i am asking this in good faith
If the Bosnian Genocide is has been ruled a genocide and the death count was 33,071 people, how is what is happening in Gaza not a genocide when the number has been surpassed
Because genocide is not about the number of people being killed. Genocide is a specific legal term, and it has to have two components:
1) obviously people have to be murdered -- but this must be done systemically, as a policy (either written or unwritten) of the belligerent party.
AND
2) there has to be genocidal intention to murder said people. Genocidal intention means that Party A (Israel) murders Party B (Palestinians) specifically because those people belong to Party B (Palestinians).
There is no evidence that Israel has a genocidal intention. In fact, the October 7th massacre was actually a genocidal act on behalf of Hamas - Hamas committed the genocidal action and has been committing genocidal actions for over 20 years, because they specifically want to murder Jews for being Jewish. They also meet the first criteria because this is a systemic policy that is present in the Hamas Charter.
This is very important to distinguish because whilst genocide is a war crime, not all war crimes are genocide. Israel has committed war crimes, including murdering civilians, and even intentionally allowing civilians to be killed (such as bombing a house with a Hamas member in it and killing his family members).
But this is not sufficient to rise to the criteria of genocide. We could make the argument that there is ethnic cleansing, because the vast majority of the people being evacuated are of a single ethnicity, Palestinian. However, again, ethnic cleansing alone is not sufficient to rise to the definition of genocide.
Crucially, the ICJ has not ruled that there is a genocide ongoing. They have ruled prima facie that 1) South Africa has the right to accuse Israel of genocide, and 2) that the ICJ itself is fit to hear and rule on the accusation. They have also ordered Hamas to release the civilian hostages, so if Hamas is saying they want to abide by the ICJ, they have already disregarded the ICJ ruling.
Genocide is not based on vibes. It's not based on bad feelings. It's not based on videos and images of dead kids, or destroyed rubble. Genocide is a specific legal term that can only be applied to the above scenario, and it cheapens our language when we levy it in circumstances where it does not apply.
It especially cheapens our language when we engage in Holocaust inversion by claiming Israel is doing to Palestine what Germany did to the Jews, which is categorically false.
Beyond this, it belittles the groups that are involved in this conflict, particularly Hamas, to treat them like they are innocent civilians when they are in fact a very well-outfitted military brigade and the official armed forces of the Gazan government with over 40,000 fighters strong, who repeatedly and loudly say "death to Israel, we want to annihilate Israel, we will commit October 7th again and again until Israel is destroyed."
They are being funded by the IRGC, they are being used as a proxy for Iran, and innocent Palestinian civilians are suffering as a result. Hamas has openly said that the "blood of martyrs fuels our resistance," they have openly said they hope Palestinian civilians die in droves while they steal aid and resell it at absurd mark-ups, while they flee to Egypt and Qatar so that they don't have to get their hands dirty. They recruit and brainwash young children to fight their "holy war" to murder as many Jews as possible.
And in terms of the death toll, you have to understand that this war is being fought in an urban environment where the belligerents are embedded purposely in the civilian population, in tunnels all throughout the civilian infrastructure. Violating the Geneva Conventions by using hospitals and schools as military bases, refusing to wear uniforms, and intentionally shooting their own people and blaming Israel.
These people even play tapes pretending to be hostages shouting in Hebrew "don't shoot," which is one of the reasons why a hostage was accidentally killed by the IDF, which is then turned around to show how evil the IDF is without understanding the context that these events happen in.
In normal urban warfare the ratio of civilian to combatant death is around 9:1. In Gaza, the ratio is, according to Hamas's own numbers, 4:1. Literally twice as low as the average. So, yeah. War crimes are happening. Yes. Absolutely. Genocide is not happening, at least, it's not happening to the Palestinians.
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