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Comment by zorked | Hacker News Reader

Your are using an argument similar to the repugnant logic of Holocaust deniers. They use claims that Germany could have easily killed Jews /even faster/ as an argument to claim that they didn't commit genocide /at all/.

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It's a ridiculous argument. The Nazis went through a LOT of effort and resources to gather Jews from all the corners of Europe, and even more effort into exterminating them as fast as they could, within the logistical and economic constraints of fighting a 3 front war.

There's no comparison at all to the ease with which Israel could just drop a couple of bombs on Gaza, had it decided to do so.

The only thing stopping Israel from doing that is international outrage. Israel is entirely dependent on its benefactor states like the US and, while it pushes the limits to the extreme, must at least contend with world opinion.

That's like me saying you're a murderer, but you just haven't killed anyone yet because you're afraid of going to jail. Maybe it's true, but it's a bit of a silly argument, isn't it? In western society, we judge people based on their actions.

Israel has murdered tens of thousands of people. Your argument doesn't hold.

That’s not what murder means. They were attacked by a government and went to war.

They've murdered tens of thousands of civilians. Israelis literally killed an entire NICU of infants.

The fact that I just spent five minutes thinking about it proves that it's not ridiculous at all. The scale is different (so far), but I’m not convinced there’s a qualitative difference.

Most people spend more than five minutes a day thinking about things that are ridiculous.

Do you? I don't think I do. Unproductive, sure, but not ridiculous.

You literally just did.

So I guess your point is that other people think about things that you consider ridiculous. I don't dispute that.

It's because you're deeply ignorant about the subject. Anyone can think ridiculous thoughts in complete ignorance.

Try reading a history book about the holocaust, or even just WW2, and you'll see just how ridiculous you sound.

You seem to be ignoring the retaliation that would be enacted at a drop of a couple of those bombs.

Huh? If the Nazis could have killed all the Jews faster, they would have. They sought to eliminate Jews all throughout Europe. I’ve never heard this argument, but it’s unintelligent and I am not making it.

The existence of camps where jews and other "undesirables" were kept for long periods of time disproves this entirely. The Nazi's were not trying to speed run the process. They were systematically eliminating people. That's why it's a genocide and not a series of massacres. I would suggest sticking with the definition of genocide instead of coming up with your own convenient version.

You're just showing your ignorance. The Nazis killed the majority of their victims as soon as they arrived in the camp. They kept 20%-30%, mostly men who could work, to be used as slaves for their military industry, and they eliminated everyone else. They developed gassing especially in order to speed up the killing and make it more economical.

It was a genocide because they tried to eliminate a specific ethnic group, for no other reason than its ethnicity.

You should go learn more about the subject, if it interests you so much.

It doesn’t interest them. People who think what Israel is doing is anything like what the Nazis did have had their brain washed clean by anti-Semitic propaganda. It’s smooth as a volleyball in there, facts don’t matter.

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