’s point was that from an Israeli perspective, an empowered Hamas would be an existential threat. The reason there is no such existential threat is because of their consistently harsh military stance when Hamas begins to build stockpiles worth noticing.
Which he only said as part of a wider point about, re:blog post, how genocide is a function of a) intent and b) capability to kill lots and lots of members of a hated group. To simplify his argument, Hamas has a) and, due in part to Israeli military action, not b. While Israel lacks a), though it has had b) for ages.
Well I dont want to get too far down this rabbit hole of when a threat becomes existential, but I dont think there are any circumstances where Hamas could become an existential threat to Israel. I mean, can you think of any ? If they got their hands on a nuclear weapon weapon ? Is that plausible ? Would they use it ? Would that even be existential?
Yes, there are circumstances when Hamas becomes *more of a threat*, say from nuisance to relatively serious. And operations like this might undermine their capacity to rise to that level in the short term. But at the same time they have a whole lot of long term reprecussions, because they aren’t a long tem solution. (And even if you do manage to destroy Hamas,then you probably get something more extreme in its place, another existential threat, and the cycle repeats.)
The problem is the failue of a resolution to this crisis, and the reality of Gaza (which israeli policy for the last 7 plus decades has created)
EDIT I dont think Hamas has (a) but there’s no point arguing over it.
Personally, I agree with almost all your post. I wouldn’t say it’s solely israeli policy for the last six plus decades responsible for the quagmire of Gaza — though israeli policy over the decade since the withdrawal has been a charlie-foxtrot to be sure. And though like you I would rather not spend much verbiage trading conjectures over whether the Hamas leadership (and rank-and-file) mean what they say in their charter, their broadcasts and their schoolbooks, or if it’s the macho posturing of the powerless, I lean toward the former. I could be convinced otherwise though, but we both seem to agree it’s not relevant as it’s beyond any conceivable capability.
Here’s what I wonder though. I would say that to a large degree, Hamas has been empowered by the blockade. However, suppose it ended, and Gaza had roughly the same freedoms as the West Bank– not statehood, but more autonomy than they’ve been accustomed to since Israel’s unilateral ‘disengagement’, Gaza’s election of Hamas, and Israel’s response. Would that power diminish? Would alternatives emerge? and if not, what does it achieve from an Israeli security perspective aside from make it easier for cross-border terrorists to arm themselves and infiltrate?
It’s easy to make the humanitarian argument. But how does one convincingly argue that, morality aside, it’s in the Israeli interest?
To me it seems like it would have to be a multi-phase process, and it also seems like it would have to be contingent on the empowerment of Fatah within Gaza. I don’t really see why that isn’t the sort of negotiated cessation of the blockade pushed for by the US and Egypt. A reset button with a new election might lend some legitimacy to the move, and couldnt’ be any more disastrous than the last palestinian election (long since expired in its term, anyway), eh?
From an Israeli security perspective, I really don’t know what they do next.
I have two hypotheticals(neither of which are useful because both are unrealistic) The first is looking backwards to 2006 and wondering if there was a genuine chance for reconcilliation between Fateh and Hamas and the opportunity to start developing proper institutions and a security apparatus that involved both parties. (Instead of encouraging conflict between the two) What are your thoughts on that specifically?
And the second is handing responsibility for Gaza to the ‘international community’ and pressuring Israel towards meaningful peace talks. The second part of that is clearly not going to happen, and I don’t know what the first would mean in practice. (Politically and practically what would it mean to cede Gazan security and development to international organisations?)
I do think any meaningful resolution will involve Hamas though. What do you think ?
Genuine chance? Perhaps you don’t remember what was going on in Gaza in 2006 the way I do… Fatah members were being thrown off rooftops. To the victor went the spoils, illiberal ‘democracy’ in all its glorious uselessness.
That’s why I disagreed with laying all the blame on six decades, or even 47 years, of Israeli policies with regard to Gaza. At a certain point internal palestinian political dysfunction does include a certain amount of reaping what they sowed in what was by all accounts a pretty legitimate election (one which has yet to be duplicated despite expiration of everyone’s terms). The loss of Fatah was due to its blatant corruption; I am not among those who agrees that the election of Hamas was ipso facto reasonable, understandable, or Israel’s fault. And the subsequent violence and civil division between Gaza and the WB, Hamas and Fatah, wasn’t an Israeli policy either.
I still think the blockade has been a disaster of a policy, but after nine years of entrenchment I’m wondering, as in my last post, how to dial that backwards to something reasonably secure and less of a humanitarian crisis, when the main concern of the ‘government’ on the Gazan side of the check points is how best to cause civilian death on the Israeli side.
The new unity government was the first sign of such cooperation, and a hint of how truly weakened Hamas is with its patrons (Iran, proxy Syria) so damaged by the Syrian civil war. The money has stopped coming in, the arms have been difficult to procure, and al-Sisi’s government has been pretty tough on the Sinai border. The blockade was always in some ways a source of revenue for Hamas, in that it made any entity in control of the tunnels the monopolist, but with less to bring in, and a war-weary population, Hamas popularity was almost as weak as its finances. I believe that’s why the unity government emerged, alongside Abbas’ complete frustration with any hope for negotiatoin with the rightward-shifting israeli government.
The israelis hated that move, though, because a) they are not interested in seeing an islamist terrorist group elevated to not just a parliamentary force, but a ruling party in a palestinian governing body b) it represented another move toward palestinian unilateralism, which scares the shit out of them cause honestly, it could put them on the wrong side of a much more serious international consensus if palestine managed to declare statehood and get recognition from the (excuse my outdated terminology, but in the Middle East the Cold War never ended) First World. And means they won’t even get anything for giving up the cards they’ll have to give up.
I would not be surprised if the vehemence of this operation is in part due to a desire to, if not topple Hamas, render them irrelevant within this unity government. If it works, i guess that might even be a good result. But Israeli political games have a long history of being poorly conceived that goes back to the early 80s…
I am not willing to say it’s impossible to make a deal with Fatah if the political landscape is such that Hamas isn’t especially consequential. But I don’t envision that being the consequence of this operation, and I don’t see a repeat performance soon (news cycle wouldn’t be pleased with Israel, and PR hits have to heal over a period of at least a couple of years), so you’re probably right that Hamas will probably need to be a part of negotiations.
Thing is, unlike everyone else who says that in the interest of pragmatism, I see that going absolutely nowhere. People have trouble seeing Hamas as unrepentant “idealists” with an agenda that’s barely susceptible to moderation. Why that is, I don’t know — wishful thinking maybe. Because the road to peace requires some sort of palestinian consensus, it must follow that any palestinian consensus can be negotiated with– so goes the thinking. I’m less optimistic. Similarly, I really do not think you’ll get a deal with an Israeli government where the Jewish Home and Likud Beitenu make up such a plurality of seats. Remember that in his government, Bibi is liberal. I don’t think it’s the time, and I think this business of “you negotiate with enemies, not friends” has its limits. So that’s my pessimistic 2 cents
Interesting. One more question then.
On the Fatah/Hamas reconcilliation in April(?) this year, what do you see as Hamas’s main reasons for it. A genuine commitment to reconcilliation ? An opportunity to remove themselves from the obligations of governance and regain strenght ?A way to get specific concessions on the siege etc ? Or ..
How does Hamas strategy play out over the next few months imagining the reconcilliation goes ahead as planned ?
Honestly as far as I can tell, $$$ and that’s the long and short of it. Fatah gained a broader Palestinian appeal for its government, and Hamas joined a government that gets tremendous international aid. Government employees hadn’t been paid in months, ad they were the largest employer. So everyone got what they wanted in the absence of a sweeter deal for Fatah coming from Israel, and nothing sweet will come from a government where bibis main concern is from being outflanked on the right (see the recent firing of Danny danon for rightward criticism)
Hamas, is a problem because they are an Islamist ‘terrorist’ group? As opposed to the secular ‘terrorists’ of Fatah (who were actually rather more ‘terroristic’ in their activities than the strictly-domestic Hamas).
Anyhow, 2006: “the subsequent violence and civil division between Gaza and the WB, Hamas and Fatah, wasn’t an Israeli policy either.”
Really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah%E2%80%93Hamas_conflict#Involvement_of_Britain.2C_United_States.2C_Israel_and_Arab_states
Hamas is a problem because a) as an Islamist group, they are ideologues and ‘idealists’ with a very poor track record for pragmatism or compromise. b) they continue to be explicitly committed not to Palestinian independence alongside Israeli security, but Israeli nonexistence — their raison d’etre c) the same goes for their patrons.
Fatah, for its part, despite its origins has come a remarkable distance toward being a negotiable partner, albeit one that can only deliver promises about half its supposed constituency. They are night and day, and yes, religious fanaticism is relevant. You won’t see a peace deal coming from Gush Emunim types from Beth El, and Israelis won’t see it coming from the Islamic Resistance Movement. That is reality.
Fatah’s origins are, of course, the very origins of Palestinian terrorism, but by the time of the Oslo framework (and even beforehand in the early nineties when Palestinian suicide bombers first emerged) the group was most certainly not anywhere near as terroristic in its activity. One was showing the first public signs of being willing to compromise while one was innovating ever more barbaric ways to kill defenseless strangers with no hand in their oppression.
The rightmost column here shows that Islamists, whether Hamas or PIJ, are responsible for nearly all suicide bombing attacks in the last couple decades in Israel, including the initial ones of the 90s and the frequent ones of the second intifada that led to Israel’s stricter policy of separation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_suicide_attacks
Your link does not demonstrate your point– you should get into the habit of actually arguing the case that you believe proceeds from the information you present, instead of leaving it to your interlocutor to share your (poor) reading comprehension. You deny agency or responsibility to
a) those Palestinians who elected their own dictators in Gaza (the majority, sadly, though electoral districting rather undemocratically tilted the balance toward Hamas as subsequent analyses have shown).
Of course, they are hardly alone in the world of one-off Arab elections: a plurality of deceived masses who think almsgiving and badmouthing a corrupt status quo indicates positive future governance from Islamists can be found in every “arab spring” debacle since. Egyptians learned little from the Palestinian example, and then ran right back to the status quo ante of al-Sisi once Morsi had his turn to muck things up a bit.
Perhaps they believed they were choosing the lesser of two evils, but realities of governance in the West Bank vs Gaza have not vindicated them even when keeping the analysis internal to the territories and accounting for distinct Israeli intervention.
b) said dictators whose reaction to victory was not to form a government with Fatah in opposition, but to defenestrate the opposition in the best of medieval traditions
ironically, today Hamas is less popular in Gaza than ever (or at least before Operation Defensive Edge; there is probably a temporary rallying effect under the shared trauma of Israeli violence, though now is probably not the safest time to conduct accurate polls), while it’s the WB where their support has grown. Grass is always greener on the other side, I suppose, when the choices in front of you just have so little green about them, Islamist populism aside.
What, exactly, will it take for Israel to feel secure? That’s the real problem here. Fourth largest army in the world, check. Nuclear weapons, check. Bankrolled by acquiescent (lone) military super power, check. Sophisticated missile defence, check. Complete intelligence penetration of all major foes, check. Pliant dictatorial quasi-proxies in two countries, check.
Basically what you seem to be suggesting is that everybody must literally roll over with their hands up, blindfolded, and stripped naked before we can expect Israel to do anything. You expect the Palestinians to do this while Israel continues its ethnic cleansing of the WB and East Jerusalem and murders civilians in Gaza.
where is this fourth largest business coming from? Do you people have any idea how strapped India is, to say nothing of massive and *demonstrably* nuclear? Or Turkey, for that matter? And as much as we mock ’em on this side of the Atlantic, the europeans are no slouches.
Lone military superpower? Man, I’m nostalgic for the nineties too, boy bands and pokemon aside, but get real. At the local geopolitical level Israel’s fears include Iran, a military of comparable if lesser capability, an increasingly unfriendly Turkey, which dwarfs its (conventional) capabilities, and the whims of Russia in the Middle East, with an increasingly aloof American administration. But worrying about nation-states is again, nostalgia for the last millennium. Israel’s main fears have been non-state actors since those selfsame nineties. And big, numerous guns don’t deal with that problem.
4th largest is an exaggeration… after the US, Russia and China, you’ve bumped off India, France, the UK, Germany, Turkey… and prolly Japan and South Korea while we’re at it. But really, the reason for the large military isn’t fear of the threat of Gazan fireqraqers, so much as the ongoing presence of belligerent neighbors, the inconstancy of peace treaties brokered with dictators whose permanence is never assured (Sadat’s was so popular he got shot for it! and Jordan is a mostly palestinian state that might go Arab ‘Spring’ redux any year now), and of course, the culturally normalized phenomenon that is the IDF. Even in the best of circumstances, inertia will have its day.
With that said, I am as shocked as you are that anyone is outraged that Israelis take seriously the Hamas capacity to reach most of its population with rockets, and now to manage cross-border infiltrations with subterranean operations. These activities are never aimed at the large military, and always at civilians. Of course when Hamas begins flexing those muscles, there is a response.
The wider strategic question of whether the conditions that exist in Gaza today are what lead to these periodic upswings in rocket activity (and subsequent violent responses to destroy munitions and capabilities for a couple more years), is up for a different debate. But is anyone genuinely surprised that a nation-state responds violently to a few thousand rockets fired at its citizenry over a few weeks, and a subterranean network designed to attack more?
No one is surprised, no. However, people with any sense of historical perspective know why this is happening. Now you might not like to admit it but when you destroy a whole society they might resist and, you know what, they have every right to fire rockets at the people who ethnically cleansed them from their homeland, habibi.
I am not your 7abib; your collectivization of guilt and glib transference thereof to civilians is repulsive, and everything wrong with the mindset of racists and bigots on both sides of the conflict.
Israelis have every right to execute the actual people responsible for the kidnapping and murder of three teenaged strangers, but it takes the sort of mindset to which you subscribe to turn that into a call for murdering the easiest random Palestinian target one can grab. You and the subhumans who burned Muhammad Abu khdeir alive are cut from the same cloth, as is anyone whose war is with an amorphous “they” and whose targets are innocent civilians within that mass of dehumanized strangers.
May the middle east be rid of all who think like you, inshallah. Then there will be peace.
Israel has the right to execute people… great. You deny the possibility of resistance. Go read the wall, to exist is to resist in Palestine. If you want peace in Palestine, truly, then call for an end to the occupation and the right of return. Then there will be peace.
You have nothing but slogans to defend your outright advocacy for the murder of civilians, coupled with outrage about advocacy for punishment of people who kidnap and murder innocent teenaged schoolchildren. (ironically when Israel catches such people alive their policy isnt execution but imprisonment, but that was not my point. My point was that making an innocent Palestinian pay the price for the murderous crime of another Palestinian is vile, like everything you stand for on the Palestinian side) .
Once again, if anyone is wondering whether the “resistance mindset” solves problems for anyone, here’s your exhibit A. Anyone expect Israelis to make it easier for weapons and materials to move across the Gaza border in the knowledge that John represents a mainstream view there?
You are garbage and if you happened to pick a different side you would be right there with the terrorists of Israeli “price tag” groups who target innocent Palestinian civilians as vengeance for what other Palestinians have done. Since there is no reasoning with your ilk I will wish u and your counterparts on the enemy side luck in killing each other and ridding the world of your cruel stupidity, making it a safer place for actual people to negotiate a reality where innocent civilians aren’t targets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq2MpG4gQgk
Allah ma’ak.
By and large I agree with you, but I don’t think it’s less “existential” to the Palestinians. As far as they have believe, Israel’s goal is to kill as many as needed to permanently displace them and take their land, and Judaize it. That, too, would be genocidal. It’s a phantasm, but lots of wars are fought on the basis of less-than-justified fears.
There are several comments here calling for ‘genocide’ to be reserved, or only used in extreme cases, or after a certain number of deaths, or after a certain portion of a population is killed. This is disappointing and pathetic. The official definition is not reserved for certain lives (or lives that matter)- it is a concept established to protect the attempted extermination of a group of people. With the daily targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure (it is not possible to call these collateral at this point with a straight face- not even John Kerry is able to do so), it is becoming more difficult to argue that this ‘offensive’ is anything other than an attempt to make life in Gaza unliveable. I seriously doubt that the next generation will look back on this attack as ‘defensible’ actions by Israel, designed merely to protect themselves. And I’m certainly not the only one who is calling for a use of the term ‘genocide’- see “More voices describe Gaza slaughter as genocide” for a list: https://mondoweiss.net/2014/07/describe-slaughter-genocide.html
I think it’s disappointing that you refuse to engage with the many well-reasoned criticisms above and instead summarily dismiss them as “pathetic”. And I believe it’s very bad practice to change the definition of specific terms just to fit your argument, especially not ones which are as sentiment- and judgement-laden as “genocide”. Also note how none of the commenters have defended the Israeli campaign or even just described it as “defensible”.
Right, because anything that someone doesn’t call genocide is fully defensible and warranted, and there is literally no middle or other ground between these two things.
Megan, you asked, “One question that has not been consistently raised is why the term ‘genocide’ is not being used to describe the activities of Israel in Gaza.” You stated, “There is a need to at least consider the term genocide and its application to Israel and Palestine… It is time for an honest assessment of Israeli actions- not just in this recent Gaza ‘offensive’ but in terms of its entire method of occupying and controlling Palestinians and their land.”
I think most of your readers took this to mean we’d have a discussion about both the term genocide and its applicability to the current crisis — not, as it appears now, that the current crisis is a genocide and we should discuss why no one is calling it such, although that could be a second question depending on the answer to the first. Hence, Simon, Colin, etc. took up your question, and we do not find that Israel’s actions in Gaza, based on the facts we have and our understanding of the term genocide, are properly genocidal. This does not mean we condone them, or think these actions are “acceptable” violence. It does mean we do not think the term genocide as we understand it usefully applies to the crisis — that is to say, calling Israel’s actions genocidal, or the crisis a genocide, does more to distort our understanding of the issue than it does to clarify it. We’ve outlined our reasons. Rather than engaging with these reasons, or showing us how our definitions of genocide could be improved, you call these reasons “disappointing and pathetic.”
I previously pointed out that the boundaries of the very term genocide are contested, and often very ambiguous. My comments were aimed at underlining some problems inherent in assessing whether violence is genocidal or not as general propaedeutic to this conversation. This propaedeutic is important because the term genocide brings with it not only substantial moral admonishment of the violence labelled as genocide, but obliges signatories to the convention on genocide that you have quoted to act. In other words, using the term genocide puts into sequence a host of moral, legal, and political effects that are specific to a kind of violence, and not simply great violence or just any violence. The desire by one party or another to put into sequence these effects regardless of whether the violence in question is properly genocidal or not has led to a politicization of the term that threatens to make it meaningless as a signifier except as rhetorical move: political violence we do not like is called genocidal, political violence we approve of is not (on this see everything from Samantha Power to Mahmood Mamdani — this debate has been examined in the relevant literature, where there are also criticisms and defences of the UN convention you cite as a useful descriptor of genocide). Hence, I think we would all agree that if we want to be able to call things genocide and for that to label to mean something — and not simply be a label parties apply to violence they do not like, period — it is worth thinking about what genocide is.
A common component in most definitions of genocide is intent to destroy in whole or in part a group as such, and thus labelling a genocide requires evidence that this the intention of violence that may otherwise appear to be having adverse effects on a group but not have genocidal intent. In a wartime situation an area may be bombed, for example, that kills in part a group (technically, in fact, this happens if anyone in any group is killed), but we wouldn’t likely call this genocide. Unfortunately, for direct evidence of genocide to exist, a certain number of deaths of a group are going to have to happen, and it will need to be clear these deaths occurred because the deceased were identified as belonging to a ethnic, cultural, etc. group marked for death as such, and not for any other reason. Hence we call the 8,000 deaths of the Srebrenica massacre genocidal, but not simply because it involved 8,000 violent deaths. This is not a way of saying deaths of 8,000 is excusable or acceptable. It is to say that for genocide to have meaning as a term applied to a specific kind of violence, we can’t apply it to just any violence that we do not approve of. (Clear evidence in our current context would be if Israel had plans to invade its neighbours for the purpose of eliminating the Palestinians there, as well, though this would not exhaust the possibilities of clear evidence). In an attempt to get around this problem, the convention includes “incitement to genocide,” and so on. What constitutes clear evidence of this is also controversial, though: note the criticisms of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign, which was justified on the basis that we had evidence of genocidal activities, and reasons to assume these activities would increase, at a very early stage — whereas the ethnic cleansing of Kosovars actually mostly occurred after the air strikes began.
You suggest, “it is becoming more difficult to argue that this ‘offensive’ is anything other than an attempt to make life in Gaza unliveable.” If it were not “anything other than” an attempt to make Gaza unliveable, Israel’s air strikes should be arranged around hitting targets that would most work toward this aim. Do we see evidence that Israel has targeted mostly hospitals, roads, power grids, and not other kinds of targets not directly connected to livability in Gaza? I ask this as a serious question. If we did, we would then have to ask whether this amounts to something like forcible expulsion or ethnic cleansing, rather than genocide — which would be a campaign to kill Palestinians by virtue of the fact they are Palestinians, rather than to make their home uninhabitable. All three of these carry extreme moral admonishment, but our effort here is to be accurate with out labelling.
(We could have a conversation about why the label genocide is particularly damning, versus “mere” ethnic cleansing, or violence involving civilian deaths as such, of course; this seems to be true at least rhetorically: if we call something genocide, as I mentioned above, people turn their heads; ethnic cleansing, democide, etc. right down to the very normalized “counter-insurgency” tend to turn heads a lot less so. As such we can understand the tendency, if someone is against all violence that kills civilians or even deliberately targets them, to label such violence genocide — hence one of the problem inherent in the term. I will simply note here that you seem to suggest in your comments that you want to label the current violence genocide rather than something else because you want to morally condemn it — or rather, that our labelling it as something other than genocide is “pathetic” because this does not sufficiently morally condemn it. If either case is true, it is the moral condemnation attached the term that is sought, rather than the specific kind of violence described as genocide. Being charitable, I’ve assumed you truly do want to have a discussion about whether what we’re seeing in Israel can be described as genocide, and how we might go about thinking through this label in such a circumstance, hence this lengthy reply.)
A last point for now: we might also bring up the problem of mixed-motives. That is to say, in a given situation, actors may have different ends in mind (at the same time) when they commit violence against another group. We may for the purposes of thinking through the application of the genocide term here assume that perhaps Israel is constrained in some regards (by domestic politics, international war law, or whatever) and therefore cannot simply kill all the Palestinians or engage directly in genocide. And thus it is pursuing strategies which will have the same effect (making Gaza unliveable by bombing everything, for example). Here I think before we begin using the term genocide we’d need very good evidence that genocide is in fact the intention of Israel’s actions, and there is some reason to believe the means chosen and a genocidal end are connected. Again, I simply have not seen this evidence.