The misleading caption under the photograph from Haifa has been pointed out and it should be corrected.
Question is whether Oct 7th can be labeled a pogrom?
Finally, this sentence is problematic:
“However, it was never the goal to destroy the Palestinians; “just” to take their land.”
This makes it sounds as if Israelis had randomly decided to take up arms and invade their potential neighbour to increase their land size , when in fact the newly created State of Israel was overrun by 5 armies. The land grabs (a classic Finkelstein and Chomsky term by the way) were by and large a result of the war, Arabs willingness to leave and give space to Arab armies to defeat the Jewish enemy, and an ethnic cleansing that occurred on both sides of the newly partitioned land (Arabs cleansed and driven out of Jewish areas; Jews driven out of what would have been Arab territory, plus the expulsion of Jews from all neighboring Muslim countries).
Thanks for the reminder on the image. It's been replaced and corrected. And when it comes to that phrase, I was more trying to use the phrasing employed by those who would argue that the Nakba was a genocide so anyone sympathetic to such a view would have a harder time dismissing what I was saying. Thanks for the feedback though, it's definitely valid.
While a good piece overall, certain pouts and clarifications need to be added.
First, it should have been made clear that there can be no genocide when a party is adhering, or making its best efforts to adhering, to the Laws of Armed Conflict. The reference to “collateral damage” hints to this, but it needs to be said - along with the similarly disingenuous abuse of terms like “proportionality” and “discrimination”.
Every Western military officer who has gone to Israel and Gaza to examine what is actually happening has come away convinced not only of Israel’s compliance with LOAC but in many instances of its exceeding its obligations. One can point to the unprecedentedly low civilian-combatant ratio of near 1:1 or the reports that 80% of the dead are Hamas fighters or related family, with that last point suggesting why they stay in harms way or their voluntary use as human shields for the Hamas family member. One could also point to the many levels of review involved not only in target choice but in execution of a strike to see the care, caution and professionalism involved. Much of the physical destruction is the direct result of Hamas strategy of using otherwise civilian or protected sites (arms caches, firing positions or boobytrapped edifices) for military advantage.
That is not to say that the IDF is conducting a flawless campaign - no army has, will or can - but given the complex battlefield Hamas created over 17 years in Gaza, the IDF has exceeded expectations in that horror we call war.
As to Gallant’s (and others) statements, they appear to fall into two categories: (1) context (from Gallant’s speech, it is clear that the consequences to the Lebanese are not that Israel targets them for deliberate destruction but that the manner in which Hezbollah has used their residences as arms and missile depots and otherwise embedded their fighters among the civilians population puts them at risk; similarly with Herzog’s “human animals” statement which specifically referred to Hamas not ordinary Gazans) and (2) level of responsibility (the most lurid statements are made by those with zero decision making authority). This is, in part, why South Africa’s genocide case before the ICJ is falling apart, because they can’t find any supporting evidence.
The caption on the Haifa photograph is, in a word, historically false. Haifa is one of the clearest examples of Arab flight due to the call of the Arab High Command to evacuate an area it sought to conquer. It is documented that the Mayor of Haifa and other leaders had asked the Arab residents to stay. So that’s a bad example.
Finally, it needs to be stated that the Arab rejection of the international community, acting the tough the League of Nations and a series of treaties, to restore the Jewish people as sovereign over part of their historical homeland was never a border issue (which is why they rejected every partition plan and why any claim of an Israeli “land grab” is the opposite of the truth given that what was left of the Mandate territory in 1948 was to be the Jewish homeland absent a compromise settlement). Instead, destroying Jewish sovereignty was a theological necessity lest Dar al Islam’s pretensions to world subjugation be falsified with dire consequences to the supremacist message embedded in the religion itself.
The goal of the 1948 invasion by the Arabs, even though it failed, was explicitly one of annihilating the Jews. In fact, one fear in the West at the time was that it might witness a second Holocaust three years after the end of Hitler’s. The thought of fighting on the Jews side remained as much of a nonstarter as it had during WWII.
And that is why October 7 might in fact be a genocide. One need only look to the Hamas Charter, what Hamas controlled mosques preached, the plans recovered from dead Hamas terrorists and the death and mayhem actually perpetrated. If Srebrenica was a genocide, so too was what Hamas wrought in the Gaza envelope on October 7. That it couldn’t complete the job for lack of assets would seem irrelevant. The genocidal intent from its leadership on down could not have been clearer.
Thanks for the elaboration and detailed response. I’m on the road so I’ll try to find time to address and approach all of this, but I’ll make sure to amend the photo caption and/or find a new more accurate photo; like I said I’m on the road so I was more in a hurry to find a relevant photo than I probably should be and just picked a well-composed one from the public domain that related to the Nakba.
But that all said, I recently spoke to David Volodsko about the notion of genocide being on the table for October 7th, and I just wanted to clarify that what made that a difficult determination for me is that the mens rea of Hamas is about as crystal clear as anything, but the act itself seemed to have a different goal. I’m not sure if that legally discounts them from being liable for genocide or not, but I think without question, Hamas is a genocidal death cult. Apologies if I didn’t make that clear.
Anyway thanks again for the response, and I’ll try to form a more detailed one myself.
In the heat of war, a handful of the "good guys" screw up--or sometimes behave like bad guys. Sometimes, they even kill people on their own side. In WWII, some American troops participated in the illegal execution of German and Japanese POWs and committed as many as 10,000 rapes. And, of course, we had the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib. Take any group of a million men, and a thousand or so are likely to screw up or do bad things if given the opportunity.
This is entirely different from the Ustaše under Ante Pavelić and Srpska forces under Radovan Karadžić. In both those cases, the soldiers weren't misbehaving; they were following policy. There was an explicit goal of completely eradicating entire ethnic groups. The same goes for Hamas, which was founded on a "covenant" chockful of anti-Semitic myths about the Jews manipulating history. Based on those myths, it calls for the complete annihilation of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. As I've pointed out previously, even Islamic organizations have issued a Fatwa condemning Hamas and forbidding Muslims from supporting it:
Israel's operation in Gaza misses the "genocide" category by so far it isn't funny:
* There is no policy of eliminating Palestinians or Arabs.
Israel is a democracy with millions of Palestinians who live there peacefully and enjoy political rights (represented both in the Knesset and the judiciary). Some of the most loyal and effective IDF soldiers are Arabic-speaking Bedouins and Druze.
* If Israel wanted to conduct a genocide, it easily could have.
Israel had more than enough ordnance to eliminate every single Gazan, without risking a single Israeli life. Instead, it continually sent warnings before it bombed strategic areas and conducted on-the-ground operations that reduced the loss of innocent Palestinian lives at the expense of Israeli lives.
I agree overall with what you are saying. My most cynical being has to call into question the whole incident with a young girl innocently targeted by the IDF. That she died, a causualty of the IDF invasion may be true, but we don't know what other circumstances were intolved. Again, cynically these events always seem to involve young girls...
Utter b*ll*cks Zionist Hasbara waffle. Read the definition of genocide, first, fool!!!
The misleading caption under the photograph from Haifa has been pointed out and it should be corrected.
Question is whether Oct 7th can be labeled a pogrom?
Finally, this sentence is problematic:
“However, it was never the goal to destroy the Palestinians; “just” to take their land.”
This makes it sounds as if Israelis had randomly decided to take up arms and invade their potential neighbour to increase their land size , when in fact the newly created State of Israel was overrun by 5 armies. The land grabs (a classic Finkelstein and Chomsky term by the way) were by and large a result of the war, Arabs willingness to leave and give space to Arab armies to defeat the Jewish enemy, and an ethnic cleansing that occurred on both sides of the newly partitioned land (Arabs cleansed and driven out of Jewish areas; Jews driven out of what would have been Arab territory, plus the expulsion of Jews from all neighboring Muslim countries).
Otherwise interesting read.
Thanks for the reminder on the image. It's been replaced and corrected. And when it comes to that phrase, I was more trying to use the phrasing employed by those who would argue that the Nakba was a genocide so anyone sympathetic to such a view would have a harder time dismissing what I was saying. Thanks for the feedback though, it's definitely valid.
I see what you mean now. Fair enough!
While a good piece overall, certain pouts and clarifications need to be added.
First, it should have been made clear that there can be no genocide when a party is adhering, or making its best efforts to adhering, to the Laws of Armed Conflict. The reference to “collateral damage” hints to this, but it needs to be said - along with the similarly disingenuous abuse of terms like “proportionality” and “discrimination”.
Every Western military officer who has gone to Israel and Gaza to examine what is actually happening has come away convinced not only of Israel’s compliance with LOAC but in many instances of its exceeding its obligations. One can point to the unprecedentedly low civilian-combatant ratio of near 1:1 or the reports that 80% of the dead are Hamas fighters or related family, with that last point suggesting why they stay in harms way or their voluntary use as human shields for the Hamas family member. One could also point to the many levels of review involved not only in target choice but in execution of a strike to see the care, caution and professionalism involved. Much of the physical destruction is the direct result of Hamas strategy of using otherwise civilian or protected sites (arms caches, firing positions or boobytrapped edifices) for military advantage.
That is not to say that the IDF is conducting a flawless campaign - no army has, will or can - but given the complex battlefield Hamas created over 17 years in Gaza, the IDF has exceeded expectations in that horror we call war.
As to Gallant’s (and others) statements, they appear to fall into two categories: (1) context (from Gallant’s speech, it is clear that the consequences to the Lebanese are not that Israel targets them for deliberate destruction but that the manner in which Hezbollah has used their residences as arms and missile depots and otherwise embedded their fighters among the civilians population puts them at risk; similarly with Herzog’s “human animals” statement which specifically referred to Hamas not ordinary Gazans) and (2) level of responsibility (the most lurid statements are made by those with zero decision making authority). This is, in part, why South Africa’s genocide case before the ICJ is falling apart, because they can’t find any supporting evidence.
The caption on the Haifa photograph is, in a word, historically false. Haifa is one of the clearest examples of Arab flight due to the call of the Arab High Command to evacuate an area it sought to conquer. It is documented that the Mayor of Haifa and other leaders had asked the Arab residents to stay. So that’s a bad example.
Finally, it needs to be stated that the Arab rejection of the international community, acting the tough the League of Nations and a series of treaties, to restore the Jewish people as sovereign over part of their historical homeland was never a border issue (which is why they rejected every partition plan and why any claim of an Israeli “land grab” is the opposite of the truth given that what was left of the Mandate territory in 1948 was to be the Jewish homeland absent a compromise settlement). Instead, destroying Jewish sovereignty was a theological necessity lest Dar al Islam’s pretensions to world subjugation be falsified with dire consequences to the supremacist message embedded in the religion itself.
The goal of the 1948 invasion by the Arabs, even though it failed, was explicitly one of annihilating the Jews. In fact, one fear in the West at the time was that it might witness a second Holocaust three years after the end of Hitler’s. The thought of fighting on the Jews side remained as much of a nonstarter as it had during WWII.
And that is why October 7 might in fact be a genocide. One need only look to the Hamas Charter, what Hamas controlled mosques preached, the plans recovered from dead Hamas terrorists and the death and mayhem actually perpetrated. If Srebrenica was a genocide, so too was what Hamas wrought in the Gaza envelope on October 7. That it couldn’t complete the job for lack of assets would seem irrelevant. The genocidal intent from its leadership on down could not have been clearer.
Good piece? Lol. The usual verbose Hasbara denials and lies!
"Not flawness"?!? Jesus and YHWH wept.
Thanks for the elaboration and detailed response. I’m on the road so I’ll try to find time to address and approach all of this, but I’ll make sure to amend the photo caption and/or find a new more accurate photo; like I said I’m on the road so I was more in a hurry to find a relevant photo than I probably should be and just picked a well-composed one from the public domain that related to the Nakba.
But that all said, I recently spoke to David Volodsko about the notion of genocide being on the table for October 7th, and I just wanted to clarify that what made that a difficult determination for me is that the mens rea of Hamas is about as crystal clear as anything, but the act itself seemed to have a different goal. I’m not sure if that legally discounts them from being liable for genocide or not, but I think without question, Hamas is a genocidal death cult. Apologies if I didn’t make that clear.
Anyway thanks again for the response, and I’ll try to form a more detailed one myself.
Yes thanks for this illuminating analysis… it is like mens rea in jurisprudence isn’t it?
Iluminating? Lol
This is not that complicated.
In the heat of war, a handful of the "good guys" screw up--or sometimes behave like bad guys. Sometimes, they even kill people on their own side. In WWII, some American troops participated in the illegal execution of German and Japanese POWs and committed as many as 10,000 rapes. And, of course, we had the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib. Take any group of a million men, and a thousand or so are likely to screw up or do bad things if given the opportunity.
This is entirely different from the Ustaše under Ante Pavelić and Srpska forces under Radovan Karadžić. In both those cases, the soldiers weren't misbehaving; they were following policy. There was an explicit goal of completely eradicating entire ethnic groups. The same goes for Hamas, which was founded on a "covenant" chockful of anti-Semitic myths about the Jews manipulating history. Based on those myths, it calls for the complete annihilation of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. As I've pointed out previously, even Islamic organizations have issued a Fatwa condemning Hamas and forbidding Muslims from supporting it:
https://jensheycke.substack.com/p/hamas-delenda-est
Israel's operation in Gaza misses the "genocide" category by so far it isn't funny:
* There is no policy of eliminating Palestinians or Arabs.
Israel is a democracy with millions of Palestinians who live there peacefully and enjoy political rights (represented both in the Knesset and the judiciary). Some of the most loyal and effective IDF soldiers are Arabic-speaking Bedouins and Druze.
* If Israel wanted to conduct a genocide, it easily could have.
Israel had more than enough ordnance to eliminate every single Gazan, without risking a single Israeli life. Instead, it continually sent warnings before it bombed strategic areas and conducted on-the-ground operations that reduced the loss of innocent Palestinian lives at the expense of Israeli lives.
Utter b*ll*cks Zionist Hasbara waffle. Read the definition of genocide, first, fool!!!
I agree overall with what you are saying. My most cynical being has to call into question the whole incident with a young girl innocently targeted by the IDF. That she died, a causualty of the IDF invasion may be true, but we don't know what other circumstances were intolved. Again, cynically these events always seem to involve young girls...