A few words on "genocide"

Genocide.

We've seen that word bandied about quite a bit since 7 October, 2023.

I posted this headline on Counter Social yesterday:

This is a good strategy. Gazan civilians are not in the tunnels; they're used exclusively by their Hamas overlords to protect the fighters, who, despite the propaganda spewed forth, don't give two farthings about the civilians.

One of my followers, with whom I didn't interact all too often, replied to me.

"So, you're for genocide?"

Now, just so we're all clear, here is the official definition of genocide, according the United Nations:

The definition contained in Article II of the Convention describes genocide as a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. It does not include political groups or so called “cultural genocide”.

[Emphasis mine.]

Hamas is a political group which is waging war against Israel. Using a tactic like flooding their tunnels is not genocide by the definition of the term. But it is genocide by the definition which Hamas-apologists have assumed: Anything Israel—read "Jews"—does to defend itself against a group which does, in fact, want to commit genocide on it is illegitimate and genocidal.

Donald Trump's election in 2016 caused many masks to drop on the right. The same can be said of the left after the October Pogrom. The horrors of that day quickly faded and were forgotten once Israel did what any country thus attacked would do: strike back. The barely-concealed antisemitism—"I'm not antisemitic, I'm anti-Zionist!"—was cast aside completely. Jews had no right to defend themselves. To pay for their centuries of "crimes", they should just lie down and let Hamas slit their throats. "Never again" applied to everyone except to the people who coined the phrase.

"So, Israel can do no wrong, then?" That's the response which my position often elicits. And it's ridiculous. The West Bank settlements are inimical to peace. The Netanyahu government is a threat both to its neighbors and its citizens. Israel can't continue the occupation and ever have any kind of settled life. But none of that matters when some of the people whom the so-concerned left want you to give up to want you dead and erased from the earth. What exactly is any country supposed to do when faced with an entity which wants its extermination? The dead Gazan civilians are a tragedy. But none of this is in a vacuum. Israel does not bear sole responsibility for the current situation. Far from it. But it bears the brunt of the blame. And you can hide behind any weaselly formulations, but at the end of the day it's nothing but hatred of Jews.

If the Israeli army wanted to commit genocide against Gaza, it has the weaponry to do so. What's happening there now is urban warfare. And the International Court of Justice ruled that what the Israelis are doing in Gaza as of this moment is not genocide. The pro-Hamas camp put great faith in the ICJ ruling Israel's actions genocidal. Now that it didn't, it's almost as if the case was never brought to the bar. The court's ruling is inconvenient. Because while it did order Israel to prevent genocidal acts, it said that genocide was not occuring. And that's just not enough for the people who want the Jewish state razed from the world.

Genocide is a heavy word. The Holodomor. The Holocaust. Cambodia. Rwanda. To use it for any military or political situation which gets you agitated is to shear the word of any meaning. If everything is genocide, then the concept loses its power. It becomes merely another rhetorical device for the aggrieved, not the catastrophe for which it was intended. And the people throwing that word around in regard to Israel are oddly unbothered by situations which do meet the definition I posted above. The Uyghurs. Darfur. The Rohingya. But those instances don't involve the (((Great Enemy))).

I simply cannot take anyone seriously who conflates flooding Hamas tunnels with "genocide". By doing so they've told on themselves. And what they've told is none to their credit.

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