Thank you, David.
Meaning of Genocidal Intent:
Scholars have pointed out that
governments do not openly admit to committing genocidal acts, they always have excuses like it was just a war or they were just trying to reestablish law and order. In response, defenders of the intentionality clause have argued that “a pattern of purposeful action” leading to the destruction of a significant part of the targeted group is enough to establish genocidal intent,
irrespective of the reasons the perpetrator regime offers for its actions.
[Britannica]Affirming that Palestinians are a national group with national rights:
The Palestinian people possess the inalienable right to self-determination, sovereignty and national independence including the right to an independent State.
[un.org]. The Palestinian people constitute a national group for the purpose of the genocide convention. The inhabitants of Gaza constitute a substantial proportion of the Palestinian nation
[twail].
Demonstrating the historical and contemporary oppression of palestinians:
Jewish militias in 1947 attacked villages and forced thousands of Palestinians to flee. In the war of 1948 Israel forced more than half of all Palestinians to flee. This is called the
Nakba. Israel never followed UNs order to let them return. Israel has continued to dispossess and displace Palestinians from their homes ever since then
[un.org]. Israel is currently denying 5 million palestinian refugees their right to return to their homeland that countless UN resolutions have affirmed.
[UNRWA].
Israel discriminates against Palestinians, making their material conditions worse. Their rights are being undermined
[minorityrights].
Palestinians everywhere are treated as racially inferior and systematically deprived of their rights. We found that Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid.
[amnesty]. They illegally occupy Palestine and perform structural violence daily, in addition to military onslaughts, raids on cities and towns, prison torture and settler militia violence
[aljazeera]. They detain children and put them in solitary confinement. They deny their prisoners access to crucial medical treatment, causing ¼ of them to suffer from easily treatable diseases on top of illegal torture
[UN].
“
There is no Palestinian equivalent. Israelis are not subjected to nor do they experience any sort of structural violence from the Palestinians. None. And when we compare violence committed by identifiable agents, we find that Israel unleashes much greater violence against the Palestinians”.
[aljazeera].
Providing evidence that Israel has been committing some forms of genocide in Gaza for a long time:
Genocide by attrition occurs when a group is stripped of its human rights, political, civil and economic. This leads to deprivation of conditions essential for maintaining health, thereby producing mass death
[pubmed]. Examples include the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza siege. Even before the current conflict, there were several scholars, intellectuals and media outlets refering to the situation in Gaza as genocide since Israel was intentionally creating the conditions calculated to destroy the Gazan populace
[mspace].
The charity
Save the Children says children make up almost half of Gaza's population. Conditions in Gaza have badly deteriorated in the 16 years since the blockade was imposed. The United Nations says more than 80% of Gazans live in poverty, with
access to clean water and electricity at crisis levels even before the latest violence [npr].
In the case of Gaza, genocide should be seen as a process that, so far, has caused “in part” destruction to Gazans as a social group. The perpetuation of these policies will, with no doubt, lead to a point where life becomes impossible in Gaza.
[mspace]. But this new conflicts speeds up the genocide.
Presenting a few of the war crimes Israel is currently committing:
Gaza’s main road artery, which Israel designated as a safe corridor, has become a corridor of horror where Palestinians have been randomly bombed, executed, forcibly disappeared, tortured and humiliated. Meanwhile, the Israeli army continued to bombard the territory south of Wadi Gaza which it had repeatedly declared a “safe area” where Palestinians from the north could seek safety. The areas where the evacuation grid system told the Palestinians to flee to were immediately targeted
[aljazeera].
Since the launch of the recent military campaign on Gaza, Israeli army has widely and indiscriminately targeted civilians and civilian objects; inflicted mass destruction, with over 60 percent of homes in Gaza destroyed or damaged; hundreds of families have been entirely obliterated from the civil registry; displaced over 1.7 million Palestinians across Gaza, when the majority of them are already refugees or descendants of 1948 refugees;
targeted journalists, medical personnel, ambulances, schools, places of worship, universities, shelters and hospitals as well as water, electricity, telecommunications and energy infrastructure, among others. While Israel leaves no place safe in Gaza, it subjects the protected 2.3 million population in Gaza to mass murder and mass assassination and inflicts conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, and causing serious bodily and mental harm; amounting to acts of genocide, and an ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian People.
[International Federation For Human Rights] (FIDH).
In just over two months, researchers say the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016 and the flattening of Ukraine’s Mariupol. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State. “
Gaza is now a different color from space. It’s a different texture,” “
Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history”
[apnews].
The risk of famine is growing, and the lack of food, water, and medicines is making the situation catastrophic, especially for the 335,000 children under 5 years of age who are especially vulnerable to severe malnutrition and disease.
[unsco]. Reports claim that children as young as 12 and persons as old as 70 are among those detained. Most concerningly, there are numerous reports that many of those detained were subjected to serious ill-treatment, which in some instances may amount to torture
[reliefweb].
Analysis of Israeli intent based on their words and actions:
Israeli government and military officials publicly declared that the total siege means no food, fuel, electricity or water are allowed to enter for the 2.3 million people in Gaza since October 9th, in addition to the blocking of medical supplies and equipment.
Israel has deliberately denied the Palestinian population in Gaza ALL the basic necessities for human survival. [FIDH]
Notably, Israel has long perpetrated the crime of persecution and the crime of apartheid - both crimes against humanity - against the Palestinian people as a whole. Israel’s pattern of attacks and measures against the Palestinian population in Gaza since October 7th, collective punishment, forced displacement, combined with Israel’s use of starvation as a tool of warfare, the cutting of water, electricity and fuel, coupled with the public and repeated statements of senior Israeli government and military officials,
are evidence to Israel’s genocidal intent and acts in its current aggression.
[FIDH]
UN experts point to evidence of 'genocidal incitement' against Palestinians. A group of United Nations experts in Geneva said on Nov 16 that there was "
evidence of increasing genocidal incitement" against the Palestinian people in what it said were "grave violations" committed by Israel.
[reuters].
An Israeli officer named Betzalel Taljah openly embraced war crimes and genocide on CNN: “
the war is not just with Hamas, the war is with all the civilians.”. Betzalel’s father is on record
saying, “
I still think that apartheid is the best thing in the world.” Racism was passed from father to son leading to Betzalel viewing Palestinian civilians as being legitimate targets in the current war
[CNN]. This racism is widespread.
60% of Jews in Israel were racist and favored segregation in 2021. This number would have skyrocketed after 7th October.
“
We are imposing a complete siege of Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything will be closed. We are fighting against human animals, and we are acting accordingly" – Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
[Al Jazeera]
Netanyahu is on record comparing Gaza to Amalek. In the Old Testament, after this people group attacked Israel, God commanded the Israelites to completely annihilate the Amalekites, to kill even their women and infants.
So Netanyahu is comparing Palestinians to a people that God himself told Israel to genocide. [juancole].
“
We’re hitting our enemies with unprecedented force,” he says, but “I stress: It’s only the beginning.”“Our enemies have only just begun to pay the price. I won’t detail what will come next. But I’m telling you, it’s only the beginning.” --- Netanyahu's more recent and far more concerning comments regarding the war.
[timesofisrael].
On 12 October 2023, Mr Isaac Herzog, President of Israel, stated, referring to Gaza: “
It is an entire nation out there that is responsible”, not just Hamas.
[icj].
It’s not only Israel’s leaders who are using such language. An interviewee on the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 called for Israel to “turn Gaza to Dresden”. Channel 12, Israel’s most-watched news station, published a report about left-leaning Israelis calling to “dance on what used to be Gaza.” Meanwhile, genocidal verbs—calls to “
erase” and “
flatten” Gaza—have become omnipresent on
Israeli social media. In Tel Aviv, a banner reading “
Zero Gazans'' was seen hanging from a bridge.
[jewishcurrents].
Listing some agencies that judge Israel to be guilty of genocide:
- The International Court of Justice just ruled against Israel and determined that South Africa successfully argued that Israel’s conduct plausibly could constitute genocide. [responsiblestatecraft]
- A federal judge found that Israel is plausibly engaging in genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and charged the Biden Administration with failing to prevent genocide. [ccrjustice].
- The International Federation for Human rights conclude that Israel is unfolding the crime of genocide in Gaza, based on the evidence I cited them for earlier. [FIDH]
- Many Israeli youths don’t want to serve in army and help commit genocide [youtube].
CONCLUSION:
I have provided a lot of data that support the PRO positions. There can be ZERO DOUBT that Israel is committing unimaginable war crimes. So this debate will mostly revolve around the intention clause. I submit that Israel's horrible track record historically speaking, combined with the inferences we can make based on their current actions and the inexcusable rhetoric coming from top officials as well as the average soldier and citizen, that this all comes together to form a very strong case that Israel is not lacking in intentionality. When every significant human rights organization tells Israel to ceasefire if they don't want to be guily of genocide, Israel responds by ramping up the violence and saying that "this is just the beginning". So yeah, Israel is destroying the palestinian people very intentionally, affirming the resolution.
Next round I will rebutt he defenses CON made in R1, and maybe elaborate more on the points I made.
my rebuttals are here https://youtu.be/EL3VX3K6Zq0?si=AjU-ClpttH9W7YoU
"I have conducted a lot of research "
Wrong, you went down increasingly more complex rabbit holes to justify your confirmation bias
This argument Is wrong
"The Palestinian people possess the inalienable right to self-determination"
The right to aid determination is not only wrong but the people who use it are lying which is revealed when they oppose either white or black nationalism.
I hope you’re able to come back. Your defenses would be great to see.
I have done a lot of reserach that I don't want wasted, so I would prefer if you didn't forfeit another round.
I think I would maybe be willing to do this debate if I am allowed to just plagiarize David's first round and you copy and paste your rounds. The one thing I would also ask is that I am allowed to use video format.
I am going to see if u can actually work some editing software though and if I can't than I might not want to do it, but I if my video editing goes off without a hitch than I am down
Wylted, I am curious. How many palestinian lives is a single Israeli life worth? 1, 2, 5, 10, 50, 100, 1000? How many? And can you give me a justification for this number?
"I'll admit I was somewhat pro-Israel until recently"
I was anti Israel until recently. I think they have every right to not o ly defend themselves from this savagery but to take measures to make sure it never occurs again.
There are literally missiles even prior to this that every day were aimed at Israel only to be stopped by the Iron dome. I can tell you that if America's anti missile defense system knocked down even a single incoming missile, there would be all out war not just a bunch of politicians sitting around trying to make us incrementally safer but an effort to immediately end missile strikes.
There are a lot of leftists who legitimately believe that Hamas has the moral high ground and are representative of Palestinians. You have an ethical obligation to put your opponent in his place even if it means sacrificing a debate victory and veering off topic to do so. I urge you to post the next round.
You can criticize the right for not wanting to help Israel, but atleast the right recognizes who has the moral high ground here.
Citing Israels twitter account as evidence of Israels' moral high ground is a crazy tactic.
I noticed your source number 13 lacks a hyperlink refence in the sources section. Could you post it in the comments?
Good point!
Now we are using X posts made by the agency in question. This is akin to quoting Trump of "America is being made great again" on twitter as evidence that America is booming. No, it is declining.
Looking forward to reading this one.
I'll admit I was somewhat pro-Israel until recently.
One thing I advise being careful of with this topic, is separating their crimes and justifications in the rest of Palestine from their crimes and justifications specifically in Gaza.