That’s begging the question in the traditional sense of the term in formal logic. First of all you have to establish that it is in fact a genocide. While what the IDF is doing probably counts as war crimes, I have yet to see a convincing case that it’s genocide in a legal sense. We’ll see. I’m more than willing to change my mind in light of new evidence or a stronger argument than I have seen thus far.
From Oxford, the traditional dictionary:
gen·o·cide
noun
the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
What part of that is Israel not doing?
Or we can go with the legal definition from the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide linked from https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml.
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- (a) Killing members of the group;
- (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- © Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The only one in question is the last point, but any single one of those points means it’s a genocide.
Ok so you don’t consider what they are doing genocidal actions.
Forcing people out of their homes, cutting off all electricity, food, and water while having them in a complete barricade and shutting down or extremely limiting aid, while destroying 80% of housing is Genocide.
If you feel the need to try and hide behind obfuscation then you do you but I can call a spade a spade.
Sometimes but not always. There’s more to it in international law. That said, I realize that in arguing caution before leveling accusations of genocide, I am in the minority in this instance. My take is based on what I’ve read of expert legal opinion on the subject and not on my own evaluation of the IDF’s moral position.
The long and short of it is that there are matters of intent that have to be shown in order to have a case for genocide. Thus far, regardless of how we think about the IDF vis war-crimes, I have yet to see a convincing argument for genocide on a legal basis.
You may say that this is a distinction without a difference, and while I’m sympathetic to that idea, I still think it’s worthwhile to maintain these sharp legal definitions.
