I think the third state is war crimes, which is why I fundamentally disagree with the position by Israel’s government. I do not believe that killing/bombing etc. is helping anyone, and I think they’ve absolutely violated the Geneva Convention… but I believe that the term Genocide is taking it a step too far. When I think of Genocide I think of the Holocaust, Rwandans, and Armenians to name a few. What do you think?
ok this i will actually respond to bc it reflects pretty widespread propaganda. the sho'ah was not the first genocide in world history. settler colonial genocide is a phenomenon with a long history: for example the States now known as the us, canada, australia are all the direct products of settler colonial genocides. there ofc are also countless of colonial genocides that did not have a primarily settler-colonial characteristic, eg notoriously king leopold's genocide of millions in what is today the congo. rly, indigenous peoples throughout the americas, africa, and asia faced genocidal violence campaigns from the british spanish french etc empires.
the sho'ah was the product of centuries of the normalization of genocide, a "shock in return" (cesaire) of european policies taken to their ideological and material conclusion. "before mass crimes were tested in europe, they were first tested in the americas, in africa, in asia. hitler was nothing if not a good student. if the techniques of mass massacre revealed all their efficiency in the concentration camps, it is because they had been tested on us, and thus made all the more efficient; and if white ferociousness came down on you with such savagery, it is because european populations closed their eyes to the "tropical genocides." (houria bouteldja)
the (mis)representation of the sho'ah as both the first genocide and the sin qua non example of genocide, is part of a specific post wwii ideological orientation developed to try to rescue white-humanism from the nazism it had brought about (and which the european world could no longer deny/ignore now that its effects had reached "even" western europe). philosemitism developed around three main ideological goals: "to solve the white world’s moral legitimacy crisis, which resulted from the Nazi genocide, to outsource republican racism, and finally to be the weaponized wing of Western imperialism in the Arab world." as em cohen elaborates, "White Euro-America recognized that using the Jews in this self-absolving and identity forming way was necessary. This was quite possibly the only way white Euro-America could form itself anew after the Holocaust, without giving up — or even recognizing — the immense wealth it had amassed through the centuries of violent colonialism it had no intention of stopping. By defining antisemitism as the “worst” form of racism, white America gets to obscure the contradictions inherent in fighting the nazis with a segregated army. By defining the Holocaust as the worst genocide in history, white Euro-America gets to ignore the colonial genocides it had conducted for centuries, for which there were no reparations, apology, or accountability. By vowing to fight antisemitism and to ‘repair the harm’ caused by the Holocaust, white Euro-America gets to forgive itself and “move on.”
"however, philosemitic remembrance of the Holocaust fundamentally redefines what the Holocaust actually was. That six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust is made into a slogan, which people exclaim when they seek to treat the Holocaust as something which has never before been seen and cannot be understood. Many of these exclamations casually gloss over the fact that the total number of Holocaust victims is over double six million, and includes Roma people, LGBTQ+ people, African people, Catholics, communists, socialists, anarchists, disabled people, Soviet civilians and soldiers, Jehovah’s Witnesses etc. The Holocaust is strikingly similar to the numerous other genocides carried out by white Euro-American colonial powers. It is a horrible genocide and should be understood, as Aimé Césaire illustrates in
Discourse on Colonialism, as a continuation of global ideological and mechanical systems of colonialism. However, philosemitic white Euro-America recognizes that discussing the similarities the Holocaust shares with other colonial genocides exposes the contradictions in its white humanist philosemitic positions. Because of this, discussions about the Holocaust that deviate from the philosemitic white Euro-American narrative become severely policed."
https://emcohen.medium.com/on-the-dangers-of-fighting-antisemitism-c888c0bbd79f
colonial genocide and settler colonial genocides have long histories. ofc each genocide has its particularities, and whether one wants to say that genocide x and genocide y are "similar" depends on what u count as "similar", idc thats a meaningless question to me. but if one is going to use the term genocide, then it is essential to acknowledge these histories, the dehumanization that is a fundamental characteristic of white humanism in general and of its nazi 'final form' in particular, and that the material genocide of palestinians and the accompanying ideological representation of palestinians as nonhumans/"human animals" in every way repeats/continues that very long history of colonial genocides and white humanism respectively.
i have no idea in what way "you think" that the palestinian genocide is 'not like' the genocides that "you think of" when you think of genocide, so i cant rly respond to that directly, but i can point out that it falls within the programme of philosemitic revisionism, which misrepresents both the history of the sho'ah and the long history of genocides in order to create a new system of white humanism which, unlike pre-20th century white humanism which openly and explicitly defended/promoted/advocated for colonial genocides, ostensibly opposes genocide, but does so by redefining genocide and rewriting its long history (and policing any discourse that does not fall within such redefinition and revisionism). "manipulation only has one goal: to share the sho'ah, to dilute it, to deracinate hitler and move him to the colonized populations, and in the end, to exonerate white people.
"the risk of removing its singularity from the nazi genocide is real... [but also] we must continue to question ourselves about the genealogy of this crime. if you really fear negationism, it is urgent to lay to rest these ideologies that glorify [jewish sho'ah survivors] as supreme victims and create hierarchies of horror. [we] must do justice to the roma, the homosexuals, the soviets, and the communists who died alongside [our] own people, and must just as urgently recognize one of nazism's origins: the trans-atlantic slave trade and colonialism. we will all together and more loudly proclaim that no, the sho'ah, like all mass crimes, will never be a "detail.""
~ ~ ~
footnote: no one has any obligation to educate you. i read your messages, you claimed that the palestinian genocide is not a genocide bc it doesnt have low birth rates which you consider to be a determinative factor, for some reason i rly dont think im interested in knowing "why" bc its lmao; and that is what i wrote. you also repeatedly represented being arab as if it is a religion, eg "150 christian countries 22 arab countries and 1 jewish country," and the constant claims that jewish arabs dont exist eg in your claim that 'palestine is arab' is antisemitic.
but its nice to see that you still have this much self-confidence while you misread my (and everyone else's) writing, use your misreadings to make more wild attacks and all while claiming that everyone isnt being fair to you.
it is kinda impossible to engage with most of your posts in any serious way, even if any of us wanted to waste our time doing so, because every time someone writes anything it gets a response that has nothing to do with what they actually said and you add on five additional even more absurd things while screaming about the thing that never happened.
i will continue to engage in discussion related to the paragraph i quoted at the top of this post and my response to it, if you wish to discuss that aspect further. i most likely will not engage further with any of your other comments (and would encourage you to stop j commenting anything/everything that comes to your mind without considering whether it is something u have any basis to speak about.)
