Posted by Student on September 05, 2014 at 14:57:43
In Reply to: Re: Genocide is never acceptable posted by humanist on September 05, 2014 at 02:21:20:
I would call the situation in Israel/Palestine apartheid--it has been for some time, and Israel is a pariah nation because of it. I would also call Gaza a humanitarian disaster. I would say the military power imbalance between Israel and Palestine is asymetrical, so yes, of course the death rate is much, much higher among Palestinians when the two sides start lobbing missils and other ammunition at each other.
Genocide is a politically loaded term. I'm not willing to go that far in my conclusions--based on my review of the evidence. Don't assume I haven't looked at the same evidence you have or that I am ignorant of the facts just because I don't draw exactly the same conclusions you have.
What I have done, which perhaps you have not, is look at less polemical and polarized accounts of the situation written by Jewish dissidents such as Max Blumenthal (Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel). What's going on inside Israel is very scarey--I've been alarmed ever since they started building that damned wall--but my revulsion to Israeli policy hasn't lead me to evaluate the evidence using the moralistic framework that you appear to favor as a way of interpreting facts.
For example, people wearing T-shirts that target Palestinians for death is reflective of attitudes in a certain segment of the population, but this is not necessarily evidence of government policy or a systematic program of extermination. Offensive T-shirts don't convince me of anything except that some Israelis are insensitive, racist assholes and that the culture tolerates that sort of crudity.