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:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Clear enough, right?
Under this definition Israel’s occupation and war of extermination is absolutely genocide, unquestionably. The goal is to kill, mutilate, and displace the Palestinian people. The goal is the total ethnic cleansing of Gaza, by any means necessary. Israel’s war on Gaza is genocide.
However, under this definition are the completely justified goals of Hamas also genocide? They intend to destroy the settler-colonial monstrosity that is Zionism and eradicate the nation state of Israel; Palestine from the river to the sea. That, technically, means they are committed with intent to destroy the national group of Israelis by displacement, death, or simply making them into Palestinians after destroying Israel’s government.
That doesn’t seem right to me. I am absolutely in solidarity with Hamas and Palestine in their struggle against the Zionist entity. An occupied people destroying their occupier’s government and settler identity can’t be considered genocide, because it creates this legal and ethical equivalency with the settlers.
And yet, technically, that seems to be the case. Am I wrong?
And, by pointing out this technicality, am I just a dog for Zionism?
It’s no use arguing definitions without also discussing ideology. No one except logic-brained online dweebs treat dictionaries like the gospel.
Instead of abstracting away all context, you should be focusing in on it. Israel is a recent colonial invention, Palestine has centuries of history (and millenia more under different names). Isrealis are almost exclusively immigrants, Palestinians are indigenous. Israel is conquering territory, Palestine is being stolen from. Israelis live a life comparable to Western countries, Palestinians live in concentration camps. Violence between these two groups are not at all comparable even if the same words are being used to describe them.
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I definitely agree, but I actually do think words matter. Not dictionary definitions, necessarily, but the word “genocide” is a thought-terminating cliche that shuts down discussion. How many people have decided to condemn both sides because both want genocide? It’s nonsense, of course, the genocide of settlers is vastly different from the genocide by settlers, but once genocide is invoked the conversation is over.
I agree that words are important which is why you shouldn’t cede an inch on this topic - the removal of an occupying force isn’t genocide, it’s liberation. People who label the situation as a mutual genocide are using words not to describe reality, but to obfuscate it.
If someone brings it up, ask them what they think about the Irish War of Independence or the Haitian Revolution.
I have! However, I was convinced that’s distinctly different because the occupiers have a nation to go back to after the occupation is defeated. French slave owners in Haiti still got to keep their French national identity. British occupiers in Ireland still got to keep their British identity.
Israeli settlers, once the Zionist entity is defeated and Israel is dismantled, will have no national identity. They’ll just be Palestinians.
By the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, that’s genocide. And that can’t be right.
Netanyahu is from Philadelphia. He can easily go back there.
Isreali settlers can all trace their nationality to some other country since Israel didn’t exist until 1948. Netanyahu would be a American Palestinian for example. We could also come up with a new word to describe the settlers as a district group like we do with Afrikaners (Dutch South Africans).
Either way, Israel isn’t real and treating Israeli nationality as equivalent to Palestinians’ is a mistake. That’s like carving a chunk out of Mexico, calling it “Freeland”, then crying genocide against Freelandians when Mexico takes its land back.
A lot of Israeli settlers are from mixed national backgrounds, the only national identity they have is Israeli.
Though if Israel isn’t real then that kinda solves that problem; they’re not Israeli, they’re Zionist settlers and pretending they’re different because they drew some lines on a map and have a flag and use brutal violence to enforce apartheid.
I don’t know the answer but it could be that Zionism is not a nation, race, ethnicity, or religion?
Israel is Zionism. They’re inextricably linked.