Israel Committing 'Textbook Case of Genocide,' Holocaust Historian Says
Israel Committing 'Textbook Case of Genocide,' Holocaust Historian Says
"We're seeing the combination of genocidal acts with special intent," said Raz Segal, an Israeli historian.
Newsweek
It's heartbreaking seeing shell shocked children covered in dust and blood or parents weeping for their dead kids. There is no sanctuary for these people. Then Israelis call them "human animals" while claiming to be the "most moral army in the world" without any sense of shame. They are depraved.
You saw the shell shocked kid? That was horrific. If you watch that video and still support Israel you are a sociopath. Here is the kid.
Absolutely heartbreaking. And on the other side, there are IDF soldiers partying because they killed children. On the hills, there are Israeli citizens throwing watch parties of Palestinians’ houses being bombed. If an orthodox Jewish, Israeli journalist expresses basic empathy with Palestinians, other Israelis go surround his house and threaten him for being a decent human being. HOW are zionists victims of ANYTHING??? And to ward off any accusation of anti-semitism: this behavior has NOTHING to do with what Judaism actually says. No religion actually says this type of dehumanization is right. This has NOTHING to do with Judaism, it has everything to do with pure racism and colonialism. Nazism in short which, it seems, some Jewish people in Israel forgot everything about - and that’s the worst part.
The adults saying "don't be afraid," it's like gaslighting. I know that's not what they intend. But that little kid just learned what shelling is and there's no "don't be afraid," after that.
When I get to be in charge, Israel will be sanctioned, little kids won't suffer violence, and housing will be free. Until then, this is fucked and I don't like it.
Yes, its quite obvious to everyone that has no power in the world.
With how often we, the United States, shove our fingers into every whisper of a conflict I'm shocked that we're not only involved in this conflict (by proxy, not for reals, take that international courts) but somehow ended up on the wrong side of it. It's like it wasn't enough to just be helpless, we had to add a whole extra layer.
Worth repeating that when American evangelical Christians support Israel, it's because of they think it will bring about the literal end of the world, and to them that is a good thing. I assume that's not Biden's angle, but it's certainly the angle of a significant portion of Republicans.
The only thing I think of with this conflict is the Doctor Who speech on war:
Because it's not a game, Kate. This is a scale model of war. Every war ever fought right there in front of you. Because it's always the same. When you fire that first shot, no matter how right you feel, you have no idea who's going to die. You don't know who's children are going to scream and burn. How many hearts will be broken! How many lives shattered! How much blood will spill until everybody does what they're always going to have to do from the very beginning -- sit down and talk!
A beautiful sentiment, but sometimes it's about forcing people to sit and talk who wouldn't otherwise do so. It's rare, but the US civil war was an unfortunate necessity.
I agree, there was a lot that could have been done to avoid it but humans (as a group) are stupid.
There's just some lines that should not be crossed, genocide, slavery, etc. and when that happens it comes down to who has the bigger stick and can stomach the suffering.
I am not an expert by any means, what I am sure of is that there were opportunities for dialog but humans did what humans do best. They 'othered' the fuck out of each side and made sure that this was the only possible outcome.
Which is no problem for them! Since they're going to be rewarded in the afterlife! So who cares that they just shit in the proverbial sandbox!? /s
Yes; Ultimately, there will be an agreement at the negotiation table.
But as long as there is a disagreement over where that final line will be drawn ...
As long as one party thinks they can get a better result on the battlefield ...
The fighting will continue.
As had been happening for almost 100 years with this particular pair of combatants.
I hate to say it, but maybe some groups of people need the shared experience of war to find common ground with each other enough to sit down and talk. Before that, they perceive they have nothing in common and treat people as “other.”
The perception of “other” being specifically programmed by various leaderships through propaganda and population conditioning is a separate but related issue.
No, if you kill everybody on the other side, you don't have to sit and talk. Or if you can kill enough so that they'll themselves guess what you want and give it to you so that you wouldn't kill the rest.
This quote ignores the issue of sociopaths, which may constitute up to 10% of people in every group.
So to prevent bloodshed you have to be strong enough to defend yourself. No other way.
Weapons usable in war should be as easy to get as notebooks and pens. Or at least as smartphones. Then we'll see some kind of peace (the medieval way, there'll be more small-scale violence, but less large-scale violence as in war, and less death all things considered).
Weapons usable in war should be as easy to get as notebooks and pens. Or at least as smartphones. Then we'll see some kind of peace
The one country in which this is a reality shows the exact opposite. There's more small scale hun violence in the USA as any other place in the world. It's not even close.
This quote ignores the issue of sociopaths, which may constitute up to 10% of people in every group.
How so? You don't have to have empathy to see the non-human costs. Or do I not understand what you're saying?
Weapons usable in war should be as easy to get as notebooks and pens. Or at least as smartphones. Then we’ll see some kind of peace (the medieval way, there’ll be more small-scale violence, but less large-scale violence as in war, and less death all things considered).
Correct me if I'm wrong. What I'm understanding from this is that your claim is that more weapons means more peace on a larger scale? I could agree, in theory, if we were still fighting with sticks and blades. However it seems like you're claiming that making modern weapons of war accessible as notebooks and pens is the solution to large-scale violence?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
An Israeli historian and Holocaust scholar has called how Israel is treating Palestinians in Gaza "a textbook case of genocide."
Israel's official account on X, formerly known as Twitter, said: "Unlike the barbaric enemy we are fighting, we do everything we can to keep innocent civilians safe."
"This dehumanizing language is clearly calculated to justify the wide scale destruction of Palestinian lives; the assertion of 'evil,' in its absolutism, elides distinctions between Hamas militants and Gazan civilians, and occludes the broader context of colonization and occupation," he wrote.
that the attack by Hamas was "a horrendous war crime," but using the term "evil" to describe the militant group is to "decontextualize" and "enhance the widespread fantasies of Israelis today that they're fighting Nazis."
He referred to a recent television interview where former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett lashed out at an anchor for asking about the Palestinian civilians suffering in Gaza by declaring, "We're fighting Nazis."
There is a "long history" of this "shameful use of Holocaust memory, which Israeli politicians have used to justify, rationalize, deny, distort, disavow mass violence against Palestinians," Segal said.
The original article contains 795 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
How quickly we forget history. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself come a villain.
That quote is so stupid. Not everyone is inevitably fated to turn to evil. Sure, humanity is inherently evil, but we can make the choice to be better than that.
And that's assuming heroism is morally good and villainy bad anyway, and I have serious beef with that assumption.
Well, sometimes you can replace "villain" with "a miserable thieving creature that may not be a villain, but can't even die with dignity".
That's about a certain subset of Armenians who aren't anything like heroes themselves and eagerly betray others who are. Who happen to control Armenia's government.
This is off topic, of course. I'm just confused whether to envy Israelis who seem to lack this particular problem.
I had a similar thought recently. Germans were a victim of WW1. Then became aggressors and the Jews were victims in WW2. Now Israel is the aggressor and Palestinians are the victims. Just a thought.
The German state in WW1 was as last as greedy for territory as it was in the second world war. They through they could improve they land holdings in Europe and in Africa. They were one of the leading causes the war escalated into a world war, instead of a Balkan one.
Hence the severity of the reparations that were forced upon her. You could argue (like Hitler did) that the reason Germany had to surrender was a betrayal of the jews, and he convinced many to put the blame of losing the war was that people, not the Germans.
We all know where that lead. There's one thing, though that you cannot claim, it's that Germany was a victim of WW1. The Emperor, his hawkish generals, politicians and investors bit off more than they could chew and got served the bill.
Germans were a victim of WW1.
That's ... an interesting way to describe the power which practically controlled Ottoman empire's state apparatus so that it wouldn't crumble through the years which cleansed Asia Minor and Western Armenia of civilized presence by murdering and breaking people constituting that presence in every way possible.
Which was also allied to Austria-Hungary which started the war in the first place, and also committed plenty of war crimes in Serbia and Western Ukraine.
Obviously Germans themselves did plenty of that too.
It's just that the war wasn't on German territory mostly.
Great point. Seems we are still paying the price for old sins.
I'm really impressed that Newsweek would publish thi.
They only could publish it because the Holocaust scholar is Jewish. In the current media zeitgeist the only people who can criticize the Israeli government are Jews. Nobody else can say anything. Which is part of the current problem, nobody's able to critique or criticize the actions of the Israeli government without being labeled as anti-Semitic in the West.
I think a lot of people are going to wake up to this hypocrisy. I've seen more open criticism of Israel during this conflict than at any time before, which is quite surprising.
Turns out that in the 24/7 media ecosystem we now live in, it has become much more difficult to frame yourself as a permanent victim class while also commiting heinous atrocities in an asymmetrical fashion.
Plus after the "War on Terror" the appetite for another Middle Eastern quagmire is quite limited. The backlash from the general public if the United States were to be dragged into this conflict, beyond throwing money at it as a show of diplomatic support, would be swift and severe.
The people in charge of both sides are evil. Picking sides in this fight is like picking sides in fucking Game of Thrones.It's not a complex argument. Israel is an apartheid, Jews only state, set up on land stolen from its indigenous people. Nothing equivocal about it. And they have been terrorizing, murdering, torturing, starving, imprisoning and humiliating them ever since. And there is a huge extremely well funded lobby in the US ensuring that things like what just happened, with Biden pledging 100 billion dollars of taxpayer money to Israel to keep doing what they are doing, which is genocide, keep happening.
Zero equivalence, the basic concept of Israel is pure, 100% apartheid. Don't you dare say "six of one, half a dozen of the other," not close at all, not even in the same universe!
Well yeah, the United States did the same to native Americans, condemning Israel would be too much on the nose even for them.
They were so good at stealing that they gave the original owners financial compensation for the land and then stole it right under their noses… even took pictures of it those crooks… https://imgur.io/5fYx5Ud
Palestina is not only "state" that was there before thou. It's piece of land that changes ownership every few hundred years if not decades.
So it's not really valid to say what was before because then somone can say even before that it was different. Then it will keep on going until beginning of history and both Palestinians and Israeli would have to leave. As opposite if we say let's look only certain time back then we might end up going closer to present in same manner.
IMHO this conflict has to be solved with todays borders (Not adding more land no IzraelI or Palestina).
Its not stolen land, it was given to them and sold to them and in addition they fought a completely legal war against people who wanted to annihilate them and won the land. They were willing to share, but the arabs in their war against them made it clear that not only wouldn't they share, but they would do everything they can to eradicate them from the land, like the peace loving, non apartheid, democratic valued nation they are. These points are not relevant today because both peoples are in the land and there must be a solution to find peace without either of them just dissapearing. They have no choice but to share it or some other country offer safe haven for refugees, as so far none have, not of the arab countries or the west, not unilaterally and collectively. Only israel allows them to stay in israel, even after all the wars and all the terrorist attacks and all the government who pledge to annihilate israelis. If you want to discuss funding, talk about all the millions and billions given to the palestianians from foreign aid, yet they cannot even feed their own people. Talk about the millions of dollars of funding from Iran and other terror supporting states that is given to support the continuation of the attacks against israel. If someone cares to prove me wrong, I'm waiting...... Every person hsa the right to defend themselves and taking land is a part of that. If someone is shooting at you from a hill, you have the right to take that hill to defend yourself from that attack and any future ones. That's exactly what happened all over Israel in many disputed areas. If you want to talk about settlments you can talk about settlements, but saying that the whole land of Israel is stolen is simply untrue.
Idk man, I think hot pie should have been king.
I fucking hate that argument. It's the same kind of mentality that says there is a 50% change of raining tomorrow, because either it rains, or it doesn't.
It's the #AllLivesMatter take for the middle east
This is a continuation of the crusades to 75% of those involved. I'm surprised nobody is framing it universally like that.
it seems you can't be bothered with any thing more than 2 lines of stereotypical rhetoric.
Talk about not bothering.
Etuomaala is correct. Both sides pick shitty leadership. Both sides are constantly fucking with the other side in a deadly game. However, one side is grossly overpowered relative to the other and is constantly stealing land while committing apartheid.
Yeah, they’re both assholes. Just one’s a shitload stronger and never ever stops fucking with the little guy.
Don't both sides this. Don't make excuses for Israel's genocide. Israel is the one with the power here. They control Gaza completely and have the monopoly of the violence.
I am not making excuses for Israel's genocide. You're right. Obviously, Israel is more evil and Israel has more control over this situation. But they're both evil. All I'm saying is that it is stupid to support the least evil side. Fuck them both, really. The situation will not be resolved until leadership on *both sides* changes. So, yeah, if you don't mind, I am going to "both sides" this.
The author is an expert, are you?
People do it anyway, though, don't they...
As they have been for decades now
Well, this jewish, israeli (born, raised, and educated) holocaust professor, with decades of experience and many titles under his belt acquired specifically in the field of genocide and the Holocaust hasn't seen what the armchair historians on the internet have to say.
Holocaust historians hate this one one trick.
The gaslighting just won't stop. Terrorists invaded Israel with the explicit purpose to commit genocide against jews, any attempt to fight back against that is criticized. A huge chunk of the whole world just seems to feel like Israel "deserved it", and they should just take it lying down.
Sure, but also Israel had already been committing genocide. The have an explicitly Zionist leader. They kill a shit-ton more Palestinians than Hamas kills Israelis. They also get a lot more support from the west. Sure, Hamas are terrorists, but Israel uses fear and violence (textbook terrorism) to suppress and colonize land. Much of that land is internationally recognized as Palestinian. Israel is not a moral state, and you shouldn't pretend like they are.
When you're engaged in oppressing a whole population for decades, then you should be surprised when people get desperate enough to lash out in brutal ways. That the other side also commits war crimes does not give you any right to commit even more war crimes.
It's not about Israel having to take it lying down. It's about Israel not retaliating against civilians who have already been victims of both Israeli and Hamas oppression their entire lives for actions carried out by a tiny proportion who won a minority of the votes so long ago that the vast majority of the current Gaza population were not even of voting age when the last election were held, and that a majority would like to get rid of (see below).
Had Israel engaged with any kind of humanity, instead of with prominent people calling Palestinians animals and instigating brutal additional oppression, and instead aimed to take on just Hamas and showed they were serious even a lot of people who see Israel as the brutal apartheid state it is would be a lot more sympathetic to their legitimate right to fight back against Hamas.
As it stands, Israel is demonstrating that like Hamas, its government are far-right extremist war criminals who thrives on dehumanizing and victimizing civilians, and whereas Israeli civilians are not legitimate targets, and should have our sympathy, nobody should have any sympathy for their Apartheid government.
To preempt the inevitable attempt to conflate Palestinians with Hamas:
Do you think that the Israeli government's current approach is reasonable and will work?
Their citizens demanded it, any country would if they suffered the same attack. Its hard to say exactly what a reasonable response is. Between doing nothing, and nuking Gaza there is some reasonable, measured response. Either side could argue about what that is, but they can't just do nothing, and take it lying down which seems to be what one side is suggesting is the only reasonable course of action.
Oh fuck off there's no way the force Gaza put out ever had a chance of doing that and Hamas themselves have said they expected to fight the military at the border. At this point the only people saying Israel is at risk of genocide are the Israelis themselves.
Then stop gaslighting.
How should they react to Hamas' desire to exterminate them?
Maybe not by mass murdering innocent civilians?
Defending yourself and annihilating an entire people are two different things.
They told them to evacuate and Hamas told them to stay put which many did.
So what's your suggestion?
Going in there with the army on the ground? That will probably result in even more casualties.
Hamas is just evil with how they planned their bases around hospitals, churches or civilian buildings because they know that it's impossible to target them without having civilian casualties. That's the whole point.
So Israel should just ignore that Hamas specifically targeted schools and civilians for their attack and not do anything? Seriously what's your suggestion besides staying in your childish black and white thinking of optimal solutions.
Civilian casualties are absolutely horrible but imho those are 100% Hamas fault for using them as meat shields and creating the necessity for a response by what they did to those victims of their attack.
I know Palestine people don't really have a choice since there were no elections in a long time so they are the biggest victims of this but imho putting the blame on Israel is just making it far too easy.
Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.
According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Maybe you should debate the expert from the article.
Kill kill kill!!!
I wonder if Isreal has gas chambers...I'd not be surprised.
historian says
Can we please stop using these nonsensical claims? What historian? A Reddit armchair hero? Can you please get an actual known historian with a name?
Having said that, Israel has been committing genocidal acts for decades now. What Hamas did is awful and despicable, but it's a proverbial bloody nose they dealt to Israel in comparison.
Religious extremism in Israel is to blame for this, IMHO. They claim that their gods says it's okay that they steal houses, the Israeli government acts as if it doesn't happen. Palestinians then protest this, get arrested, tortured or shot. Kids throw stones, get shot. Israëli government acts as if their nose bleeds.
Then they hit back hard, and now their nose IS bleeding and everybody is "poor Israelis"
No. I feel for the families that have their loved ones killed and kidnapped, I do, and Hamas must be stopped. However, we can't simply blame Hamas and completely ignore what Israel is doing right now and more importantly, what it's been doing for the past 60 years.
It. Has. To. Stop.
I somewhat agree, but, maybe read the article.
Raz Segal (Hebrew: רז סגל) is an Israeli historian residing in the United States who directs the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies program at Stockton University.[1] He has written multiple books about the Holocaust in Carpathian Ruthenia.
**That ** historian.
Gazan population doubles in 2 decades: help! There's a genocide!
What the jews got was the purposeful death of innocent civilians. Just watch jewish numbers in the world before and after WW2. What gazans get is a war. Yes, civilians die in wars, and that's an awful thing. Israel should've done everything to prevent this war, but didn't. Bibi has a lot to answer.
But comparing the Holocaust to gaza is just absurd. You can take a side in a conflict without baseless accusations, Israel has already a lot to answer to. But purposefully killing civilians? We've yet to see that from Israel, only from Hamas...
Extermination is first stage 9 out of 10 of Stantons 10 stages of genocide. And as the article also points out, extermination is only one approach to genocide, and not required to meet the UN definition.
That you conflate genocide with inherently requires mass murder just demonstrates that you don't know what genocide is.
Maybe you should actually read and try to understand the article.
I see that genocide is not just murdering innocent, but still there's a lost nuance in this article that Israel is only addressing the Palestinian leaders (Hamas), not the Palestinian population as a whole.
That's a very huge distinction, since jews in the Holocaust were just regular citizens in a country, without a murderous leadership. Palestinians are different in that regard - they have a terrorist organization running their territory, and no one but Israel can/will do anything about that. No one is considering how good Gazans could've lived if their leaders weren't terrorists.
And nobody can fight a terrorist organization without civilian casualties. That's war. Calling it a genocide is in my eyes dishonest to actual genocides where innocent people are being called animals and pillaged and slaughtered. Palestinians are poor people, but there's definitely not only one aggressor against them.
I don't think he's calling the last two decades genocide, but he is calling the last two weeks genocide. The language is genocidal, refusing to allow Palestinians a way to escape is murderous, and the limited aid coming from Egypt won't be enough to keep Palestinians afloat. If kept up, the blockade of necessary resources will kill more people in the coming months than the air strikes ever could.
I agree the past 2 weeks are inhumane against Palestinians, but blaming it entirely on Israel is dishonest given they still have civilians kidnapped and probably tortured (not based on a tin foil hat, based on the bodies of dead Israelis).
I do believe they'll let help come from Egypt before it gets catastrophic, because they also don't want a humanitarian disaster to happen. That'll only move more people towards Hamas, which is of course against their interests.
And about the language - not once have I heard an Israeli official calling the Palestinian people animals - only their leadership (which let's face it - they are animals). And because Israel is a free state, and part of the free world, they'll get backlash for saying anything of that nature. I just don't think we'll even come to that - since Israel just doesn't wanna involve itself with Gaza at all besides destroying Hamas.
The Jewish population also increased in the ghettos before the Nazis decided to clear the Ghettos. Maybe you should go read the UN definition of genocide before saying stupid shit?
increased in the ghettos
Source? That sounds like an interesting read
Either way tho, that wasn't my main point. My main point is that Israel is fighting a war against Palestinian leaders, not killing civilians needlessly. And that's a nuance that's not addressed in this article, or in most pro-palestinian text I read.
An Israeli historian and Holocaust scholar
Are you an expert? He is.
Nah, I'm just some dude with an opinion on the internet. I think that every country should have a right for proper defense, and proper safety for its citizens. And that includes Palestinians. But to think that the source for that defense should be Israel who are suffering their own casualties is not fair by the world. And Israel tbh is doing the bare minimum in Gaza (up until 2 weeks ago) which is definitely not good, but not as awful as a genocide.
After the events of Saturday tho, I can't blame them for stopping that bare minimum of protection. They're at war and can't enjoy that luxury.