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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

The term genocide is a bit grammatically fucked. Every other “cide” denotes the commission of the crime. Attempted homicide is categorically distinct from homicide per se.

For practical reasons, however, we call attempted extermination genocide, which I think confuses people. (It also brings up all the mens rea problems that plague any prosecution of attempted and ongoing crimes.)

I wouldn’t conclude someone is a denialist or racist or hate speaker just because they hesitate to call something a genocide. (I genuinely don’t know what that word means anymore apart from throwing up my hands and saying it’s whatever a clique of humanitarian organizations say it means.)

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I don‘t think you nor mahboi is a genocide denier just because you put a different meaning to the term then most people. If I would then I would have to call the tribunal tasked with pressing charges for the Cambodian genocide genocide deniers (they were not) just because they failed to press charges for an obvious genocide.

Being a genocide denier means that you deny the atrocities behind said genocide and that is what hunterpayne and nailer (your sibling thread) are doing. They are genocide deniers. They are spreading conspiracy theories and propaganda denying the atrocities (e.g. by claiming that pictures of atrocities were generated by AI or the the population of Gaza has not suffered as a result of the genocide). This is genocide denial, and it is hate speech, and it is anti-Palestinian racism.

>Every other “cide” denotes the commission of the crime

No, it doesn't; it's a Latin suffix meaning "to kill". While we may have codified the word "homicide" into law, this doesn't redefine the word to mean anything other than "one person killing another".

Genocide means killing focused on an ethnic group. Israel has plainly stated that this is their goal with Palestinians. This is a genocide in every way that matters.

Yeah, homicide is the act, and it's also a crime, and it could be attempted.

Israel's stated goal is to push all the Palestinians out of Gaza and West Bank. Several orgs consider this genocide because it's a way to destroy the culture. I don't agree because of the confusion we've already seen it create. Genocide before meant killing off an ethnic group. We already had a term for what Israel is doing, ethnic cleansing. It's inexcusable either way.

Language doesn't work like that. If it did homophobia would mean fear, and it doesn't. You can't discover the meaning of a word by taking it apart into it's Latin roots.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Genocide is the partial or total destruction of a human group,[a] committed intentionally. The popular view conceives of genocide as the large-scale killing of individuals, but in scholarly and legal fields, genocide occurs when the group itself is targeted. Acts of genocide include killing as well as non-lethal acts such as preventing reproduction among the group, the forcible transfer of children to another group, and cultural genocide.

I’m not sure what Wikipedia has to say would be relevant for any topic. However “in part” seems like a way to redefine violence against any individual member of a group as genocide. Do you consider Hamas’ murder rampage also to be an act of genocide?

It seemed like random violence against Israelis rather than genocide, but I'm not any kind of expert.

If you don't like Wikipedia for your definitions, you could try any dictionary you are particularly fond of. The Wikipedia article also has a section about the person who first coined the term and what he meant by it, and a section about the Genocide Convention passed by the United Nations, if that would help.

Wikipedia itself doesn’t like citing Wikipedia, and the site is famously biased. My question though is that a part of the Jewish people was murdered deliberately, why would you not consider it genocide?

Wikipedia is perfectly acceptable to cite when the topic is what do words mean. Here Wikipeida cites the UN Genocide Convention as well as other scholars, but maybe you believe the UN is also biased, or some conspiracy or something.

Hamas is a resistance group. Their aim is the liberation of Palestine. IDF is a genocidal army, their aim is the eradication of Palestinians from the land of Palestine. One of these is doing anti-colonial resistance, the other is doing a genocide. Israel has stripped Palestinians of any political means of resistance, so the group naturally resorts to violence to achieve their goals (as horrible as that is). There is a big difference here. Israel is doing a genocide, Hamas is not.

And before you start accusing me of anti-semitism I am gonna be ahead of your game and remind you that your anti-academia stance rhymes a helluva lot with the cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, which is an actual anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, unlike credible accusations of genocide.

> Wikipedia is perfectly acceptable to cite

No, not accordinging to Wikipedia.

> Hamas is a resistance group.

No. Their aim is to slaughter Jewish people worldwide, which is in Hamas' founding charter.

> One of these is doing anti-colonial resistance

How? Arabs colonised the area in 650. Hamas openly chants that "from the river to the sea (ie, all of Israel), Palestine will be arab"

> Israel has stripped Palestinians of any political means of resistance,

Arabs can vote in Israel. Arabs cannot vote in Palestine.

> Israel is doing a genocide, Hamas is not.

Yes but why? Hamas deliberately eliminated, in part, Jewish people. That meets the definition you gave. Why is Hamas not committng genocide then?

> your anti-academia stance

I'm not anti academia. I'm just open about the biases of academia. It seems you are not.

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