I appreciate that he is a well respected Scholar and was nominated for the Nobel peace prize but to suggest that Israel being more genocidal than the Nazi’s, who actively killed millions of Jews is… well ridiculous.
I 100% do not condone what is happening in Gaza, I believe the US/Europe/UK should be actively stopping all weapons transfers, taking of land. And be putting more pressure on Israel, for an immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations.
In my opinion, and it is only my opinion. The interview you have linked is the type of mis-information that antagonises the situation. For example, watching the video it took him 9 days in one country, not two as the X post suggests, for him to come to his conclusions….which are subjective and without facts.
As humans, across history we are all guilty of believing what we have been told, lead to believe. Unfortunately, with Social Media, it is a damn lot quicker and with a wider audience to capture.
While I am not making any judgements on the validity of the comparison, I would like to point out that the active murder you’re talking about (a) took place over a 3-year-period, (b) came 3-4 years after the nationwide pogrom, itself many years after the initial restriction of freedoms for Jews.
It’s counterproductive calling Israel’s occupation of Gaza a genocide.
Especially when the Jewish Holocaust involved more than a million Jews dead.
There needs to be international pressure on Israel (including the stopping of arms being supplied/ sanctions / cases in the ICJ / cessation of trade including oil) to stop Israel from carrying out their war crimes.
But to use the term genocide simply allows the Israeli viewpoint an easy way to gain the upper hand in the narrative.
Israel will say that there were around 30k casualties in the ongoing Gaza war. Which is over a year now.
The difference in the scale between the holocaust and what’s happening here makes the comparision counterproductive. Israel can simply take the control of the narrative especially when the term genocide is used.
I think comparing genocides is not entirely useful as the circumstances are never the same. Reference to the Genocide Convention is more pertinent as that is what the countries have signed up for.
I think with a population of <5.5m, if you want to compare by deaths, exterminating the entire Palestine wouldn’t exceed what the Nazis did. I did not watch the video, I have no interest in comparing the genocides, nor was I making any claim as to the validity of any comparison.
I am merely pointing out that the Holocaust was years in the making. To reject the claim outright would be rather hubristic.
The conditions in Gaza w.r.t the Israeli occupation and the prison conditions are years in the making too.
I’m not rejecting his claim outright. I’m saying claims like the ones the Burmese scholar made are counterproductive. He could have not gotten the terms genocide into the picture. He’s gotten those terms into the discussion by the needless comparision with the Nazi atrocities.
The US Holocaust Memorials’ own defenition of genocide is
the Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These acts fall into five categories:
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
So if what Israel is doing in Gaza isn’t genocide, then what is it?
Remember this goes beyond October 7th and the Israeli response, this has been going on since 1948 when the UN and Britan forcebily stole land from Palestine to create the state of Israel.
@redalways@Sithbare you both make valid points. In then end, we all want the same outcome. As referenced by @redalways it’s irrelevant comparing genocides, especially as a world we still haven’t learnt from them. But that was my issue with the interview link.
Without trying to go into the history and politics of it all. Media portrays that only one side wants to commit ‘genocide’ and that everyone associated on either side is inline with that policy. There are innocent and peaceful people on both sides.
Let’s be clear. The factions that hold the power on both sides want to commit genocide. Only one side has the power to do so, and is actively doing so.
Caught in the middle are innocent people who want to live ordinary lives, but are also brainwashed by these factions into believing that the “other side” are all evil and must be destroyed.
As I’ve said repeatedly through all of this, lock up the warmongers on either side in a room with each other, fistfight to the bloody end, and forget all about them. Let the civilians live in peace.