Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 08/25/2025 5:40:03 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The accusation that Israel is committing a “genocide” in Gaza has become pervasive on the Left, and particularly in academia. I think that the accusation is absurd, so much so that until now I haven’t thought it worthy of a response. However, the accusation has recently arrived on my own website. In the comment thread on the prior post, one of the commenters (regular readers can guess who) has leveled against President Trump the charge that he “is sending weapons to Israel for the genocide in Gaza.” Really? It’s time for a response.
In my opinion, what’s going on in Gaza is not a genocide, but a war. Deaths in war are not a genocide. On October 7, 2023, the governing entity of Gaza, Hamas, conducted an unprovoked attack on Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people, and taking some 250 hostages. Israel has responded with a military action. This is a classic war. The norm in war is that the parties fight until one of the parties surrenders, or there is an armistice. When the parties are fighting, the whole idea is to kill as many of the enemy as possible. Hamas could end the war by surrendering. It has not done so. Moreover, it continues to hold hostages. Therefore, the normal expectation of war would be that Israel will continue to kill as many of the enemy as possible until there is a surrender.
You may disagree with my characterization that the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel was “unprovoked.” It doesn’t matter. Assume that the attack was provoked. This is still a war. In war, it is entirely the norm that a party that has been attacked tries to kill as many of the enemy as it can until the enemy surrenders.
Is there any other example of the term “genocide” being applied to a full-scale military response to an armed attack by an enemy state actor that has not surrendered? If there is, I don’t know of it.
Consider, for example, the Russia/Ukraine war. In this case I would say that Russia’s attack and invasion were unprovoked. The Russian version of events of course differs, and accuses Ukrainian of provocations that caused the conflict. But again, even if Russia’s invasion was completely unprovoked, the conflict is still a war between enemy state actors, where neither has surrendered. Unlike Israel, which makes extensive efforts to minimize civilian casualties, Russia regularly sends drones to bomb civilian targets and residential buildings in Ukrainian cities. But does anyone call Russia’s conduct toward Ukraine a “genocide”? Not that I’ve seen. Contrast this with the conduct of the Soviet Union toward Ukraine in the 1930s, when it imposed an intentional famine in which millions of innocents starved to death. There was no war going on; Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. That was a genocide.
Or consider World War II. Today that conflict is quickly fading out of living human memory. But it provides some obvious guideposts to distinguish between “genocide” and deaths from combat in war.
During World War II, Hitler and his minions engineered the deaths of some 6 million Jews and others, selected largely by racial and ethnic criteria, who were noncombatants and residents of either Germany or conquered territories. That is the classic “genocide.”
But there were far more deaths from fighting in the war. Here is a quote from a famous speech given by U.S. General George Patton to the Sixth Armored Division of the U.S. army (under his command) on May 31, 1944 (a few days before D-Day and the Normandy beach invasion):
We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by fighting and showing the Germans that we’ve got more guts than they have or ever will have. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, we’re going to rip out their living g[-]damned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun c[***]suckers by the bushel-f[***]ing-basket.
(Quoted in Michael Walsh’s recent book A Rage to Conquer.)
In other words, with a war going on, we are going to kill the enemy, and as effectively as possible. And Patton was only talking about killing enemy soldiers. The U.S. and allied war effort was by no means limited to killing soldiers. For example, in 1943 and 1944 the U.S. and England carried out saturation bombing campaigns directed at German cities like Dresden, Bremen, Essen and even Berlin itself. There were many military targets, but these campaigns essentially leveled the cities, with very large numbers of civilian casualties. Indeed, a large part of the reason for these campaigns was the attempt to undermine civilian support for the Nazi regime. Nobody thought that the U.S. or England were under any obligation to deliver food aid to the suffering German civilians.
And then there were the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in these bombings. Shortly thereafter, Japan surrendered unconditionally, at which point the indiscriminate killings ended immediately.
I have no idea how it is that new rules seem to have emerged, applicable only to Israel (or maybe to only Israel and the United States) whereby any civilian casualties in war are now deemed “genocide.” The use of the term seems to be directed at appealing to soft-minded and historically ignorant students and academics in Western countries. But endless repetition of an inapplicable term cannot change a classic war into something else.
Hamas can end the deaths in Gaza by the simple expedient of unconditional surrender. Until then, it can expect large numbers of deaths, many of them civilians.
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Gaza was a “Two State” solution. HAMAS just used it as a platform to attack Israel. The two state solution failed.
Paging MTG!
Any two state solution will fail because it goes against what God intermediary for Israel. You can’t reason with the unreasonable who want to kill you.
Any two state solution will fail because it goes against what God intended for Israel. You can’t reason with the unreasonable who want to kill you.
Sorry about the typo.
“”I have no idea how it is that new rules seem to have emerged, applicable only to Israel (or maybe to only Israel and the United States) whereby any civilian casualties in war are now deemed “genocide.” The use of the term seems to be directed at appealing to soft-minded and historically ignorant students and academics in Western countries. But endless repetition of an inapplicable term cannot change a classic war into something else.””
Reasonable people .... ie not those that are anti-semite, Jew-haters, leftists and anti-American, anti-Israel propagandists... know that it’s not genocide. What you, Francis Menton, are alluding to has been pushed by the radical left for decades and yes, it applies ‘only’ to America and to Israel. No victory of any kind is allowed to those two nations by the globalist left.
I say reasonable people, because only sane, reasonable people realize that it (the accusations of genocide by Israel) is all a bunch of BS and lies pushed by those that hate Israel and choose the world view against ‘da Jews’. If the Jew-haters have their way, America will turn against Israel as will the rest of the world... just as it is written in the end days. They are going against God as they fulfill biblical prophecy. Which is the main reason why I detest their stance and their propaganda.
“No There Is Not A “Genocide” In Gaza”
Oh, but there is. What else would you call Oct 7?
Tell MTG that.
Terrorists and terrorist sympathizers are getting what they deserve. That is called justice.
Two great minds, you and me. 😂👍
It is touching how in this age, when all norms have been destroyed by the left, a rational person still has faith that flawless logic will carry weight with people who base their reality on emotion and ideology without any input from rationality.
Great article but it will not sway even one of the “Free Palestine” cabal or their useful idiots. The battle Trump is waging for America is against the army of chaos for whom rationality and reality is not even an option. He is reestablishing a rational pragmatic basis for American government’s actions.
Even more importantly is the war against those people pulling the strings of the cabal. Those people are coldly rational, ruthlessly working to accomplish domination & subjugation on a grand scale. Their means of wielding power must be eliminated.
No There Is Not A “Genocide” In Gaza
It also goes against what the Muslims there will allow without war.
Yes, there is. It is Muslims against Jews. What do you think the Jihad is for?
“No There Is Not A “Genocide” In Gaza”
If there ever is, it will probably be sponsored by Hamas.
Genocide - Wikipedia
Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their
membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people.
Definition: Genocide is the intent to destroy a specific national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part, through acts such as killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, or preventing reproduction. Coined by Raphael Lemkin, the concept was later codified in the Genocide Convention, which serves as the legal basis for defining and prosecuting the crime of genocide.
Key Aspects of Genocide
Targeting a Group:
Genocide specifically targets members of a protected group, rather than individuals, and is motivated by their membership in that group.
Intent to Destroy:
The defining feature of genocide is the intent to destroy the group, even if the destruction is not immediate or complete.
Specific Acts:
Under the Genocide Convention, prohibited acts include: Killing members of the group. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Historical Context
The term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin to describe the systematic destruction of groups, drawing on events like the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust.
The international legal definition, while largely based on Lemkin’s ideas, was influenced by powerful countries that sought to limit its scope, particularly excluding political groups and cultural destruction from the Convention’s initial draft.
Distinction from Other Crimes
Genocide is often considered the most severe crime, even worse than other atrocities that result in similar numbers of civilian deaths. Unlike other crimes, the intent to destroy a group as a whole is the central element of genocide.
Genocide Convention - Wikipedia
Definition of genocide * The convention was passed to outlaw actions similar to the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust.
“people who base their reality on emotion and ideology without any input from rationality.”
You understand the problem. How does one have a rational conversation with someone who believes in “women with penises”? It would be easier to talk to someone who believed in Leprechauns.
It’s clearly ethnic cleansing, and by broader definitions of genocide, now seemingly universally used, that is genocide. (I’d rather just leave it more precisely as ethnic cleansing.)
And October 7 was clearly a green flag operation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.