| ▲ | hersko 2 hours ago |
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| ▲ | artnanika 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| What a bizarre thing to say, concentration camps during the Holocaust also had swimming pools and soccer fields (for the inmates as well), does that prove the Holocaust is a hoax? Swimming pools, soccer fields, and 5k events do not disprove ongoing genocides. |
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| ▲ | rodrodrod 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Let's not forget the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics too. Public events don't disprove atrocities. |
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| ▲ | _alternator_ 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Honestly it's difficult for me to respond to this comment because the premise is so clearly flawed. A semblance of civilian life does not mean genocide did not or is not taking place. Wholesale population displacement, destruction of a significant percentage of civilian structures, bombings, raids, land and sea blockades, statements from leaders that suggest genocidal intent... these point in the other direction. Would it only be genocide only if no child in Gaza was smiling? If no one was getting married, no one singing, no one relaxing amid the horror? Inhumanity of this level of extreme only occurs literally when everyone is dead. I guess that's the line you have in mind? |
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| ▲ | hersko 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | "Wholesale population displacement, destruction of a significant percentage of civilian structures, bombings, raids, land and sea blockades," These are all things that happen during war. Explain why this war is different. All war is bad. I genuinely don't see how this is not a war but a genocide. | | |
| ▲ | bhouston 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > "Wholesale population displacement..." > These are all things that happen during war. You do realize that Israeli government officials openly talk about permanent relocation (expel, "voluntary migration", emigration, etc) of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza all the time: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/smotrich-says-n... https://www.timesofisrael.com/occupy-expel-settle-minister-m... This woman was actually tasked with that job by Netanyahu: https://www.haaretz.com/gaza/2026-04-29/ty-article/.premium/... | |
| ▲ | Supermancho 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I have questions. What do you think are the definitions of genocide and war? (why are they different words) Do they overlap? | |
| ▲ | js8 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can think of genocide as a special case of a war, one where the party being genocided has no army or weapons to defend itself. | | |
| ▲ | hersko 30 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | What do you mean no weapons to defend themselves? They have plenty of weapons... | |
| ▲ | unyttigfjelltol 44 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran— all of them have both an armed force and weapons to fight with. Hamas in particular, instigated the hot conflict that started Oct. 7 2023, and prolonged it through hostage-taking and active participation in armed conflict. All these Iran-backed forces are formally allied into an Axis of Resistance, and their main success so far has been to confuse people like you about who holds the moral and ethical high ground. The reason they sought to sow doubt and confusion is to isolate Israel so they can destroy the nation, the whole thing, as they continuously have campaigned to do for perhaps 70 years. |
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| ▲ | catlikesshrimp 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You cathegorize that as genocide when it is directed at a very specific group. Like jews in WWII, now it is Palestinians in their own country. | | |
| ▲ | george916a a few seconds ago | parent | next [-] | | No.
Here’s the difference between real genocide and appropriation of the term.
Genocide is actual when a third of a people is annihilated just because they are not liked.
“Genocide” is an appropriated term when the population of the people supposedly “genocides” against actually INCREASES after “genocide”. After said people is warred upon after they attempted a real genocidal annihilation attack on its neighbors. The type of attack they are used doing. The type of attacks that allowed them to grow from a little tribe near Mecca to control most of the Middle East. | |
| ▲ | hersko 29 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | That is not at all what a genocide is. |
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| ▲ | tptacek 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wholesale population displacement is explicitly not (by itself) genocide under the convention. Genocide is an intent crime, and the intent has to be the eradication of the targeted ethnic, national, racial, or religious group. Kidnapping all the children in an occupied territory and dispersing them so they can't be returned to their families is genocidal. Mass displacement isn't. The fixation on the term "genocide" has been a major own-goal for advocates of Palestinians. It was deliberately defined to be a difficult bar to clear. "Warm crimes" and "ethnic cleansing" are easy claims to make in the region, and ordinary people don't care about the distinction between "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide"; that term would have served just as well, without the escape hatch "genocide" provides. | | |
| ▲ | _alternator_ 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | So... "statements from leaders that suggest genocidal intent" ... meets the genocide bar, yes? I'll just quote wikipedia: The Gaza genocide is the ongoing,[19][20] intentional, and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel during the Gaza war. It encompasses mass killings, deliberate starvation, infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, and prevention of births. Other acts include blockading, destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying healthcare facilities, killing healthcare workers and aid-seekers, causing mass forced displacement, committing sexual violence, and destroying educational, religious, and cultural sites.[21] The genocide has been recognised by a United Nations special committee[22] and commission of inquiry,[21] the International Association of Genocide Scholars,[23][24] multiple human rights groups,[c] state governments, numerous genocide studies and international law scholars,[30][31] and other experts.[32] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_genocide | | |
| ▲ | tptacek 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | There are certainly people involved in the Israeli government that have expressed genocidal intent. The problem is that you can say that about basically every state in the world. It can't be the case that the moment a state commits an ethnically-targeted war crime it is per se committing genocide because you can find someone in the majority, the opposition, or the administrative state that has embraced genocidal logic. The logic has to animate the whole conflict. You've rattled off a list of war crimes, many of which I agree with you about unreservedly, all of which are colorable. I don't think there's much doubt about the impact of Israel's post-October-7 policy on Gazans. But so long as you remained fixed on the term "genocide", you'll forever be arguing with opponents who, at least in the current trajectory of the conflict, have the better side of the legal argument. | | |
| ▲ | _alternator_ an hour ago | parent [-] | | I'm no genocide expert, but it does seem like legal scholars who _are_ genocide experts agree that the facts here seem to clearly meet the bar. The people who you credit with "hav[ing] the better side of the legal argument" do not seem, from my vantage, to be arguing in good faith. They are trying to bog us down in semantics when a truly horrifying crime is happening, and saying that we can't call a horse a horse is not helping. I'll also say this: I greatly sympathize with Israel and Jews more generally here. The problem at the core remains global antisemitism; it's the reason Israel needed (and still needs!) to exist, and the reason Jews globally feel threatened. Antisemitism in the middle east is particularly pernicious, but it's not much better in Europe or the Americas. It doesn't just feel like a dangerous wolrd for Jews, it _is_ a dangerous world. That doesn't change my opinion about the situation in Gaza---there's ample evidence that it's a genocide. But I hope this helps people see that we can, and should, hold these two truths at once. Jews are persecuted, and are in a precarious situation globally. In fear and in anguish, the state of Israel is performing unconscionable deeds in Gaza. The root cause is antisemitism; if we could somehow find a solution to that, you'd solve the whole conflict in the middle east. But good luck. | | |
| ▲ | tptacek an hour ago | parent [-] | | Really the only thing that moved me to comment here, besides message board vulnerability amplified by waiting for a Rust compile run to finish, was the implication upthread that mass displacement of populations was genocidal. The rest of it I don't think there's enough daylight between us to debate usefully. |
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| ▲ | rexpop 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It was held in the U.S., not in Gaza, at Nethermead Lawn in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. There are also other Gaza 5K events in U.S. cities, including Dallas and Milwaukee, depending on the year and location. |
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| ▲ | b00ty4breakfast 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| See, the thing that makes a genocide is all the dead people. The dead people who were killed by Israeli missiles and bombs. Or when they, the Israeli military, denied aid workers entry into the steaming heap of rubble that they, the Israeli military, created with their missiles and bombs. The steaming heap of rubble that used to be populated buildings that they, the Israeli military, bombed into powder whilst people were inside of them. |
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| ▲ | pnemonic 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | dpoloncsak 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Pretty sure it was in NYC to raise funds/awareness for what is, by any modern definition, a genocide Edit: Okay, there was a 5k in Gaza too. Point still stands. |
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| ▲ | kgwgk 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Surprisingly, 5k races may happen in multiple places: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYM64Boqt9K/ | |
| ▲ | hersko 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nope [1], they actually hosted a 5k in Gaza. Can you imagine Holocaust survivors or Armenians during the genocide taking part in a 5k? I can't. Also, it is definitely not "by any modern definition" a genocide. Ireland is currently trying to broaden the definition of the term just to indict Israel [2] [1] https://ca.news.yahoo.com/palestine-marathon-returns-gaza-we... [2] https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/409187 | | |
| ▲ | _alternator_ 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, I can. This is what being human is. You eat, sleep, laugh when you can, make plans with friends, fall in love, get married, and grieve when the people around you die. And there is a lot of grief in Gaza right now, but there are still living people and living people do nothing if not love one another. To suggest that genocide is only possible when there is no civil life, no humanity, nothing to live for, no I do not accept your definition. If you kill 10% of a population... does it only count as a crime against humanity if the rest of the population cannot even be human? | |
| ▲ | viccis 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | People are allowed to attempt to live a life of dignity even while the entity and its defenders on HN are trying to wipe their people out. | |
| ▲ | constantius 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Holocaust survivors did have art/dance/theatre events, and soccer/boxing competitions. In ghettos and in concentration camps. This was viewed as a triumph of the human spirit over the horrors of Nazism. These events are celebrated in countless books by survivors, exhibitions, and art installations. I dare you to find one survivor's account that does not mention these events. >90% of Gaza's infrastructure is destroyed, >90% of the population is displaced, no universities left, only one hospital with no equipment. These numbers are from several months ago, so you'll excuse me if I'm not keeping up with Israel's killing frenzy. That Gazans still can make art, enjoy a coffee, and do a 5k to raise awareness in a world that doesn't care is seen as victory over darkness by those who are caring about this catastrophe. Those who don't know anything about anything and use the smile of a child to screech "not a genocide!" should be ashamed of themselves. |
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