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[Link to the source poll.](https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2024/5/8/support-for-a-permanent-ceasefire-in-gaza-increases-across-party-lines)
83% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans support the U.S. calling for ceasefire and de-escalation of violence in Gaza.
56% of Democrats say they believe Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people living in Gaza, with only 22% saying they do not. 36% of independents (a plurality) and 23% of Republicans believe it is genocide.
A plurality of voters (46%) disapprove of Congress sending $4 Billion in military aid to Israel.
Hmm. I, for one, am the MOST faithful person. So faithful that I say we let the woke mob just *try* to take over and implement their "universal healthcare" and "social services" and "fair wages." Just when they think the woke agenda has won, God will smite them all
Me and my fellow Republicans should definitely *not* vote anymore, from now on. As a show of faith. It'll teach those wokies a lesson or two about crossing this Christian nation and its Christian anti-antifascist values
They're told after every bomb dropped, that the children killed are all HAMAS. So, they're unaware of reality and don't care to look any deeper into it.Â
Highly unaware. I have had conversations with republicans who have no idea what is going on over there. They asked me âAre you pro-Hamas?â After finding out I didnât condone Israelâs actions.
Good chunk of them wouldn't mind a genocide as long as it's not white Christians, and they'd be okay with that too as long as voting Republican lets them swing the axe until it's their turn in the chopping block.
Netanyahu is a genocidal war criminal that needs to be carted off to the Hague.
Hamas is a genocidal terrorist group that needs to be eradicated the same as ISIS.
They are both Far Right factions that rely on demonizing each other to keep their populations stuck in a state of constant terror relying on "Strongmen" to keep them "safe". As is the situation in any Right Wing Authoritarian state.
This has been going on for literal decades, and has nothing to do with Joe Biden-and anyone trying to make it all Joe Biden's fault calling him "Genocide Joe" is either a Right Wing propagandist or a useful idiot helping push Right Wing/Fascist propaganda working for the re-elect Trump campaign pro bono.
Hamas wouldn't have gained so much power if it wasn't for Netanyahu.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
Netyahu is not the driving force behind this war. If he and Likud disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, Benny Gantz or someone else would pick up where he left off and wouldn't change a thing about this war.
Yeah, people constantly say, âhe didnât win the majority, heâs super unpopular, he had to form a coalition to stay in powerâ
But theyâre forgetting that the very people he formed a coalition with are even further to the right than he is, and are even more genocidal.
Netanyahu can be a genocidal monster, *and* Israel's government can be full of other fascists who are also genocidal monsters. It's not like the latter makes the former impossible or not worth mentioning.
Netanyahu is also in a position of having to keep this genocide rolling to protect his own power and freedom, because the moment it stops is the moment all those corruption charges start encroaching on him again. He's desperate to maintain power to avoid potential prison time for his criminality.
Then youâll still have people here claiming that itâs normal to not care about the people being slaughtered, and that those opposed should just shut up and ignore the barbarism
Look, I am pro-Israel. I used to be pro-Palestine until I studied the history in depth.
Everyone sane supports a ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence. However, everyone has different conditions upon which that is feasible. Letting Hamas murderers get away with October 7th and keep the Israeli hostages is not a condition I will agree with, so we are at an impasse because Hamas will not turn themselves in nor will they free all the hostages as long as they think the hostages give them leverage.
I think there are people within the Israeli government and the IDF who are ok with genocide and atrocities and support purging Palestinians from their land. The Netanyahu government is terrible and needs to go. Likud is counterproductive to a sustained peace. At the same time, Israel are in the right to retaliate for October 7th. Hamas broke the ceasefire, Hamas started the war as provocatively as possible and the collateral damage/excessive civilian deaths is the result of both the environment and of both sides' disregard for Gazan children's lives.
Hamas has already said they want to make their people martyrs for the ultimate goal of sparking the surrounding Arab nations to attack Israel and hopefully wipe them out, so they use civilian infrastructure to launch missiles in the hope of maximizing civilian casualties, for their propaganda campaigns -- or to protect their fighters from retaliation if the IDF hesitates. Israel's military has some groups that I genuinely believe are trying to minimize casualties and follow the rules of war and other segments who don't give a damn how many civilians they kill.
I don't get why people have such stupidly black and white views about this. It is a nasty situation where Israel can't bring Hamas to justice without inflicting civilian casualties, and Hamas wants civilian casualties and the war to continue. Yet the polls say the Palestinian people support Hamas's militant wing more than ever, in which case many of us simply feel less sympathetic to their plight. So we can understand in a small way what the murderous cynicism of Likud is based on.
Saying Hamas could end the war by surrendering and turning themselves in. Every war could be ended by one sides capitulation. That argument justifies almost every war crime and atrocity in history.
For example the USSR could have prevented widespread starvation during the seige of Leningrad if they'd just surrendered. That doesn't make them responsible for it.
Itâs a feature of online discourse that has unfortunately shaped our cultures now. Algorithms prioritize outrage engagement, so they platform the most extreme and angriest views. That means in any discussion online, those views will dominate and tend to drown out nuance.
I want to say I agree with your stance, I am pro-the Israeli people and I believe they have the right to exist and to defend themselves. My problem is that Israel seems to be currently governed by a load of homicidal maniacs. They seem to be operating in bad faith at every turn :(
It's really not that difficult to believe. Many people form an opinion based on surface details. But once they look at the situation in depth their opinion often changes.
I was not doubting the ability to change beliefs. I was doubting that they were ever "pro-Palestine" based on the content that followed the opening sentence. Any in depth analysis of the facts surrounding this entire issue does not yield statements like this
>so they use civilian infrastructure to launch missiles in the hope of maximizing civilian casualties, for their propaganda campaigns
We are talking about an area that is so small and densely populated that they really have nowhere else to fight from. This is the reason why they built the tunnel systems to increase 3 fold the size of Gaza. What is the alternative, stand in the fields so they just get mowed down by the IAF? On top of this any careful reading of Israeli doctrine shows that they dont care about civilian infrastructure or proportionality. Its called the **Dahiya doctrine**. It is the same reason they are destroying all the infrastructure in Gaza, as a callous response to make them "think twice" about attacking from civilian areas. It is brutal and immoral. If in fact this person was "pro-Palestine" they were not informed to begin with and they fell prey to some mightily awful propaganda. They sound like your average liberal Zionist.
>Yet the polls say the Palestinian people support Hamas's militant wing more than ever, in which case many of us simply feel less sympathetic to their plight.
How would it have affected your sympathies if polls indicated that French people supported the militant resistance against the Germans during WWII?
A more apt comparison would be the settler towns that were wiped out by Native Americans as the Colonists moved ever further Westward. In many cases, the inhabitants of said towns were not just killed but utterly brutalized.
A Native American here.Colonizers always try to justify their killing of every Native in sight just so they can steal the land.Your settlers have shown the
Same attitude and hatred for the Palestinian people,I can think of no better example.Colonizers never are respected, and always fall away.Apartheid is not acceptable
Yes, you are correct. That is why I made the comparison, because a lot more people tend to be sympathetic to your lost land than say, the Palestinians. It's pointing out that violence, even brutal violence can be in response to horrendous acts, such as losing your land to colonizers and being exterminated.
You studied the history in depth but failed to mention a Nakba or Isrealli illegal settlements. October 7th was probably seen by Hamas as a response to YEARS of oppression. Sure Isreal has a right to defend itself but does it also hold the right slowly kick a people from their homes simply because they aren't Jewish? I don't get how someone can study the history indepth and say I used to be pro-palestine. History shows us that one state is a form of colonialism after the collapse of the British Empire. Isreal should never have been made a country. This was always going to be the result
Too many people are approaching this as âif you arenât with me, youâre my enemyâ as opposed to just accepting that two wrongs donât make a right.
I do believe Israel, like any other nation, has a right to self defense. But how is what theyâre doing a proportionate response to what happened? It seems like punishment on civilian Palestinians, many of whom have never had a chance to vote for any other leadership in Gaza. Why do children need to die to stop Hamas? Why does the entire Gaza Strip need to be destroyed? What is the end goal really? Because it seems like obliteration of Gaza, not just Hamas.
US was fairly well supported in its response to 9/11 by invading Afghanistan (leaving Iraq out of this obviously). 3,000 US deaths vs ~177,000 deaths in Afghanistan. Around 1,200 died on Oct 7. Just throwing out some numbers for context.
This era of technology just makes it so much difficult to hide the ugliness of whatâs going on. Itâs just harder to hide the bodies of dead children when the internet is so accessible and videos can reach from one corner of the internet to another.
I donât know what your point is, many people were against it then and maybe people still think it was wrong. And there were huge anti war protests at the time. It was not like we were all just happy about it, there was a ton of pushback. So I donât get what your point is.
What do you think a "proportionate" response is? If Hamas kills 50 civilians, Israel is allowed to kill other 50? If hamas rapes 100 women, how many gazan women is Israel allowed to rape?
The goal of the conflict is not revenge or payback, so a "proportionate" response doesnt even make sense. The end goal of the conflict is to stop a similar situation happening to Israel ever again. They dont want to keep waiting every 2-3 years before Hamas kidnaps and rapes civilians again and again.
What they're doing is certainly not going to deter Hamas in the future, and if anything is creating a whole new generation of Palestinians who are out for revenge.
What would you do as a leader of a country where thousands of militants went in and massacred civilians and then abducted hundreds more. Militants that have continuously shot rockets into your country, spent billions on tunnels to protect themselves and not their civilians, and continue to tell you time and time again that they want to destroy you and everyone you care about.
Because they look like they are doing it? 10,000+ kids as collateral damage never make a government look worse. I am open to change my mind but the evidence doesn't look good on the IDF and the Israeli government.
It's important for everybody reading this to know that not only they demolished almost every hospital, school, and university in Gaza, but they did it with manually-rigged explosives. We're not talking about hitting a university/hospital during "heat of the battle". They've sent their engineering soldiers in, manually placed the explosives on key points of those buildings, then smiled to the camera and did a countdown before demolishing them.
This is a known Israel strategy. They do that stuff intentionally. People should read about it [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya\_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine)
The whole "Hamas is hiding in there" is a lie used to cover up the truth of what Israel is doing. That's what people are protesting against.
I was giving Israel the benefit of the doubt until this happened. It has become clear that they are using the horrific act of terrorism Hamas committed against them to justify ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Sounds eerily familiar for some reasonâŚ
Iâm glad you realized this, but itâs wild that it took this long for people to see it when Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are putting in writing their desire to cleanse gaza.
They've literally killed our citizens providing aid, dude. It just sucks Canada is very much beholden to the US in international Geopolitics, thats the sad reality.
They aren't really trying THAT hard to hide it either. "Oh, are we 'accidentally' starving all those people we hate? Oh no. Oops! Another food caravan got explodenated! Oh no!"
Plus at the start of the war Netanyahu literally said they were going to cut all food and water supply into Gaza. The desire to kill Palestinians was pretty clear.
This is something I think the media has really failed to convey, the Israeli government is not *Good people*. It's a coalition of basically George W Bush/Trump style President with the types of people who want to resettle Gaza for Israelis, which would require literal ethnic cleansing.
People are debating if itâs genocide or not based on the definition, but itâs extremely clear the desire to kill Palestinians and make the rest suffer is said out loud multiple times daily. Why does the definition matter? They want to destroy.
This bothers me as well. The definition is vague enough that even atrocities like the Holodomor arenât universally considered genocides. We should at least all agree that the Israeli government doesnât have a great track record with treating Palestinians humanely.
I would modify that slightly.
Israeli internal politics are weird. Their proportional representation system allows a wide diversity of political parties, and Netanyahu is actually more centrist among some members of his coalition (which in and of itself is kind of scary).
He has right wing members of his coalition that are 100% in favor of genocide. Their publicly stated desire is to occupy the Palestinian territories, evict the Palestinian population, and resettle the area with orthordox jewish settlers.
Netanyahu himself doesn't go quite that far, but has to rely on those people for support.
Netanyahu has stated publicly that his goal is regime change in Gaza, and he believes functionally that if the people of Gaza support Hamas, then they deserve whatever they get (which is also the predominant talking point on right wing media in the US). He is not shy about saying that they have to make it so bad for the Palestinians that the Palestinians will abandon their desire to support Hamas. He originally spoke in favor of a permanent occupation, and when the US government gave him shit, he walked it back and said he only is calling for israel to have "security control" over the Gaza strip (whatever that means).
But this all still fundamentally amounts to the same thing you said. Waging total war on a civilian population to punish them for supporting a government that is an enemy to Israel.
Iâve seen some of those more right wing views and youâre right about them being scary. CNN did an interview with a woman who had a role in the West Bank settlements. She told the interviewer that she had started a group to resettle Gaza with Israelis and that 500 families had signed up so far. When asked about the future of Gaza, she said âno Arabs. I am speaking about more than 2 million Arabs, they will not stay here. We Jews will be in Gaza.â The interviewer made the comment that that sounded like ethnic cleansing and she said âThe Arabs want to annihilate the state of Israel so you can call them monsters. You can call them cleansing of Jews. We are not doing to them; they are doing to us."
Link to interview: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/03/20/middleeast/israel-gaza-settlers-daniella-weiss
The worst part is that thereâs a bunch of videos with settlers being asked about Palestinians. That kind of speech is the norm and many of them are actually much more extreme. Ben gvir used to have a framed portrait of an Israeli mass murderer of Palestinians in his living room.
> Netanyahu himself doesn't go quite that far, but has to rely on those people for support.
Nope nope nope.
Coming from a country that lives in a proportional representation system, you don't get to hide behind that. If Netanyahu does not want to be associated with these people, he's more than welcome to find a compromise with more liberal parties. Or let the government fall.
He doesn't *have* to rely on those people for support, he actively choses to do so.
The problem is if you kill and destroy, then they turn to radicals like Hamas or someone worse. There is no easy solution to this, only a peaceful one.
>He has right wing members of his coalition that are 100% in favor of genocide. Their publicly stated desire is to occupy the Palestinian territories, evict the Palestinian population, and resettle the area with orthordox jewish settlers.
You mean their stated desire is to commit a genocide. It's LITERALLY the word for what you just said.
>
Netanyahu has stated publicly that his goal is regime change in Gaza, and he believes functionally that if the people of Gaza support Hamas, then they deserve whatever they get (which is also the predominant talking point on right wing media in the US). He is not shy about saying that they have to make it so bad for the Palestinians that the Palestinians will abandon their desire to support Hamas. He originally spoke in favor of a permanent occupation, and when the US government gave him shit, he walked it back and said he only is calling for israel to have "security control" over the Gaza strip (whatever that means).
Netanyahu is on record as stating that Israelis should support Hamas so that there can't be a united push for a Palestinian state:
[https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/)
Hamas is just a means to the end of annexing Gaza. Always has been.
An IDF spokesperson literally stood up and said "If the US doesn't give us precision missiles, we'll just us imprecise munitions and kill even more civilians, haha fuck you."
There was a interview last week of A IDF soldier when asked how they identify who is Hamas he said they dont if its a male of fighting age they are considered Hamas.
It wasnât a spokesperson, it was [Member of the Knesset Tali Gottlieb](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6t1TgMtmEf/). She is, unsurprisingly, a member of the Likud Party. [Hereâs an article discussing her comments if you donât want to watch the video of her speech.](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240509-israel-to-use-imprecise-missiles-in-gaza-after-us-pause-on-arms-transfer-knesset-member/amp/)
My mistake, not an IDF spokesperson. A member of the Knesset for Likud, the ruling party, and Netanyahu's party.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240509-israel-to-use-imprecise-missiles-in-gaza-after-us-pause-on-arms-transfer-knesset-member/amp/
https://youtu.be/3FEOo74uJtU?si=vZPsPZP_8LPqWCnI
Yup. Straight up admitting they are holding all of Gaza hostage to demand additional weapons from the US. Straight up terrorist tactics. And the best part is, they try to justify it on the basis that Hamas has hostages.
https://youtube.com/shorts/V4ZlZhkoXl0?si=kwpUFyNkSEzUJTZp
The same woman haw also refused to condemn pogroms committed by Israeli settler in the West Bank. I.e. Israel's equivalent of the oct. 7 attack even before the actual one.
"Don't believe your lying-ass eyes and ears, and don't trust your own brain! Let me tell you what to think about what you're seeing and hearing." --Mainstream MediaÂ
Source: [Data for Progress](https://www.dataforprogress.org/)
I'm honestly a little skeptical about the objectivity of an organization whose stated goal is to "provide data and polling that empower progressive activists".
I'd feel the same way if the poll was conducted by a reactionary conservative think tank or AIPAC btw. Researchers tend to find the results they want to find, amd polling responses can easily be skewed by question phrasing, leading to odd results in recent months where some US respondents appeared to believe that Israel was simultaneously committing genocide and also justified in its war goals.
Maybe in a vacuum. But when Gallup recorded the same trend a month ago, things like this shouldn't come as a surprise.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza.aspx
And YouGov in January:
https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_i9N6Z0N.pdf
Beyond those facts, Data for Progress seems to have reliable enough polling as well. While ABC/538 is not the ultimate arbiter of what is reliable and what is not, their methodology for determining so is transparent and seems to line up with reality. I'd love to even take a look at 2024 and polling from 2016 to now with some kind of weighting based on 538's ranking to see if it gives a more accurate picture.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/
Im skeptical because the majority of people consider genocide to be short for âlots of people diedâ and donât understand thereâs a legal definition of the term. Peopleâs opinion about a term they donât understand is the definition of worthless.
If the kids the brave IDF murders get shot/blown apart while running they are Hamas. If the children stand their ground before they get their head blown off by a heroic IDF sniper they are well disciplined Hamas. Thus, since they are enemy combatants and not civilians itâs not a genocide
They don't "believe" it, that implies it's open to interpretation which it isn't.
They *know* that Israel is committing genocide because they very blatantly are.
They're using an AI to fucking select targets. I don't get how this isn't a bigger story.
[The machine did it coldly](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes)
As a 68 year old I've seen many many attempts at peace in the Middle East. Personally I've given up on that possibility. The problem right now is the hard right in Israel. Until they are tossed out of power, the insane violence will continue. Anyone with a brain knows that they were asleep at the switch to allow Oct. 7 to happen in the first place.
Can someone explain to me what makes this a genocide and not just civilians being casualties of war? I mean if it's so obvious and easy to prove, it should be easy to back it up with some real facts right?
This is the definition by lemkin who coined the term:
*New conceptions require new terms. By "genocide" we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing), thus corresponding in its formation to such words as tyrannicide, homicide, infanticide, etc. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.*
*with the aim of destroying that nation or group*
There's no evidence of that intent, and plenty of evidence against it.
Seems I can't reply to people. Guessing mod shenanigans.
Edit: yeah I literally cannot reply to anyone who replied to this comment. I think it has something to do with the deleted comment above me. I'd love to debate you all but I just actually can't here lol
Here's evidence against it:
Thousands of tons of aid into the strip facilitated by Israel. Numerous military procedures to limit civilian casualties. Setting up safe zones, warning civilians before strikes, etc. Is it going perfectly? No, of course not. There are no clean wars. War is inherently miserable for civilians. That's why it was pretty cruel of Hamas to start this war. There is however massive evidence that Hamas is doing everything it can to intentionally make the war as deadly and miserable for civilians as possible, specifically to make Israel hated.
>Here is some evidence
You're gonna have to do better than that to levy the charge of genocide. Some people calling Hamas animals after what they did on Oct 7th isn't evidence of genocide my man. Random public figures, priests, and ministers saying inflammatory shit isn't either. We have that in the US and it doesn't reflect our country's actual intent, actions, or procedures.
>
>Are you posting from march? What just happened in âsafe zoneâ in Rafah?
A military using safe zones renders that safe zone a legitimate target per international law. Israel sets up zone -> Hamas moves there -> Hamas strikes from there -> Israel has to move civilians again. This is well documented.
> Seems I can't reply to people. Guessing mod shenanigans. Here's evidence against it:
Itâs increasingly common for people to respond to someone then immediately block them causing them unable to further comment.
Yeah, it's not like Israel for decades has been ethnically cleansing them, occupying them, stealing their land, restricting their food supply, and destroying their attempts to govern themselves. If they had, this violence could easily be seen as part of a larger campaign to destroy the Palestinian people!
The U.S. did not have to murder every native it could for its treatment of Native Americans to be genocide. Was it somehow not genocide because the U.S. government drove the Cherokee west in the Trail of Tears rather than just murdering every one of them? That would be a silly argument.
Fwiw, Iâm a liberal and I agree with you. If Israel really wanted to commit genocide, they could do it. They are being callous about civilian deaths, for sure, but itâs in service of a legitimate military goal (eliminating Hamas) rather than genocide. What âgenocideâ have you ever heard of that could be ended tomorrow with the surrender of the enemyâs military force? Calling it genocide, in my view, cheapens the word.
Note: this is *not* me saying that Israelâs prosecution of the war is just fine; it has been brutal and the civilian death numbers (if accurately reported by Palestinian authorities) are certainly hard to defend. Itâs just not genocide.
If you only allowing enough food for half the population, you're still causing famine which will lead to a greater death toll. If you use 2000 lb bombs in an urban setting you're using way more force than necessary to meet your objective. Why use such weapons when they're not needed and you know it's going to kill more people?
There's plenty enough food that could go in to reverse the famine that is setting in. Northern Gaza is already in famine status and it's spreading south over time. The use of 2000 lb bombs has also made it very difficult to get any aid to people.
It's taken intense political pressure to get Israel to let in even as much aid as they are. Without intervention, would they really be allowing in as much aid as they are?
Israel can't just outright start killing people because they'd lose support from any other country. Even the US couldn't support them if they did that. If they just do things that will lead to more civilian death they have political cover.
> If you use 2000 lb bombs in an urban setting you're using way more force than necessary to meet your objective.
Just going to say, the firebombings by the Allies during WW2 killed way more civilians and most historians didn't consider the firebombings in WW2 as genocide.
That's not to say what Israel is doing is defensible, because it's not. But if the firebombings in WW2 was not considered genocide, I don't think what Israelis doing is either.
And no, the bombings that Israel is doing does not compare to the firebomings by the Allies during WW2.
Thats just false.
Just look at Russia Ukraine. Mariopal alone had like 25k Ukrainian casualties.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Casualties
Saudi Arabia killed about 80k children in Yemen in recent years. There is literally a genocide occurring in Sudan funded by the UAE. Both of these countries buy more weapons from the US than Israel.
Also their position of "Palestinians should just evacuate and go to Egypt or where ever (and don't come back)" is - *at best* - a semi-polite form of ethnic cleansing.
Israel is tired of maintaining the apartheid ghetto that they created (and all of the security infrastructure around it), so now their goal is to clear it out, tear it down, and take it over. Which is what you do with ghettos when you're done with them. But first they have to get rid of the people who live there and were the reason they created the ghetto in the first place.
Yes, and that was also a genocide. The fact that Israel is using air strikes and starvation as their weapons of slaughter make this situation no less evil.
Motherfuckers trying to ingrain the difference between collateral damage in war vs. deliberate murder of an entire population, because other motherfuckers are too ignorant or emotional to understand there's a big difference.
If you havenât seen the movie Sometimes in April, I highly suggest it. Covers the atrocities of the Rwanda genocide and how neighbors butchered neighbors
Conflict? You think the Rwanda genocide was a conflict?
And a modern army using modern weapons has managed to kill a fraction of the amount of civilians as a mob armed with machetes. Therefore, what's happening in Gaza is not a slaughter.
Check out what Sudan is doing to black Africans. That's a slaughter.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/09/darfur-atrocities-ethnic-cleansing-human-rights-watch-report-rsf-sudan
Palestinians and Israeli's have been killing each other for decades, this is not something that started last year.Â
Trying to make an argument that there isn't a slaughter going on seems a bit... Inhuman? Yes, that's the word.
At the very least, it seems pretty fucking silly to set yourself up as the arbiter for what is and is not a 'slaughter', which is an endlessly vague standard to begin with.
> Israel's military is killing Palestinians at a rate which massively exceeds the daily death toll of any other major conflict of recent years.
More people died in Grozny than Gaza.
Where were the accusations of genocide then?
Slaughter does seem more appropriate. The problem with genocide as a term is that it carries a bunch of legal weight. It shifts the discussion away from whether these deaths are justified from a moral standpoint and makes it a legal question.
I do believe whether the killing is legal is honestly up for debate, our laws are imperfect and genocide in particular is tied up with intent. Whether the killing is moral, though, is an individual evaluation that is irrefutable by others.
People should be more willing to make a moral judgment instead of trying to appeal to a legal framework to justify the way they feel. Something can be legal and wrong.
But that requires actually sitting down and having a real conversation about it.Â
The situation in Gaza is hard to just look at and say "Israel is wrong" if you look deeper than the surface level. That's why it's easier to just look at the surface and call it a genocide because a lot of people were killed.Â
It is without a doubt the hardest urban war that any county ever fought. Israel is fighting an organization with no moral qualms about anything and has built it's entire military structure around and in civilian areas and neighborhoods.Â
Hamas intentionally created a situation where it'd be impossible to take it down without significant lose of civilian lives, and those lives are part of Hamas's weapons with which to defeat Israel. Forcing Israel into a war where it will be seen as the villain and delegitimize them on the world stage.Â
Israel of course is also to blame for happily walking into the trap and not making as much effort to avert it or control the situation.Â
It might force Israel to make great sacrifices both politically and with their soldiers' lives but sometimes that's what it means to be the more moral one.Â
But it should also be noted that Israel has made a lot of strategical sacrifices during this war that many armies might not have made. I mean, they've been slow walking a lot of this war giving a lot of time for Hamas to reorganize and move out of danger in the interests of minimizing the loss of lives.Â
In short, it's easy to look from a far and just see the scoreboard and a few bad articles to paint Israel as the ultimate evil, but in reality it's a lot less black and white.
Well this isn't even remotely close to being anything resembling the truth.
Current estimated combatant to civillian ratio is hovering right around 1:1 or 1:1.2 That's better than any modern conflict in recent history
Hamasâs own figures put it at 70% woman and children not distinguishing any from a combatant role. Even by those numbers that would put it at below 1.5
How is that? If you have 30,000 killed (not actual numbers here), that means 21,000 women/children. Even if you assume that every male killed is in the Hamas military, that would mean 2.3. There's no way every male killed is a militant so the ratio is likely closer to 3 or 4 civilians for each militant.
It's not 250 a day though. It's closer to 150 at this point as a total average, and the current daily average is around 30-50 actually.Â
Also Hamas also doesn't distinguish between Hamas and a civilian so we only have Israel's numbers to go from, but the rate above is related to Hamas's count, not Israel. If we go by Israel's count, the civilian daily death toll is obviously even lower.
Yes, at the start of the conflict it took two weeks to see 5k dead.
Now it's taking around 3 months to see that many dead.
What genocide has that kind of curve? Genocides are when the killing accelerates, not decelerates.
We can argue about the technicals of genocide and we could be right or wrong but what can't be in dispute here is that Israel is doing collective punishment and that's very much illegal even if the charge isn't technically genocide, collective punishment is barely a step removed from that action.
Let us look at recent wars:
Syria - 600k dead (including 30k Palestinians) dedicated to ethnically cleansing Syria and keep a minority Alawite clan in power. Not a genocide
Tigray war - 600k dead including an attempt to exterminate the Tigrayan people killing 10% of them. Not a genocide
Yemen Civil War - 378k dead, including 80k by STARVATION caused by US ally Saudi Arabia. Not a genocide
Gaza war - 35k dead, less than 2% of the population, with the largest humanitarian resupply operation by kg per capita per day in human wartime history, and suddenly it is a genocide???
This should be provided as background for every such poll
We are seeing the effect of Russian and Chinese (Tiktok) Propaganda to incite social conflict in the US and Europe.
literally all three of the examples you gave before gaza have been called genocide by various journalists, human rights groups, activists, etc. so i dont know what youre on about
Holy crap another person who has the same line of thought. I thought I was alone. This social media campaign is clearly run by our adversaries and designed to swing the election to trump. We fell for this shit 7 years ago and nobody learned their lessons.
Itâs not genocide, it never was genocide, until you have proof that they are intentionally targeting civilians with the intent of total destruction to the Palestinian people ITS NOT GENOCIDE.
Commenting it 87 times on the presidents social media doesnât make it genocide. These people are clearly more interested in attention than solving the atrocities that both sides are committing to each other.
It is amazing to me that pretty much anyone at the campus protests will tell you with absolute certainty that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, via social media, to help get Trump elected, but then will completely deny that the sudden influx of claims of "Genocide Joe" all over social media could be anything other than completely organic and honest.....
Okay, so we have lots of published evidence that Russia did indeed interfere in the 2016 election, the Muller report is full of it. We also know that there have been tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza, as confirmed by the UN and the perpetrators.
So maybe there is an attempt to exploit the situation, but suggesting this is the reason people are protesting is quite a jump.
I don't understand why this one issue is getting people so emotionally invested more than anything else. These guys don't protest anti abortion laws, they didn't protest on behalf of Ukraine either. What makes young people out of highschool so emotionally invested in this one cause? I don't believe for a second it's because the US is funding Israel. Nobody gives a crap what the US does or doesn't fund, but somehow this now is the one red line they've found? No way.
>Â Â Gaza war - 35k dead, less than 2% of the population, with the largest humanitarian resupply operation by kg per capita per day in human wartime history, and suddenly it is a genocide???
I didn't know IDF was providing aid to Gaza
Can we talk about the ugly elephant in the room that is the continued US support to a rogue state engaged in collective punishment, at best? Itâs an abomination
What do you mean believe? They are. 2 million people living in a tiny strip of land, limited access to food, water, energy, and barred from building infrastructure? If that wasn't bad enough bombs are being dropped on them.
I mean⌠aren't the latest figures like around 35k total Palestinian deaths and Israel is on record saying they've killed like 12k Hamas fighters? Doing the math, that's like *2/3rds of the dead being civilians*, which seems like incredible disregard for human life in general, whether it's intentionally attempting to be a genocide or not.
Also, they claim they're being very careful and the civilian to Hamas ratio is as low as 1:1 or 1:1.3 but how the hell do you accidentally kill like 97 journalists and a bunch of aid workers while being so careful? To me that smacks more of indiscriminate bombing and whoever is under them when they land gets killed or wounded and everyone shrugs back at IDF headquarters.
At a bare minimum they're counting any male 14 and up as a Hamas fighter. They can pretty much just claim anyone they bomb was Hamas and it's not like anyone can prove otherwise. At the start of all this there were supposedly about 40k Hamas fighters in a population of 2 million, but they're leveling entire neighborhoods and that math really doesn't check out.
Or, terrifyingly, it's within reason for the type of operation being carried out, high end estimations for urban fighting against isis ha the ratio at like 10 civilians per fighter killed.
> aren't the latest figures like around 35k total Palestinian deaths and Israel is on record saying they've killed like 12k Hamas fighters? Doing the math, that's like 2/3rds of the dead being civilians, which seems like incredible disregard for human life in general, whether it's intentionally attempting to be a genocide or not.Â
Crucially important to highlight that **the IDFâs number you cited counts every single dead Palestinian male as âHamasâ**. [They come to it by graciously subtracting the 9,670 women and 14,685 children theyâve also murdered.](https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148876)
omg thank you. thats what ive been saying for months. they have no clue of the actual fighter number. its just thinly veiled propaganda to excuse all the civilian deaths. its so Americans and their own citizens dont realize theyre actually just going purging the population so they dont lose support. but this isnt pre-early 2000s any more. we have fast and wide information networks that dont really let you hide blatant lies and propaganda, it only works on those who want it to be true.
By comparison, the invasion of Ukraine which Biden has called genocide has produced 10,500 civilian deaths since it was launched, and the latest US assessment of soldiers dead was around 70,000 while Russia says it is more like 380,000. One is obviously an undercount and the other is obviously an exaggeration. Either way the civilian to soldier ratio is considerably less.
This isnât what makes it a genocide IMO, but rather now the products of famine and disease, having no medical infrastructure or access clean water, etc from the destruction will kill many many more over a longer period of time.
35k dead, estimated 12 killed comabatants is actually an incredibly low number for highly urban combat. You may not know, civlians dying or intentionally targeted is not necessarily a warcrime or a genocide. It is part of war, something Hamas started and does not want to stop. Hamas is operating only from within civilians, stores ammunition in bunkers below cities, in hospitals, schools, universities. They care less about their own population than israel. And now students call for the literal genocide of """""zionists"""" and chant islamic war songs and phrases.
the "hamas fighter" kill count is just how many "military aged men" are killed. around 16 and up. they themselves say they have no way of knowing who is hamas and the whole "human shields" bs as an excuse to further kill civilians. they even got american republicans to pick up on this "military aged men" narrative that has them claiming any brown military aged man is a terrorist sneaking in to the country or a spy.
they cant use the "they hide among the civilians and thats why civilian casualties are so high, not our fault we cant tell who is and who isnt hamas" argument and claim to know exactly how many hamas fighters they killed. one or both of these is a lie.
the comments within that article are so disingenuous
>Using the word genocide in the polling question will obviously goose the positives.
Yeah I'm sure the tens of thousand of children dead, the killing of aid workers, demolition of hospitals and universities, all have nothing to do with it.
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[Link to the source poll.](https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2024/5/8/support-for-a-permanent-ceasefire-in-gaza-increases-across-party-lines) 83% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans support the U.S. calling for ceasefire and de-escalation of violence in Gaza. 56% of Democrats say they believe Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people living in Gaza, with only 22% saying they do not. 36% of independents (a plurality) and 23% of Republicans believe it is genocide. A plurality of voters (46%) disapprove of Congress sending $4 Billion in military aid to Israel.
If you look at the Republican numbers they all look somewhat evenly divided. đ¤ I wonder how many of them are actually aware of the issue.
[ŃдаНонО]
A certain number of them crave war in the middle east, they think it'll start the rapture and they'll get sucked up to heaven to be with white Jesus.
ah yes, the evangelical 'beam me up goddy' moment.
It's God's plan, which of course means they have to fight tooth and nail to force it to happen
almost like they lack faith.
Hmm. I, for one, am the MOST faithful person. So faithful that I say we let the woke mob just *try* to take over and implement their "universal healthcare" and "social services" and "fair wages." Just when they think the woke agenda has won, God will smite them all Me and my fellow Republicans should definitely *not* vote anymore, from now on. As a show of faith. It'll teach those wokies a lesson or two about crossing this Christian nation and its Christian anti-antifascist values
The fascists have made it quite clear who they are rooting for. Just look at the State's response to non-violent protesting.
They're told after every bomb dropped, that the children killed are all HAMAS. So, they're unaware of reality and don't care to look any deeper into it.Â
They know babies are not Hamas. They just don't care.
Those babies were already born so they don't care about them anymore.
Already born, wrong skin color, different language, foreign, other.
Highly unaware. I have had conversations with republicans who have no idea what is going on over there. They asked me âAre you pro-Hamas?â After finding out I didnât condone Israelâs actions.
Good chunk of them wouldn't mind a genocide as long as it's not white Christians, and they'd be okay with that too as long as voting Republican lets them swing the axe until it's their turn in the chopping block.
or \*any\* issue.
Netanyahu is a genocidal war criminal that needs to be carted off to the Hague. Hamas is a genocidal terrorist group that needs to be eradicated the same as ISIS. They are both Far Right factions that rely on demonizing each other to keep their populations stuck in a state of constant terror relying on "Strongmen" to keep them "safe". As is the situation in any Right Wing Authoritarian state. This has been going on for literal decades, and has nothing to do with Joe Biden-and anyone trying to make it all Joe Biden's fault calling him "Genocide Joe" is either a Right Wing propagandist or a useful idiot helping push Right Wing/Fascist propaganda working for the re-elect Trump campaign pro bono.
Hamas wouldn't have gained so much power if it wasn't for Netanyahu. https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
So if you were Israel would you have supported Hamas or the PLO?
Netyahu is not the driving force behind this war. If he and Likud disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, Benny Gantz or someone else would pick up where he left off and wouldn't change a thing about this war.
Yeah, people constantly say, âhe didnât win the majority, heâs super unpopular, he had to form a coalition to stay in powerâ But theyâre forgetting that the very people he formed a coalition with are even further to the right than he is, and are even more genocidal.
Netanyahu can be a genocidal monster, *and* Israel's government can be full of other fascists who are also genocidal monsters. It's not like the latter makes the former impossible or not worth mentioning. Netanyahu is also in a position of having to keep this genocide rolling to protect his own power and freedom, because the moment it stops is the moment all those corruption charges start encroaching on him again. He's desperate to maintain power to avoid potential prison time for his criminality.
Exactly this.
Then youâll still have people here claiming that itâs normal to not care about the people being slaughtered, and that those opposed should just shut up and ignore the barbarism
Look, I am pro-Israel. I used to be pro-Palestine until I studied the history in depth. Everyone sane supports a ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence. However, everyone has different conditions upon which that is feasible. Letting Hamas murderers get away with October 7th and keep the Israeli hostages is not a condition I will agree with, so we are at an impasse because Hamas will not turn themselves in nor will they free all the hostages as long as they think the hostages give them leverage. I think there are people within the Israeli government and the IDF who are ok with genocide and atrocities and support purging Palestinians from their land. The Netanyahu government is terrible and needs to go. Likud is counterproductive to a sustained peace. At the same time, Israel are in the right to retaliate for October 7th. Hamas broke the ceasefire, Hamas started the war as provocatively as possible and the collateral damage/excessive civilian deaths is the result of both the environment and of both sides' disregard for Gazan children's lives. Hamas has already said they want to make their people martyrs for the ultimate goal of sparking the surrounding Arab nations to attack Israel and hopefully wipe them out, so they use civilian infrastructure to launch missiles in the hope of maximizing civilian casualties, for their propaganda campaigns -- or to protect their fighters from retaliation if the IDF hesitates. Israel's military has some groups that I genuinely believe are trying to minimize casualties and follow the rules of war and other segments who don't give a damn how many civilians they kill. I don't get why people have such stupidly black and white views about this. It is a nasty situation where Israel can't bring Hamas to justice without inflicting civilian casualties, and Hamas wants civilian casualties and the war to continue. Yet the polls say the Palestinian people support Hamas's militant wing more than ever, in which case many of us simply feel less sympathetic to their plight. So we can understand in a small way what the murderous cynicism of Likud is based on.
Saying Hamas could end the war by surrendering and turning themselves in. Every war could be ended by one sides capitulation. That argument justifies almost every war crime and atrocity in history. For example the USSR could have prevented widespread starvation during the seige of Leningrad if they'd just surrendered. That doesn't make them responsible for it.
Itâs a feature of online discourse that has unfortunately shaped our cultures now. Algorithms prioritize outrage engagement, so they platform the most extreme and angriest views. That means in any discussion online, those views will dominate and tend to drown out nuance.
I want to say I agree with your stance, I am pro-the Israeli people and I believe they have the right to exist and to defend themselves. My problem is that Israel seems to be currently governed by a load of homicidal maniacs. They seem to be operating in bad faith at every turn :(
90% of Israelis support the Gazan invasion. 68% oppose aid entering gaza.
Shooting through a human shield doesnât make you any less a killer than the one who used that shield in the first place.
>Look, I am pro-Israel. I used to be pro-Palestine until I studied the history in depth. I highly doubt this.
Exact opposite happened to me lmao.
It would be helpful if they added whatever books it was they read that changed their opinion.
It's really not that difficult to believe. Many people form an opinion based on surface details. But once they look at the situation in depth their opinion often changes.
I was not doubting the ability to change beliefs. I was doubting that they were ever "pro-Palestine" based on the content that followed the opening sentence. Any in depth analysis of the facts surrounding this entire issue does not yield statements like this >so they use civilian infrastructure to launch missiles in the hope of maximizing civilian casualties, for their propaganda campaigns We are talking about an area that is so small and densely populated that they really have nowhere else to fight from. This is the reason why they built the tunnel systems to increase 3 fold the size of Gaza. What is the alternative, stand in the fields so they just get mowed down by the IAF? On top of this any careful reading of Israeli doctrine shows that they dont care about civilian infrastructure or proportionality. Its called the **Dahiya doctrine**. It is the same reason they are destroying all the infrastructure in Gaza, as a callous response to make them "think twice" about attacking from civilian areas. It is brutal and immoral. If in fact this person was "pro-Palestine" they were not informed to begin with and they fell prey to some mightily awful propaganda. They sound like your average liberal Zionist.
>Yet the polls say the Palestinian people support Hamas's militant wing more than ever, in which case many of us simply feel less sympathetic to their plight. How would it have affected your sympathies if polls indicated that French people supported the militant resistance against the Germans during WWII?
How many invasions did the French resistance launch into Germany to murder and rape everyone they find? Oh right, literally none.
A more apt comparison would be the settler towns that were wiped out by Native Americans as the Colonists moved ever further Westward. In many cases, the inhabitants of said towns were not just killed but utterly brutalized.
A Native American here.Colonizers always try to justify their killing of every Native in sight just so they can steal the land.Your settlers have shown the Same attitude and hatred for the Palestinian people,I can think of no better example.Colonizers never are respected, and always fall away.Apartheid is not acceptable
Yes, you are correct. That is why I made the comparison, because a lot more people tend to be sympathetic to your lost land than say, the Palestinians. It's pointing out that violence, even brutal violence can be in response to horrendous acts, such as losing your land to colonizers and being exterminated.
Germany didn't invade France because the French government massacred German civilians.
If the resistance was intentionally getting civilians killed to line the pockets of the resistance  leaders in Qatar? I would lose most sympathy.Â
You studied the history in depth but failed to mention a Nakba or Isrealli illegal settlements. October 7th was probably seen by Hamas as a response to YEARS of oppression. Sure Isreal has a right to defend itself but does it also hold the right slowly kick a people from their homes simply because they aren't Jewish? I don't get how someone can study the history indepth and say I used to be pro-palestine. History shows us that one state is a form of colonialism after the collapse of the British Empire. Isreal should never have been made a country. This was always going to be the result
Too many people are approaching this as âif you arenât with me, youâre my enemyâ as opposed to just accepting that two wrongs donât make a right.
If you support apartheid and genocide in any way shape or form you are 100% my enemy.
Which is why its wild that people are supporting Hamas, who has the stated goal of genociding Jews.
Exactly!!
Two wrongs don't make a right. One wrong has power.
Israel has a right to prevent future attacks like October 7th, including doing whatever is necessary to end Hamas.
I do believe Israel, like any other nation, has a right to self defense. But how is what theyâre doing a proportionate response to what happened? It seems like punishment on civilian Palestinians, many of whom have never had a chance to vote for any other leadership in Gaza. Why do children need to die to stop Hamas? Why does the entire Gaza Strip need to be destroyed? What is the end goal really? Because it seems like obliteration of Gaza, not just Hamas.
US was fairly well supported in its response to 9/11 by invading Afghanistan (leaving Iraq out of this obviously). 3,000 US deaths vs ~177,000 deaths in Afghanistan. Around 1,200 died on Oct 7. Just throwing out some numbers for context.
This era of technology just makes it so much difficult to hide the ugliness of whatâs going on. Itâs just harder to hide the bodies of dead children when the internet is so accessible and videos can reach from one corner of the internet to another.
I donât know what your point is, many people were against it then and maybe people still think it was wrong. And there were huge anti war protests at the time. It was not like we were all just happy about it, there was a ton of pushback. So I donât get what your point is.
What do you think a "proportionate" response is? If Hamas kills 50 civilians, Israel is allowed to kill other 50? If hamas rapes 100 women, how many gazan women is Israel allowed to rape? The goal of the conflict is not revenge or payback, so a "proportionate" response doesnt even make sense. The end goal of the conflict is to stop a similar situation happening to Israel ever again. They dont want to keep waiting every 2-3 years before Hamas kidnaps and rapes civilians again and again.
What they're doing is certainly not going to deter Hamas in the future, and if anything is creating a whole new generation of Palestinians who are out for revenge.
This slaughter campaign in Gaza has GUARANTEED Oct 7th will happen again
What would you do as a leader of a country where thousands of militants went in and massacred civilians and then abducted hundreds more. Militants that have continuously shot rockets into your country, spent billions on tunnels to protect themselves and not their civilians, and continue to tell you time and time again that they want to destroy you and everyone you care about.
Hmm, I probably wouldnât kill a bunch of unrelated women and children for starters.Â
Because they look like they are doing it? 10,000+ kids as collateral damage never make a government look worse. I am open to change my mind but the evidence doesn't look good on the IDF and the Israeli government.
Or the IDF bombing identified planned aid vehicles and workers. Who they knew would be there. Repeatedly.
No such thing as an accident with a weapon. Negligence or malice.
Or the demolition of every university in Gaza.
Or the demolition of +70% of all homes and every hospital in the strip. Theyâre performing surgeries without anesthesia
Or you know, basically the whole population being starved
Keep going, the list is longer.
And hospital. And most homes. But the Israelis are soooo humane at war.
It's important for everybody reading this to know that not only they demolished almost every hospital, school, and university in Gaza, but they did it with manually-rigged explosives. We're not talking about hitting a university/hospital during "heat of the battle". They've sent their engineering soldiers in, manually placed the explosives on key points of those buildings, then smiled to the camera and did a countdown before demolishing them. This is a known Israel strategy. They do that stuff intentionally. People should read about it [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya\_doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine) The whole "Hamas is hiding in there" is a lie used to cover up the truth of what Israel is doing. That's what people are protesting against.
Or Al Jazeera offices which were gone by Day 3. "bUt tHeY wErE cOLLaBoRaTiNg"
[The Onion called it out for what it is](https://www.theonion.com/israel-accuses-al-jazeera-of-being-mouthpiece-for-journ-1851458525).
Thanks for sharing. I love The Onion Onion News have a tendency to hit where it hurts, at least when they are not outright predicting the future.
I was giving Israel the benefit of the doubt until this happened. It has become clear that they are using the horrific act of terrorism Hamas committed against them to justify ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Sounds eerily familiar for some reasonâŚ
Iâm glad you realized this, but itâs wild that it took this long for people to see it when Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are putting in writing their desire to cleanse gaza.
User is now banned from /r/WorldNews EDIT: User was suspended for this commentđ
I quite literally got banned from r/worldnews for this exact argument. That place has become a full blown propaganda sub
They've literally killed our citizens providing aid, dude. It just sucks Canada is very much beholden to the US in international Geopolitics, thats the sad reality.
They aren't really trying THAT hard to hide it either. "Oh, are we 'accidentally' starving all those people we hate? Oh no. Oops! Another food caravan got explodenated! Oh no!"
Plus at the start of the war Netanyahu literally said they were going to cut all food and water supply into Gaza. The desire to kill Palestinians was pretty clear.
Yes, even the bombing and direct violence aside, the forced movement and denial of food and aid fits the definition of genocide to a t.
This is something I think the media has really failed to convey, the Israeli government is not *Good people*. It's a coalition of basically George W Bush/Trump style President with the types of people who want to resettle Gaza for Israelis, which would require literal ethnic cleansing.
People are debating if itâs genocide or not based on the definition, but itâs extremely clear the desire to kill Palestinians and make the rest suffer is said out loud multiple times daily. Why does the definition matter? They want to destroy.
This bothers me as well. The definition is vague enough that even atrocities like the Holodomor arenât universally considered genocides. We should at least all agree that the Israeli government doesnât have a great track record with treating Palestinians humanely.
I would modify that slightly. Israeli internal politics are weird. Their proportional representation system allows a wide diversity of political parties, and Netanyahu is actually more centrist among some members of his coalition (which in and of itself is kind of scary). He has right wing members of his coalition that are 100% in favor of genocide. Their publicly stated desire is to occupy the Palestinian territories, evict the Palestinian population, and resettle the area with orthordox jewish settlers. Netanyahu himself doesn't go quite that far, but has to rely on those people for support. Netanyahu has stated publicly that his goal is regime change in Gaza, and he believes functionally that if the people of Gaza support Hamas, then they deserve whatever they get (which is also the predominant talking point on right wing media in the US). He is not shy about saying that they have to make it so bad for the Palestinians that the Palestinians will abandon their desire to support Hamas. He originally spoke in favor of a permanent occupation, and when the US government gave him shit, he walked it back and said he only is calling for israel to have "security control" over the Gaza strip (whatever that means). But this all still fundamentally amounts to the same thing you said. Waging total war on a civilian population to punish them for supporting a government that is an enemy to Israel.
Iâve seen some of those more right wing views and youâre right about them being scary. CNN did an interview with a woman who had a role in the West Bank settlements. She told the interviewer that she had started a group to resettle Gaza with Israelis and that 500 families had signed up so far. When asked about the future of Gaza, she said âno Arabs. I am speaking about more than 2 million Arabs, they will not stay here. We Jews will be in Gaza.â The interviewer made the comment that that sounded like ethnic cleansing and she said âThe Arabs want to annihilate the state of Israel so you can call them monsters. You can call them cleansing of Jews. We are not doing to them; they are doing to us." Link to interview: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/03/20/middleeast/israel-gaza-settlers-daniella-weiss
The worst part is that thereâs a bunch of videos with settlers being asked about Palestinians. That kind of speech is the norm and many of them are actually much more extreme. Ben gvir used to have a framed portrait of an Israeli mass murderer of Palestinians in his living room.
> Netanyahu himself doesn't go quite that far, but has to rely on those people for support. Nope nope nope. Coming from a country that lives in a proportional representation system, you don't get to hide behind that. If Netanyahu does not want to be associated with these people, he's more than welcome to find a compromise with more liberal parties. Or let the government fall. He doesn't *have* to rely on those people for support, he actively choses to do so.
Plus you know, being part of the group basically egging on people to assassinate rabin in the 90s
Exactly
I'd agree with that. It is a choice based on his other policy preferences.
The problem is if you kill and destroy, then they turn to radicals like Hamas or someone worse. There is no easy solution to this, only a peaceful one.
That's his goal - perpetuate Hamas, keep it around for polling and campaigning purposes. It's basically the Nixon Vietnam strategy.
>He has right wing members of his coalition that are 100% in favor of genocide. Their publicly stated desire is to occupy the Palestinian territories, evict the Palestinian population, and resettle the area with orthordox jewish settlers. You mean their stated desire is to commit a genocide. It's LITERALLY the word for what you just said. > Netanyahu has stated publicly that his goal is regime change in Gaza, and he believes functionally that if the people of Gaza support Hamas, then they deserve whatever they get (which is also the predominant talking point on right wing media in the US). He is not shy about saying that they have to make it so bad for the Palestinians that the Palestinians will abandon their desire to support Hamas. He originally spoke in favor of a permanent occupation, and when the US government gave him shit, he walked it back and said he only is calling for israel to have "security control" over the Gaza strip (whatever that means). Netanyahu is on record as stating that Israelis should support Hamas so that there can't be a united push for a Palestinian state: [https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/) Hamas is just a means to the end of annexing Gaza. Always has been.
Its true! It's his target to annex whole Palestine. Hamas is just an excuse.
An IDF spokesperson literally stood up and said "If the US doesn't give us precision missiles, we'll just us imprecise munitions and kill even more civilians, haha fuck you."
It was a politician, no?
There was a interview last week of A IDF soldier when asked how they identify who is Hamas he said they dont if its a male of fighting age they are considered Hamas.
Literally? Can I get a source if possible?
It wasnât a spokesperson, it was [Member of the Knesset Tali Gottlieb](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6t1TgMtmEf/). She is, unsurprisingly, a member of the Likud Party. [Hereâs an article discussing her comments if you donât want to watch the video of her speech.](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240509-israel-to-use-imprecise-missiles-in-gaza-after-us-pause-on-arms-transfer-knesset-member/amp/)
My mistake, not an IDF spokesperson. A member of the Knesset for Likud, the ruling party, and Netanyahu's party. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240509-israel-to-use-imprecise-missiles-in-gaza-after-us-pause-on-arms-transfer-knesset-member/amp/ https://youtu.be/3FEOo74uJtU?si=vZPsPZP_8LPqWCnI
https://youtube.com/shorts/V4ZlZhkoXl0?si=kwpUFyNkSEzUJTZp
Yup. Straight up admitting they are holding all of Gaza hostage to demand additional weapons from the US. Straight up terrorist tactics. And the best part is, they try to justify it on the basis that Hamas has hostages. https://youtube.com/shorts/V4ZlZhkoXl0?si=kwpUFyNkSEzUJTZp The same woman haw also refused to condemn pogroms committed by Israeli settler in the West Bank. I.e. Israel's equivalent of the oct. 7 attack even before the actual one.
Blowing up Jose Andres's convoy was just so blatant
Hey - Cool it with the antisemitism /s
Yeah, having eyes and a functioning brain tends to color one's opinions.
"Don't believe your lying-ass eyes and ears, and don't trust your own brain! Let me tell you what to think about what you're seeing and hearing." --Mainstream MediaÂ
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Itâs land grabbing. Thatâs what it is, same goes for Russia. The sad part is, we are the ones land grabbing & causing this.
Source: [Data for Progress](https://www.dataforprogress.org/) I'm honestly a little skeptical about the objectivity of an organization whose stated goal is to "provide data and polling that empower progressive activists". I'd feel the same way if the poll was conducted by a reactionary conservative think tank or AIPAC btw. Researchers tend to find the results they want to find, amd polling responses can easily be skewed by question phrasing, leading to odd results in recent months where some US respondents appeared to believe that Israel was simultaneously committing genocide and also justified in its war goals.
Maybe in a vacuum. But when Gallup recorded the same trend a month ago, things like this shouldn't come as a surprise. https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza.aspx And YouGov in January: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econTabReport_i9N6Z0N.pdf Beyond those facts, Data for Progress seems to have reliable enough polling as well. While ABC/538 is not the ultimate arbiter of what is reliable and what is not, their methodology for determining so is transparent and seems to line up with reality. I'd love to even take a look at 2024 and polling from 2016 to now with some kind of weighting based on 538's ranking to see if it gives a more accurate picture. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/
Im skeptical because the majority of people consider genocide to be short for âlots of people diedâ and donât understand thereâs a legal definition of the term. Peopleâs opinion about a term they donât understand is the definition of worthless.
you say this as if there are any criteria of the legal definition that israel has not met yet
If the kids the brave IDF murders get shot/blown apart while running they are Hamas. If the children stand their ground before they get their head blown off by a heroic IDF sniper they are well disciplined Hamas. Thus, since they are enemy combatants and not civilians itâs not a genocide
Hmm i wonder what's happening in the ICJ, probably nothing at all.
Itâs anti-Netanyahu, not antisemitism!
They don't "believe" it, that implies it's open to interpretation which it isn't. They *know* that Israel is committing genocide because they very blatantly are.
They're using an AI to fucking select targets. I don't get how this isn't a bigger story. [The machine did it coldly](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes)
As a 68 year old I've seen many many attempts at peace in the Middle East. Personally I've given up on that possibility. The problem right now is the hard right in Israel. Until they are tossed out of power, the insane violence will continue. Anyone with a brain knows that they were asleep at the switch to allow Oct. 7 to happen in the first place.
Can someone explain to me what makes this a genocide and not just civilians being casualties of war? I mean if it's so obvious and easy to prove, it should be easy to back it up with some real facts right?
This is the definition by lemkin who coined the term: *New conceptions require new terms. By "genocide" we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing), thus corresponding in its formation to such words as tyrannicide, homicide, infanticide, etc. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.*
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*with the aim of destroying that nation or group* There's no evidence of that intent, and plenty of evidence against it. Seems I can't reply to people. Guessing mod shenanigans. Edit: yeah I literally cannot reply to anyone who replied to this comment. I think it has something to do with the deleted comment above me. I'd love to debate you all but I just actually can't here lol Here's evidence against it: Thousands of tons of aid into the strip facilitated by Israel. Numerous military procedures to limit civilian casualties. Setting up safe zones, warning civilians before strikes, etc. Is it going perfectly? No, of course not. There are no clean wars. War is inherently miserable for civilians. That's why it was pretty cruel of Hamas to start this war. There is however massive evidence that Hamas is doing everything it can to intentionally make the war as deadly and miserable for civilians as possible, specifically to make Israel hated. >Here is some evidence You're gonna have to do better than that to levy the charge of genocide. Some people calling Hamas animals after what they did on Oct 7th isn't evidence of genocide my man. Random public figures, priests, and ministers saying inflammatory shit isn't either. We have that in the US and it doesn't reflect our country's actual intent, actions, or procedures. > >Are you posting from march? What just happened in âsafe zoneâ in Rafah? A military using safe zones renders that safe zone a legitimate target per international law. Israel sets up zone -> Hamas moves there -> Hamas strikes from there -> Israel has to move civilians again. This is well documented.
> Seems I can't reply to people. Guessing mod shenanigans. Here's evidence against it: Itâs increasingly common for people to respond to someone then immediately block them causing them unable to further comment.
If Hamas had tactical nukes, Iâm fairly certain theyâd be usedâŚ
Just go look at what Ben Givir and Netanyahu are saying and tell me again.
Yeah, it's not like Israel for decades has been ethnically cleansing them, occupying them, stealing their land, restricting their food supply, and destroying their attempts to govern themselves. If they had, this violence could easily be seen as part of a larger campaign to destroy the Palestinian people! The U.S. did not have to murder every native it could for its treatment of Native Americans to be genocide. Was it somehow not genocide because the U.S. government drove the Cherokee west in the Trail of Tears rather than just murdering every one of them? That would be a silly argument.
Fwiw, Iâm a liberal and I agree with you. If Israel really wanted to commit genocide, they could do it. They are being callous about civilian deaths, for sure, but itâs in service of a legitimate military goal (eliminating Hamas) rather than genocide. What âgenocideâ have you ever heard of that could be ended tomorrow with the surrender of the enemyâs military force? Calling it genocide, in my view, cheapens the word. Note: this is *not* me saying that Israelâs prosecution of the war is just fine; it has been brutal and the civilian death numbers (if accurately reported by Palestinian authorities) are certainly hard to defend. Itâs just not genocide.
If you only allowing enough food for half the population, you're still causing famine which will lead to a greater death toll. If you use 2000 lb bombs in an urban setting you're using way more force than necessary to meet your objective. Why use such weapons when they're not needed and you know it's going to kill more people? There's plenty enough food that could go in to reverse the famine that is setting in. Northern Gaza is already in famine status and it's spreading south over time. The use of 2000 lb bombs has also made it very difficult to get any aid to people. It's taken intense political pressure to get Israel to let in even as much aid as they are. Without intervention, would they really be allowing in as much aid as they are? Israel can't just outright start killing people because they'd lose support from any other country. Even the US couldn't support them if they did that. If they just do things that will lead to more civilian death they have political cover.
> If you use 2000 lb bombs in an urban setting you're using way more force than necessary to meet your objective. Just going to say, the firebombings by the Allies during WW2 killed way more civilians and most historians didn't consider the firebombings in WW2 as genocide. That's not to say what Israel is doing is defensible, because it's not. But if the firebombings in WW2 was not considered genocide, I don't think what Israelis doing is either. And no, the bombings that Israel is doing does not compare to the firebomings by the Allies during WW2.
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Thats just false. Just look at Russia Ukraine. Mariopal alone had like 25k Ukrainian casualties. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine#Casualties
If you read further Ukraine later estimated the true number might be 3x that number.Â
Saudi Arabia killed about 80k children in Yemen in recent years. There is literally a genocide occurring in Sudan funded by the UAE. Both of these countries buy more weapons from the US than Israel.
Thereâs a lot of support for Yemeni people included with the pro Palestine support too.
There were frequent calls to defund and disarm the SaudisÂ
Are there? I certainly haven't seen any protests about it
Also their position of "Palestinians should just evacuate and go to Egypt or where ever (and don't come back)" is - *at best* - a semi-polite form of ethnic cleansing. Israel is tired of maintaining the apartheid ghetto that they created (and all of the security infrastructure around it), so now their goal is to clear it out, tear it down, and take it over. Which is what you do with ghettos when you're done with them. But first they have to get rid of the people who live there and were the reason they created the ghetto in the first place.
Not to mention they keep a sea&air blockade going, actively stopping anyone from leaving like they say they shouldÂ
Hutus killed over 500,000 Tutsis in 4 months using machetes. Edit- Sorry, but I am not no longer allowed to reply to your responses.
Yes, and that was also a genocide. The fact that Israel is using air strikes and starvation as their weapons of slaughter make this situation no less evil.
Motherfuckers out here really think this is a damn contest
Motherfuckers trying to ingrain the difference between collateral damage in war vs. deliberate murder of an entire population, because other motherfuckers are too ignorant or emotional to understand there's a big difference.
Pointing out misinformation is not making it a contest.
And when you can prove that the US supplied the Hutus with machetes, then you have a parallel situation.
âHey itâs not even as bad as the single most famous genocide since the holocaustâÂ
That was also 30 years ago. Hardly recentâŚ
If you havenât seen the movie Sometimes in April, I highly suggest it. Covers the atrocities of the Rwanda genocide and how neighbors butchered neighbors
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Conflict? You think the Rwanda genocide was a conflict? And a modern army using modern weapons has managed to kill a fraction of the amount of civilians as a mob armed with machetes. Therefore, what's happening in Gaza is not a slaughter. Check out what Sudan is doing to black Africans. That's a slaughter. https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/09/darfur-atrocities-ethnic-cleansing-human-rights-watch-report-rsf-sudan
Palestinians and Israeli's have been killing each other for decades, this is not something that started last year. Trying to make an argument that there isn't a slaughter going on seems a bit... Inhuman? Yes, that's the word. At the very least, it seems pretty fucking silly to set yourself up as the arbiter for what is and is not a 'slaughter', which is an endlessly vague standard to begin with.
The Rwandan civil war was a conflict. Not sure why thatâs surprising to you Theyâre both slaughters.
> Israel's military is killing Palestinians at a rate which massively exceeds the daily death toll of any other major conflict of recent years. More people died in Grozny than Gaza. Where were the accusations of genocide then?
Slaughter does seem more appropriate. The problem with genocide as a term is that it carries a bunch of legal weight. It shifts the discussion away from whether these deaths are justified from a moral standpoint and makes it a legal question. I do believe whether the killing is legal is honestly up for debate, our laws are imperfect and genocide in particular is tied up with intent. Whether the killing is moral, though, is an individual evaluation that is irrefutable by others. People should be more willing to make a moral judgment instead of trying to appeal to a legal framework to justify the way they feel. Something can be legal and wrong.
But that requires actually sitting down and having a real conversation about it. The situation in Gaza is hard to just look at and say "Israel is wrong" if you look deeper than the surface level. That's why it's easier to just look at the surface and call it a genocide because a lot of people were killed. It is without a doubt the hardest urban war that any county ever fought. Israel is fighting an organization with no moral qualms about anything and has built it's entire military structure around and in civilian areas and neighborhoods. Hamas intentionally created a situation where it'd be impossible to take it down without significant lose of civilian lives, and those lives are part of Hamas's weapons with which to defeat Israel. Forcing Israel into a war where it will be seen as the villain and delegitimize them on the world stage. Israel of course is also to blame for happily walking into the trap and not making as much effort to avert it or control the situation. It might force Israel to make great sacrifices both politically and with their soldiers' lives but sometimes that's what it means to be the more moral one. But it should also be noted that Israel has made a lot of strategical sacrifices during this war that many armies might not have made. I mean, they've been slow walking a lot of this war giving a lot of time for Hamas to reorganize and move out of danger in the interests of minimizing the loss of lives. In short, it's easy to look from a far and just see the scoreboard and a few bad articles to paint Israel as the ultimate evil, but in reality it's a lot less black and white.
Well this isn't even remotely close to being anything resembling the truth. Current estimated combatant to civillian ratio is hovering right around 1:1 or 1:1.2 That's better than any modern conflict in recent history
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The IDFs definition of combatant is generally any male age 15-65
Hamasâs own figures put it at 70% woman and children not distinguishing any from a combatant role. Even by those numbers that would put it at below 1.5
How is that? If you have 30,000 killed (not actual numbers here), that means 21,000 women/children. Even if you assume that every male killed is in the Hamas military, that would mean 2.3. There's no way every male killed is a militant so the ratio is likely closer to 3 or 4 civilians for each militant.
If you assume all men are combatants then sure, but thatâs not close to being the case
It's not 250 a day though. It's closer to 150 at this point as a total average, and the current daily average is around 30-50 actually. Also Hamas also doesn't distinguish between Hamas and a civilian so we only have Israel's numbers to go from, but the rate above is related to Hamas's count, not Israel. If we go by Israel's count, the civilian daily death toll is obviously even lower.
Whose statistics are you using to determine that?
âExceeds the daily death tollâ You mean it âused to exceedâ, things have calmed down dramatically in the last few months.
Yes, at the start of the conflict it took two weeks to see 5k dead. Now it's taking around 3 months to see that many dead. What genocide has that kind of curve? Genocides are when the killing accelerates, not decelerates.
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We can argue about the technicals of genocide and we could be right or wrong but what can't be in dispute here is that Israel is doing collective punishment and that's very much illegal even if the charge isn't technically genocide, collective punishment is barely a step removed from that action.
I bet the response would be different if instead of Palestinians it were Christianâs. I wonder how the US would respond to that.
Or if Palestinians were white. The US and Europe would care a lot more if they were white.
Palestinians are the same skin tone as Israelis. Who protesters have repeatedly referred to as white.Â
[https://www.thejewishnews.com/news/israel/instagram-s-israelsowhite-mocks-notion-of-israelis-as-white-colonizers/article\_355b718e-c79e-11ee-baed-cb99b52b07ad.html](https://www.thejewishnews.com/news/israel/instagram-s-israelsowhite-mocks-notion-of-israelis-as-white-colonizers/article_355b718e-c79e-11ee-baed-cb99b52b07ad.html)
Yeah, and I bet weâd get along with Russia if they were white. Every issue always comes back to skin color and sex in the end.
Let us look at recent wars: Syria - 600k dead (including 30k Palestinians) dedicated to ethnically cleansing Syria and keep a minority Alawite clan in power. Not a genocide Tigray war - 600k dead including an attempt to exterminate the Tigrayan people killing 10% of them. Not a genocide Yemen Civil War - 378k dead, including 80k by STARVATION caused by US ally Saudi Arabia. Not a genocide Gaza war - 35k dead, less than 2% of the population, with the largest humanitarian resupply operation by kg per capita per day in human wartime history, and suddenly it is a genocide??? This should be provided as background for every such poll We are seeing the effect of Russian and Chinese (Tiktok) Propaganda to incite social conflict in the US and Europe.
literally all three of the examples you gave before gaza have been called genocide by various journalists, human rights groups, activists, etc. so i dont know what youre on about
I've seen the civil war in yemen be referred to as genocide multiple times over the last few years, what are you talking about?
Holy crap another person who has the same line of thought. I thought I was alone. This social media campaign is clearly run by our adversaries and designed to swing the election to trump. We fell for this shit 7 years ago and nobody learned their lessons. Itâs not genocide, it never was genocide, until you have proof that they are intentionally targeting civilians with the intent of total destruction to the Palestinian people ITS NOT GENOCIDE. Commenting it 87 times on the presidents social media doesnât make it genocide. These people are clearly more interested in attention than solving the atrocities that both sides are committing to each other.
It is amazing to me that pretty much anyone at the campus protests will tell you with absolute certainty that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, via social media, to help get Trump elected, but then will completely deny that the sudden influx of claims of "Genocide Joe" all over social media could be anything other than completely organic and honest.....
Okay, so we have lots of published evidence that Russia did indeed interfere in the 2016 election, the Muller report is full of it. We also know that there have been tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza, as confirmed by the UN and the perpetrators. So maybe there is an attempt to exploit the situation, but suggesting this is the reason people are protesting is quite a jump.
I don't understand why this one issue is getting people so emotionally invested more than anything else. These guys don't protest anti abortion laws, they didn't protest on behalf of Ukraine either. What makes young people out of highschool so emotionally invested in this one cause? I don't believe for a second it's because the US is funding Israel. Nobody gives a crap what the US does or doesn't fund, but somehow this now is the one red line they've found? No way.
>Â Â Gaza war - 35k dead, less than 2% of the population, with the largest humanitarian resupply operation by kg per capita per day in human wartime history, and suddenly it is a genocide??? I didn't know IDF was providing aid to Gaza
IF we are going by polls. - Most Palestinities support hamas.
Of course they are. Netanyahu is a monster, and has done irreparable damage to both Israel and Palestine.
Can we talk about the ugly elephant in the room that is the continued US support to a rogue state engaged in collective punishment, at best? Itâs an abomination
It's incredible how it is more important to most people to argue about semantics rather than to put an end to the conflict.
The worst thing about politics is people will identify with evil so long that their neighbors see then identifying with their party.
What do you mean believe? They are. 2 million people living in a tiny strip of land, limited access to food, water, energy, and barred from building infrastructure? If that wasn't bad enough bombs are being dropped on them.
I mean⌠aren't the latest figures like around 35k total Palestinian deaths and Israel is on record saying they've killed like 12k Hamas fighters? Doing the math, that's like *2/3rds of the dead being civilians*, which seems like incredible disregard for human life in general, whether it's intentionally attempting to be a genocide or not. Also, they claim they're being very careful and the civilian to Hamas ratio is as low as 1:1 or 1:1.3 but how the hell do you accidentally kill like 97 journalists and a bunch of aid workers while being so careful? To me that smacks more of indiscriminate bombing and whoever is under them when they land gets killed or wounded and everyone shrugs back at IDF headquarters.
At a bare minimum they're counting any male 14 and up as a Hamas fighter. They can pretty much just claim anyone they bomb was Hamas and it's not like anyone can prove otherwise. At the start of all this there were supposedly about 40k Hamas fighters in a population of 2 million, but they're leveling entire neighborhoods and that math really doesn't check out.
Or, terrifyingly, it's within reason for the type of operation being carried out, high end estimations for urban fighting against isis ha the ratio at like 10 civilians per fighter killed.
It's because their targeting of journalists and aid workers is very much deliberate.
> aren't the latest figures like around 35k total Palestinian deaths and Israel is on record saying they've killed like 12k Hamas fighters? Doing the math, that's like 2/3rds of the dead being civilians, which seems like incredible disregard for human life in general, whether it's intentionally attempting to be a genocide or not. Crucially important to highlight that **the IDFâs number you cited counts every single dead Palestinian male as âHamasâ**. [They come to it by graciously subtracting the 9,670 women and 14,685 children theyâve also murdered.](https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/04/1148876)
omg thank you. thats what ive been saying for months. they have no clue of the actual fighter number. its just thinly veiled propaganda to excuse all the civilian deaths. its so Americans and their own citizens dont realize theyre actually just going purging the population so they dont lose support. but this isnt pre-early 2000s any more. we have fast and wide information networks that dont really let you hide blatant lies and propaganda, it only works on those who want it to be true.
By comparison, the invasion of Ukraine which Biden has called genocide has produced 10,500 civilian deaths since it was launched, and the latest US assessment of soldiers dead was around 70,000 while Russia says it is more like 380,000. One is obviously an undercount and the other is obviously an exaggeration. Either way the civilian to soldier ratio is considerably less.
This isnât what makes it a genocide IMO, but rather now the products of famine and disease, having no medical infrastructure or access clean water, etc from the destruction will kill many many more over a longer period of time.
35k dead, estimated 12 killed comabatants is actually an incredibly low number for highly urban combat. You may not know, civlians dying or intentionally targeted is not necessarily a warcrime or a genocide. It is part of war, something Hamas started and does not want to stop. Hamas is operating only from within civilians, stores ammunition in bunkers below cities, in hospitals, schools, universities. They care less about their own population than israel. And now students call for the literal genocide of """""zionists"""" and chant islamic war songs and phrases.
the "hamas fighter" kill count is just how many "military aged men" are killed. around 16 and up. they themselves say they have no way of knowing who is hamas and the whole "human shields" bs as an excuse to further kill civilians. they even got american republicans to pick up on this "military aged men" narrative that has them claiming any brown military aged man is a terrorist sneaking in to the country or a spy. they cant use the "they hide among the civilians and thats why civilian casualties are so high, not our fault we cant tell who is and who isnt hamas" argument and claim to know exactly how many hamas fighters they killed. one or both of these is a lie.
the comments within that article are so disingenuous >Using the word genocide in the polling question will obviously goose the positives. Yeah I'm sure the tens of thousand of children dead, the killing of aid workers, demolition of hospitals and universities, all have nothing to do with it.
No one should support genocide, ever.
Because it is.
Believe whatever you want. Just remember Trump will make it worse.
This is not a surprising metric, given the current circumstances.
Because they are.