Technically yes. But October 7 IMO, was essentially a prison riot, an explosion of rage at the decades long brutalization of the Palestinian people by especially, the IDF. The mostly young Israeli victims were apparently oblivious to the danger of partying next door to a maximum security prison, Gaza, and to their own identity, to the im…
Technically yes. But October 7 IMO, was essentially a prison riot, an explosion of rage at the decades long brutalization of the Palestinian people by especially, the IDF. The mostly young Israeli victims were apparently oblivious to the danger of partying next door to a maximum security prison, Gaza, and to their own identity, to the imprisoned, as their oppressors. To believe that this one act of rage was intended as the opening of a sustained attempt to eradicate the Jewish population of Israel/Palestine, strikes me as denial of the truly calculated genocide being waged against the Palestinians. Who have been the indigenous people of that region for centuries. In this sense the better historical analogy is the attempted extermination of the Native Americans by the European colonizers.
"Technically yes" - hopefully you can see that that is why this definition of genocide is so broad as to be meaningless. The constant invocation of the term to describe the conflict in Gaza seems disingenuous (at best) to observers who are otherwise sympathetic to the plight of the Gazans.
On the subject on indigineity, I call your attention to this from Freddie de Boer (who shares your disdain for the state of Israel):
"Let me also take a moment to say that the whole concept of indigeneity, constantly invoked by a certain species of pro-Palestine activist, is an utter waste of time. Neither side has any clear historical claim to being the first people there, as neither are descendants of the Canaanites described in the Torah. (The notion that Jewish people are indigenous to Palestine is denied by their own holy book - Abraham was from Iraq!) We will never, ever resolve the historical debates to anyone’s satisfaction. More to the point, though… rights do not stem from indigeneity. I understand that, to a large degree, academics essentially reverse-engineered the concept in order to give moral heft to the plight of the Native Americans, who were the victims of a largely-successful genocide. But the rights of the Native Americans did not depend on their indigenous nature, especially considering that like all people they came here from somewhere else. We shouldn’t have slaughtered them not because they had some sort of unique connection to the land that they were on but because they were human and in possession of rights. The same applies to Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs - they are there, they have the right to stay and to live in peace and prosperity. There is no lawyering our way out of this by pretending we know who was there first. The concepts of democratic rule, human rights, egalitarianism, and international law must be enough."
Technically yes. But October 7 IMO, was essentially a prison riot, an explosion of rage at the decades long brutalization of the Palestinian people by especially, the IDF. The mostly young Israeli victims were apparently oblivious to the danger of partying next door to a maximum security prison, Gaza, and to their own identity, to the imprisoned, as their oppressors. To believe that this one act of rage was intended as the opening of a sustained attempt to eradicate the Jewish population of Israel/Palestine, strikes me as denial of the truly calculated genocide being waged against the Palestinians. Who have been the indigenous people of that region for centuries. In this sense the better historical analogy is the attempted extermination of the Native Americans by the European colonizers.
"Technically yes" - hopefully you can see that that is why this definition of genocide is so broad as to be meaningless. The constant invocation of the term to describe the conflict in Gaza seems disingenuous (at best) to observers who are otherwise sympathetic to the plight of the Gazans.
On the subject on indigineity, I call your attention to this from Freddie de Boer (who shares your disdain for the state of Israel):
"Let me also take a moment to say that the whole concept of indigeneity, constantly invoked by a certain species of pro-Palestine activist, is an utter waste of time. Neither side has any clear historical claim to being the first people there, as neither are descendants of the Canaanites described in the Torah. (The notion that Jewish people are indigenous to Palestine is denied by their own holy book - Abraham was from Iraq!) We will never, ever resolve the historical debates to anyone’s satisfaction. More to the point, though… rights do not stem from indigeneity. I understand that, to a large degree, academics essentially reverse-engineered the concept in order to give moral heft to the plight of the Native Americans, who were the victims of a largely-successful genocide. But the rights of the Native Americans did not depend on their indigenous nature, especially considering that like all people they came here from somewhere else. We shouldn’t have slaughtered them not because they had some sort of unique connection to the land that they were on but because they were human and in possession of rights. The same applies to Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs - they are there, they have the right to stay and to live in peace and prosperity. There is no lawyering our way out of this by pretending we know who was there first. The concepts of democratic rule, human rights, egalitarianism, and international law must be enough."
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/can-the-liberal-democratic-project