context: the -fan high school friend I’ve complained about before, I’m pressing him on his debate daddy’s claim that nuking the Gaza Strip and annihilating the entire population of it would not be an act of genocide
He tries to say it depends on the context, and I’m like, ‘elaborate’
Here is the hypothetical scenario in which an Israeli nuke is launched into the Gaza Strip, killing everybody in it, where purportedly no one is guilty of genocide. I am going to try my best to quote this conversation as close to how it played out as I can.
Let’s say, a rogue IDF soldier sees one Hamas guy in the Gaza Strip, and he launches a nuke to deal with him.
That would still be genocide, dude, the rogue IDF soldier would have committed an act of genocide.
It wouldn’t, because–
What do you mean it wouldn’t?
Because he’s using the nuke without the special intent to kill everyone in the Gaza Strip, he’s using it to get the Hamas guy-
No, wait, when you’re launching a– if you unleash a WMD the results of the action is a responsibility you take on and can be assigned to your– unless a fucking breeze literally takes your nuke and puts it somewhere else, it’s– you assume responsibility for the consequences of your actions, especially if you can comprehend them, which I’m not even going to consider people not knowing what nukes do to be valid.
But it wouldn’t be genocide! He doesn’t have the special intent.
How the fuck did this rogue soldier get the nuclear codes anyways
What’s even at stake here? Like, let’s say we agree that this doesn’t fit the definition of genocide, so what? What does it matter? It would never happen, and even if it somehow did happen, it would still be an unforgivable atrocity that Israel would be responsible for by association.
This is like arguing about the difference between involuntary manslaughter and criminal negligence resulting in death. Possibly interesting for legal perverts, but definitely not in any way meaningful compared to someone being dead.
the stake is that they're trying to argue what Israel is currently doing is also not genocide, and also trying to defend Destiny who said that he would not be sure if dropping a nuke and killing all the Palestinians in Gaza would be genocide
It’s just such a bizarre and incoherent argument. What does it matter if the IDF soldier is acting against orders? Israel has sanctioned all of the things that have happened, so an apples to apples comparison would require the hypothetical to assume that the nuke was a sanctioned act. We could argue that the Joker launching a nuke at Gaza wouldn’t be genocide, because the Joker is insane and his motivations are his own (or whatever), but that’s equally unrelated to the current situation. The premise is nonsense and irrelevant to the argument about what is and isn’t genocide.
But yeah, he’s obviously just arguing in bad faith and/or is an idiot, so we don’t need to overanalyze it.