Thursday, August 21, 2025

i should clarify what i meant by "genocide in slow motion" when i started saying that roughly 20 years ago. i never meant that they intended to starve them like in the holocaust, or mass slaughter them like what happened to the armenians during world war one. i meant a cultural genocide, intended to chase them out and assimilate them over time. this would be something more like the genocide of the scots or welsh in the united kingdom, or the bretons in france.

the point i was trying to get across is that israel does not intend to enslave the arabs, it wants to get rid of them. that's a conceptual point people were confused about in using south african comparisons. in fact, when john kerry was secretary of state, he had the insight and initiative to realize that the absence of any kind of economy in the west bank essentially made statehood impossible, so he went out of his way to try to build factories that palestinians could work in, which would have almost entirely served the israeli market, and the israelis had a hissy fit because it was taking away jobs for jews and giving them to muslims. israel remains built on kibbutzes and the labour party. never forget that, and never forget where the jews escaped from. they are not likely to resort to enslaving anyone. i was seeking more descriptive language to get away from a bad analogy, mostly by following chomsky's lead. chomsky was visibly irritated by the south africa comparison and repeatedly explained why.

i have rejected the claims that israel is starving gazans. the evidence suggests the opposite. it's just factually wrong, no matter how much you dislike the israeli government.

you can define genocide strictly as per the geneva convention and that has legal value in it's place but it's never what i meant. i meant the broader idea of eliminating a culture, a language, a religion, etc through less overt or violent methods. it's not the same thing, but if the end result is the intentional elimination of palestine, it does remain genocide in the broader sense.