Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumThere has never been a plausible case of Israeli genocide.
I've avoided this conversation for more than the past year. It's likely that this was discussed contemporaneously with the BBC interview, but that I didn't see it. At this point though, as people begin to finally realize that they've been duped by an extraordinary Iranian propaganda campaign, it would be immensely helpful if people would, at the very least, stop making the claim of adjudicated genocide... right?
The video is 1:28 long. From its description:
Judge Donoghue: You know, Im glad I have a chance to address that because the Courts test for deciding whether to impose [provisional] measures uses the idea of plausibility, but the test is the plausibility of the rights that are asserted by the applicant, in this case South Africa. So the court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim in the court. It then looked at the facts as well, but it did not decide and this is something where Im correcting whats often said in the media it didnt decide that the claim of genocide was plausible."

surfered
(8,010 posts)


Source: CNN. Sky News, WSJ
OilemFirchen
(7,271 posts)
surfered
(8,010 posts)The war in Europe took 43 million lives. Dresden was firebombed in Feb of 45, only months before the end of the War.
In the Oct 7th attacks, Hamas murdered 700 Israelis and took 250 hostages. For that, Gaza looks like Dresden.
OilemFirchen
(7,271 posts)Dresden established modern international wartime law. The Hague determined that, in fact, war crimes can not be claimed based upon proportionality.
I'll add what's probably rhetorical at this point: there are now putatively more residents of Gaza than on October 8, 2023. There also continue to be roughly two million Arabs living in Israel. That doesn't sound like genocide to me, but it's not my call. It's the call of the ICJ (in this case), and their determination is the subject of this OP.
Ken Dayenu
(111 posts)My grandfather is from Poland. 90% of the Jews in Poland were killed. Over 2.5 million people. That is what a genocide looks like. Something can be really bad without it being genocide. It could be an atrocity, barbaric, or heinous. Genocide is just a very charged word, particularly I would think for Jews. It gets in the way of having a useful discussion. The same goes for calling Jews or Israelis Nazis. That is just offensive.
Whatever we call it. There are a lot of dead people in Gaza. A lot of them are children. Nobody can be happy about that. Nobody can be happy about the latest offensive when we were told weeks ago that they were close to a ceasefire agreement.
surfered
(8,010 posts)OilemFirchen
(7,271 posts)I believe that you have the best of intentions, but your second paragraph is chock full of loaded language. Recognizing that there are always exceptions to outright declarations, I'll nonetheless use a very broad brush and state that no one is denying that there are a lot of dead people in Gaza and that a lot of them are children. With the same brush, I'll aver that no one is "happy about that". Generally, the people who use that language in defense of something are people who are accusing other people of harboring those heinous perspectives. In my experience, they are also those who freely claim that Israel is committing genocide.
That's why I brought up this clip. Israel is not committing genocide. Those who make that claim are doing so in bad faith or out of ignorance and unless that's stopped (especially among the stenographic media members, like the interviewer in this example) the fervor will intensify, endangering more people, and greater atrocities will be claimed, with the desire for greater retribution.
I don't think there's another word that's necessary. I'm just hoping that as the manufactured vitriol subsides, this assertion is the first to go away - as it's the most incendiary claim underlying all of the other horrid rhetoric.
Ken Dayenu
(111 posts)I get that the words I chose are still loaded, just less loaded. Do you think I'm accusing you of being "happy about" the death of children? That was definitely not my intent. I think we agree on the main point that calling this a genocide is not appropriate.
OilemFirchen
(7,271 posts)
surfered
(8,010 posts)If a person dies, the unnecessary death should be the issue, not the word to describe it
..killed, wasted, offd, iced, taken out, rubbed out, etc.
We should spend more effort trying to stop it than describe it.
OilemFirchen
(7,271 posts)Here, in this OP, the word is the literal subject. And if it's the wrong word, as it is, it shouldn't be used.
Okay?
surfered
(8,010 posts)I try to find the humor in everything, so I hope you take no offense, but this site offers a language and linguistics forum.
Peace!
Israeli
(4,415 posts)Bibi uses it all the time , you American Jewish Democrats havent noticed ??
A little history :
In Israel, calls for genocide have migrated from the margins to the mainstream
Published: April 2, 2025
Thirty years ago in Israel, advocating for genocide could land you in prison.
In April 1994, an Israeli rabbi named Ido Alba published an article that read, in part, In war, as long as the war has not been decided, it is a commandment to kill every non-Jew from the nation one is fighting against, even women and children. Even when they do not directly endanger the one killing them, there is concern that they may assist the enemy in the continuation of the war.
An Israeli court convicted Alba for incitement to racism and encouraging violence and sentenced him to four years in prison.
Now the legal system is ignoring similar rhetoric.
In December 2023, following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which resulted in the killing of approximately 1,200 Israeli civilians, soldiers and migrant workers, Rabbi Moshe Ratt, whos seen as a public intellectual among Israeli West Bank settlers, composed a long post on Facebook.
In it, he noted that in the past, some people may have struggled with the morality of destroying an entire people, including women and children. Now they dont. Obliquely referring to the Palestinians, he added, Some nations have descended into such depths of evil and corruption that the only solution is to eradicate them completely, leaving no trace.
More recently, on Feb. 24, 2025, Nissim Vaturi, one of the deputy speakers in the Knesset, Israels parliament, called for killing all Palestinian adults in Gaza.
Ratts and Vaturis words went unpunished. In fact, genocidal rhetoric like theirs in which the entire destruction of a people is proposed has become more common in Israel.
Continued @ https://theconversation.com/in-israel-calls-for-genocide-have-migrated-from-the-margins-to-the-mainstream-250010
Listen to what this government is saying they are not shy about it , the only good Arab is a dead Arab .....bottom line .
LymphocyteLover
(8,354 posts)Forced displacement of people, mass starvation, complete destruction of cities, and the intent to remove and wipe out a whole people is there too.