Every time I've looked into the arguments for this being a genocide, I saw, at best, a description of urban warfare. Maybe I am wrong. If anyone is still reading this thread, could you write what you believe will happen after Israel won the war?
I more or less agree with you (if it were a _genocide_, you'd expect Israel to be equally targeting Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel proper), but the report does have some specific examples of things that seem to go beyond "just" urban warfare. For example, Israel denied shipments of baby milk powder, which can serve no legitimate military purpose (except trying to prosecute the war via starvation of babies, which is illegal). When combined with the public statements from Israeli government officials that denigrate the Palestinians in Gaza as animals, I think there's definitely _some_ crimes against humanity being committed by Israel.
> if it were a _genocide_, you'd expect Israel to be equally targeting Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel proper
Genocide does not require equal effort in all areas subject to the perpetrators influence; both the required intent and the required actions that define genocide can coincide with taking opportunistic advantage of available political pretexts to try to retain support of, say, a third-party country with a UNSC veto that uses that veto to protect the perpetrator from consequences, but might not do so in the absence of some kind of palatable pretext for a sufficient segment of the third-party state’s population.
Genocide requires particular kinds of evil, it doesn't require stupid.
If they leave so much of a group alone, it starts to suggest that the intended targeted group is a different, smaller one. In this case, residents of Gaza vs Palestinians as a nation. Especially in combination with the "siege" comments, the motive seems clearly military advantage.
“Yesterday, armed individuals approached four trucks outside our compound in Gaza City that were getting ready to transport desperately needed Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) for malnourished children enduring famine." https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/statement-unicef-theft...
This must have been done by the Jews of Gaza. Wait...
This is a different incident (RUTF is not milk powder, it's enhanced peanut butter basically). Both sides are bad, and both should do more to alleviate the suffering of civilians in areas they occupy.
Then you have misunderstandings about urban warfare. Bakhmut is urban warfare. It's actually called an urban meat grinder, the worst form of urban warfare. Civilian casualties at Bakhmut is one or two orders of magnitude smaller than total casualties per different sources and estimates. 80% civilian casualties and 50% being women and children is not "at best urban warfare."
Given the deliberate creation of unlivable conditions on the ground and the absence of any viable plan for restoring Palestinian life and sovereignty, the civilian population of Gaza faces two primary and foreseeable outcomes:
Mass mortality from non-combat causes: The synergistic crisis of famine, disease, and healthcare collapse makes widespread death from starvation, dehydration, and preventable illness a mathematical certainty in the coming months. A significant portion of the population, especially the most vulnerable—children, the elderly, and those with chronic illnesses—will perish even if direct hostilities were to cease. This is the direct and inevitable consequence of the "conditions of life" that have been imposed.
Permanent displacement and demographic change: For the remaining population, survival inside a Gaza that has been rendered uninhabitable will become a practical impossibility. The complete lack of housing, clean water, food, healthcare, and economic activity will create immense and unbearable pressure for civilians to flee the land in order to survive. This outcome aligns directly with the legal definitions of forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing, as identified by human rights organizations. It is also the logical endpoint of a strategy that involves mass evacuation orders followed by the total destruction of the evacuated areas, and it serves as a necessary precondition for post-war plans that require an "emptied out" territory for foreign-led redevelopment.
The military campaign, therefore, should not be viewed merely as a precursor to a post-war settlement. Rather, it is actively creating the physical and demographic preconditions for a specific type of post-war reality—one that precludes the existence of a viable, self-governing Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. The destruction is not an unfortunate obstacle to be overcome during reconstruction; it appears to be the first and most critical phase of a reconstruction model that requires a tabula rasa. This connects the seemingly separate phases of "war" and "post-war," revealing them as a continuous process. The objective is not simply to defeat a military opponent, but to physically and demographically re-engineer the Gaza Strip to make it amenable to a future state that serves external interests and permanently prevents Palestinian sovereignty. The evidence strongly suggests that the intended outcome of the current strategy is a Gaza Strip largely, if not entirely, devoid of its Palestinian population.
Some basic observations:
28% of children under five are actively malnourished.
IPC Phase 5 famine is officially confirmed in Gaza.
100% of the population is facing crisis level food insecurity.
Two weeks ago, journalists were targeted in an attack at Nasser hospital. Journalists are being targeted to scare them away and prevent what’s occurring from being shown to the world. https://youtu.be/xAK1w9r2J54?si=-ZvG-55KBKNZbqt9
And do you think we defeated the nazis by leaving their food intact? By leaving their bomb factories intact?
Did we refuse to invade their cities in case the innocent nazi citizens got killed?
War is war. I don’t see a single person in that territory that opposes the war. They simply want the other side to surrender because they are losing a war they started.
No all war doesn’t constitute genocide. Nor is genocide justifiable if you think it’s effective. Mass murdering children crosses a fundamental moral line. Children are innocent. Israel has lost any moral basis for its war through its dark, “ends justifies the means” reasoning.
Counterfactual: let's say Israel had never blocked food or other aid (or at least not more than since before October 7) but everything else were the same. Would it still be considered a genocide?
