They use the word "genocide" so that anyone who questions it would get labeled a genocide denier, and of course to make any action against Israel justified on an a priori basis.
This is also why other genocides are ignored, because we don't have time for this shit.
If these people believed what they said, Iran and Spain would be opening their doors to Gazan refugees right now, as per the law.
It's said that false allegations of rape are extremely rare because there's no upside. If the upside was "I get to do whatever I want and label it resistance", allegations would have exploded. People have completely lost their fucking minds.
One of indications that anti-Israeli activists care more about Israel hate than about the Palestinians is their imprecise use of language. This use of language has created a distorting effect that can make it harder to call attention to real suffering and to its true causes because it makes it hard to distinguish between lies, distortions and true facts. It is also interesting how often an entire genocide is blamed on "Netanyahu." Is a genocide truly blamed on one person, or has the word "Netanyahu" become a euphemism for something else?
As an Indigenous person with family in residential schools, as someone who has done extensive research on genocide, and as someone who has paid very close attention to the ICC case and their rationale for determining it is a genocide (which btw, I don’t wasn’t entirely convinced on until much later when more unfolded from Netenyahu, I am disappointed that you seem to be unaware that there are indeed different definitions of genocide.
You are choosing the one that you think fit you, but I personally do respect the ICC, and yet I still had to do my homework on their rationale.
The Genocide Convention defines genocide as ANY of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." These five acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.
The convention further criminalizes "complicity, attempt, or incitement of its commission.
Netenyahu is NOT just targeting Hamas and you can continue to say he is but just because you say it does not make it true.
It is unfortunate but not unexpected that you are being wilfully blind to this. I know that if someone accused Indigenous people of committing genocide we would take that very personally given it has happened to us.
That doesn’t mean Netenyahu isn’t committing genocide just because you don’t want to hear it.
At the end of the day, it is about “thinking” there is a genocide because I think Netanyahu’s actions fit the definition, and you don’t. The ICC does, and Netenyahu doesn’t. Someone is wrong here and I’m willing to bet that it is not me and not the ICC just as you are willing to bet the opposite, not literally bet but you know what I mean.
There is also the court of public opinion which is often far stronger than the criminal courts. And what I am telling you is that when you draw your line in the sand and say if anyone thinks like the ICC, then they are a Jew hater, you are taking the court of public opinion and dismissing its relevance and nobody is going to stand for that. The public are the people you need to convince, and that won’t happen when you start by calling someone a Jew hater when they aren’t.
On top of the court of public opinion, when you draw your line in the sand, you should make sure you are on the right side of it or be prepared to concede when you aren’t. There is no indication in my view that this is not an attempt at genocide - every possible indication one could have does indicate it is. So burying your head in the sand and saying it’s not and the Jews have been waiting for the world to say this because you knew it was coming is both dismissive and also then presumes that Israel can do whatever it wants and if anyone disagrees with anything, then you will launch the “see, we knew you would do that” line and that is BS. There is a line for everything and at some point Netenyahu can be human and act like a human and cross that line by his choice and that makes him wrong and whenever that point is, you aren’t then right because you say “see we knew you would say that about us”. You don’t get that latitude and not does anyone.
And you know what, if Netenyahu wants to dial it back and be more strategic then he could gain my support again, but until then, he is committing genocide and I don’t think he is going to stop that until he either is finished or he realizes the political consequences for doing so and is forced to dial it back. Those who continue to support him are complicit and that includes the USA, Biden, and any other country that arms Israel for the purposes of attacking Gaza while withholding humanitarian aid. Full stop.
Those same countries would be wise to arm Israel to fight Iran because what is happening there is a travesty and Iran needs to be stopped.
Back to the Jew hater thing… you still think I am a Jew hater? OK. That’s a silly way to assess me but what you want at this point is for me to continue to defend myself which was clear by your condescending “I gave you too much credit” comment and so, as Jerry Seinfeld once said, “I’m out.”
Does this make the Jewish people who think it is a genocide, Jew haters because they don’t agree with you?
Yesterday’s Toronto Star:
I once embraced the Zionist dream. Now I’m protesting the genocide in Gaza on the streets of Toronto
By Michele Landsberg, Contributor Michele Landsberg is a journalist and author based in Toronto.
I grew up swathed in antisemitism in 1940s Toronto. We Jewish kids on the block knew which stores we shouldn’t enter, which areas of Toronto were dangerous (Beaches!), how to defend ourselves in the schoolyard around Christmas and Easter, when our ears burned at the taunt of “Jews killed Jesus!” We cowered … as a tiny minority in our public school … when the principal threatened us with the strap for not praying to Jesus, and when the music teacher told us that Jewish students were not allowed to sing in his class. We had to mouth the words. No wonder I leaped into the embrace of the Zionist youth movement when I discovered it at the age of 13. Here was everything I needed: other teenagers who read books and argued about ideas, shared shining ideals of a state where men and women would be equal, democratic socialism would mean justice for all, and Jews would be safe at last in our own home. Here at last was our defiance against a world that had silently witnessed and remained indifferent while we were slaughtered in the millions. I consider myself a post-Zionist now. That adolescent dream of a country committed to justice and equality has died. That Zionist identity, which gave me such a comfortable framework for my ideals, has faded away. I can no longer visualize what Israel plausibly could or should be in the future, but I know I’m no longer committed to being part of it.
I lost that dream of Jewish social justice, but I found a new one: justice for all. It wasn’t a quick transition. My stubborn allegiance slowly frayed, first while I lived in Israel for a year in 1957 at age 18 and tried hard not to see the cracks in the Zionist utopian narrative behind the dream, and later when I lived in the more progressive air of New York in the 1980s and found a community of feminists who could criticize Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank without being labelled “selfhating Jews.” I began to read more deeply, to examine my emotional allegiance to Zionism, to peel away the layers and layers of propaganda I had been fed and eagerly swallowed. None of this was easy. I fought enlightenment every step of the way. Loyalties rooted in childhood trauma are like tough weeds, fiercely resisting the tools of fact and reason. Even as Israel’s cruelty in its occupation of Palestinian lands spawned world-wide anti-Jewish terrorism, I was still arguing that Israel was making Jews safer. Now the slaughter in Gaza grows daily more horrific, fitting any reasonable definition of genocide. Look at the countless credible reports of intentional murder of children, of journalists, of aid workers; the deliberate destruction of schools, hospitals, museums, libraries; the erasure of an entire culture; the stark evil of denying food and water to desperate people. Over the past 20 months, I have been weeping for the murdered, mutilated and orphaned children of Gaza as bitterly as I had wept over the murdered families in the weeks after October 7. Yes, some of us can keep both thoughts in our heads and empathy for both sides — all humans — in our hearts.
When I knew I had to do something, anything, about the war crimes in Gaza (I was haunted by my lifelong grief and outrage that no-one, no-one, no-one stood up for us when we were being annihilated in Europe) I was immediately attacked online by right-wing Jews. The usual condescending reproaches and violent insults were trotted out: I was giving aid to our enemies; I was spreading a “blood libel”; I was a Jew-hater; I was “pro-rape”. None of these insults could touch me because I knew how ludicrously false they were. As painful as it is to lose cherished friends, I asked myself: Is this intense social pressure why so very few Germans stood up against the Nazis? In 1988, in Jerusalem, I stood alongside Women in Black, Israeli women who had created a powerful silent protest against the occupation. They stood every week, all in the black of mourning, to demand an end to the occupation. In late May, I posted my idea of a Toronto Women in Black on Facebook and rushed to a printer to make signs: Feminists Against Genocide and Women in Black Say Starvation is a War Crime. On June 6, with the help of volunteers, we lugged the 50 signs to the corner and were stunned when 300 black-clad women came pouring onto the street to stand with us. We lined the curb around the corner from Yonge and along Bloor St. all the way to Park Road. The honks and cheers from passing trucks and cars told us how many others are as shocked by the genocide as we are. And we’ll be doing it again and again, until the killing stops. Not in our name, not now or ever, not to anyone. We will not let threats and abuse choke our humanity into silence. We cannot and will not be silently complicit anymore.
————-
Interesting, and seems to refute much of what you are claiming. So which Jewish person do I believe? How about I use the brain I was given and assess things objectively for myself based on the evidence I see before me, and decide that way. So just as I DO support Israel in its fight against Iran, because Iran armed Hamas, I don’t support Israel in its fight in Gaza now because Israel has gone too far. If that makes me a Jew Supporting Jew Hater, that’s a pretty ridiculous way at attempt to box someone in just so they will agree with you more. It won’t work.
Bryn, I guess I gave you too much credit. It is not a matter of "thinking" it's a genocide. It either fits the definition or it doesn't. And it doesn't. You seem to think the term "genocide" is a subjective term. It's not. It has a very specific meaning.
And if you do not understand the meaning of the term, you really should not be engaging in the discussion. However, if you want to know which Jewish person to believe, trust the 91% who, according to Prof. Robert Brym's survey of Canadian Jewry, agree with me, rather than the 3% who agree with Landsberg. There's your answer, Bryn.
Likewise, your other post on Fb about the % of Liberals, Cons, NDP etc, who "think" it's a genocide, is irrelevant. There was a time when most people thought the earth was flat. It isn't. There was a time when most Canadians thought marriage equality was immoral. It isn't.
You should be familiar with the Jewish experience with mobs who unanimously concur that Jews are abc. That does not make the mob right. There is no genocide. And your fanatical insistence that we -- not you -- are wrong on this fact is a symptom of a sort of fanatical ideology that is unbecoming.
If I recall, Pat, not that many newsletters back, you traced the genocide allegation against Israel back to the first Durban Conference?
What's terrifying to read is the extent to which Canadians responding to a recent poll believe that the war in Gaza is a genocide being perpetrated by the IDF, but it's not surprising, if the CBC is any sort of benchmark to go by. On an almost daily basis there's someone airing that opinion, some of them who can even claim the bona fides to do so, like Amnesty Canada's former "Secretary General", Alex Neve, now teaching international law at Dalhousie and Essex University (Britain), and people who don't know much about people like him accept what he says at face value.
You’ve nailed every point with precision and accuracy. Nicely done Pat.
Every word a gem, thank you Pat!
They use the word "genocide" so that anyone who questions it would get labeled a genocide denier, and of course to make any action against Israel justified on an a priori basis.
This is also why other genocides are ignored, because we don't have time for this shit.
If these people believed what they said, Iran and Spain would be opening their doors to Gazan refugees right now, as per the law.
It's said that false allegations of rape are extremely rare because there's no upside. If the upside was "I get to do whatever I want and label it resistance", allegations would have exploded. People have completely lost their fucking minds.
Again, perfectly stated.
One of indications that anti-Israeli activists care more about Israel hate than about the Palestinians is their imprecise use of language. This use of language has created a distorting effect that can make it harder to call attention to real suffering and to its true causes because it makes it hard to distinguish between lies, distortions and true facts. It is also interesting how often an entire genocide is blamed on "Netanyahu." Is a genocide truly blamed on one person, or has the word "Netanyahu" become a euphemism for something else?
As an Indigenous person with family in residential schools, as someone who has done extensive research on genocide, and as someone who has paid very close attention to the ICC case and their rationale for determining it is a genocide (which btw, I don’t wasn’t entirely convinced on until much later when more unfolded from Netenyahu, I am disappointed that you seem to be unaware that there are indeed different definitions of genocide.
You are choosing the one that you think fit you, but I personally do respect the ICC, and yet I still had to do my homework on their rationale.
The Genocide Convention defines genocide as ANY of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." These five acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.
The convention further criminalizes "complicity, attempt, or incitement of its commission.
Netenyahu is NOT just targeting Hamas and you can continue to say he is but just because you say it does not make it true.
It is unfortunate but not unexpected that you are being wilfully blind to this. I know that if someone accused Indigenous people of committing genocide we would take that very personally given it has happened to us.
That doesn’t mean Netenyahu isn’t committing genocide just because you don’t want to hear it.
At the end of the day, it is about “thinking” there is a genocide because I think Netanyahu’s actions fit the definition, and you don’t. The ICC does, and Netenyahu doesn’t. Someone is wrong here and I’m willing to bet that it is not me and not the ICC just as you are willing to bet the opposite, not literally bet but you know what I mean.
There is also the court of public opinion which is often far stronger than the criminal courts. And what I am telling you is that when you draw your line in the sand and say if anyone thinks like the ICC, then they are a Jew hater, you are taking the court of public opinion and dismissing its relevance and nobody is going to stand for that. The public are the people you need to convince, and that won’t happen when you start by calling someone a Jew hater when they aren’t.
On top of the court of public opinion, when you draw your line in the sand, you should make sure you are on the right side of it or be prepared to concede when you aren’t. There is no indication in my view that this is not an attempt at genocide - every possible indication one could have does indicate it is. So burying your head in the sand and saying it’s not and the Jews have been waiting for the world to say this because you knew it was coming is both dismissive and also then presumes that Israel can do whatever it wants and if anyone disagrees with anything, then you will launch the “see, we knew you would do that” line and that is BS. There is a line for everything and at some point Netenyahu can be human and act like a human and cross that line by his choice and that makes him wrong and whenever that point is, you aren’t then right because you say “see we knew you would say that about us”. You don’t get that latitude and not does anyone.
And you know what, if Netenyahu wants to dial it back and be more strategic then he could gain my support again, but until then, he is committing genocide and I don’t think he is going to stop that until he either is finished or he realizes the political consequences for doing so and is forced to dial it back. Those who continue to support him are complicit and that includes the USA, Biden, and any other country that arms Israel for the purposes of attacking Gaza while withholding humanitarian aid. Full stop.
Those same countries would be wise to arm Israel to fight Iran because what is happening there is a travesty and Iran needs to be stopped.
Back to the Jew hater thing… you still think I am a Jew hater? OK. That’s a silly way to assess me but what you want at this point is for me to continue to defend myself which was clear by your condescending “I gave you too much credit” comment and so, as Jerry Seinfeld once said, “I’m out.”
Does this make the Jewish people who think it is a genocide, Jew haters because they don’t agree with you?
Yesterday’s Toronto Star:
I once embraced the Zionist dream. Now I’m protesting the genocide in Gaza on the streets of Toronto
By Michele Landsberg, Contributor Michele Landsberg is a journalist and author based in Toronto.
I grew up swathed in antisemitism in 1940s Toronto. We Jewish kids on the block knew which stores we shouldn’t enter, which areas of Toronto were dangerous (Beaches!), how to defend ourselves in the schoolyard around Christmas and Easter, when our ears burned at the taunt of “Jews killed Jesus!” We cowered … as a tiny minority in our public school … when the principal threatened us with the strap for not praying to Jesus, and when the music teacher told us that Jewish students were not allowed to sing in his class. We had to mouth the words. No wonder I leaped into the embrace of the Zionist youth movement when I discovered it at the age of 13. Here was everything I needed: other teenagers who read books and argued about ideas, shared shining ideals of a state where men and women would be equal, democratic socialism would mean justice for all, and Jews would be safe at last in our own home. Here at last was our defiance against a world that had silently witnessed and remained indifferent while we were slaughtered in the millions. I consider myself a post-Zionist now. That adolescent dream of a country committed to justice and equality has died. That Zionist identity, which gave me such a comfortable framework for my ideals, has faded away. I can no longer visualize what Israel plausibly could or should be in the future, but I know I’m no longer committed to being part of it.
I lost that dream of Jewish social justice, but I found a new one: justice for all. It wasn’t a quick transition. My stubborn allegiance slowly frayed, first while I lived in Israel for a year in 1957 at age 18 and tried hard not to see the cracks in the Zionist utopian narrative behind the dream, and later when I lived in the more progressive air of New York in the 1980s and found a community of feminists who could criticize Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank without being labelled “selfhating Jews.” I began to read more deeply, to examine my emotional allegiance to Zionism, to peel away the layers and layers of propaganda I had been fed and eagerly swallowed. None of this was easy. I fought enlightenment every step of the way. Loyalties rooted in childhood trauma are like tough weeds, fiercely resisting the tools of fact and reason. Even as Israel’s cruelty in its occupation of Palestinian lands spawned world-wide anti-Jewish terrorism, I was still arguing that Israel was making Jews safer. Now the slaughter in Gaza grows daily more horrific, fitting any reasonable definition of genocide. Look at the countless credible reports of intentional murder of children, of journalists, of aid workers; the deliberate destruction of schools, hospitals, museums, libraries; the erasure of an entire culture; the stark evil of denying food and water to desperate people. Over the past 20 months, I have been weeping for the murdered, mutilated and orphaned children of Gaza as bitterly as I had wept over the murdered families in the weeks after October 7. Yes, some of us can keep both thoughts in our heads and empathy for both sides — all humans — in our hearts.
When I knew I had to do something, anything, about the war crimes in Gaza (I was haunted by my lifelong grief and outrage that no-one, no-one, no-one stood up for us when we were being annihilated in Europe) I was immediately attacked online by right-wing Jews. The usual condescending reproaches and violent insults were trotted out: I was giving aid to our enemies; I was spreading a “blood libel”; I was a Jew-hater; I was “pro-rape”. None of these insults could touch me because I knew how ludicrously false they were. As painful as it is to lose cherished friends, I asked myself: Is this intense social pressure why so very few Germans stood up against the Nazis? In 1988, in Jerusalem, I stood alongside Women in Black, Israeli women who had created a powerful silent protest against the occupation. They stood every week, all in the black of mourning, to demand an end to the occupation. In late May, I posted my idea of a Toronto Women in Black on Facebook and rushed to a printer to make signs: Feminists Against Genocide and Women in Black Say Starvation is a War Crime. On June 6, with the help of volunteers, we lugged the 50 signs to the corner and were stunned when 300 black-clad women came pouring onto the street to stand with us. We lined the curb around the corner from Yonge and along Bloor St. all the way to Park Road. The honks and cheers from passing trucks and cars told us how many others are as shocked by the genocide as we are. And we’ll be doing it again and again, until the killing stops. Not in our name, not now or ever, not to anyone. We will not let threats and abuse choke our humanity into silence. We cannot and will not be silently complicit anymore.
————-
Interesting, and seems to refute much of what you are claiming. So which Jewish person do I believe? How about I use the brain I was given and assess things objectively for myself based on the evidence I see before me, and decide that way. So just as I DO support Israel in its fight against Iran, because Iran armed Hamas, I don’t support Israel in its fight in Gaza now because Israel has gone too far. If that makes me a Jew Supporting Jew Hater, that’s a pretty ridiculous way at attempt to box someone in just so they will agree with you more. It won’t work.
Bryn, I guess I gave you too much credit. It is not a matter of "thinking" it's a genocide. It either fits the definition or it doesn't. And it doesn't. You seem to think the term "genocide" is a subjective term. It's not. It has a very specific meaning.
And if you do not understand the meaning of the term, you really should not be engaging in the discussion. However, if you want to know which Jewish person to believe, trust the 91% who, according to Prof. Robert Brym's survey of Canadian Jewry, agree with me, rather than the 3% who agree with Landsberg. There's your answer, Bryn.
Likewise, your other post on Fb about the % of Liberals, Cons, NDP etc, who "think" it's a genocide, is irrelevant. There was a time when most people thought the earth was flat. It isn't. There was a time when most Canadians thought marriage equality was immoral. It isn't.
You should be familiar with the Jewish experience with mobs who unanimously concur that Jews are abc. That does not make the mob right. There is no genocide. And your fanatical insistence that we -- not you -- are wrong on this fact is a symptom of a sort of fanatical ideology that is unbecoming.
If I recall, Pat, not that many newsletters back, you traced the genocide allegation against Israel back to the first Durban Conference?
What's terrifying to read is the extent to which Canadians responding to a recent poll believe that the war in Gaza is a genocide being perpetrated by the IDF, but it's not surprising, if the CBC is any sort of benchmark to go by. On an almost daily basis there's someone airing that opinion, some of them who can even claim the bona fides to do so, like Amnesty Canada's former "Secretary General", Alex Neve, now teaching international law at Dalhousie and Essex University (Britain), and people who don't know much about people like him accept what he says at face value.