In the end, it doesn’t matter how Biden defines it. We are signatories to the UN and the UN definition in Article II of the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” is:
“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Note the language: “ANY of the following acts”.
Israel is now 5/5 with the relocation of children from Gaza to the West Bank.
I like the term “extermination” which the ICC’s chief prosecutor used in his charging document against Bibi.
Genocide requires intent. There is at least the possibility that Israel is merely showing careless disregard and willful ignorance towards Palestinian lifes. That doesn’t make a practical difference, of course. The fact that Israel is maybe? not as racist as they could be, doesn’t help all the dead or starving civilians.
That’s why I like the term extermination. It’s precise but doesn’t require intent. It doesn’t imply that Israels interest in defeating Hamas is merely a smokescreen (for the record: I don’t think Hamas can be defeated militarily, but I understand the interest).
And it does all that without being a euphemism.
Edit: a previous version of this contained a Freudian slip where I confused the names of Biden and Netanjau.
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