- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
Donald Trump has said that Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza due to the devastation left by Israel’s war on Hamas, in effect endorsing ethnic cleansing of the territory over the opposition of Palestinians and the neighbouring countries.
Speaking as he prepared to host Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Tuesday, Trump repeated the suggestion that Gaza’s population should be relocated to Jordan and Egypt – something both countries have firmly rejected.
Trump claimed Palestinians would “love to leave Gaza”, telling reporters: “I would think that they would be thrilled.”
From the same Wikipedia article.
Your quote is just a bunch of insinuations leading questions without an answer. Pure bad faith.
Your argument’s defense of a nonexistent boundary between genocide and ethnic cleansing boils down to genocide denial. There is no agreed upon definition of ethnic cleansing. There is no way to peacefully forcefully relocate a group of people. An attempt to forcefully relocate a group of people is motivated by the desire to destroy that group in whole or in part.
The quote from the wiki article points out everything I have now written down in this comment. It’s written as a series of rhetorical questions with clear answers. Your argument’s effort to misrepresent the wiki page’s descriptive analysis of ethnic cleansing as an official definition is an attempt to police a none existent boundary. You argument left out the last part of that section.
A call for ethnic cleansing is a call for genocide. There is no way to engage in peaceful forceful deportation or population transfer. There is no meaningful difference between getting rid of a group by forcefully removing them and destroying them.
The Armenian genocide involved death marches, into the desert without food or water. What’s the meaningful difference between sending people to die in the desert and destroying them? There isn’t one.
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/armenian-genocide
Please read that again. There’s a gigantic difference between dead or alive.
100,000 Armenians were ethnically cleansed in 2023 with less than a dozen civilian deaths. Compared that to the Armenian Genocide at the beginning of the 20th century with a million deaths.
Using the same term genocide for both is watering down the term. It betrays why it was coined in the first place.
Of course it’s still a terrible crime.
The number of deaths has nothing to do with it. The intent is the same, the only difference between the two genocides is that they were less successful at killing people in the second one. The only people that are helped by defending a distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide, that does not exist, are the people who want to commit genocide.
Try and tell that to the face of someone whose whole family died in death camps.
Try telling that to the face of someone whose whole family died in the death marches.
My argument is genocide is bad, ethnic cleansing is bad, and that there is no meaningful difference between the two.
Your argument is genocide is bad, ethnic cleansing is frowned but somehow less bad, and that there is a meaning distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide that your argument does not articulate.
Try and tell that to the face of someone whose whole family died in death camps.
Genocide denial is still genocide denial even if your argument uses victims of one genocide to deny that genocide happened to other groups of people.