Why I don't believe Israel is committing a genocide

Author: TheUnderdog

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TheUnderdog
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They say Israel killed 30,000 Gazans.  Fine.

Lets say they only killed 10 Gazans.  Would it be a genocide?  No.  Only 10 people died.

My cutoff is 150k and what happened in Gaza hasn't met that.
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Troll
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@TheUnderdog

Well, on 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombings killed 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians.
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@TheUnderdog
So America committed a genocide in Iraq according to your cutoff. Noted.
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I'm fine with labeling both of these as genocides.  If we nuked Cairo, then it would be a genocide against Egyptians.

This doesn't justify nation bankrupting reparations to Iraq or Japan.
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In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.[1][2]


But don’t let this stop ya’ll from merely speculating what the word means and what might constitute a real life example of it…

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@cristo71
So if Israel only killed 9 Gazans, then would it be fair to call it a genocide?  Dylan Roof murdered 9 black people because they were black.  Dylan Roof did not commit genocide; he committed mass murder.
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@TheUnderdog
That’s a fair point— the UN does not seem to specify numbers at all. It seems to be simply assumed that a genocide involves large numbers because of the intent to eliminate (or severely reduce the population of) a people group. The point I’m making is that intent is key here. Is it Israel’s intent to wipe out the Palestinian people? I think not because:

A. Israel could have wiped them out long before now
B. Israel’s intent is to get back hostages
C. Israel’s intent is to neutralize the threat posed by Hamas
D. Hamas could stop this alleged genocide if they so desired
E. Hamas uses the human shield strategy
F. This is in direct response to the actions of Hamas on October 7