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If our ‘benchmark’ for genocide is the Holocaust, in which the vast majority of Jews under Nazi geopolitical control were murdered, then it’s hard to see how Israel’s action in Gaza is genocide. Even assuming that the vast majority of the Hamas-reported casualty figures are civilians, something like 1% of the population have been killed, which is not unreasonably high in comparison to historic invasions of dense urban environments. Whatever the threshold for genocide, 20,000 casualties out of a population of 2,000,000 surely isn’t it.
The Israelis have proposed multiple reasonable accords with the Arabs, who have rejected all of them, and who indeed rejected even the UN’s 1947 accord, brokered by many global powers. More generally, I don’t think that either Israel or Hamas are ‘genocidal’; they would commit genocide if they could, but so would many tribes and peoples throughout history, what matters is whether they can (both geopolitically/diplomatically and practically), and in this case neither can by those conditions.
To be clear, that wasn’t my intent. My intention was to argue that the expulsion of descendants of German Gastarbeiter would not be ethically equivalent to the Holocaust by any means. I added the last line about Israel because I knew that, otherwise, it would be all anyone would discuss in the replies. I don’t think the fate of the Palestinians and the fate of Muslims in Western Europe are linked, certainly not in so direct a way.
I know you said in the past 'I don't support the West giving Israel aid'. However, the key issue with Israel repatriating/expelling Arabs out of Israel is that they're using our strength to do it and having us pay most of the diplomatic, economic and military price. If it weren't for the US carrier groups nearby, the looming threat of Western firepower to back up Israel and the munitions they've received, they would not be able to do what they've been doing.
The intense bombing and blockade meets "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" to a certain extent. Genocides are routinely listed which don't kill a high % of the population in question - the Rohingyas for example. If the Israelis have killed 1% of the Palestinian population in 3 months of war, that's roughly similar to what happened in Myanmar over several years, indeed it happened at a faster rate.
The Israelis never proposed any reasonable accord with the Palestinians or at least they haven't done so sincerely. They've refused to allow Palestinian statehood, which includes control of borders, airspace, water rights and raising an armed force. They expelled a large number back in 1948, more in 1967 and won't let them return. They've consistently annexed more and more land from Palestine, regardless of what the UN says. If the UN ruled to give Israel land more land than they had before, as it did in 1947, they'll take that land happily. If the UN rules against Israel and tells them to give land to Palestine as in 1967, they'll ignore them and keep taking land. These are not the actions of a state that's interested in a long-term diplomatic solution but a state that knows they are stronger and wields that strength (our strength) to their advantage.
True, it's not you but there were a bunch here who make an equivalence between Palestine and struggles with third world migration - 'how can you claim to be against terror attacks/atrocities in the West from migrants and not oppose terror attacks/atrocities against Israel' was the implicit reasoning. The natural conclusion is 'since we oppose terror attacks against Israel, we should assist Israel in war'. Yet one could reverse it just as easily: 'since we oppose bombing of civilians and support national self-determination, we should support Palestine in war'.
This sort of thinking is the underlying rationale behind the disastrous global war on terror. Terror is a subset of war, war is the use of force to achieve political goals. There's no need to support either Israel or Palestine, it's not and shouldn't be about who can present themselves as the victim. We shouldn't be picking sides in other people's conflicts.
Diplomatic perhaps, but economic and military? Other have already pointed out that most of Israel's foreign aid is for them to buy US weapons - in other words, it's a government subsidy for the US defense industry.
The US is probably all that is keeping the Israelis from literally committing genocide. Our presence may give them more of a sense of security, but it also serves a sort of "big brother is watching" function and gives them less excuse to claim that they are under an existential threat.
US carrier groups aren't deterring Hamas or Hezballah, they're there to deter Iran.
But it's still a transfer of wealth from the US to Israel. If I give you an Amazon gift card then I'm giving you something valuable even if Amazon also benefits. If the US announced tomorrow that it's stopping all aid to Israel I don't think their reaction would be "I don't care, it's just a subsidy to the US defense industry".
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Yes, they would. Israel has won very consistently in major conventional wars.
Thanks to US military aid. If it were the Soviet backed Arabs vs Israel alone Israel would've lost.
More recently, without US support the Israelis would not have enough munitions to bomb Gaza as intensively as they have since they're using munitions that come straight from the US. Without US support the Israelis would've probably just made peace, as opposed to continual settling and expansion, since they'd be paying full price.
https://www.axios.com/2023/11/04/us-israel-aid-military-funding-chart
Israel won in the 40’s without US support, and it’s reasonable to think they’d be poorer without US support but they probably still would have won the 6 day and Yom Kippur war.
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Who would stop them?
You think Hezbollah could stage a successful land invasion against Israel?
Or that Egypt would give it one more go despite knowing that even if they succeeded in breaking through, they'd just get their victorious troops neutron bombed?
You don't have to be capable of storming Tel Aviv to impose serious costs on Israel, just like you don't have to raise your flag over Washington DC to impose costs on the USA. If it weren't for unflinching US support the Israelis would moderate their stance since they'd have a less favourable balance of power.
Finally, they're using US supplied weapons:
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Why? Who do you think would invade them in 2024?
Hezbollah would've launched a major attack, not skirmished on the border. The US seems to think somebody would've been opportunistic, they sent a carrier group there with the express intention of warding off any opportunists. https://www.voanews.com/a/us-aircraft-carrier-to-remain-in-mediterranean-near-israel-officials-say-/7400248.html
I don’t think we know this - I don’t think Hizbullah & Hamas together can take Israel. Iran would have huge logistical difficulties intervening directly and it is… not obvious that would succeed, even if Israel didn’t have nukes.
I don't think Hamas + Hezbollah can take Israel, but I do think there is at least some probability they would have tried if the US hadn't moved its carrier groups nearby. And in that reality we're talking about a much bigger, bloodier, and less restrained war than the one we're seeing now.
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Return to where? The right of return is such a tremendous case of isolated demand for rigor. I don't know any other case in which a treaty between two powers allowed people who left to come back into a land now controlled by a foreign power.
Well, we can see what happened after a unilateral withdrawal from settlements in Gaza.
I actually disagree with RR’s response here - allowing refugees to return after a war is historically normal, not allowing it is somewhat unusual (though by no means unheard of). Rulers usually didn’t care what ethnicity their subjects were in the past, and usually preferred mass forced conversion to expulsion except in special circumstances. Why not let the expelled Palestinians return (since their expulsion probably wasn’t actually planned)? Democracy creates a very strong incentive to engage in (relatively soft in this case, to the Yishuv’s credit) ethnic cleansing.
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Historically, it is indeed customary for stronger powers to expel populations they defeat in war. If you read my posts I note that history is written in blood, that this is how borders are made.
We also saw intensive bombing of Gaza, indiscriminate shooting of protesters, those IDF T-shirts with 'one shot two kills' and pregnant women in the crosshairs pre October 7th. It reveals a certain attitude. Do you think this might be related to lots of people joining Hamas and going on to dedicate their lives to killing Israelis?
Intensive bombing, you mean after gazans shot rockets at Israel?
Shooting protestors indiscriminately after they tried to illegally cross the border?
It's beyond crazy to claim that Israel is responsible for the sorry state of Gaza when the gazans took advantage of the Israeli withdrawal to elect a party running on a platform of killing every jew and subsequently poking the three hundred pound gorilla next door for nearly twenty years. The hatred of Israel was well ingrained at the time of withdrawal. Everything since has been biding time and begging, borrowing, or stealing war materiel to attack Israel with.
How about sniping two women walking inside a church courtyard, as happened just before Christmas? Seems pretty indiscriminate and militarily indefensible to me, yet for some reason, the Israeli government doesn’t seem to mind.
As I said in my other comment, I'm not doing to defend everything Israel has done. But this event from December cannot possibly explain how things got to this state in the first place.
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There was no 'illegally trying to cross the border', they were protesting from inside the fence.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/02/no-justification-israel-shoot-protesters-live-ammunition
When did I claim that Israel is responsible for the sorry state of Gaza? It's a conflict, responsibility is split. Obviously it's Israeli (US-supplied) bombs that are doing the destruction.
I'm not going to defend every Israeli action, but this was a classic "mostly peaceful" protest.
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