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Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

middleeasteye.net

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Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#511
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people fail to understand about dynamics between countries, is ultimately there is no supreme court or arbiter of truth. The UN doesn't have authority over any powerful country (or non powerful country for that matter). People seem to have this concept that there is some supra national legal system, or even moral system that can hold a higher truth than what powerful countries want, but there isn't. When it come…

Its important to note that most of those "irrelevant" countries are only irrelevant because they're perpetually under the thumb of world powers. Hence why they petition the UN. And, hence why empires and somewhat-formally colonial nations ignore them. Ultimately, a lot of the wealth of the West comes from core countries siphoning wealth from the periphery and propping up psueodo governments to place their thumbs on t…

Empires are not exclusive to the West, and those also ignore the UN. For many of the countries under their thumbs, the West has at least sometimes been acting in their defense.

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the official HN guidelines, it states that "Most stories about politics" is off-topic , and "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic ". Is the Isreal/Gaza debate not political, and not mainstream news? How does a story like this not directly violate those guidelines? Furthermore, the guidelines state that stories should be what "good hackers" find "intellectually satisfying". A political deb…

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Please make your substantive points without crossing into personal attack.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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The Holocaust does not justify committing a genocide against another population. Some people having inaccurate, or even immoral, views about what occurred on October 7th does not justify genocide. The fact that Hamas engages in evil acts does not justify genocide perpetrated against innocents. In short: Two wrongs do not make a right. It is also worth noting that you are not portraying the matter fairly. You are tran…

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Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#514
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Those who believe that there is any comparison between then and now generally should learn more about what happened then - and would do well to learn the history of war in general.

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#516
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> both parties were supportive in the last election. Not many choices. Primaries. The truth is that foreign policy rarely flips American elections. Particularly when we don't have our troops on the ground.

Last election the democrats didn't have a primary, and the republicans barely had one. Political change requires more than one day at the polls; it demands large scale sustained effort by many people, including those in positions of prominence, and even with that success takes time and luck. Part of being in a leadership position is taking responsibility for what happens on your watch. The electorate can't be blamed…

> Last election the democrats didn't have a primary, and the republicans barely had one

Now do down ballot.

> electorate can't be blamed for its leaders not doing their jobs when the their leadership is needed

Pro-Palestinian voters who swung for Trump explicitly endorsed the war. Even if they thought they were just throwing a tantrum. That includes the war’s repercussions, including the dissolution and incorporation of Palestine.

If you care about net effect, the answer is obvious. If how one feels reigns supreme, yes, that voting bloc is excused. (But still irrelevant.)

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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The Holocaust does not justify committing a genocide against another population. Some people having inaccurate, or even immoral, views about what occurred on October 7th does not justify genocide. The fact that Hamas engages in evil acts does not justify genocide perpetrated against innocents. In short: Two wrongs do not make a right. It is also worth noting that you are not portraying the matter fairly. You are tran…

“Two wrongs don’t make a right” misframes the issue. Hamas murders civilians deliberately; Israel targets Hamas while taking steps to limit civilian harm. Civilian deaths are tragic, but tragedy is not genocide. The moral difference is intent.

“The fact of the matter is that Israel hasn't merely been attacking Hamas targets that happen to also have civilians present, but rather that Israel is going beyond that to willfully engage in a near-indiscriminate extermination campaign against unjustifiable targets.”

Calling this “indiscriminate extermination” ignores Hamas using civilians as shields and demands an impossible standard of zero casualties. It also drains the word genocide of meaning. The Holocaust was genocide, the systematic extermination of Jews for existing. That is not what Israel is doing to Palestinians.

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#518
post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I will. I will not vote for anyone who supports Israel. My vote is here for the taking, I just need to see an anti-Zionist candidate.

This line of reasoning helped get Trump in. It’s hard to say what Harris would have done, but it’s unlikely she would have greenlit the complete demolition of Gaza so she could build a resort. Similarly, I doubt she would have forced places like UC Berkeley to send her lists of people critical of Israel (like you), then opened critical investigations against them. Refusing to vote is the best way to ensure policies y…

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Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#519
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely a generational gap going in the US. Support for Israel is not popular among the younger generation in the US, and there's a good deal of voters in their 20s and 30s for whom support for Israel a red line in candidates. But older generations tend to be staunchly in favor of Israel, and too much of the gerontocratic political class thinks that pro-Israel uber alles is the key to winning votes. It is…

I wouldn't label this as "support for Israel"/"against Israel". One can support Israel without supporting Israel's current approach. Many within Israel are not happy with Netanyahu's methods, and presumably they are not against Israel. I understand that that's the current shorthand, but it seems inaccurate and unnecessarily polarizing to me.

This isn't right, though it can feel like an option when you are looking for a solution that doesn't make you feel bad.

Zionism is the idea of colonial occupation. The internal logic will always end in ethnic cleansing. It did in 1948. It's doing it now. American Manifest Destiny had a similar function, and it also resulted in massive genocide for which we have not atoned.

Zionism is done. A secular democratic state for all people with the right of return guaranteed for displaced Palestinians along with some kind of reeducation / denazification program for the genocidal citizens of the current state of Israel is the only viable solution.

As a Jew, I don't think Arabs should pay for Germany's crimes. I think Germany should pay. They paid a little already. They should pay more, especially now that they are supporting this genocide too.

Re: Top UN legal investigators conclude Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza

#520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The videos coming out of Gaza have turned me and many others into single issue voters. Ironically, that was one of the biggest campaign points and voter sentiment on which people flipped to Red. We all know what happened.

Wait what happened? Was it that people who typically vote blue voted against those who supported Israel? As a Muslim and staunch supporter of Palestine, I didn't think that many people turned red because of this, at least not enough to swing the election. Wayne County, which has Dearborn Michigan (the city with the largest population proportionally of Muslims), stayed blue. I figured if Dearborn couldn't tip the scal…

What happened was complex, multi-factoral, and impossible to cleanly draw pithy conclusions from. It’s like the drawing of the rabbit that turns into a duck when you look at it a different way except there are fifty animals instead of just two. Everyone wants you to think it’s just their preferred animal because it fits their agenda.
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