Hamas attacks southern Israel

[nhytgbvfeco2]

Ludicus, if the Holocaust happened at the speed of the Gaza "gEnOcIdE", the Holocaust would have taken 117 years to kill 6 million Jews.

[mishkin]

Israel is slower than the Nazis, congratulations.

Edit: You've used this argument before, it seems it's only genocide if it's done Nazi style.

[Coughdrop addict]

Honestly, it feels like "genocide" has become for the left what "socialism" is for the right. Just shorthand for "Something I don't like." or "When I don't get my way."

Yes, it is tragic what has happened in Gaza. War is never pretty, particularly urban warfare. But there is a large difference between civilians being unfortunate casualties (because in this case Hamas wished it to be so) and the deliberate targeting of civilians as a primary objective as Russia is doing in Ukraine.

[mishkin]

Honestly, it feels like "genocide" has become for the left what "socialism" is for the right. Just shorthand for "Something I don't like." or "When I don't get my way."

Yes, it is tragic what has happened in Gaza. War is never pretty, particularly urban warfare. But there is a large difference between civilians being unfortunate casualties (because in this case Hamas wished it to be so) and the deliberate targeting of civilians as a primary objective as Russia is doing in Ukraine.

As far as I know, "the left" is not talking about any other genocide and what is happening/has happened in Gaza is not the usual misery of war.

Nakba (wiki)

The Nakba (Arabic: النكبة an-Nakbah, lit. 'The Catastrophe') was the ethnic cleansing[1] of Palestinians in Mandatory Palestine during the 1948 Palestine war through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations.[2] The term is also used to describe the ongoing persecution and displacement of Palestinians by Israel.[3] As a whole, it covers the shattering of Palestinian society and the long-running rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.[4][5]

[...]

The First Intifada began in 1987 and lasted until the 1993 Oslo Accords.[112] The Second Intifada began in 2000.[113] In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza and blockaded it.[114] In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel has built the Israeli West Bank barrier[115] and created Palestinian enclaves.[116]

In 2011, Israel passed the Nakba Law, which denies government funding to institutions that commemorate the Nakba.[117]

The 2023 Israel-Hamas War has caused the highest Palestinian casualties since the 1948 war,[118] and has raised fears among Palestinians that history will repeat itself.[119] These fears were exacerbated when Israeli Agricultural Minister Avi Dichter said that the war would end with "Gaza Nakba 2023."[120] Dichter was rebuked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[121]

You can read the entire article in five minutes.

If you have another five minutes:

The Holocaust and the Nakba (wiki)

International perspectives

Raphael Lemkin, the inventor of the concept of genocide, supported Zionism and likely considered the Nakba justified in line with mainstream Zionist views. Although he championed the independence of "small nations", especially the Jews, Lemkin did not believe in granting independence to groups, such as Palestinian Arabs, that he thought were not sufficiently developed to qualify as nations.[39] In his 2021 book The Problems of Genocide, historian A. Dirk Moses argues that the universalization of the Holocaust in the definition of genocide has served to exclude other acts—including the Nakba—from moral opprobrium. Moses writes, "Today, this regime ascribes Palestinians the role of the villains in a global drama about preventing genocide and a 'second Holocaust' for resisting colonization of and expulsion from their land."[40]

Some historians such as Moses and Donald Bloxham have criticized the perceived uniqueness of the Holocaust, and instead view it and the Nakba as part of broader trends of settler colonialism and ethnic nationalism leading to genocide and ethnic cleansing in the European rimlands.[41] There is a general consensus that colonialism is a valuable frame of analysis for Nazism and the Holocaust.[42] Historian Omer Bartov writes that various competing nationalisms in east-central Europe excluded Jews. Their negative treatment by non-Jewish neighbors during and after the Holocaust "by all accounts... rendered many of them indifferent and callous and at times vengeful toward the Arab population they encountered in Palestine".[43]

[Jozam]

Israel is slower than the Nazis, congratulations.

Edit: You've used this argument before, it seems it's only genocide if it's done Nazi style.

It's also the same argument China uses to deny the Uyghur genocide.

Xinjiang population growth best answers Western smear campaign on Uygurs — Global Times

[mishkin]

I was going to say that the Israelis are more cunning, but I'm afraid that jokes about asemitism (for example the triple parenthesis) are only allowed to declared isrelies and their staunchest defenders.

Seriously, there is a lot of very interesting information about genocide denial.

I am just going to leave this here. Genocide denial (wiki)

Genocide scholar Adam Jones proposed a framework for genocide denial that consists of several strategies, including minimizing fatalities, blaming fatalities on unrelated "natural" causes, denying intent to destroy a group, and claiming self-defense in preemptive or disproportionate attacks:[13]

"Hardly anybody died" When the genocides lie far in the past, denial is easier.
"It wasn't intentional" Disease and famine-causing conditions such as forced labor, concentration camps and slavery (even though they may be manufactured by the perpetrator) may be blamed for casualties.
"There weren't that many people to begin with" Minimizing the casualties of the victims, while the criminals destroy or hide the evidence.
"It was self defense" The killing of civilians, especially able bodied males is rationalized in preemptive attack, as they are accused of plotting against the perpetrators. The perpetrator may exterminate witnesses and relatives of the victims.
"There was no central direction" Perpetrators can use militias, paramilitaries, mercenaries, or death squads to avoid being seen as directly participating.
"It wasn't or isn't 'genocide,' because ..." They may enter definitional or rhetorical argumentation.
"We would never do that" Self-image cannot be questioned: the perpetrator sees itself as benevolent by definition. Evidence doesn't matter.
"We are the real victims" They deflect attention to their own casualties/losses, without historical context.

[sumskilz]

Let’s see, what allegation are you talking about, exactly? written by you, a few years ago, “Israeli Arabs are Israeli citizens, whereas Palestinians are a hostile population.” (thread “Meet the "Trump peace plan" for the Israel-Palestinian conflict”)

That’s not what you claimed I said before:

"Hospital records", "analysis at face value"...I find all these arguments very intertaining, coming from someone who has already said that a few years ago that the Palestinians don't exist.

So why no link to support this allegation? Were you just lying?

First, the Palestinian citizens of Israel are second class citizens.

In December of 2017, only 24.3% of Arab citizens of Israel considered themselves to be Palestinian (source). In May of 2023, only 16.5% of Arab citizens of Israel considered Palestinian to be the most important component of their identity. After October 7th, this dropped to 8.2%. Conversely, 21% of Arab citizens of Israel considered being Israeli to be the most important part of their identity. This rose to 33.2% after October 7th.


Source

I’m guessing that you’ve met very few if any Israeli Arabs. There are even some who would take being called a Palestinian as a hostile insult. Even those who live in the triangle, who are on average more negative about Israel, vehemently opposed the suggestion that they could become part of a future Palestinian state in a negotiated solution.

[mishkin]

I’m guessing that you’ve met very few if any Israeli Arabs. There are even some who would take being called a Palestinian as a hostile insult.

Why?

[sumskilz]

Why?

Because the term Palestinian is to varying degrees associated with Arab nationalism, Islam, the urban population, and/or being the enemy. There is a big politically charged debate about how much, if at all, the Arabs in the region identified as Palestinians before the 1948 and 1967 wars, but for certain some Arab groups (with rare individual exceptions) have never considered themselves to be Palestinians.

Some of the Bedouin groups, especially in the south, speak a different dialect of Arabic than Levantine Arabs do, and have always considered themselves to be a distinct people from the settled population. Some of the Bedouin groups were allied with the Jews during the 1948 war and fought against the ancestors of the people who now consider themselves to be Palestinians. Bedouins aren’t obligated to serve in the IDF, but they volunteer to serve at a relatively high rate anyway. The Desert Reconnaissance Battalion in the IDf is almost all made up of Bedouins.

Israeli Druze are extremely nationalistic. Despite speaking the same language, to most of them, Palestinians are the enemy. They also fought on the Jewish side during the 1948 war. At the request of their own community leaders, all Druze men are drafted into the IDF. A lot of them get jobs as border guards after they complete their military service. Others make a career out of the IDF and rise to fairly high ranks, like Salman Habaka, the commander of the IDF 53rd Battalion who was killed in Gaza in November. A while back, there was a huge brawl in the north of Israel because some Druze were infuriated by the sight of some Muslim Arabs wearing Palestinian keffiyehs.

Some Christian Arabs have been involved with secular Palestinian nationalist movements, but they were generally neutral in the 1948 war. As the Palestinian cause has become more and more associated with Islamism, and with the growth of Islamism in general, Arab Israeli Christians have more and more come to see themselves as Israelis and consider Muslim Arabs to be their historical oppressors. A minority of them even dislike being called an Arab now (much less a Palestinian), even though Arabic is the language they speak at home. In that case, they prefer calling themselves Arameans, because that that’s the language their ancestors spoke before they were conquered by the Arabs and the language some of them still use in their liturgy.

Most secular Arab Israelis I know wouldn’t be bothered if a foreigner called them a Palestinian, but they might correct the person. If an Israeli Jew called them a Palestinian they might take it as implying that they don’t belong or that they’re a terrorist sympathizer. I know one secular Arab Israeli who calls herself a Palestinian, but I’m not sure if that’s political or if she just likes making people uncomfortable. Most of the Arab Israelis I know are educated professionals or university students, so they may not be representative of the general population.

[mishkin]

Thank you for the elaborate response. I assumed that the reason was simply because it was considered a derogatory term, it could be said, if I understood you correctly, that the reason for not allowing confusion ("don't call me palestinian") is one's own nationalism/pride and the fact that for many the Palestinian is directly considered the enemy (as you have said, in varying degrees from Islamist to Hamas militant).

[nhytgbvfeco2]

Israel is slower than the Nazis, congratulations.

Edit: You've used this argument before, it seems it's only genocide if it's done Nazi style.

Ludicus was making a direct comparison to the Holocaust, so yes, I did aswell as a response.

[mishkin]

Ludicus was making a direct comparison to the Holocaust, so yes, I did aswell as a response.

You have also recently talked to me about the genocide in Europe to deny the possibility of a genocide in Palestine, you used exactly the same argument; It would take X years for Israel to kill 6 million Palestinians

Edit:

If this were a genocide the casualty figure after 6 months of fighting would be much higher. At this rate of casualties it would take another 39 years to kill the population of Gaza, and that's if you don't count any births. If you think that's plausible then.. lol.

no reference to the holocaust, only reference to the slowness with which Israel is doing it. My memory fails, sorry.
-----------------------------
since I was looking at old messages, this is in incredibly bad taste. You did not tell Ludicus that their mention of the Holocaust was unfortunate and you preferred to put yourself at their level, or even below.

the Gaza "gEnOcIdE"

[nhytgbvfeco2]

Indeed, there is no genocide in Gaza, that much is pretty clear. This war barely tickles the demographic situation in Gaza, not to mention the palestinian authority's territory as a whole. There is no ethnic or religious component to it. It is a war, and the civilian casualties as a proportion of deaths isn't even particularly unusual for conflicts of this sort, as you can see from the comparison Sumskilz posted.

[mishkin]

Most of Gaza is devastated, it can no longer be lived in, no homes, no water, no food, infrastructure and services destroyed, more than twenty hospitals destroyed (26?), schools and universties destroyed, more than a million citizens displaced to the last corner that remains unrazed.

The Nakba happened and this is its third act. Are you a Nakba denier?

-------------------------------------------------------

No Exit in Gaza (Human Rights Watch)

In the 1990s, extremists aiming to change Bosnia and Herzegovina’s demographic map through “ethnic cleansing” terrorized civilians into leaving their homes. Horrified at witnessing violent forced displacement in real time and wanting to stop it, the then-UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata extolled a new principle she called "preventive protection" and used the term “right to remain.”

But the UN refugee agency and other humanitarian actors could not stop the ethnic cleansing. To make matters worse, European states seized on the “right to remain” as a rationale to block asylum seekers from fleeing Bosnia. The UN Security Council declared the creation of “safe areas” to contain and protect the displaced people within Bosnia. We know how that story ended: The mass graves of men massacred at Srebrenica, one of those so-called safe areas, stand as testament to the international community’s failure to protect civilians.

Now, 30 years later, 2.3 million Palestinians are trapped in Gaza, but unlike Bosnia, there is no place within that small, densely populated territory that even purports to be safe. Following the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israeli forces have laid waste to vast areas, reducing much of the housing to rubble, with more than 31,000 people estimated killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the majority women and children.

Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced, many ordered to evacuate one area only to be bombed, starved and forced to flee again—and again. More than 1 million people who have fled to Rafah on Gaza’s far southern border with Egypt live in fear as an Israeli military ground operation on Rafah and another mass evacuation looms.

[Ludicus]

In December of 2017, only 24.3% of Arab citizens of Israel considered themselves to be Palestinian (source). In May of 2023, only 16.5% of Arab citizens of Israel considered Palestinian to be the most important component of their identity. After October 7th, this dropped to 8.2%. Conversely, 21% of Arab citizens of Israel considered being Israeli to be the most important part of their identity. This rose to 33.2% after October 7th.

I’m guessing that you’ve met very few if any Israeli Arabs. There are even some who would take being called a Palestinian as a hostile insult. Even those who live in the triangle, who are on average more negative about Israel, vehemently opposed the suggestion that they could become part of a future Palestinian state in a negotiated solution.

A nice mystification...so, "being called palestinian is an hostile insult". Really. They are afraid to say what they are: Palestinians.

1 -Before,

The Palestinian Arab Citizens of Israel- University of Michigan

In 1948, only about 150,000 Palestinian Arabs remained in the area that became the stateof Israel. They were granted Israeli citizenship and the right to vote. But in many respects they were and remain second-class citizens, since Israel defines itself as the state of the Jewish people and Palestinians are non-Jews. Until 1966 most of them were subject to amilitary government that restricted their movement and other rights (to speech,association and so on).

Arabs were not permitted to become full members of the Israelitrade union federation, the Histadrut, until 1965. About 40 percent of their lands wereconfiscated by the state and used for development projects that benefited Jews primarilyor exclusively. All of Israel’s governments have discriminated against the Arabpopulation by allocating far fewer resources for education, health care, public works,municipal government and economic development to the Arab sector.

Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel have had a difficult struggle to maintain their culturaland political identity in a state that officially regards expression of Palestinian or Arabnational sentiment as subversive. Until 1967, they were entirely isolated from the Arabworld and were often regarded by other Arabs as traitors for living in Israel. Since 1967,many have become more aware of their identity as Palestinians. One important expression of this identity was the organization of a general strike on March 30, 1976,designated as Land Day, to protest the continuing confiscation of Arab lands. The Israeli security forces killed six Arab citizens on that day.

It is now commemorated as a national day by all Palestinians. Many Palestinian Arabs have also come to understand that their political status as Israeli citizens and their protracted contact with Israeli society has differentiated them from other Palestinians. Although most of them support the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, few would pursue the possibility of relocating thereif such a state comes into existence.

--
2- ...And now. Published two months ago.
The Many Civil and Human Rights Challenges Facing Israeli Palestinian Citizens

PCIs, who are among Israel’s most marginalized minorities, have experienced even more violence and racism after the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Despite the intense global focus on Gaza, the troubling situation of Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCIs) has received scant attention. Since the events of October 7, the nearly 2 million PCIs—also known as Arab Israelis, though many reject that label—have faced increasing discrimination from state and local authorities as well as from their Jewish counterparts, with little recourse available to them. Whether this becomes a lasting trend is yet to be seen.

WHO ARE THE PCIS?

Though three-quarters of Palestinians were forced out of lands that became Israel in 1948, 150,000 were allowed to remain and were granted citizenship. They now account for approximately 20 percent of Israel’s population. A majority live in villages and cities segregated from Jewish society, while only about 8 percent live in mixed, Jewish-Palestinian cities.

PCIs are among Israel’s most marginalized minorities. Israel does not have a constitution that guarantees equality for all before the law. Instead, important privileges and rights are conferred based on nationality. For example, an Israeli law passed in 2018 declared that only Jewish people have a right to self-determination and that Arabic is not an official language, despite its indigeneity. Even discussing the Palestinian history of displacement and dispossession in public entities, including schools, risks the loss of state funding under legislation popularly known as the Nakba law.


PCIs also hold different identification documents than their Jewish counterparts. The IDs are labeled with race and religion—markers that restrict where Arabs can reside. Though most PCIs are allowed to vote (since they hold Israeli passports, which differentiates them from East Jerusalemites, who do not), they face organized suppression and intimidation efforts. In elections conducted in 2019, authorities mounted cameras in polling stations where PCIs vote, and those living in the Naqab (Negev) had to travel 50 kilometers (31 miles) to the closest polling station. It wasn’t until 2021 that a Palestinian political party was able to join an Israeli governing coalition for the first time. The experience was short-lived, however, and it was succeeded by the most extreme, right-wing government in Israel’s history.

Even though they face civic, social, and economic differential treatment and discrimination, PCIs were largely absent from the almost nine months of protests in Israel challenging the government’s plan to limit judicial review of state law and policies. Most Palestinians viewed the protests as an effort to maintain a status quo rather than a movement for progressive social change that might address the racism they face.

HOW DID OCTOBER 7 IMPACT PCIS?

Hamas’s attack on October 7 killed twenty-one PCIs. Six PCIs were taken hostage, two of whom have since been released during prisoner exchangers, and one was killed by the Israeli army while trying to escape in mid-December. In addition, PCIs who live mainly in unrecognized, sparsely populated herding and agricultural communities near the Gaza border have not benefited from Israeli state security to protect them. They have been unable to seek alternative shelter during the Gaza war, and as a result, at least seven have been killed by Hamas missiles, including six children.
Though 53 percent of the population of Israel’s Northern District are PCIs, around half do not have access to bomb shelters to protect them from Hezbollah artillery or rockets. Moreover, some PCIs who were inside Gaza living or visiting family on October 7 have been able to leave, but they were unable to take their non-Israeli family members with them.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO PCIS SINCE ISRAEL INVADED GAZA?

PCIs have been hesitant to express themselves either in public or in private conversations since the attacks.

A poll conducted in December showed that 70 percent of PCIs did not feel comfortable sharing their opinions of the war on social media.

Social media posts or other public statements about Gaza have been the basis for actions against PCIs, resulting in job losses, expulsion from school, or even arrest. According to the Emergency Coalition of Arab Society, a Palestinian civil rights organization in Israel, 108 students have faced repercussions from their colleges for their speech, and twenty-seven have been expelled. More than a hundred PCIs have been fired from their jobs, and 221 have been arrested—most due to social media posts. Media personalities and influencers have been targeted for arrest, likely to discourage other PCIs from speaking out. Even those PCIs expressing patriotic or pro-Israel sentiments have been targeted.

Police have also cracked down on protests inside PCIs’ towns using intimidation tactics on the basis that demonstrations might “endanger the public well-being.” Though the Israeli Supreme Court found that authorities had no right to decree sweeping prohibitions on preapproved demonstrations, it rejected a petition to allow antiwar protests in two of the largest Palestinian towns in Israel, Sakhnin and Umm al-Fahm. In early February, prominent PCI lawyer Ahmad Khalefa was released to home confinement after spending 110 days in prison for organizing an anti-war march in October, for which he was charged with “incitement to terrorism” and “identifying with a terrorist organization.” He faces up to eight years in prison for what his colleagues say are unsubstantiated charges.
Access to certain reading material is also being restricted.

On November 8, the Knesset enacted a new law to restrict the “persistent consumption” of “terrorist materials,” punishable by up to a year in prison. Which materials might be deemed terroristic is not defined. To implement the law, the police have started confiscating phones from PCIs and scrolling through their social media accounts and chat groups for evidence of violations of the law. Those arrested may be held in prison without bail until their hearings.

Have They Faced Violence or Other Threats?

As vitriol from Israeli media stations and politicians against PCIs has increased, so have incidents of violence and racism. For example, on October 28, a mob surrounded a dormitory for Palestinian students at Netanya College and chanted “death to Arabs.” Though the police and some PCI community leaders prevented the mob from entering the building, the students were forced to return to their villages because their safety could not be ensured. PCIs have also shown up to work to see racist, offensive graffiti targeting them and have been physically threatened by patrons. Some PCIs employed in Jewish or mixed localities have stopped working because of this.

What Does This Mean for the Status of PCIs?

Many PCIs identified with their Jewish counterparts in the first weeks of the war. According to an Israel Democracy Institute poll conducted a month after the attacks, more than 70 percent of PCIs felt more a part of Israel and its issues—an all-time high, as this number has hovered around 40 percent since 2015. However, subsequent polling conducted between November 27 and December 4 showed a 5 percent drop, perhaps because PCIs realized they were not being protected by authorities in the same way as Jewish Israelis and as they faced restrictions on their speech and right to protest. In the same poll, 46 percent of PCIs responded that they felt uncomfortable speaking Arabic around Jewish Israelis, and 54 percent said they felt uncomfortable entering Jewish or mixed localities for work or errands. This is an alarming development for the integration of society, and there is no guarantee that it will be mended after the war ends.

More- Read about how Israel deliberately deny Palestinians their basic rights and freedoms, including chronic discriminatory underinvestment in Palestinian communities in Israel: The lesser citizens of Israel: Israel's apartheid

----
----
I advise everyone to carefully read the extensive documentation provided by the United Nations on the Palestinian question, instead of being fooled by some Israeli patriotic versions, particularly with regard to Origins and Evolution of the Palestine Problem: 1917-1947(Part I)

Here you can read extensively about,

I. The Beginnings of the Palestine Issue
II. The Balfour Declaration
III. The League of Nations Mandates
IV. Palestine Mandated
V. Mandated Palestine: The “Jewish National Home”
includes: Immigration into Palestine, 1920-1929
VI. Mandated Palestine – Palestinian Resistance
VII. Mandated Palestine: The Partition Plans
VIII. Palestine and the League of Nations
IX. The Ending of the Mandate

It’s worth quoting the final words,

Arnold J. Toynbee who, before becoming recognized as an eminent world historian had dealt directly with the Palestine Mandate in the British Foreign Office, wrote in 1968:

All through those 30 years, Britain (admitted) into Palestine, year by year, a quota of Jewish immigrants that varied according to the strength of the respective pressures of the Arabs and Jews at the time. These immigrants could not have come in if they had not been shielded by a British chevaux-de-frise. If Palestine had remained under Ottoman Turkish rule, or if it had become an independent Arab state in 1918, Jewish immigrants would never have been admitted into Palestine in large enough numbers to enable them to overwhelm the Palestinian Arabs in this Arab people’s own country.

The reason why the State of Israel exists today and why today 1,500,000 Palestinian Arabs are refugees is that, for 30 years, Jewish immigration was imposed on the Palestinian Arabs by British military power until the immigrants were sufficiently numerous and sufficiently well-armed to be able to fend for themselves with tanks and planes of their own. The tragedy in Palestine is not just a local one; it is a tragedy for the world, because it is an injustice that is a menace to the world’s peace.

More,
Part II (1947-1977)
Part III (1978-1983)
Part IV (1984-1988)
Part V (1989-2000)

-----
Anti-Israel protests continue to escalate at major universities in the US, fueled by the arrests of hundreds of students. Republicans are calling for military intervention in the universities. Students are demanding that university administrations sever all ties with Israeli companies and divest from investments related to the military industry. Tejasri Vijayakumar, the president of the student association at Columbia University, told The Washington Post that the current generation of students is more determined in their activism. "One difference from previous generations is that university, in the past, was a rite of passage into adulthood," said Vijayakumar. "In our case, we started elementary school during the financial crisis, went through high school during the Trump administration, and arrived at university during the pandemic. We've never lived in normal times." Here, Republicanos admitem intervenção militar em ...

----

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Over 100 faculty members protest in 'Rally to Support our Students and Reclaim our University’
At Columbia, Israel-Gaza tensions simmer as leaders face

“There’s an enormous amount of pressure being exerted on presidents, not just President Shafik, but other presidents,” said David B. Lurie, an associate professor of Japanese history and literature at Columbia, “from people who would really like to see student speech and faculty speech constricted, as far as it applies to the ongoing conflict. So we’re at a very dangerous time.”
Lurie is president of the school’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which has registered alarm at what the organization sees as violations of academic freedom since the war began.

[sumskilz]

2- ...And now. Published two months ago.
The Many Civil and Human Rights Challenges Facing Israeli Palestinian Citizens

Almost every line of this article you quoted is either a lie or a misrepresentation. It’s too much to bother with, but I’ll use one small section as an example:

PCIs also hold different identification documents than their Jewish counterparts. The IDs are labeled with race and religion—markers that restrict where Arabs can reside. Though most PCIs are allowed to vote (since they hold Israeli passports, which differentiates them from East Jerusalemites, who do not), they face organized suppression and intimidation efforts.

Everybody has the exact same ID card. The ID cards are not labelled with race or religion. To claim otherwise is simply false. Prior to 2005, ID cards did list a person’s leᵓom, which means something like nation/community/ethnicity. The only difference a person’s leᵓom makes legally is whether or not they are drafted. Jews, Druze, and Circassians are drafted, whereas Arabs are not. It’s not some special privilege to be drafted, and Arabs aren’t drafted because their communities for the most don’t want them to be.

While neither are on a person’s ID, their leᵓom and religion are listed in the population registry database. The latter is because Israel maintains the millet system from the Ottoman Empire for family law. Each of the ethnoreligious communities have their courts which are recognized by the state. So for example, Muslim Arabs have issues of family law settled by state-sanctioned sharia courts, the Druze by Druze courts, and so forth. This is because Israel is actually a multicultural state, and that’s how the minorities want to keep it. If someone doesn’t want to be under the jurisdiction of a particular court, they can change their affiliation to “none” and simply be under the jurisdiction of the secular court, though very few of the minorities choose to do so.

Most Arabs in East Jerusalem are permanent residents rather citizens, because they don’t want to be citizens. A lot of people there do most identify as Palestinians and have close ties to other Arabs in the West Bank. Although according to polls, something like half of them prefer to stay as part of Israel rather than be part of a future Palestinian state. In any case, as permanent residents they have all the same legal rights and privileges as citizens, except that they can’t vote in national elections (only local elections). They have the option to apply for citizenship, most have not done so.

[PointOfViewGun]

Indeed, there is no genocide in Gaza, that much is pretty clear. This war barely tickles the demographic situation in Gaza, not to mention the palestinian authority's territory as a whole. There is no ethnic or religious component to it. It is a war, and the civilian casualties as a proportion of deaths isn't even particularly unusual for conflicts of this sort, as you can see from the comparison Sumskilz posted.

Its interesting that you keep on being selective about the definition of genocide regarding this case. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

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;
(c) 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.

You only mention ethnic and religious classifications but the definition is not limited to them. Racial and national classifications are there too. The definition does not make distinctions on the extensiveness of the genocidal actions either. Pointing out that Israel haven't killed enough Palestinians in your opinion is a moot argument. There being war does not invalidate genocide either. What Sumskilz expressed about expected deaths in such a conflict is merely his opinion and not based on any argument of logic or knowledge.

[Laser101]

Its interesting that you keep on being selective about the definition of genocide regarding this case. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:


You only mention ethnic and religious classifications but the definition is not limited to them. Racial and national classifications are there too. The definition does not make distinctions on the extensiveness of the genocidal actions either. Pointing out that Israel haven't killed enough Palestinians in your opinion is a moot argument. There being war does not invalidate genocide either. What Sumskilz expressed about expected deaths in such a conflict is merely his opinion and not based on any argument of logic or knowledge.

Establishing genocide under the Convention is actually a rather tall order; from the cases on the chart Sumskilz showed earlier, most examples of 'contested genocide' would probably not qualify under a strict reading. Body count is not in itself sufficient; you need to establish that there was an attempt to destroy a particular racial or ethnic group.

The strange thing is that it doesn't make sense to go for the hard to prove and rather weak claim of genocide when more defensible claims against Israeli conduct would be apartheid or ethnic cleansing (both are debatable to say the least, but have a stronger basis than the genocide allegation).

[mishkin]

wiki

Ethnic cleansing has no legal definition under international criminal law, but the methods by which it is carried out are considered crimes against humanity and may also fall under the Genocide Convention.[1][11][12]

It is a shame that we get involved in semantic discussions when it is evident that what Israel is doing is simply barbaric. They have devastated the territory where a very specific population lived, and for us it should be irrelevant whether it can be called genocide or ethnic cleansing or anything else, It is not that we are going to condemn or penalize Israel based on a specific definition.

[Muizer]

It is a shame that we get involved in semantic discussions when it is evident that what Israel is doing is simply barbaric. They have devastated the territory where a very specific population lived, and for us it should be irrelevant whether it can be called genocide or ethnic cleansing or anything else, It is not that we are going to condemn or penalize Israel based on a specific definition.

It is obviously particularly aggravating to Jewish people to be accused of genocide. That is the reason why it is used. Part of the information war.

The sad reality is civilian lives have not factored into the war from the start, including the 7/10 raid. It's been a battle of who cares less, if anything.

As for barbarism, Israel is as ruthless in pursuit of its enemies as Hamas is eager to sacrifice its own people.

The interests of Palestinian people the way we understand it are simply not represented by any side in this conflict. They will continue to suffer until they are. But who's going to do that? I have no idea.