The linguistic truth-twisting over Israel/Gaza disgusts me. It is appalling that bad faith actors have successfully weaponised “genocide”, “holocaust” and “Nazis” against the descendants of genuine victims of those things. Let’s remind ourselves of truth and facts. The definition of genocide: “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” And the component parts: “1A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and 2A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively: - 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.” So let’s look at this with regard to Israel. Firstly, intent. Nowhere, anywhere, has anyone expressed a plan to destroy all Gazans. South Africa’s joke of a case cites a variety of punchy statements from Israeli politicians and soldiers as evidence of intent. Most of these submissions were from people *nowhere near* policy making. Speeches by policy makers have been taken out of context, the old crowd favourite being “Amalek”. But look at what Netanyahu went on to say in that speech: “In their name and on their behalf, we have gone to war, the purpose of which is to destroy the brutal and murderous Hamas-ISIS enemy, bring back our hostages and restore the security to our country, our citizens and our children.” It’s obvious what he meant. Factor in the horror of the events of 7 October, and, frankly, you can’t blame Israeli politicians for sounding pissed off and being punchy. But the other half of the equation is action on the ground. We can dismiss preventing births, and we can disregard forcible transfer of children. Even Israel’s critics don’t accuse them of that. So the other three: of course, people have been killed. Of course, bodily and mental harm will have been caused. This is a war. The key question is how and why? Hamas fighters are legitimate targets. At a best guess, Israel has killed 12-15k Hamas fighters, with many more wounded. Hamas omits this in their weekly casualty figures (which, of course, don’t stand up to the merest statistical scrutiny). We can safely take Hamas’ reported “37k dead civilians” and bring that total down to 20k at most. Still many people; still a tragedy. But is it legal? Well, that depends on Israeli targeting. Were those civilians legally collateral damage under the Law of Armed Conflict? I don’t know and you don’t know. However: we also have documented and unquestionable Israeli attempts to remove civilians from the areas they are attacking. For example, they delayed the assault on Gaza City until 800k people had fled South. That, I suggest, is not the action of an armed force determined to “destroy in whole or in part”. So, we turn to “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. Even Hamas’ 37k dead civilians, out of 2.4m, disprove this. We’re six months in. The conditions, whilst clearly appalling for Gazan civilians, are demonstrably not bringing about physical destruction to any greater extent than one would expect in a war zone of this nature. No intent; no action: no genocide. Criticise Israeli strategy, by all means. Criticise the stupid behaviour of young IDF reservists who do immeasurable strategic harm by videoing unprofessional behaviour and sharing it on social media. Be appalled at dead civilians: that is the correct human response. But the deepest shame on those who aim to cynically and evilly weaponise the worst crime in history, by accusing its historical victims of being its modern perpetrators.
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