I think applying the term genocide is very frequently a normative question in IHL, yes. It's almost by design a crime defined by what one thinks of as the intention behind it - not purely nature, metrics or scale.
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A genocide can encompass an entire continent or a single metropolitan area. It can be primarily cultural or physical. It can encompass anything from government neglect in the face of famine to active killing squads. It can encompass basically any relative % of victims - "in whole or in part."
aug 3, 2025, 7:57 pm • 0 0 • view
(And this gets even more ambiguous when we consider for example the fact that again, Gaza is basically a single metropolitan area of modest size, and yet the same terms & scale are applied as are applied to ethnic cleansing of much larger areas & much more concentrated paces of massacre!)
aug 3, 2025, 7:59 pm • 0 0 • view
(Ultimately, when people demand people acknowledge "this is a genocide!" they are almost always saying " I'm seeing it all over my TL! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!" and there is a not-insignificant number of people who think that "something" should involve bullets and bombs in Tel Aviv.)
aug 3, 2025, 8:04 pm • 1 0 • view
There are very few crimes in international humanitarian law MORE nebulous than genocide, by design. It doesn't even have legal gradiations! It's really mostly an additional condemnation of intent as far as I can tell.
aug 3, 2025, 8:05 pm • 0 0 • view
I think that's a fair characterization - these terms create understandings as much as describing them - but then that has serious ramifications for the entire understanding of post-Holocaust genocide prevention, if speaking the term is what creates the moral obligation.
aug 3, 2025, 7:59 pm • 1 0 • view
It does! It's a very uncomfortable topic! When it comes to "preventing genocide" aggressively we have a pretty bad record.
aug 3, 2025, 8:00 pm • 0 0 • view
I'm curious in what directional sense you mean
aug 3, 2025, 8:22 pm • 0 0 • view
I mean we just aren't very good at preventing genocide or especially motivated to do so. We are perhaps good at preventing genocides that specifically look like the Shoah, but that's kinda it?
aug 3, 2025, 8:23 pm • 0 0 • view
I mean if you're arguing that historically speaking we've moved too late, too selectively, not at all, etc, i agree
aug 3, 2025, 8:24 pm • 6 0 • view
All I was trying to say is that I know Jews who think it is genocide and say so, and those who don't think it is, but I don't know anyone who earnestly thinks it is but is afraid to say so for political reasons.
aug 3, 2025, 8:00 pm • 10 0 • view
But if you are saying that they would come to different conclusions about the ostensibly descriptive question, if the political context of the term were different, perhaps that is true; we can't really know for sure.
aug 3, 2025, 8:01 pm • 3 0 • view