It is popular among some Democrats and fellow travelling polemicists tot declare Israel guilty of genocide. By rational and legal standards Israel has fallen complete short of genocide or attempted genocide. They had no intention of annihilating the people of Gaza- I am reluctant to call the Gazans Palestinians as a differentiator since Israelis historically are people of the land of Canaan too. Jews were living in Canaan before the arrival of the Philistines by thousands of years. About 75,000 Gazans were killed from a pre-war population of more than 2 million. And that ratio is about what is normal for an intense urban war campaign in a densely populated region that is honeycombed with terrorist infrastructure.
Israel warned the populace of imminent attacks offering an opportunity to exit. Frankly at best the topic could be one of democide and if the Israeli military planned to carry out intentional attacks on unarmed non-combatants. The answer to that is a plain no.
Democide is a term coined by a political scientist named R.J. Rummel in the 1990s. Democide occurred in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and has occurred elsewhere. When a government kills people intentionally that it does not prefer existing within a particular region, and they are unarmed civilians, that is a criterion of democide. Genocide is the effort to eliminate a race intentionally. It is useful polemically for the unethical and/or very emotional to use the strongest term they can to vilify the target of their wrath. Plainly there are many that hate Jews and the existence of Israel and would and abhor Israel’s effort to make Gaza safe for the existence of Israel rather than a future base for renewed attacks on Israel. The rise of drones and proliferation of Kayatusha and other rockets has made low cost attacks on Israel recurrent and more lethal. American support for the renewal of attacks upon Israel from a militant Gaza under the power of Hamas or the Acme Terror Consortium is reprehensible collusion with the devil.
Leave a Reply