The word genocide has a legal definition, it’s not up for discussion or debate. What is happening in Gaza is a genocide according to genocide scholars.
Here's a letter from 514 verified scholars and legal experts calling on IAGS to retract their resolution, along with their rebuttal of the substance of the resolution:
They have certainly had some interesting members[0].
Anyway I have no comment on the specific claim being made here, I just really dislike it when discussion is stifled by saying “I’m right and no one can ever disagree”.
I think one strength of the liberal academic tradition is that whether it's philosophy, whether it's law, you get introduced to the "whose to say" archetype early on and get inoculated against it. It's not just that the concepts are well enough established that they're resilient against such skepticism, but even in cases of uncertainty, routine amounts of conceptual uncertainty are not a deal-breaker to investigating and understanding urgent moral issues.
A real argument in the negative would be along the lines of "here's how food truck inspection policies are tied to well-established norms that better explain the outcome of famine than intent to destroy". A not real argument is spontaneous, mid-debate discovery of the transience of linguistic meaning, discovered just in time to skirt the question of genocide.
The trouble with this form of skepticism is it can only ever be hypothesized, never actually consistently embodied by real people. Long before navigating to hacker News, you would look at your computer and be paralyzed by fundamental puzzles like "what is electricity", "what is information", "is there really an external world" and so on. It wouldn't have been discovered mid conversation about genocide.
Rape? Like age of consent being different across regions and time? No nuance? Like how half the planet laughs when a boy gets molested by his attractive teacher and the other half calls it rape?
Also, the ICJ only has jurisdiction when states consent to its authority. And the UN security council can veto any decision. It's essentially a show court.
And again, people endlessly debate what is and isn't rape and murder. Judges and juries make the decision at the end of the day, and people still debate whether their decision was correct. If anything, drawing parallels to murder and rape only serve to highlight how subjective it is.
I don't think you could have raised a weaker point.
I actually don't agree with you that "legal definitions" are as hotly debated or that the existence of debate in general negates consensus on specific topics. And I do think one important point with genocide scholarship is regarding muddying the waters with tom-ay-to/to-mah-to approach to definitions. Treating definitions as inherently transient is an important instrument in normalizing cultural acceptance of genocides when they're unfolding in real time, which is why that tactic is targeted by so much scholarly criticism.
But here we have UN and other twisting it to fit a situation that clearly weren't meant to be covered by it.
Because if the war in Gaza can be called a genocide so can almost every single other major war!
Also it is absolutely ridiculous to call a war that is started by one side, and one that only that side can end, a genocide against the same side that started it!
Heck, the US Revolutionary war saw the British perpetrated genocide against the Colonists if the military actions following Oct 7 count as a genocide.
75% of those were military deaths, 25% civilian deaths. In Gaza the numbers are switched.
Now I understand that the UN has specific criteria, etc. But the most famous genocide was the systematic execution of millions in gas chambers. This is not akin to that, is what people are arguing.
Anyone who watches Israeli news/media in Hebrew knows that Palestinians are not considered human in the Israeli society. Israel dehumanizes and genocides the Palestinians with the intention of wiping them off the face of the earth.
A long way of agreeing with your point, I suppose.