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Does Israel commit genocide in Israel–Hamas war?

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This resource is a wikidebate, a collaborative effort to gather and organize all arguments on a given issue. It is a tool of argument analysis or pro-and-con analysis. This is not a place to defend your preferred points of view, but original arguments are allowed and welcome. See the Wikidebate guidelines for more.

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Israel commits genocide in Israel–Hamas war

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Pro

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  • Pro The commitment of genocide is plausible per preliminary ruling of International Court of Justice (ICJ), as per Wikipedia: Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza.
    • Objection Mere plausibility is far removed from establishing the truth of the accusation.
  • Pro Arguably, the rather indiscriminate large-scale bombing of civilian infrastructure creates conditions for large-scale loss of life by starvation, etc., and it is hard to see how this is not part of the intent.
    • Objection If Egypt allows Gazans as refugees into its territory (an if) and if international aid can be provided there, starvation should be avoidable. Therefore, starvation is not necessary outcome.
      •  Comment Then, it is at least ethnic cleansing, creating conditions that make it hard for Gazans to return to their homes after the conflict.

Con

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  • Con Genocide is a technical term and cannot be decided using lay understanding and analysis. The motion should therefore be dismissed, not because it is necessarily false, but rather because it is not fit for the kind of lay analysis attempted in a Wikidebate.
    • Objection This proposition assumes that all wikidebate participants in the past, present and future cannot possibly complete "expert technical analysis", which is not necessarily true.
  • Con Israel is attacking Hamas, not civilians; the civilians are collateral damage.
  • Con Expanding on the above, if Israel was attacking civilians at large scale with the intent to decimate the Gaza population as much as possible, there would be much huger loss of Gazan life. Even with the Hamas-stated loss of 35,562 Gazan lives (May 21)[1] (possibly inaccurate, and some of them are likely members of Hamas rather than civilians), that amounts to 1.5% of the Gaza population of 2,375,259[2].
    • Objection In so far as the definition of genocide allows destruction of the group in part, even such a relatively low percentage can fit the bill.
    • Objection If all it took to bar the genocide claim was to claim that the people killed make up a small percentage of the targeted population, ICJ would have never declared genocide to be plausible.
  • Con Expanding on the above, as per Times of Israel, the combatant-to-civilian ratio in the war is 13:17, a witness to aim to protect civilian life (the ratio is made using Hamas-supplied total casualties and Israel-supplied Hamas combatant casualties).[3]
    • Objection The source of the ratio is not neutral/independent.

References

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  1. ↑ Wikipedia: Casualties of the Israel–Hamas war
  2. ↑ Wikipedia: Gaza Strip
  3. ↑ The genocide claim against Israel doesn't add up | The Times of Israel, 2 June 2024, timesofisrael.com

Further reading

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Wikipedia and Wikisource:

Non-Wikipedia:

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