A VERY REASONABLE ANALYSIS AND ARGUMENT.....

 

The Genocide Debate

Since Israel’s campaign in Gaza began incurring its heavy human cost, a very charged debate has simmered: is the Jewish State, itself born of the Holocaust, committing genocide? A new New York Times essay by genocide scholar Omer Bartov—who was raised in a Zionist home and lived half his life in Israel—has revived it.   “I believe the goal was—and remains today—to force the population to leave the Strip altogether or, considering that it has nowhere to go, to debilitate the enclave through bombings and severe deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation and medical aid to such an extent that it is impossible for Palestinians in Gaza to maintain or reconstitute their existence as a group,” Bartov writes. “[T]his was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”   While Israel and its supporters maintain that the war against Hamas is just, some critics allege that the real aim is to drive Gazans off their land. That would constitute ethnic cleansing, defined as rendering a geographical area ethnically homogenous. Those critics are bolstered by select comments from the Israeli ultranationalist right, where politicians envision Israeli sovereignty over a Strip largely devoid of Palestinians. For instance: recently, far-right government minister Bezalel Smotrich said Gaza would be “totally destroyed” with Gazans “concentrated” in a humanitarian zone near the border and Israel in control. US President Donald Trump has publicly suggested displacing Palestinians to third countries.   Others, like Bartov, argue Israel is pursuing something even more extreme: genocide, defined as certain measures taken “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Proponents of this view point to the breadth of the killing, hunger, thirst and disease Israel’s military continues to unleash on Gazans—and again to disturbing comments by far-right Israeli government ministers, who in various moments have mused about the mass killing of Gazan civilians as a potential war strategy. The charge, levied by critics of Israel—including Amnesty International; the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories; and South Africa, which launched a case at the International Criminal Court—is that Israel wants to exterminate Palestinians in Gaza as a national group. On GPS in May of last year, Aryeh Neier—who fled the Nazis as a child and co-founded Human Rights Watch—made that case.   Naturally, Israel denies the allegation. The Israeli government and supporters around the world characterize the military campaign against Hamas in Gaza as a legitimate project to eradicate a terrorist group (which is also a political party and the local governing authority, whose founding document expressed a wish to “obliterate” Israel) that perpetrated the extreme violence of Oct. 7. Yes, the human toll may be high for innocent Gazan civilians—in fact catastrophic. But those lost lives, supporters of the war effort say, are unfortunate collateral damage. New York Times columnist and former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Bret Stephens made the case to fellow columnist Ross Douthat recently. Any Israeli government would have retaliated, Stephens argued, and it was entirely reasonable after Oct. 7 to conclude that it was time to uproot Hamas completely. Hamas, not Israel, bears responsibility for the deaths of Gazan civilians because it prompted Israel’s predictable response, Stephens argued. In a Washington Post essay in June, scholars of the Holocaust and antisemitism Norman J.W. Goda and Jeffrey Herf argued similarly that Hamas is to blame. Accusing Israel of genocide, they added, is antisemitic: a repetition and transposition of past antisemitic smears against Jews as nefarious. “Those accusing Israel of genocide avoid describing Hamas’s exterminatory ideology and the genocide, commenced on Oct. 7 and then interrupted, that followed from it,” they write. “Mass poisoning and especially the depraved killing of children are among the oldest antisemitic tropes.” At The Times of Israel, Seth Eisenberg responds to Bartov’s essay, noting that intent must be present for genocide to occur, and Israel has stated clearly that it intends to kill Hamas fighters, not Gazan civilians; comments by far-right ministers, he adds, are not the same as government policy. “This is a tragedy and a war crime,” Eisenberg writes—“but committed by Hamas.” Indeed, some good points to the ongoing argument between several thinkers as well as politicians about the ongoing situation between Israel and its neighbors, more so of course Gaza, and creeping into the West bank, Syria and Lebanon. Again copied from Fareed Zakaria's global briefing, for the better understanding of this ongoing horrific situation by our blog's readers..  To all my good readers, all my thanks for following and reading. Thanks to all.