Yes, I’m not a fan, either. For that reason and because it seems to be a grand perversion to argue that it’s genocide to fight back against the people trying to commit a genocide. If self defense becomes genocide at the point that the occupier gains the upper hand, it’s all meaningless. It would give carte blanche to any invading force that moved quickly enough and violently enough.
Maybe in other circumstances, where two indigenous neighbours try to wipe each other out? But that’s simply not the history of Palestine. Israel was created by forcibly dispossessing the previous inhabitants (who are still there or refugees elsewhere).
Maybe it would be genocide to decolonise (abolish) Palestine if Israel represented all Judaism or if more or less every Jew lived there. But neither of those is true, either. And as decolonising Palestine is not about removing Judaism but Zionist Israel, contrary to propaganda, I don’t see how genocide can apply. Again, except as a distortion of the meaning, as neither Zionism nor Israel are nations/ethnicities/religions.
Luckily the moral question is a lot more straightforward than the legal question.
Yes, I’m not a fan, either. For that reason and because it seems to be a grand perversion to argue that it’s genocide to fight back against the people trying to commit a genocide. If self defense becomes genocide at the point that the occupier gains the upper hand, it’s all meaningless. It would give carte blanche to any invading force that moved quickly enough and violently enough.
Maybe in other circumstances, where two indigenous neighbours try to wipe each other out? But that’s simply not the history of Palestine. Israel was created by forcibly dispossessing the previous inhabitants (who are still there or refugees elsewhere).
Maybe it would be genocide to decolonise (abolish) Palestine if Israel represented all Judaism or if more or less every Jew lived there. But neither of those is true, either. And as decolonising Palestine is not about removing Judaism but Zionist Israel, contrary to propaganda, I don’t see how genocide can apply. Again, except as a distortion of the meaning, as neither Zionism nor Israel are nations/ethnicities/religions.
Luckily the moral question is a lot more straightforward than the legal question.