I think what happened in Rwanda had the specific goal of murdering/eliminating people of a particular group. I don't personally think that anyone but some real extremists in Israel want to kill Palestinians because they are Palestinians. When I argued about this with someone else the other day, the other party said a lot of things like, "but in effect..."

well I guess you could make that argument although I think the killing of a few hundred or even a few thousand people is kind of a flimsy argument for genocide without the intent to kill them BECAUSE of their nationality. Truthfully, a shit ton of civilians are killed in all wars. Are all wars genocides?

Americans probably killed 100,000+ civilians in Iraq. Was it an Iraqi genocide? I'm not setting up a strawman, just trying to find where the borders of this term are because it seems to mean an increasing number of things

it's not genocide when Jews do it

sometimes I wish the Maccabees had been wiped out

i was surprised to learn that the definition includes cultural annihilation, a deliberate effort to destroy a ethnicity, race or religion, and that doesn't necessarily involve mass murder. i think the more general definition makes a lot of sense, and it could be argued the israel's treatment of civilian palestinians is exactly that.

so again is all war genocide? what wars have occurred that have not resulted in the deaths of mass numbers of civilians of one group or another?

was Sherman's campaign in the Civil War a genocide of the Confederate nation? was the undiscriminating firebombing of German cities during WWII a genocide by the Allies against the Germans?

like I said before I'm not sure what the efficacy is in expanding the definition to ******* any mass killing of people which can be construed to belong to a group when we already have terms like ground invasion, asymmetrical warfare, total war, etc., all of which to me better describe what is going on here. It just seems like an effort to legitimize the use of buzzword to rile people up

I guess the foundation of my problem with using the G word in this scenario is that I really don't think ethnicity or religion or nationality are the dominant factors in why Israel is blowing up children in the streets. I think that intention matters, and a lot of civilians dying is not enough to constitute a genocide. Shooting and killing a would-be mugger who was armed only with a knife might be a horrible perversion of self-defense and murder, but it is not an assassination just because the outcome is that someone died.

no. the object of many modern wars is to disarm the adversary by destroying their economic means to fight the war. this is why modern strategies call for not only call for targeting military facilities, but also bridges, power plants and other public works facilities. bombing hospitals and homes carry higher cost-benefit ratios than say, a bridge that severely limits freedom of movement within gaza.

the thing is, Israel has already accomplished that very well through their extreme regulation of imports. there are no high value targets. furthermore, the crude bombs that hamas is lobbing into israel are doing damage that is minuscule compared to the IDF's devastation.

there's a fairly blurry line that quantitatively divides collateral damage and genocide, but i think we're well beyond that threshold in this particular flare-up.

I'm just not really sure how you are making that call. Not to be insensitive, but the human cost here is actually quite low compared to other conflicts along ethnic divides going on in the world right now. Your answer is pretty flimsy. Israel's attack is "well beyond that threshold..." what threshold? Where is it? What makes this genocide but not the American occupation of Iraq in which the civilian to combatant dead ratio is fantastically higher?

did al Qaeda commit a genocidal act by killing 3000 Americans on 911? Again, I'm not trying to set up strawmen, I just honestly want to know what line everyone is seeing here? "I know it when I see it" is not really an acceptable measurement.

Bread Regal: "genocide isn't a numbers game and is not only to do with mass murder"
redbreegull: "well, to be fair, a relatively low number of Palestinians have died"

As I said, a quantitative threshold is practically impossible to define here. Israel and its allies all in one way or another works to delegitimize palestinian culture as a whole. They're an oppressed and brutalized population who can't build any sort of capital for shit because the PA keeps it all from coming in.

The point I'm trying to get at is that israel doesn't need to shoot missiles into gaza. the iron dome is doing a fantastic job at protecting israelis. that's fantastic. and that's all that's needed here. Israel's per capita military spending is only exceeded by the US and they probably have nukes as well. If Israel was interested in destroying their weapons, it would be sufficient to just let hamas use them all up.

Firing those missiles into gaza gives israel negligible tactical advantage over hamas, and the fact that it's so unnecessary leads me to believe they are targeting civilians.

1. Israel's allies largely condemn the way it treats Palestinians, it is Israel and its neighbors that have delegitimized Palestinian culture as a whole.

2. The iron dome has prevented a lot of damage but your implication seems to be that it is fullproof which it isn't, plenty of rockets still reach the ground despite their rudimentary nature (they are quite a bit better than the rockets Hamas has used in past phases of conflict though). Not that it makes it acceptable, but do you think any country would act differently if terrorists were shooting rockets at them from foreign soil? My guess is no

3. Israel absolutely has nuclear weapons but that's not relevant to this particular argument

4. Hamas has been firing rockets at Israel for years. Thousands and thousands and thousands of rockets. They have been pretty crunched financially the last few years and yet they are still firing rockets. The idea that they might just use them all up and call it a day is laughable, man.

5. Israeli's invasion and missile attacks on rocket launcher sites is very shortsighted because it is driven by extreme security paranoia and fear of terrorism. It doesn't have to do with giving them longterm military advantage over Hamas, but also doesn't mean they are purposely shooting at civilians. The goal is to eliminate the immediate threat which is rocket launching sites and tunnels. I think you actually give Netanyahu too much credit for assuming he must be acting rationally, either he has a master plan for disarming Hamas forever or he must be on a campaign of organized terror. Neither is true, he's a paranoid neoconservative Israeli George W. Bush.

you also have to understand that for the current people in power in Israel (the nutjob imperialists and neocons), the situation already is optimal minus the rocket fire. It would not suit their ideological endpoint either to destroy Palestinian autonomy or to allow Palestine to morph into a functional state with a reasonable government.

Someone I know posted this on facebook, it's probably the most succinct and accurate explanation of what is going on that I have seen

This description avoids to say what it is: war crimes, shitting all over the Geneva Conventions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/wo...over-gaza.html

So what is it? An accident? More kids have died than militants.
Is the Israeli military so untrained that they accidentally hit a hospital or shelters they previously declared as refugee zone for civilians?

is anybody reading all of his posts? it's TOC level shit

No it's not shut the fuck up Scotty

So my honest question is: what should Israel do? Obviously not what they're doing. But I don't think nothing is the right answer either. Right?****

***i know very little about this shit

they should wait until the first of april and then go "hahaha! it was all a joke" and then everyone will laugh and forget about it and there will be peace.

well if you really want to understand the current situation in israel between the jewish/hebrew israelis and the palestinians who include hamas, but are not entirely comprised thereof, you have to really take a step back and look at the long and convoluted history of the region, including to a large extent but not limited to the longstanding racial, religious and ideological tensions between the two major groups currently extant in the region but also by taking into account the higher level political situation vis-à-vis petroleum politics with the united states and other distant developed nations factoring in, but also longstanding geopolitical jostling for power between the shia- and sunni-predominant islamic arab states in the middle eastern region. now, obviously, everyone has their own opinion on this matter and on other related matters of all stripes, but i think we have to be honest here and own up to the fact that i'm the only one of us here right now who has actually been to israel, which if you stepped back for a moment you'd probably realise actually has no material bearing on the argument but i feel it makes me seem more worldly, which is a trait i very much wish to be able to be described as possessing, and also sophisticated and well-travelled and other such socially-desirable descriptors. anyway i'm getting sidetracked which is the last thing one is advisable to do when discussing such serious, complex, nuanced, difficult, troublesome, intractable matters such as these. the point of the matter is that i have a weak emotional stake in the proceedings which i am determined to make a centrepiece of the ongoing discussion therein, as my sense of importance and your sense of my importance are very, to be brutally frank and honest with everyone here, important. also, i think we should consider the fact that these people are putting guns in places where there are other people, and who's really to blame there? i don't know but it certainly seems like something we should be thinking about. anyway, did i mention that i've been to israel?

nuke craotia!

can you expand upon that please

no, not really. :(
gotta nuke something?

Lol

i do realise that my opinion isn't very valuable, as i've never visited croatia.

I honestly don't know how to answer this. Blowing up anything that moves to get to the terrorists is pretty much the lowest and most disgusting way of conducting a war, but I also think Bread Regal's point about waiting it out for hamas to run out of rockets and go home is absurd.

Truthfully I believe Israel could probably deconstruct the Hamas war machine all on foot going street by street, and this would greatly reduce civilian casualties. A lot more Israelis would be killed though. It's not really difficult to understand why a country would choose killing a ton of foreigners over letting a ton of their own people die to take the moral high road. Particularly a large Israeli death toll would be anathema to Netanyahu and co. because their entire ethos is built in them being strong-armed defenders at the gate.

no, not an accident. The goal is simply to disable Hamas weapons with extreme prejudice no matter what, and if there are some civilians in the area so be it. unforgivable, yes, but I don't see any advantage for Israel in actually targeting civilians as a tactic. Hamas certainly does not care, and in fact the civilian deaths bolster Hamas' position and isolate Israel.

i feel like i've had an argument with RBG about how many people need to die before we call it genocide. honestly lately every thread gives me deja vu.

but he's visited israel, he knows some people there. he had love and laughs and acoustic guitar jams with some amazing folks. he's seen things you people wouldn't believe

i'm pretty sure it results in people like Manohla Dargis

well, and señor ding dong here

kinda like native americans amirite usa #1

wave of trotskilicious

way hay-hay hay-have

drive my car

into the ocea-a-an

hey, if we're doing pixies lyrics...
she's a real left winger 'cause she been down south and held peasants in her arms she said i could tell you a story that could make you cry
WHAT ABOUT YOU I SAID ME TOO I SAID I COULD TELL YOU A STORY THAT WILL MAKE YOU CRY