• Victor Villas
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    5 hours ago

    So your criteria is a court conviction? I guess that’s one way to answer, but I was more asking what’s your criteria, meaning what’s the criteria you’d personally use to think whether such court decision would be fair or not.

    demonstrated the intent to destroy the Palestinian people

    If that’s what you mean as your answer, then I kinda agree. That’s about what I would use to define genocide.

    • DarthJon@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      That’s the definition of a genocide. The evidence has to support the conclusion that Israel has demonstrated intent to destroy the Palestinian people, and the evidence clearly doesn’t show that. Here are a few key data points:

      1. Even if we take the estimated death toll at face value, every military expert who has looked at the numbers has concluded that the civilian-to-combatant ratio is among the lowest (and possibly THE lowest) in the history of urban warfare. This suggests that the IDF has actually done a very good job of minimizing civilian casualties.
      2. Even if we take the estimated death toll at face value, it represents maybe 1-2% of the entire Palestinian population. If Israel intended to destroy the Palestinian people, you would expect the death toll to be much higher.
      3. The pace of civilian death slowed dramatically over the course of the war in Gaza as the IDF moved into different phases of the war. If Israel intended to destroy the Palestinian people, you would expect the pace of civilian death to remain constant and not diminish over time.
      • Victor Villas
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        4 minutes ago

        If Israel intended to destroy the Palestinian people, you would expect the death toll to be much higher.

        Would I? I don’t know if I would. It’s a big percentage to accomplish in a single campaign, and if you think about the compounding effect of the war on the lives of the remaining 98% it’s still a pretty strong result. For example the UN reported that Gaza now has the biggest cohort of child amputees in modern history. Crippling a generation economically and literally is a very powerful genocide tool, and so is claiming land - expanding the largest West Bank land grab in 30 years.

        you would expect the pace of civilian death to remain constant and not diminish over time.

        Again, I don’t think I would. Maybe we have different visions of what an effective genocide strategy looks like in the XXI century.