Comment by johnnyworker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnnyworker | Hacker News Reader

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> They have a border with Egypt. Why won't Egypt let them leave?

"Leave" as in "ethnically cleanse themselves, never to return"? So what's all this song and dance about pretending to not be on board with genocide about?

> There was never a blockade because Israel never surrounded Gaza.

Ahuh.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-counted-calorie-require...

> Israel maintained the blockade was necessary to weaken Hamas, an armed, Iranian-backed group committed to Israel’s destruction.

> But critics say the blockade constituted collective punishment against Gaza’s more than 1.5 million people in its ultimately failed effort to shake Hamas’ hold on the territory. An American diplomatic cable revealed by WikiLeaks last year quoted Israeli diplomats as saying they wanted to “keep Gaza’s economy on the brink of collapse.”

[..]

> Similar to the calculation of the calorie needs, Israel also used baffling secret guidelines to differentiate between humanitarian necessities and nonessential luxuries. The result was that military bureaucrats enforcing the blockade allowed frozen salmon and low-fat yogurt into the Hamas-ruled territory, but not cilantro or instant coffee.

There never was a blockade. There is no genocide. Just keep handwaving and it will all go away.

> "Leave" as in "ethnically cleanse themselves, never to return"? So what's all this song and dance about pretending to not be on board with genocide about?

Ethic cleansing is about mass relocating people, while genocide is about mass murdering them. They are two different phenomena.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

> acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group

When they all live in refugees in other countries, they are destroyed as a national group. With this level of hair splitting you might as well say it's not genocide as long as even one member of the group survives, why not go there, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing

> Ethnic cleansing has been described as part of a continuum of violence whose most extreme form is genocide, where the perpetrator's goal is the destruction of the targeted group. Ethnic cleansing is similar to forced deportation or population transfer whereas genocide is the attempt to destroy part or all of a particular ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. While ethnic cleansing and genocide may share the same goal and the acts which are used to perpetrate both crimes may often resemble each other, ethnic cleansing is intended to displace a persecuted population from a given territory, while genocide is intended to destroy a group.

Whereas, by your understanding, ethnic cleansing and genocide are the same thing. Why would we need the term "ethnic cleansing" then?

How is displaying a national group elsewhere not destroying it as a national group? That's why I say genocide. And at best you could say they don't care if the Palestinians live or die as long as they go away, by bombs, starvation or fleeing, and then can take the land.

https://twitter.com/GLZRadio/status/1741347524693127398

> "If we act strategically correctly, there will be immigration and we will live in the Gaza Strip. We will not allow a situation where 2 million people live there. If there are 100-200 thousand Arabs in Gaza, all the talk is about the day after will be different. They want to leave, they have been living in the ghetto for 75 years and are in need"

Admitting Gaza is a ghetto and the desire to ethnically cleanse it in one fell swoop.

> Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, concretely says it is a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal believes that Israeli forces are completing three genocidal acts, including, “killing, causing serious bodily harm, and measures calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.” He points to the mass levels of destruction and total siege of basic necessities—like water, food, fuel, and medical supplies—as evidence.

-- https://time.com/6334409/is-whats-happening-gaza-genocide-ex...

So, at the very least, some of the people literally studying genocide are agreeing it is genocide. And many people who deny it is have political motivations. So fuck their nuance. If people can commit genocide or rub shoulders with people who do, they'll survive being called genocidal. It's not about their feelings or the face they think they can save, it's about the people who are getting murdered and driven away by colonialists.

> How is displaying a national group elsewhere not destroying it as a national group?

Plenty of nations have migrated over history. Every inhabitant of the Middle East is part transplant and/or invader.

Yes, and? People die naturally, they always eventually do. Does that make murder a nop?

The point is displacement doesn’t necessarily destroy nations. Murder necessarily kills. Forced displacement is a war crime. It isn’t genocide.

I’ll go one step further and argue that this sort of bombastic rhetoric hurts the pro-Palestinian cause.

https://time.com/6334409/is-whats-happening-gaza-genocide-ex...

> his sort of bombastic rhetoric hurts the pro-Palestinian cause.

First off, that dichomoty of "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine" something I reject. I stand for international law and against Nazis. I know you find that "bombastic", too, but I prefer the company I'm in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM2fXTkjU2

Secondly, it's not even that clear cut as you make it out to be.

https://time.com/6334409/is-whats-happening-gaza-genocide-ex...

> Raz Segal, the program director of genocide studies at Stockton University, concretely says it is a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal believes that Israeli forces are completing three genocidal acts, including, “killing, causing serious bodily harm, and measures calculated to bring about the destruction of the group.” He points to the mass levels of destruction and total siege of basic necessities—like water, food, fuel, and medical supplies—as evidence.

If a director of genocide studies says there is a case to be made, there is a case to be made. I can try to make the case, if you want, until dang steps in to curtail a flamewar between two people who aren't even mad at each other and who nobody else reads ^^

But more importantly, what practical difference do you see?

I say our neighbour is murdering his daughter, right now. All sorts of people come from the brushwork to call me a neighbour-hater, berate me in all sorts of ways, seek nuance, blah di blah. Turns out, he didn't murder his daughter, he was "just" raping her and cutting her legs off while people made excuses to do fuck all. And then they feel vindicated even! See? False alarm. It wasn't crime A that is beyond that pale, it was crime B that is beyond that pale!

Hannah Arendt explained how totalitarianism can only by fully understood by obduction, and how people who can't get mobilized by what is already known, wouldn't be mobilized by the full picture either.

Don't criticize me for doing imperfectly what you are not doing at all and expect anything but a tired groan. Put people on trial and then the judges can and should be nuanced. Until then, nope.

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