Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
- Thread starter Teufel
- Start date
Last edited:
Does anyone actually click Play when they see a post like that?
I skimmed it and it's just the typical doggerel from the songbook:
Have some balls, Mehdi. Support Palestine. Say that the Allies committed a German Genocide. Say it.
I skimmed it and it's just the typical doggerel from the songbook:
- "How can you deny that gays are wicked sinners? The Catholic Church, Jesuits, Opus Dei, Salvation Army, and Focus on the Family all agree on this!"
- "You're not a genocide scholar, because you didn't pay $30 to get listed as one."
- "Here's a definition of genocide that proves America committed a German Genocide, and Ukraine is committing a Russian Genocide, and Luke Skywalker committed an Imperial Genocide."
Have some balls, Mehdi. Support Palestine. Say that the Allies committed a German Genocide. Say it.
Last edited:
I don't think Hasan ignored the distinction. He addressed it directly.
His point wasn't that "lots of civilians died, therefore genocide." His point was that genocide requires intent to destroy a protected group. He argues the Allies were trying to defeat Germany, not destroy Germans as a people. Whether you agree with that or not, that's the distinction he's making.
Quoting Patton or Arthur Harris saying awful things doesn't automatically prove the Allies intended to wipe out the German people. It proves they were willing to use brutal tactics and that some leaders used hateful rhetoric. That's evidence you could use in a war crimes argument. It's not automatically evidence of genocide.
So if you think the Allied bombing campaign and Gaza are legally the same, then make that case. Show that the Allies intended to destroy the German people as a protected group. Just saying "they bombed civilians too" skips over the part Hasan is actually arguing about.
You can disagree with Hasan's conclusion, but saying he never drew a distinction isn't really true.
His point wasn't that "lots of civilians died, therefore genocide." His point was that genocide requires intent to destroy a protected group. He argues the Allies were trying to defeat Germany, not destroy Germans as a people. Whether you agree with that or not, that's the distinction he's making.
Quoting Patton or Arthur Harris saying awful things doesn't automatically prove the Allies intended to wipe out the German people. It proves they were willing to use brutal tactics and that some leaders used hateful rhetoric. That's evidence you could use in a war crimes argument. It's not automatically evidence of genocide.
So if you think the Allied bombing campaign and Gaza are legally the same, then make that case. Show that the Allies intended to destroy the German people as a protected group. Just saying "they bombed civilians too" skips over the part Hasan is actually arguing about.
You can disagree with Hasan's conclusion, but saying he never drew a distinction isn't really true.
Not a "protected" group - any group, Germans or Russians or Galactic Imperials, whoever. It only counts if you are deliberately killing your targets because of their identity.
Allied bombings and Gaza are the same, in that neither are genocide. Patton, Harris, etc., all spoke the same way Ben-Gvir or Smotrich do. Israel does not intend to destroy Palestinians as a group and has not been moving towards destroying Palestinians as a group - instead they have been negotiating ceasefires, providing warnings before bombings, advising civilians to flee, leaving refugee corridors open, etc. This is not mutually exclusive with a high, horrible civilian death count, or committing war crimes all the while; it is exclusive with intentionally trying to exterminate a people. You can charge people with all sorts of awful crimes through accidents or negligence or disregard, but you can't charge them with genocide for it. This is also why there are first, second, and third degrees of murder, then manslaughter, then negligent homicide, then self-defense, etc.
Hasan draws a distinction by seeming to admit that Stephens is correct about Allied brutality, but not daring to engage directly with Stephens' question about how someone can claim there was a Palestinian genocide but not a German one.
Read the transcripts of the Nuremberg trials provided here. One Nazi Einsatzgruppen commander after another showed up sounding just like Mehdi Hasan - "Your weapons are so much more powerful, you butchered our children from the air by the tens of thousands" - and one after another, the judges had them silenced by the rope. I can highlight the most important segments but it would be best if you (or anyone else interested) gave it the full read on your own and really thought about it, slept on it.
We have also previously discussed here that under international law, all war crimes are equally severe, genocide is not the final boss of war crimes, yet it is one of the hardest to prove - so why the special desperation to prove that one, and not others that they could pin on Israel so much more easily, or unquestionably? Instead of nailing an open-and-shut case of Israel cutting off civilian electricity supply, its adversaries are trying revise the definition of genocide specifically to make sure Israel is found guilty of it. This plainly strips the whole concept of any moral meaning and had better not be endorsed by anyone who has a problem with Ron DeSantis calling all openly gay teachers "groomers".
Last edited:
Israel continues to commit genocide, atrocity crimes by deliberately targeting Palestinian children, UN independent commission finds
Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide and atrocity crimes in the Gaza Strip and war crimes in the West Bank, a UN independent commission of inquiry said in its latest report released on Tuesday.
Overwhelming evidence of genocide against Palestinians: a legal expert unpacks the UN report on Gaza
This legal analysis lists the atrocities committed by Israel in great detail.
theconversation.com
Amnesty International concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza
Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.
www.amnesty.org
Israel’s genocide isn’t over. It’s been expanded. - JVP
The West Bank is in crisis as Israel expands its genocide and extremist settler violence reaches record highs.
www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org
(Settler Colonial) Genocide in Gaza: The Report of the UN Special Rapporteur
The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, has submitted her report to the Human Rights Council on Israel’…
twailr.com
@Thylacine 2000
"Protected group" is the right term. The Genocide Convention doesn't apply to just any group. It applies to national, ethnic, racial and religious groups. Germans and Palestinians qualify.
And genocide doesn't require trying to exterminate every last member of a people. The Convention says "in whole or in part." So saying Israel isn't trying to wipe out every Palestinian doesn't end the discussion.
Warnings before some bombings, evacuation corridors, aid deliveries and ceasefire negotiations don't exist in a vacuum. Hasan's argument is that they have to be weighed alongside things like repeated restrictions on food and water, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and statements by senior Israeli officials advocating collective punishment or forced displacement. You don't find that evidence persuasive. Hasan does.
As for Nuremberg, Nazi defendants arguing "the Allies bombed civilians too" doesn't prove every later comparison to Allied bombing is automatically invalid. It just means "you did it too" wasn't a defense to their own crimes.
"Protected group" is the right term. The Genocide Convention doesn't apply to just any group. It applies to national, ethnic, racial and religious groups. Germans and Palestinians qualify.
And genocide doesn't require trying to exterminate every last member of a people. The Convention says "in whole or in part." So saying Israel isn't trying to wipe out every Palestinian doesn't end the discussion.
Warnings before some bombings, evacuation corridors, aid deliveries and ceasefire negotiations don't exist in a vacuum. Hasan's argument is that they have to be weighed alongside things like repeated restrictions on food and water, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and statements by senior Israeli officials advocating collective punishment or forced displacement. You don't find that evidence persuasive. Hasan does.
As for Nuremberg, Nazi defendants arguing "the Allies bombed civilians too" doesn't prove every later comparison to Allied bombing is automatically invalid. It just means "you did it too" wasn't a defense to their own crimes.
It's often been said that if the terms as used by the UN are consistently applied, that the concept becomes diluted -- if everything is, nothing is, and the like.
This essay suggests that such a view may be yet another form of American exceptionalism....
www.everythingishorrible.net
This essay suggests that such a view may be yet another form of American exceptionalism....
Genocides Are Not Uncommon
It is politically convenient to treat them as rare.
www.everythingishorrible.net
Last edited:
This was already addressed: "How can you not agree that gays are wicked sinners when the Catholic Church and the Salvation Army all say so?"
I have already pointed out that it is worthless for Mehdi Hasan to make an Appeal To Authority argument via groups that have no particular expertise or authority, as they have all been shown to be steeped in antisemitic bigotry and bias, whether it's a United Nations vote among a bunch of countries that criminalized, banished, or exterminated their Jews within living memory, or wacko fake charity groups with immensely problematic histories like Jews for Jesus in Palestine.
Wikipedia has been massively brigaded and corrupted by organized campaigns to erase Jewish history and to declare that even groups like Hamas are strictly antizionist and not antisemitic, it's been a fairly public scandal. We have discussed that here too.
Given Allied commanders' above-stated goals of killing as many GERMANS as possible, and they certainly wiped out all infrastructure and burned civilian districts to ash, please explain in your own words why there was NOT a German Genocide.
Given your own invoked definition ("deliberately attempting to destroy, in whole or in part, a national group"), please explain in your own words how Ukraine is NOT committing a Russian Genocide right now. Because they're sure attempting to destroy the part of Russia that is marching inside it.
(You might find yourself arguing against another weird and worthless charity, Amnesty International, which infamously blamed Ukraine for fighting back against Russia too hard.)
Last edited:
It seems, yet again, that the whole world is wrong and yet inexplicably, you are completely correct.
In other news:
Trump's Gaza plan hinges on Hamas disarmament, Israeli withdrawals.
(Source: - https://www.reuters.com/world/middl...s-disarmament-israeli-withdrawals-2026-08-10/)
Last edited:
Ukraine is an easy one. The "part of Russia that is marching inside it" is the Russian military. Ukraine is trying to destroy an invading army. Russian soldiers are being targeted because they're enemy combatants invading Ukraine, not simply because they're Russian.
If killing enemy soldiers counts as genocide because those soldiers belong to a particular national group, then practically every war between countries becomes genocide. That's obviously not what "in whole or in part" means. The target has to be the national group as such.
The same applies to Germany. Allied commanders wanting to kill German soldiers doesn't show an intent to destroy Germans as a people. Even deliberately attacking German civilians doesn't establish that by itself. That can be a war crime, but genocide requires the additional intent to destroy the national group as such.
And Amnesty didn't accuse Ukraine of genocide for "fighting back against Russia too hard." It criticized Ukrainian forces for operating in populated areas and putting civilians at risk. Whatever you think of that report, I don't see how it supports your argument here.
Last edited:
That's not really addressing what he posted. The UN Commission finding wasn't "a United Nations vote among a bunch of countries." It came from an independent investigative commission that examined the evidence and applied the Genocide Convention to it.
Calling this an appeal to authority doesn't make much sense either. Nobody's saying "the UN says genocide, therefore genocide." The reports lay out the evidence and explain how they reached their conclusions. If you think the evidence is bad or the reasoning doesn't hold up, then address that. Just declaring everyone involved biased doesn't tell me what's wrong with the actual case they're making.
Same with Amnesty. Calling them a "wacko fake charity" doesn't tell me why their evidence or conclusions are wrong.
And even if we toss the Wikipedia links completely, what does that change? The UN Commission report, Amnesty report and the other sources he posted are still there.
At some point you've got to deal with the evidence instead of just disqualifying the people presenting it.
You are looking for a Shirley Exception ("surely this law cannot mean what it says, that would be ridiculous / dangerous"). The definition does not say "except for soldiers," it says "or in part." If that looks like it expands genocide to cover every war that ever happened, that's because it does.
And yes, in both cases above you have perfectly identified and articulated the exact points I have been trying to make. No one, certainly not Mehdi Hasan, has shown how Gaza was treated any differently, let alone any worse, than Germany; when Hasan attempted to do so, he instead only showed how little he knew of WW2.
The word "genocide" was invented in the first place to describe what the Nazis did to the Jews. Targeting a group for wholesale extermination, wiping them out on purpose because of who they were. If Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas had been right and the Holocaust had never happened, and WW2 had featured "only" aerial terror bombing by each side against the other until their armies were defeated and their leaders surrendered - London, Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo - there would have been no new words invented for it, because none would have been necessary. The bombing of Gaza exists somewhere on a continuum between those cities.
Last edited:
There's no "Shirley Exception" here. "In part" doesn't mean any random subset of people who happen to belong to a national group. Courts have already dealt with this. The targeted part has to be a substantial part of the protected group, and the intent has to be to destroy the group as such.
Srebrenica is a good example. Bosnian Serb forces systematically executed thousands of captured Bosnian Muslim men. The court didn't treat military-aged Bosnian Muslim men as a separate protected group. It found that the group being targeted for destruction was the Bosnian Muslim community of Srebrenica, and the killing of the men was evidence of an intent to destroy that larger community.
So I'm not inventing an exception for soldiers because I don't like where the definition leads. International courts already interpret it this way. Ukraine killing Russian soldiers who invaded Ukraine doesn't show an intent to destroy Russians as a people. They're fighting an invading army. Your interpretation of "in part" isn't how international courts have applied it.
And I don't see why Gaza has to be "worse than Germany" for it to qualify as genocide. There's no atrocity scale where you compare Gaza to Dresden and whichever one was worse determines whether genocide happened. The question is whether there was a specific intent to destroy the protected group, in whole or in substantial part, as such.
Srebrenica is a good example. Bosnian Serb forces systematically executed thousands of captured Bosnian Muslim men. The court didn't treat military-aged Bosnian Muslim men as a separate protected group. It found that the group being targeted for destruction was the Bosnian Muslim community of Srebrenica, and the killing of the men was evidence of an intent to destroy that larger community.
So I'm not inventing an exception for soldiers because I don't like where the definition leads. International courts already interpret it this way. Ukraine killing Russian soldiers who invaded Ukraine doesn't show an intent to destroy Russians as a people. They're fighting an invading army. Your interpretation of "in part" isn't how international courts have applied it.
And I don't see why Gaza has to be "worse than Germany" for it to qualify as genocide. There's no atrocity scale where you compare Gaza to Dresden and whichever one was worse determines whether genocide happened. The question is whether there was a specific intent to destroy the protected group, in whole or in substantial part, as such.
Does anyone of Armenian descent wish to weigh in on that?
(Nota Bene: In the very article linked, it does quote historian Stefan Ihrig as writing in his book that the Nazis took inspiration from Ottoman Turkey's actions. As Bruce Sterling once said, the 20th century was by and large not a good one.)
Last edited:
Regardless of whether others have performed (or continue to perform) genocide, the evidence of Israel's genocide against Palestine is indeed plentiful.
The debate continues, but it seems most people (outside Israel and the US Republican party) seem to agree that genocide has been committed by Israel:
- https://www.npr.org/2025/09/25/g-s1-89678/israel-gaza-genocide-debates-united-nations
The debate continues, but it seems most people (outside Israel and the US Republican party) seem to agree that genocide has been committed by Israel:
- https://www.npr.org/2025/09/25/g-s1-89678/israel-gaza-genocide-debates-united-nations
Last edited: