An open letter to my friends who believe Israel is not committing and has not committed genocide against Gaza:

1a) You are certainly right that the charge of genocide is being used to generate hatred against all of Israel and hatred against Jews, and to equate Israel with the Nazis. Such implications are used for evil purposes. But that does not mean ab initio that the charge is false.

1b) You may be right that it is not genocide – the legal definition of genocide is complex, and the question of intent is both paramount and difficult to prove.

2) But you may be wrong: the extent of the damage, and the razing of so much of Gaza to the ground, the wanton destruction of agriculture, water treatment and infrastructure, the hospital equipment destroyed that has no possibly military function (such as equipment in any NICU unit), the documented establishment of kill zones in cases where the lines of those kill zones were not communicated to the local populace, the attacks that happened in zones previously deemed “humanitarian corridors”, the targeting of medical workers and journalists, and on and on and on, is consistent with the intention of making Gaza uninhabitable. This level of damage is not explained by the need to destroy Hamas’s tunnel network.

3) If it is not genocide, which requires specific intention on a policy level, it almost certainly meets the conditions for being ethnic........

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