Mr BoyceGenocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by means such as "the disintegration of [its] political and social institutions, of [its] culture, language, national feelings, religion, and [its] economic existence".I suppose the most extreme example of this is what was inflicted upon 6,000,000 Jews by Germans in WWII.The key fact being killing of civilians.Now the definition seems to have been widened.How many innocent Palestinians have been killed by Israel in response to its attack by them in 2023 ?That is after you have factored out Palestinians who are members of Hamas and who vow to destroy Israel and its Jewish citizens ?And one wonders if Palestinians who were killed who were not members of Hamas might not have been were Hamas not to imbed itself amongst the civilian population.And if you widen the definition of genocide, how many Palestinians have been starved to death and how many might not have gone hungry had Hamas not hijacked food relief convoys and sold on their contents to continue to fund their aggression ?And were Hamas concerned about the effects of their 2023 pogrom on Palestinian healthcare and education when they initiated it ?The trite and glib bandying about of the term genocide, redefined for one sided political argument, shows no credit to those that do so nor those millions around the world that have been or still are being subject to genocide as most sensible and honest people understand and abhor it.
John Hawkes ● 26d