NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
Two Jewish-led rights groups have accused Israel of genocide. Article from a week ago.
Shattering a taboo in Israel
The rights groups, while prominent and respected internationally, are considered in Israel to be on the political fringe, and their views are not representative of the vast majority of Israelis. But having the allegation of genocide come from Israeli voices shatters a taboo in a society that has been reticent to criticize Israel's conduct in Gaza.
Oh, look, it seems like the hostages don't really matter and Israel wants to do a full occupation with no end in sight. I guess they reverted from their insane policy of aid distribution, let the countries and UN who they were preventing from distributing it to do it just long enough so they can avoid a bad starvation news cycle and now the war can march on, in an even more escalatory direction.
Can't wait for RJ to explain how justified this is. I mean, I don't even need it, its going to be "this is exactly what their war goals are, exterminate Hamas and poor Bibi is left without a choice, they have to fully and permanently occupy all of Gaza".
Who says it is going to be permanent? I haven't read that. If it is, I would be against that and most Israelis would be too. I also completely oppose any partial annexation of Gaza which I hear getting tossed around.
I think the decision to occupy the strip is a bad idea, actually, and so do many within the Israeli cabinet as well as the IDF Chief of Staff. Not that there are many good options given that Hamas has basically left the table and taken to posting horrific photos of the remaining hostages.
It's clear (maybe not to you) that Hamas cannot be allowed to remain in control of Gaza, but there are still hostages there and no country apparently wants to accept any Palestinians as refugees. I hope there is more out-of-the-box thinking left in Israeli military leadership because I can't see a good way forward.
It's fascinating that you think (and that this is a very common argument) that some or more hypothetical countries should want to take in 2+ million of refugees that Israel has been brutalizing for 20 + years.
Here's an out of the box idea, Israel leaves, humanitarian organizations come back in, people get fed, Israel finances rebuilding of Gaza and + a peacekeeping mission mostly composing of Arab country UN troops makes sure that free and fair elections are done while Israel deals with war crime tribunals in order to illustrate to Gazans that some semblance of justice can happen in the world so their faith in democracy is restored.
Unfortunately, Israel would never allow this, so they will go with a full occupation at the cost of many more lives.
"Brutalizing for 20+ years" yea sure ok. They haven't been "brutalized" for one and you speak as if the Palestinians have absolutely no agency. Stop your nonsense. The Palestinians had multiple attempts at getting their own state, they rejected it. When Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005 and evicted the settlers living there they got rewarded with 20 years of rocket fire culminating in 10/7.
If the Palestinians accepted the idea of living next to Israel in peace then the violence would stop. It happened with Egypt and Jordan and it can happen in Palestine if they actually get political leadership that disavows terrorism and stops teaching the population to hate Jews.
So no other country should take in refugees from Gaza, even though they are legally obligated not to turn away refugees fleeing a war zone. It's ok that these civilians have to live in a war zone because... why? I thought there was a genocide going on? You do realize how ridiculous this argument is right?
Goes without saying that humanitarian organizations and peacekeeping missions are not going to come back to Gaza if Hamas controls it. There will be no rebuilding Gaza if Hamas controls it. There will be no free and fair elections if Hamas controls it.
Median age in the Gaza Strip is around 19.5 years. Last election in Gaza was in 2006. Please explain to me how Gazans are the ones that are responsible for "not accepting" anything. These people being blown up weren't alive the last time anyone asked them anything, let alone of voting age.
And that's not even the last time that anything was offered to them. When was the last time Israel offered anything other then 2000 LBS bombs to Gazans? How many of those people were alive then?
Did you miss the part of my comment where Hamas is not in control of Gaza, the peacekeeping troops are?
Oh, look, it seems like the hostages don't really matter and Israel wants to do a full occupation with no end in sight. I guess they reverted from their insane policy of aid distribution, let the countries and UN who they were preventing from distributing it to do it just long enough so they can avoid a bad starvation news cycle and now the war can march on, in an even more escalatory direction.
Can't wait for RJ to explain how justified this is. I mean, I don't even need it, its going to be "this is exactly what their war goals are, exterminate Hamas and poor Bibi is left without a choice, they have to fully and permanently occupy all of Gaza".
Who says it is going to be permanent? I haven't read that. If it is, I would be against that and most Israelis would be too. I also completely oppose any partial annexation of Gaza which I hear getting tossed around.
I think the decision to occupy the strip is a bad idea, actually, and so do many within the Israeli cabinet as well as the IDF Chief of Staff. Not that there are many good options given that Hamas has basically left the table and taken to posting horrific photos of the remaining hostages.
It's clear (maybe not to you) that Hamas cannot be allowed to remain in control of Gaza, but there are still hostages there and no country apparently wants to accept any Palestinians as refugees. I hope there is more out-of-the-box thinking left in Israeli military leadership because I can't see a good way forward.
It's fascinating that you think (and that this is a very common argument) that some or more hypothetical countries should want to take in 2+ million of refugees that Israel has been brutalizing for 20 + years.
Here's an out of the box idea, Israel leaves, humanitarian organizations come back in, people get fed, Israel finances rebuilding of Gaza and + a peacekeeping mission mostly composing of Arab country UN troops makes sure that free and fair elections are done while Israel deals with war crime tribunals in order to illustrate to Gazans that some semblance of justice can happen in the world so their faith in democracy is restored.
Unfortunately, Israel would never allow this, so they will go with a full occupation at the cost of many more lives.
What will you do when Hamas wins the election and declares war on Israel?
I think that given a chance, choice and time these people who have suffered so much, a lot of it on account of Hamas might make a different choice if any good alternatives were presented to them.
Unfortunately, it wasn't, and it says a lot about you that this is the first and only thing you have to say here, you are just a hateful person who doesn't think of these people as normal human beings and I honestly feel sorry for you.
You completely skipped over a comment I wrote about the timeline of the starvation in Gaza, with quotes, articles and interviews from an Israeli, but you came here to, once again, disparage the people who are subject to most suffering in the world, truly despicable.
The point is not that it is historically low compared to all conflicts the point is that it is low compared to contemporary urban conflicts. The fact that the IDF has achieved a low civilian to military death ratio in an area that is 25KM long and 6KM wide with a huge tunnel network under essentially all the civilian infrastructure is a testament to the targeted nature of the operations.
Edit: Also, your point that Hamas makes up casualty statistics and deceives the west has no basis. Nearly all studies attempting to estimate casualties of the war believe the Gaza health ministry death toll is an undercount. Just because Hamas is incentivized to inflate casualty figures does not mean it does so. Article discussing the story where Gaza ministry of health "suspiciously" removed thousands of child deaths https://aoav.org.uk/2025/the-vanishing-children-the-gaza-health-ministrys-quiet-retraction-of-thousands-of-deaths-fuelled-doubt-but-the-data-suggests-something-far-darker-than-deception/. All evidence points to the health ministry trying to count the deaths as accurately and meticulously as it can. You cannot argue that this is false simply because you think they wouldn't be incentivized to do so.
Beyond that, the MoH data doesn't distinguish between combatants and civilians, it counts civilians who die of natural causes, and it doesn't take into account the fact that some civilians may have been killed by Hamas, not Israel. The rocket attack at the hospital right after 10/7 where there was a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket is an example of this.
To your point about the USAID study, it says that there isn't evidence to conclude that Hamas is systematically stealing food aid. The passage you quoted does not contradict this. You think it is very suspicious and the "unknown" contribution must be basically all Hamas, but you have no actual basis for this belief. The burden is on Israel to prove that Hamas stealing of food aid is serious enough that it justifies preventing all other organizations from providing aid besides GHF (which is exacerbating the current starvation crisis). Also, even if Hamas did steal a lot of aid and sold it, it seems like it'd make more sense to flood Gaza with aid to decrease the value to Hamas of selling that aid. It would also avoid the current hunger crisis. Furthermore, Israel claims Hamas may be stealing just 25% of the aid- far from making the provision of that aid ineffective. That seems like no reason to me to force hundreds of thousands of Gazans to starve.
So essentially we have a study here that says - we don't know who was stealing our aid but we don't have the intelligence to establish that it was Hamas. I'm not really clear on what value it is adding to the conversation when there is clear video evidence that Hamas steals aid (maybe not systematically?) and the UN's own data includes the number of trucks that get hijacked by armed actors within Gaza.
The fact that Hamas steals aid has pretty much been established at this point. Where you are correct is that the Israeli strategy to try to choke off aid to Hamas was dumb and they should have instead flooded the area with aid. That I completely agree with.
Beyond the whistleblower there has been no credible evidence that corroborates any kind of claim that IDF soldiers are shooting people indiscriminately at aid sites.
And we have evidence that the IDF misidentifies people it kills as Hamas, quite deliberately in all likelihood. A flagrant example of this is when 15 aid workers were killed and the IDF simply lied that there were members of Hamas among them and emergency lights on vehicles were off until this was disproved by a phone recording of one of the workers who were killed. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/aid-workers-gaza-1.7503942. You speak of believing that the IDF has some bad eggs who do commit war crimes and should be punished. Do you actually know of any IDF soldier who has been punished for committing war crimes in this war? Perhaps the fact that there's so few such cases is intentional on Israel's part.
Your claim that the interpretation of children being shot in the head is disputed by the "actual" experts is frankly silly. I guess the over 40 doctors who stated they saw children with bullet wounds to the chest and/or head all cannot be trusted. https://aoav.org.uk/2025/shot-in-the-head-american-doctors-bear-witness-to-the-atrocities-committed-by-the-idf-against-gazas-children/ I read the article you linked and they seem to be mainly critical of the x-rays being possibly manipulated. But NYT also received actual images of the children's injuries that they decided not to share.
Furthermore, the Guardian actually had articles containing images of children with bullet wounds to the head. There's obvious evidence that these shots to the head occurred. Perhaps there is some difficulty in establishing the intentionality of these shootings in each case, although the sheer improbability of seeing child patients daily with single bullet wounds to the head or chest is quite damning.
If "hearsay reports" from doctors, journalists, gazan children, whistle-blowers, etc. are considered "no evidence" to you, then I think your picture of how the current conflict is unfolding is probably very inaccurate.
Yes, I don't automatically believe Hamas propaganda. The X-rays being manipulated is kind of an important point no? Given that this image is being run on the front pages of major news organizations.
Hearsay evidence isn't credible, it's basically a bunch of people saying that other people told them this happened. I don't doubt for a moment that they've found people with gunshot wounds to the head. But relying on "well some people told me" to say that the IDF is responsible and is INTENTIONALLY doing it? Sorry, that sounds like propaganda to me - similar to a lot of the supposed atrocity stories that come out of Gaza.
I could produce lots of articles of respected genocide historians (including ones from Israel) describing the current war as genocidal. Usually, these genocide historians make those assertions based on a similar impression of the state of affairs as the one I'm trying to paint in these comments. I promise you that you do not know more than them, even if you think that you do. As genocide historians whose opinion carries a lot of weight, do you really think they just carelessly study this topic before discussing their point of view in interviews and with news media?
I don't claim to know more than genocide historians or scholars. The idea that there is a consensus though is wrong. I can find international law scholars (and the foreign ministries of several Western countries) that do not believe it is a genocide. So given that there's no consensus I looked up the definition of genocide and read the arguments from each side. I'm not at all convinced by the people who say it's genocide.
The definition is very clear. Intent to destroy a people in whole or in part, where the only reasonable inference based on the totality of the evidence is that the actions were genocidal. The IDF's conduct doesn't come close to meeting this standard. The claim of genocide is belied in so many ways by:
- The IDF's targeted conduct in the war - The fact that the IDF has facilitated 2 million tons of aid over the course of the conflict - in addition to conducting a vaccination campaign in Gaza in the middle of the war - The fact that Israel, even during the conflict, has flown out Gazans to seek medical treatment in other countries
These are inconvenient facts for the genocide accusers. So orgs like Amnesty International and at least some of these historians then decide to take a bunch of statements out of context and change the definition of genocide to try to make it stick.
The death count from the Gaza Health Ministry is reliable enough. There's not a sufficient reason to call it "Hamas-run". If people doubt the numbers, I would ask them to take a neutral stance and doubt all data equally, including that from Israel. It makes no sense to assume greater credibility from one side than from the other, because both sides have the same incentive to fudge the number of casualties.
On August 07 2025 03:37 Magic Powers wrote: The death count from the Gaza Health Ministry is reliable enough. There's not a sufficient reason to call it "Hamas-run".
It's literally run by Hamas, they are the government of Gaza, it's their ministry. Who else would it be run by?
Stefan Talmon, professor of international law, isn't on your side at all as he is quoted numerous times saying that Israel is committing war crimes and should be stopped, which is not what you're advocating in this thread. He does say that Israel is only committing war crimes and not genocide though, you're right. Want to know why he says that? Well... he is currently the defense lawyer for Myanmar in the case of genocide against the Rohyngia: "Talmon may have another reason for his position: He is one of Myanmar’s counsel in the ICJ proceedings. As such, he has an interest in a narrow interpretation of the Genocide Convention." (Btw I got this quote in an article that Talmon linked himself on Twitter, thank you Stefan )
Then I'll group the ones that are from a while ago:
Nobody named, and check this out: "The government is seeking to defend itself in a judicial review brought over allegations that it acted unlawfully". This is an article about lawyers, who have a client, defending their client. It is literally their job to say that there is no genocide.
Natasha Hausdorff, "member of pro-Israel lobbying group UK Lawyers for Israel." Paywalled but it's clear from the first few paragraphs that this isn't rooted in any kind of factual analysis.
Norman JW Goda, historian, not lawyer. Does not discuss whether Israel is committing genocide in any meaningful way, only focuses on why we are antisemites for saying it does. Off topic.
Stefan Talmon, professor of international law, isn't on your side at all as he is quoted numerous times saying that Israel is committing war crimes and should be stopped, which is not what you're advocating in this thread. He does say that Israel is only committing war crimes and not genocide though, you're right. Want to know why he says that? Well... he is currently the defense lawyer for Myanmar in the case of genocide against the Rohyngia: "Talmon may have another reason for his position: He is one of Myanmar’s counsel in the ICJ proceedings. As such, he has an interest in a narrow interpretation of the Genocide Convention." (Btw I got this quote in an article that Talmon linked himself on Twitter, thank you Stefan )
Then I'll group the ones that are from a while ago:
Nobody named, and check this out: "The government is seeking to defend itself in a judicial review brought over allegations that it acted unlawfully". This is an article about lawyers, who have a client, defending their client. It is literally their job to say that there is no genocide.
Natasha Hausdorff, "member of pro-Israel lobbying group UK Lawyers for Israel." Paywalled but it's clear from the first few paragraphs that this isn't rooted in any kind of factual analysis.
Norman JW Goda, historian, not lawyer. Does not discuss whether Israel is committing genocide in any meaningful way, only focuses on why we are antisemites for saying it does. Off topic.
That's the end of the list.
Ok, so Talmon is an international lawyer who says that he doesn't believe Israel is committing a genocide. You asked me to name international law experts who disagreed with your so-called consensus. But then when I do you claim that they have ulterior motives. Could it be that they are more interested in actual rigorous application of the correct standard? No, I guess everything is a conspiracy theory if it paints Israel in any kind of good light.
January 2024. July 2024. August 2024. November 2023 (!!) May 2024
Many of the articles are from 2024 because the South African case was lodged in December of 2023. Remember? And the genocide accusation has been bandied about by the same so-called "human rights organizations" (in the case of that article, Human Rights Watch) basically since the war began.
Nobody named, and check this out: "The government is seeking to defend itself in a judicial review brought over allegations that it acted unlawfully". This is an article about lawyers, who have a client, defending their client. It is literally their job to say that there is no genocide.
That argument is based on a previous internal legal finding that Israel did not harbor genocidal intent. That finding was made prior to the case you cite.
Natasha Hausdorff, "member of pro-Israel lobbying group UK Lawyers for Israel." Paywalled but it's clear from the first few paragraphs that this isn't rooted in any kind of factual analysis.
I'll accept that she has bias, but she is a recognized barrister and international law expert. But thanks for not engaging with any of her actual content (seems to be a pattern with you). I'm sure you have time for Amnesty International though right?
Norman JW Goda, historian, not lawyer. Does not discuss whether Israel is committing genocide in any meaningful way, only focuses on why we are antisemites for saying it does. Off topic.
Oh ok. So we can discount the opinions of historians then? Cool then everything Omer Bartov says on the topic is complete bullshit too.
The point is not that it is historically low compared to all conflicts the point is that it is low compared to contemporary urban conflicts. The fact that the IDF has achieved a low civilian to military death ratio in an area that is 25KM long and 6KM wide with a huge tunnel network under essentially all the civilian infrastructure is a testament to the targeted nature of the operations.
Edit: Also, your point that Hamas makes up casualty statistics and deceives the west has no basis. Nearly all studies attempting to estimate casualties of the war believe the Gaza health ministry death toll is an undercount. Just because Hamas is incentivized to inflate casualty figures does not mean it does so. Article discussing the story where Gaza ministry of health "suspiciously" removed thousands of child deaths https://aoav.org.uk/2025/the-vanishing-children-the-gaza-health-ministrys-quiet-retraction-of-thousands-of-deaths-fuelled-doubt-but-the-data-suggests-something-far-darker-than-deception/. All evidence points to the health ministry trying to count the deaths as accurately and meticulously as it can. You cannot argue that this is false simply because you think they wouldn't be incentivized to do so.
Beyond that, the MoH data doesn't distinguish between combatants and civilians, it counts civilians who die of natural causes, and it doesn't take into account the fact that some civilians may have been killed by Hamas, not Israel. The rocket attack at the hospital right after 10/7 where there was a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket is an example of this.
To your point about the USAID study, it says that there isn't evidence to conclude that Hamas is systematically stealing food aid. The passage you quoted does not contradict this. You think it is very suspicious and the "unknown" contribution must be basically all Hamas, but you have no actual basis for this belief. The burden is on Israel to prove that Hamas stealing of food aid is serious enough that it justifies preventing all other organizations from providing aid besides GHF (which is exacerbating the current starvation crisis). Also, even if Hamas did steal a lot of aid and sold it, it seems like it'd make more sense to flood Gaza with aid to decrease the value to Hamas of selling that aid. It would also avoid the current hunger crisis. Furthermore, Israel claims Hamas may be stealing just 25% of the aid- far from making the provision of that aid ineffective. That seems like no reason to me to force hundreds of thousands of Gazans to starve.
So essentially we have a study here that says - we don't know who was stealing our aid but we don't have the intelligence to establish that it was Hamas. I'm not really clear on what value it is adding to the conversation when there is clear video evidence that Hamas steals aid (maybe not systematically?) and the UN's own data includes the number of trucks that get hijacked by armed actors within Gaza.
The fact that Hamas steals aid has pretty much been established at this point. Where you are correct is that the Israeli strategy to try to choke off aid to Hamas was dumb and they should have instead flooded the area with aid. That I completely agree with.
Beyond the whistleblower there has been no credible evidence that corroborates any kind of claim that IDF soldiers are shooting people indiscriminately at aid sites.
And we have evidence that the IDF misidentifies people it kills as Hamas, quite deliberately in all likelihood. A flagrant example of this is when 15 aid workers were killed and the IDF simply lied that there were members of Hamas among them and emergency lights on vehicles were off until this was disproved by a phone recording of one of the workers who were killed. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/aid-workers-gaza-1.7503942. You speak of believing that the IDF has some bad eggs who do commit war crimes and should be punished. Do you actually know of any IDF soldier who has been punished for committing war crimes in this war? Perhaps the fact that there's so few such cases is intentional on Israel's part.
Your claim that the interpretation of children being shot in the head is disputed by the "actual" experts is frankly silly. I guess the over 40 doctors who stated they saw children with bullet wounds to the chest and/or head all cannot be trusted. https://aoav.org.uk/2025/shot-in-the-head-american-doctors-bear-witness-to-the-atrocities-committed-by-the-idf-against-gazas-children/ I read the article you linked and they seem to be mainly critical of the x-rays being possibly manipulated. But NYT also received actual images of the children's injuries that they decided not to share.
Furthermore, the Guardian actually had articles containing images of children with bullet wounds to the head. There's obvious evidence that these shots to the head occurred. Perhaps there is some difficulty in establishing the intentionality of these shootings in each case, although the sheer improbability of seeing child patients daily with single bullet wounds to the head or chest is quite damning.
If "hearsay reports" from doctors, journalists, gazan children, whistle-blowers, etc. are considered "no evidence" to you, then I think your picture of how the current conflict is unfolding is probably very inaccurate.
Yes, I don't automatically believe Hamas propaganda. The X-rays being manipulated is kind of an important point no? Given that this image is being run on the front pages of major news organizations.
Hearsay evidence isn't credible, it's basically a bunch of people saying that other people told them this happened. I don't doubt for a moment that they've found people with gunshot wounds to the head. But relying on "well some people told me" to say that the IDF is responsible and is INTENTIONALLY doing it? Sorry, that sounds like propaganda to me - similar to a lot of the supposed atrocity stories that come out of Gaza.
I could produce lots of articles of respected genocide historians (including ones from Israel) describing the current war as genocidal. Usually, these genocide historians make those assertions based on a similar impression of the state of affairs as the one I'm trying to paint in these comments. I promise you that you do not know more than them, even if you think that you do. As genocide historians whose opinion carries a lot of weight, do you really think they just carelessly study this topic before discussing their point of view in interviews and with news media?
I don't claim to know more than genocide historians or scholars. The idea that there is a consensus though is wrong. I can find international law scholars (and the foreign ministries of several Western countries) that do not believe it is a genocide. So given that there's no consensus I looked up the definition of genocide and read the arguments from each side. I'm not at all convinced by the people who say it's genocide.
The definition is very clear. Intent to destroy a people in whole or in part, where the only reasonable inference based on the totality of the evidence is that the actions were genocidal. The IDF's conduct doesn't come close to meeting this standard. The claim of genocide is belied in so many ways by:
- The IDF's targeted conduct in the war - The fact that the IDF has facilitated 2 million tons of aid over the course of the conflict - in addition to conducting a vaccination campaign in Gaza in the middle of the war - The fact that Israel, even during the conflict, has flown out Gazans to seek medical treatment in other countries
These are inconvenient facts for the genocide accusers. So orgs like Amnesty International and at least some of these historians then decide to take a bunch of statements out of context and change the definition of genocide to try to make it stick.
I think Michael Spagat's article addresses your point. He concludes in the article that it is "possible that the percentage of civilians among all those killed in the Gaza war is about average for urban warfare, but the evidence suggests that this percentage is probably a bit higher than average." You can look through the analysis he did again, he says even an 80% average urban civilian-militant death ratio is "highly implausible" (incidentally, this is where most estimates I'm aware of put the civilian-militant death ratio for this war). So it's actually not clear at all that Israel should be commended for a low civilian-militant death ratio.
Wikipedia collected some civilian-militant death ratio estimates. Perhaps you don't think wikipedia itself is a good source, but you can follow the links to the references if you like and tell me if you take issue with that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_war.
The Gaza Health ministry only counts people who were killed. People who died due to untreated illness, deprivation of food, medicine, etc. wouldn't contribute to the death toll. Gaza death figures in previous conflicts have generally been considered reliable by human rights groups and the UN. I took a very brief look at the HJS, which seems quite biased, but I will try to engage with it a bit.
And even the HJS report only seems to call into question a fraction of the deaths listed by the health ministry that were counted using electronic forms. Given that the health ministry death figures have a good track record of being reliable, I think this method of counting deaths arose from the fact that Gaza's collapsing healthcare system cannot count people killed as effectively. Just because you think they are incentivized to make up death figures does not mean that they have done so. And just because you can point to something that calls into question the reliability of the death figures doesn't mean that you can disregard any (tentative) conclusion that someone might draw from them.
Also if you look at any study that attempts to estimate deaths in Gaza (sometimes including indirect deaths), they always conclude that the Gaza health ministry data figures are an undercount. For example, Michael Spagat's recent paper is an example and another study by Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02678-3/fulltext (not the controversial 186000 deaths estimate one)
As for the USAID study, it demonstrates that there isn't clear evidence of systematic stealing of aid from Hamas. The problem here is that the IDF's restriction of all other aid into Gaza created a humanitarian crisis, so the fact that the USAID could not find clear evidence is actually really damning. "UN's own data includes the number of trucks that get hijacked by armed actors within Gaza." Not exactly sure where to find this but we are only interested in the proportion of those attacks that are perpetrated by Hamas and similar groups. There are other armed groups operating in Gaza with Israel's support too, and they may also contribute to these issues.
Also, the idea of choking off aid wasn't merely dumb, it was actually incredibly cruel and likely quite intentional. The people responsible for Israel's military decisions are probably fully cognizant of what they are doing and the consequences.
As for the whistle-blower for GHF, I wasn't aware of this story. Personally, I think the GHF's claims are highly suspicious given that they denied that people seeking aid were being killed initially. That being said, I can set aside what the GHF whistle-blower said, since there are many other whistle-blowers who have said similar things about the IDF.
I took a look at the articles of the soldiers who were punished and I respect that you have provided some examples. Unfortunately, the punishments outlined in the article for such crimes seem remarkably lenient to me. It reminds me of something Liquid`Drone said earlier in the thread that Israel may take performative actions to convince people in the west that they are prosecuting the war humanely and with oversight. That the punishments were meted out for cases with a lot of media visibility should also be taken into account.
As for the point about children being shot in the head, what I meant is that NYT and other news sources received more than just x-rays. They also received accompanying images of the injuries which they decided not to share. Therefore, even if the x-rays might "seem" to be manipulated, they haven't taken all of the available evidence into account.
None of the sources I've been linking to you are Hamas propaganda. They're from respected Western news sources whose editorial staff often has members who are sympathetic towards Israel. These articles contain information that even they feel has to be revealed about Israel to preserve their integrity as news media.
I don't really want to get into a debate about what constitutes a genocide. Although I'm willing to write at length on that issue as well, it would make my comments even longer than they are now. That seems to be the purview of legal experts and although I strongly believe this is a genocide, I'm awaiting ICJ's conclusion on this case. Even in the articles you linked to Nebuchad, some of the legal experts stated that even though they think there's insufficient evidence of a genocide being carried out, that Israel is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity (including using hunger as a weapon of war). So I think it's an exercise in futility to try to put Israel's conduct in this war in any sort of positive light.
I think it's important to bring up the fact that genocide historians like Omer Bartov's opinion carries a lot of weight. He served in the IDF and really did not want to believe that Israel was carrying out a genocide. So I think the fact that he came to that conclusion after mourning the loss of his country's (supposed) innocence should not be so easily dismissed. I understand that you are pretty invested in protecting Israel's moral standing, but it's not rational to think that Israel is perpetrating minimal amounts of evil simply because you can always find some way to question the credibility of claims made against Israel. At least some of the accusations (I believe most are true) of the horrors Israel are perpetrating will have to be true, and we have to live with that reality.
Stefan Talmon, professor of international law, isn't on your side at all as he is quoted numerous times saying that Israel is committing war crimes and should be stopped, which is not what you're advocating in this thread. He does say that Israel is only committing war crimes and not genocide though, you're right. Want to know why he says that? Well... he is currently the defense lawyer for Myanmar in the case of genocide against the Rohyngia: "Talmon may have another reason for his position: He is one of Myanmar’s counsel in the ICJ proceedings. As such, he has an interest in a narrow interpretation of the Genocide Convention." (Btw I got this quote in an article that Talmon linked himself on Twitter, thank you Stefan )
Then I'll group the ones that are from a while ago:
Nobody named, and check this out: "The government is seeking to defend itself in a judicial review brought over allegations that it acted unlawfully". This is an article about lawyers, who have a client, defending their client. It is literally their job to say that there is no genocide.
Natasha Hausdorff, "member of pro-Israel lobbying group UK Lawyers for Israel." Paywalled but it's clear from the first few paragraphs that this isn't rooted in any kind of factual analysis.
Norman JW Goda, historian, not lawyer. Does not discuss whether Israel is committing genocide in any meaningful way, only focuses on why we are antisemites for saying it does. Off topic.
That's the end of the list.
Ok, so Talmon is an international lawyer who says that he doesn't believe Israel is committing a genocide. You asked me to name international law experts who disagreed with your so-called consensus. But then when I do you claim that they have ulterior motives. Could it be that they are more interested in actual rigorous application of the correct standard? No, I guess everything is a conspiracy theory if it paints Israel in any kind of good light.
January 2024. July 2024. August 2024. November 2023 (!!) May 2024
Many of the articles are from 2024 because the South African case was lodged in December of 2023. Remember? And the genocide accusation has been bandied about by the same so-called "human rights organizations" (in the case of that article, Human Rights Watch) basically since the war began.
Nobody named, and check this out: "The government is seeking to defend itself in a judicial review brought over allegations that it acted unlawfully". This is an article about lawyers, who have a client, defending their client. It is literally their job to say that there is no genocide.
That argument is based on a previous internal legal finding that Israel did not harbor genocidal intent. That finding was made prior to the case you cite.
Natasha Hausdorff, "member of pro-Israel lobbying group UK Lawyers for Israel." Paywalled but it's clear from the first few paragraphs that this isn't rooted in any kind of factual analysis.
I'll accept that she has bias, but she is a recognized barrister and international law expert. But thanks for not engaging with any of her actual content (seems to be a pattern with you). I'm sure you have time for Amnesty International though right?
Norman JW Goda, historian, not lawyer. Does not discuss whether Israel is committing genocide in any meaningful way, only focuses on why we are antisemites for saying it does. Off topic.
Oh ok. So we can discount the opinions of historians then? Cool then everything Omer Bartov says on the topic is complete bullshit too.
You appear to be mistaken on what's going on here. I just wanted to engage with this notion that there is a contentious debate currently within genocide scholarship and international law on whether this is genocide or not, so I wanted to get the names of a few of those international law specialists and genocide experts who share your position. You named one, who doesn't share your position and who is also the only name that I was able to come up with myself, which is Stefan Talmon, and him having an incentive to have the position that he has - which, again, is not yours - is obviously relevant, you shouldn't debase yourself by pretending that you don't understand why, it's silly. Google is having a hard time getting me more names.
It's not hard to find reputable experts in the field arguing against the claim of genocide. John Spencer is a war scholar who argues against it. His primary point of contention is that of intent, which from a legal standpoint remains unproven.
The problem I have with his argumentation is that this would imply complete powerlessness against genocide. He's arguing exclusively from a legal perspective, not from an evidence based perspective. This is not the same thing. If Spencer's argument is entirely valid, then that has a number of terrible implications. For example the Holocaust was unproven until the camps in Germany were discovered - well after Germany had effectively lost the war on its own soil. It wasn't possible to obtain sufficient evidence (from a court's perspective) at an earlier point.
So in reality we all know that courts don't have the truth trademarked. Many crimes go unproven even if we all know they happened. For example we all know the Epstein list exists, but we can't bring it to a court to review it, because it's been either destroyed or sealed someplace nobody knows where. Nobody can access it. In the meantime we can all agree that Trump has raped children. It's obviously true. But say that openly and you could face a defamation lawsuit, and you'd likely lose that case, despite everyone knowing exactly that you're speaking the truth. MAGA wins from a legal perspective, but not from an evidence based perspective.
It's the same thing with Gaza. All the evidence points to a genocide, which is why the majority of scholars are moving in that direction and not denying it. We know it's true, and for that it doesn't matter how many courts would rule otherwise because intent can't be definitively proven. We know that the law is impotent in this regard.
On August 07 2025 06:32 Magic Powers wrote: It's not hard to find reputable experts in the field arguing against the claim of genocide. John Spencer is a war scholar who argues against it. His primary point of contention is that of intent, which from a legal standpoint remains unproven.
The problem I have with his argumentation is that this would imply complete powerlessness against genocide. He's arguing exclusively from a legal perspective, not from an evidence based perspective. This is not the same thing. If Spencer's argument is entirely valid, then that has a number of terrible implications. For example the Holocaust was unproven until the camps in Germany were discovered - well after Germany had effectively lost the war on its own soil. It wasn't possible to obtain sufficient evidence (from a court's perspective) at an earlier point.
So in reality we all know that courts don't have the truth trademarked. Many crimes go unproven even if we all know they happened. For example we all know the Epstein list exists, but we can't bring it to a court to review it, because it's been either destroyed or sealed someplace nobody knows where. Nobody can access it. In the meantime we can all agree that Trump has raped children. It's obviously true. But say that openly and you could face a defamation lawsuit, and you'd likely lose that case, despite everyone knowing exactly that you're speaking the truth. MAGA wins from a legal perspective, but not from an evidence based perspective.
It's the same thing with Gaza. All the evidence points to a genocide, which is why the majority of scholars are moving in that direction and not denying it. We know it's true, and for that it doesn't matter how many courts would rule otherwise because intent can't be definitively proven. We know that the law is impotent in this regard.
It could be a skill issue for sure but I am genuinely having trouble finding a lot of names. This Spencer guy is a military guy who is now in a military academy, I don't think I'd put him in the same category as the opposition at all. He looks like quite the dumbfuck on wiki too "John Spencer has stated that the Israeli military has created a "new standard" consisting of a multitude of novel precautionary measures it has implemented during its invasion of the Gaza Strip" lol
Goda was a fair inclusion though, as he is a professor of Holocaust studies, I was wrong to dismiss him. He's not really engaging with the genocide claim though, he's mostly just calling us antisemites for making it and that has no value.
And fwiw I want to stress again, "Professor Ugur Umit Ungor of the University of Amsterdam and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies said that while there are certainly researchers who say it is not genocide, "I don't know them".
The Dutch paper reviewed 25 recent academic articles published in the Journal of Genocide Research, the field’s leading journal, and found that “all eight academics from the field of genocide studies see genocide or at least genocidal violence in Gaza”."
On August 07 2025 06:32 Magic Powers wrote: It's not hard to find reputable experts in the field arguing against the claim of genocide. John Spencer is a war scholar who argues against it. His primary point of contention is that of intent, which from a legal standpoint remains unproven.
The problem I have with his argumentation is that this would imply complete powerlessness against genocide. He's arguing exclusively from a legal perspective, not from an evidence based perspective. This is not the same thing. If Spencer's argument is entirely valid, then that has a number of terrible implications. For example the Holocaust was unproven until the camps in Germany were discovered - well after Germany had effectively lost the war on its own soil. It wasn't possible to obtain sufficient evidence (from a court's perspective) at an earlier point.
So in reality we all know that courts don't have the truth trademarked. Many crimes go unproven even if we all know they happened. For example we all know the Epstein list exists, but we can't bring it to a court to review it, because it's been either destroyed or sealed someplace nobody knows where. Nobody can access it. In the meantime we can all agree that Trump has raped children. It's obviously true. But say that openly and you could face a defamation lawsuit, and you'd likely lose that case, despite everyone knowing exactly that you're speaking the truth. MAGA wins from a legal perspective, but not from an evidence based perspective.
It's the same thing with Gaza. All the evidence points to a genocide, which is why the majority of scholars are moving in that direction and not denying it. We know it's true, and for that it doesn't matter how many courts would rule otherwise because intent can't be definitively proven. We know that the law is impotent in this regard.
It could be a skill issue for sure but I am genuinely having trouble finding a lot of names. This Spencer guy is a military guy who is now in a military academy, I don't think I'd put him in the same category as the opposition at all. He looks like quite the dumbfuck on wiki too "John Spencer has stated that the Israeli military has created a "new standard" consisting of a multitude of novel precautionary measures it has implemented during its invasion of the Gaza Strip" lol
Goda was a fair inclusion though, as he is a professor of Holocaust studies, I was wrong to dismiss him. He's not really engaging with the genocide claim though, he's mostly just calling us antisemites for making it and that has no value.
And fwiw I want to stress again, "Professor Ugur Umit Ungor of the University of Amsterdam and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies said that while there are certainly researchers who say it is not genocide, "I don't know them".
The Dutch paper reviewed 25 recent academic articles published in the Journal of Genocide Research, the field’s leading journal, and found that “all eight academics from the field of genocide studies see genocide or at least genocidal violence in Gaza”."
Yeah I mean finding names is one thing. The trend is very clear. More scholars are calling this war a genocide, never the other way around. But the old dissent is significant enough to have an effect on people's views. It's important to look at their argumentation and try to understand it. The legal argument works in a court. That's why I made the argument - which nobody's been able to dispute - that genocide is not something that only a court can determine. We can determine it independently from all courts.
I argue that, if intent has to be proven first, then there's no way to stop a genocide. That means there'd be no point in having a definition of genocide. Therefore I ignore the intent and go straight to the events on the ground, and I make the simple argument that we're at least 80% there to a full-blown genocide. The missing 20% is the unproven intent, everything else fits. This is an argument that nobody's been able to refute. Nobody's even attempted to refute it.
A few years ago I was entirely on the side of Israel, arguing some of the same points - word for word - as people do today. When I hear people defending Israel, I hear my younger self. My mind has changed in the weeks after October 7, when I saw no limit on the casualties that Israel is willing to shovel on top of the already far too massive mountain of corpses. I was forced to change my mind based on the realities on the ground. And then I started questioning my old beliefs, which led me to understand that I had also closed my eyes to the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. And from that I understood that I even had to consider the possibility of genocide in Gaza. I wasn't on this side of things from the start, I was on the opposite side. The facts convinced me to switch.
@RJGooner, do you have any actual confidence in the IDF investigating allegations against its members?
I don’t, although I don’t have that confidence in the British army, or the US either, so I’m not singling anyone out.
Going off memory you get 13 aid workers killed, the press release said it was an unfortunate incident, but they approached IDF forces without lights on or visible identification. Folks go to where the bodies were buried so to speak somewhat literally, and lo and behold there’s recovered phone footage amongst the dead showing that neither of those things were the case.
More broadly, you’ve got an environment that’s more hazardous to 3rd party observers, that Israel also as a state don’t seem to want various 3rd party orgs around.
So as an outside observer I’m sorta left taking Hamas’ word for it, or the IDF’s, and neither would I trust further than I could throw a tank.
Regarding the claim that Hamas is the reason why most of the aid doesn't reach civilians, or why so little aid can be delivered to them. This is an unsubstantiated claim, and even the most outrageous numbers go no higher than 25-30% of aid being redistributed by Hamas (source: IDF aka trust me bro). There is no way to verify what portion of aid gets delivered successfully to those in need. Furthermore, "those in need" are often the same people who intercept the aid before it reaches the intended target. That's what people do when they're desperate for food and other necessities. So there's an overlap here as well. Theft becomes logical when aid is so scarce.
So the real problem is the lack of aid, not stolen aid. First of all more total aid being delivered would drive down prices, thus making it easier for those in need to get their hands on it. Secondly by flooding in more aid, if the percentage of stolen aid remains roughly the same, then a much larger portion of aid passes through untouched. This is not too difficult to understand.
There's a final obstacle though, which has nothing to do with theft: the war itself. The IDF actively creates warzones where people are starving, thus making it near impossible to deliver aid to anyone at all. This is a problem that is caused by both Hamas and the IDF, and not only by Hamas (because why don't Hamas surrender - same reason why the IDF doesn't withdraw. It's a biased question that can be dismissed out of hand).
This semantic arguments are exactly what the people who stan for Israel's imperialist brutal campaign want, just drown the discourse in semantics and arguments about opinions.
When faced with a clear timeline of actual war crime, irrefutable step by step plan announced and executed by Israel which resulted in malnourished kids dying of starvation, more then a thousand people gunned down as they are funneled to 4 aid distribution points which replaced more then 200 UN ones, they will simply ignore it and wait to catch an opportunity for some stupid inane gotcha, or, once again try to bog everything down with talking about genocide scholars.
Who the fuck cares what we call what is happening, honestly, nothing is going to change with calling it genocide, Israel will always have some people ready to say it's not, you will never win this kind of an argument, and this argument is easy for people who still probably like to think of themselves as decent people to make.
What they can't and won't do is engage with facts of planned starvation, countless instances of murdering of aid workers, complete disregard for getting the hostages back, leveling of 80 % of structures in Gaza, not letting any journalists in.
On August 07 2025 18:16 Jankisa wrote: This semantic arguments are exactly what the people who stan for Israel's imperialist brutal campaign want, just drown the discourse in semantics and arguments about opinions.
When faced with a clear timeline of actual war crime, irrefutable step by step plan announced and executed by Israel which resulted in malnourished kids dying of starvation, more then a thousand people gunned down as they are funneled to 4 aid distribution points which replaced more then 200 UN ones, they will simply ignore it and wait to catch an opportunity for some stupid inane gotcha, or, once again try to bog everything down with talking about genocide scholars.
Who the fuck cares what we call what is happening, honestly, nothing is going to change with calling it genocide, Israel will always have some people ready to say it's not, you will never win this kind of an argument, and this argument is easy for people who still probably like to think of themselves as decent people to make.
What they can't and won't do is engage with facts of planned starvation, countless instances of murdering of aid workers, complete disregard for getting the hostages back, leveling of 80 % of structures in Gaza, not letting any journalists in.
I agree in principle that the Gaza war doesn't require the label "genocide" specifically. It is exactly as bad as a genocide, and Israel has the power to stop it. Those two facts are the key.
On the other hand forcing people to argue agianst the genocide accusation also forces them to argue from an impossibly immoral position. This exposes the brutality that drives the support for the war.
I want to put another face on the crisis. This girl is another example of someone trying to create a future for herself and her family. She's not an extremist, she's a normal person like most people on the planet. She could well be our neighbor, but instead she was born in a bad place. She carries no fault and she's the kind of person that I'm talking about when I say the war needs to end even if Hamas stays in power. She deserves it, because everyone here would equally deserve it if we switched places with her.
On August 07 2025 18:16 Jankisa wrote: This semantic arguments are exactly what the people who stan for Israel's imperialist brutal campaign want, just drown the discourse in semantics and arguments about opinions.
When faced with a clear timeline of actual war crime, irrefutable step by step plan announced and executed by Israel which resulted in malnourished kids dying of starvation, more then a thousand people gunned down as they are funneled to 4 aid distribution points which replaced more then 200 UN ones, they will simply ignore it and wait to catch an opportunity for some stupid inane gotcha, or, once again try to bog everything down with talking about genocide scholars.
Who the fuck cares what we call what is happening, honestly, nothing is going to change with calling it genocide, Israel will always have some people ready to say it's not, you will never win this kind of an argument, and this argument is easy for people who still probably like to think of themselves as decent people to make.
What they can't and won't do is engage with facts of planned starvation, countless instances of murdering of aid workers, complete disregard for getting the hostages back, leveling of 80 % of structures in Gaza, not letting any journalists in.
There is no strategy we can employ in which this wouldn't happen, you'll never get the engagement you want because this isn't an honest debate in the first place. Faced with that, I'd rather just stick to saying things that are true. It is probably the case that as the world goes more and more rightwing, being correct loses value, but that's fine, we're only some dudes on TL we aren't producing a ton of value anyway.
On August 07 2025 18:16 Jankisa wrote: This semantic arguments are exactly what the people who stan for Israel's imperialist brutal campaign want, just drown the discourse in semantics and arguments about opinions.
When faced with a clear timeline of actual war crime, irrefutable step by step plan announced and executed by Israel which resulted in malnourished kids dying of starvation, more then a thousand people gunned down as they are funneled to 4 aid distribution points which replaced more then 200 UN ones, they will simply ignore it and wait to catch an opportunity for some stupid inane gotcha, or, once again try to bog everything down with talking about genocide scholars.
Who the fuck cares what we call what is happening, honestly, nothing is going to change with calling it genocide, Israel will always have some people ready to say it's not, you will never win this kind of an argument, and this argument is easy for people who still probably like to think of themselves as decent people to make.
What they can't and won't do is engage with facts of planned starvation, countless instances of murdering of aid workers, complete disregard for getting the hostages back, leveling of 80 % of structures in Gaza, not letting any journalists in.
There is no strategy we can employ in which this wouldn't happen, you'll never get the engagement you want because this isn't an honest debate in the first place. Faced with that, I'd rather just stick to saying things that are true. It is probably the case that as the world goes more and more rightwing, being correct loses value, but that's fine, we're only some dudes on TL we aren't producing a ton of value anyway.
The sands they do shift.
One may notice I decidedly don’t interject on the auld ‘G word’ debates. I figured it’s just such an evocative word, and there’s ‘big G’ genocide and small ‘g genocide’, and its invocation tends to have people think of the ‘big g’ version that I figured it just brought up a reflexive defensiveness.
The flipside of that was, I thought by not immediately triggering that defensive reflexive action by sticking the genocide issue on the table, one could get more sober engagement on the other factors.
However, what I’ve oft-found is you’ll just get that same defensiveness and denial no matter how much you soften it. So why soften it?
It’s a little like the idea that certain people gravitate to right wing populists because they’re just sick of being called racists and it’s an exasperated reaction to that.
This may be true for some people, in reality I find all it accomplishes if one drops the accusation of racism is allow a lot of racists to go about their days without being called racist.
Inb4 anti-Semitism, there are some Jewish people who would not defend some parallel non-Jewish state that was doing equivalent things, indeed they’d actively condemn it.
I’ll add these are mostly observations I’ve made of interactions outside these forums and not within them.
EPT
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