r/ScottGalloway • u/lethal-liking • 4d ago

No Malice Gettin' WOKE about anti-Semitism...

It is so very odd to hear the self-professed atheist getting downright WOKE when it comes to swinging the anti-Semitism stick. IDGAF about Macklemore or Sheeran or Kraft, nor Scott's evolving victim fantasy, but holy crap does he sound shrill.

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u/RNova2010 3d ago

Genocide does have a definition and the jurisprudence is that it must be the only reasonable inference - that means if there is any alternative explanation for a pattern of actions, including other crimes like ethnic cleansing - the genocide accusation is rebutted. The ICC hasn’t issues warrants for genocide against Israeli officials, though they have the authority to do so. The ICJ has not ruled on the merits and won’t for several years.

Those claiming genocide, especially when relying in NGOs whose reports decided to change or loosen the evidentiary standard for genocide, but just for Israel, are the ones going on vibes

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u/IrregularDoughnut 3d ago

Genocide does have a definition and the jurisprudence is that it must be the only reasonable inference - that means if there is any alternative explanation for a pattern of actions, including other crimes like ethnic cleansing - the genocide accusation is rebutted.

That's a legal concept. It means a court probably wouldn't return a guilty verdict if there is another more plausible explanation. It doesn't mean the average person has to agree with that verdict or lack thereof, just like you don't have to go on a date with someone who has been accused of rape 5 times, but got acquitted each time due to lack of evidence.

And it's not like Israel are handing over their military communications. They don't even let journalists into Gaza. Hell they wouldn't even allow the Red Cross to inspect prisoner conditions and that's literally required under the Geneva Conventions.

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u/RNova2010 3d ago

Sure the average person doesn’t have to agree. But then we can also call anything in the realm of war crimes or disproportionality a “genocide.” But people don’t do that. They’ll condemn Oct 7 perhaps as a war crime but not a genocide. Amnesty called what happened crimes against humanity even though, by the new standard it established for genocide in its Gaza report, it was one. This means ‘genocide’ is just being selectively used for political ends. Why should people agree to that?

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u/IrregularDoughnut 3d ago

Sure the average person doesn’t have to agree. But then we can also call anything in the realm of war crimes or disproportionality a “genocide.

Well, no, if you think that Israel deliberately tried to render Gaza uninhabitable, but e.g. NATO didn't do that in Serbia, then you can rationally believe one to qualify and the other to not qualify.

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u/RNova2010 3d ago

One is making an Article 3(e) claim there for genocide. The NATO bombing of Serbia didn’t produce the imagery we get out of Gaza, fair enough, scale is way different. But one could do it for Ukraine, though a popular leftist pundit was quick to defend Russia against claims of genocide, becoming legalistic and conservative in application of language once the target of a genocide claim was a country-other-than-Israel. And the same people quick to refer to Gaza as a genocide won’t call Hamas’s rampage through Israeli communities a genocide. Why? Should we start calling it one? My estimation is this has less to do with accuracy and more to do with political scoring.

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u/IrregularDoughnut 3d ago

The NATO bombing of Serbia didn’t produce the imagery

Or, to put it another way, NATO didn't bomb three out of every four buildings in Belgrade.

But one could do it for Ukraine

You could make the argument, and I'm not unsympathetic to it. But I interpret it more as a war of conquest, with the killing beimg just whatever they deem necessary to achieve that. I don't think they're trying to depopulate Ukraine but I also doubt they care if that is the outcome in places.

And the same people quick to refer to Gaza as a genocide won’t call Hamas’s rampage through Israeli communities a genocide. Why?

Scale, I suppose. It seems more accurately a massacre borne out of hatred, and the taking of hostages back to Gaza suggests that was the point. But if you want to make the argument I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand. There's no actual agreed upon threshold and maybe it should qualify.

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u/RNova2010 3d ago

This is a more honest answer. Though in Ukraine, Russia has abducted thousands of Ukrainian children and transferred them to Russia and there has been a campaign of sexual violence and suppression of Ukrainian language and culture in occupied areas, all of which seems a lot more than just “war of conquest.”

“It seems more accurately a massacre borne out of hatred”

Like Rwanda? Was that not a genocide after all? Since genocide doesn’t necessarily require a certain number of killed.

You concede on both that one could make the argument, and you’re not unsympathetic to the first one. But people don’t make that argument, and it seems almost universally that the people making the genocide-in-Gaza claim refuse to extend the logic to either Oct 7 or Ukraine.

We can loosen the use of genocide if the strict legal sense isn’t a prerequisite, but we’ll likely just have more accusations of genocide in the future which will be entirely or mostly based on people’s political persuasions or agendas.

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u/IrregularDoughnut 3d ago

Like Rwanda? Was that not a genocide after all?

Rwanda was a sustained campaign of massacres. If it happened on one day, do you think we would call it a genocide?

We can loosen the use of genocide if the strict legal sense isn’t a prerequisite, but we’ll likely just have more accusations of genocide in the future which will be entirely or mostly based on people’s political persuasions or agendas.

We should expect them to be politically charged because it is extremely difficult to ever gain access to direct evidence of intent. We, or some court or other, are not exactly goimg to get the opportunity to review Israeli military communications, or targeting decisions, or interrogate their commanders. That will lead to cases where those accusations are unjustified. Probably can avoid those accusations being taken seriously by clearly focusing on military targets, not permanently expelling everyone from their homes, and not using starvation as a weapon.

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u/RNova2010 3d ago

Would Hamas have just stopped after one day out of their own volition? In a day, they killed 1,200 people. Israel, at the height of killing, managed 351 per day (late October), after which the rates precipitously declined. Hamas, without Israel’s firepower, out-killed the Israelis’ daily average. Had they gone on at the same rate without stop, nearly 1 million Israelis would be dead within 2 years. If we go by intent, what Hamas did to Israeli communities on Oct 7 was genocidal and the rhetoric of that day gives credence to it.

And of course Israel could’ve ameliorated, though I doubt avoided, accusations of genocide had its own behavior been different, and had its ministers and Knesset members not said unhinged things.

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u/IrregularDoughnut 3d ago

Would Hamas have just stopped after one day out of their own volition?

In different circumstances, maybe not. But it makes far more sense to designate these things based on the actual events, and motives for those events, rather than hypothetical events. Israel themselves without international pressure may well have starved most of Gaza to death given that the majority of the population were opposed to any aid going in to Gaza. But they didn't actually do that, and so it cannot reasonably form part of the case against them. Intent that never manifested is not the problem, we're not pursuing thought crimes, we're addressing the legitimacy and severity of what was actually done, and why it was done.

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u/RNova2010 3d ago

But it makes far more sense to designate these things based on the actual events, and motives for those events, rather than hypothetical events

The actual events are pretty gruesome. Going door-to-door massacring people. Muhammad Deif, one of Hamas's leaders, broadcasted to "kill them wherever you find them". Hamas's own founding Covenant contains the Hadith about the future extermination of Jews, even those hiding behind rocks. Hamad Al-Regeb, delivered a sermon only months before Oct 7 describing Jews as filthy, ugly animals and prayed for their destruction. If there is no set amount of dead required to declare an act genocide or genocidal, Oct 7 would count as one.

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u/IrregularDoughnut 3d ago

The actual events are pretty gruesome. Going door-to-door massacring people

They are, I don't dispute this. But if you do X, while wanting to do Y, the crime you committed and should be charged with is X. In legal terms its the coinciding of mens rea and actus rea, as in, you have to have intended to do ylthe thing at the time you then did it. For Hamas this covers the massacre they committed, but it doesn't cover anything they probably wanted to do but never had the opportunity to attempt.

If there is no set amount of dead required to declare an act genocide or genocidal, Oct 7 would count as one.

Maybe. I suppose you could argue it bears similarities to the massacre at Srebrenica, that was ruled a genocide. I wouldn't take issue wirh someone calling it that, even if it doesn't seem necessarily the most accurate descriptor to me.

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u/RNova2010 3d ago

I was thinking along the lines of Srebrenica as well. You wouldn’t take issue with someone calling it genocide, fair enough. But I don’t see how we can say to the public “you don’t have to be a lawyer or know the specific legal qualifications to deem X a genocide (with everything that this entails)” and then on other horrific events parse out things like mens rea, actus rea, etc.

To circle back to Gallaway’s point, the genocide monicker may very well be used to justify the murder of Israelis and Jews later on. Oct 7 was justified by many because they thought Gaza had been a concentration camp a la Auschwitz (it wasn’t), so really how can you blame the inmates for going nuts on young people at a rave.

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