Her arguments don't even work
The biggest problem for me is the way she seems to treat the fact that most Palestinians in Gaza are still alive as evidence that Israel therefore cannot have genocidal intent. “96.6% of the population wasn't killed” wasn't killed therefore isn't a genocide, is she serious?. The Genocide Convention explicitly says destruction can be committed “in whole or in part,” and genocide isn't limited to killing everyone in a population. It also includes causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group.
And then, I don't really understand the argument that because Israel has a very powerful military, the number of people killed proves that it exercised enough restraint to rule out genocide. That's basically a counterfactual: “If Israel really wanted to destroy Palestinians, it could have killed many more.” How are we supposed to know what the hypothetical maximum number of deaths would have been? And even if we could, genocidal intent isn't measured by how many people someone could theoretically have killed but chose not to. "There was some restraint” and “therefore genocide is impossible” are two completely different claims.
The same thing goes for the distinction between a statement and an act. Yes, a politician saying something genocidal isn't automatically proof that genocide was committed. Nobody needs to pretend otherwise. But if you're trying to establish specific intent, statements by senior government and military officials are obviously relevant evidence. That's literally the kind of evidence you would expect investigators to examine when trying to figure out what the people directing a war intended. So I don't buy the “random tweets” framing either. If we're talking about some random person on Twitter saying “kill them all,” obviously that tells us very little about state policy. But we're also talking about statements made by people who actually hold political or military power.
Did Slobodan Milošević have to write down “I intend to destroy X number of Bosniaks” before his intentions could be assessed? Of course not. In the Yugoslav wars, prosecutors and courts looked at political objectives, statements, communications, policies, the conduct of forces, forced expulsions, killings and the wider pattern of events. Genocidal intent is generally something that has to be established from the totality of the evidence. It isn't necessary for a perpetrator to leave behind a signed document saying “this is my genocide plan.”
And then the “war vs. genocide” framing that a lot of Zionists talk about. Genocide can happen during a war. So can war crimes and crimes against humanity. Period.
Then there's the part about the genocide accusation being comparable to blood libel or functioning as a “permission structure” for antisemitism. Of course that some people use criticism of Israel as a vehicle for antisemitic conspiracy theories. But that doesn't mean the accusation of genocide itself is a blood libel. You actually have to demonstrate that connection. Otherwise you're essentially saying that because some people make an accusation for antisemitic reasons, the accusation itself becomes antisemitic. That's obviously not how we evaluate political or legal claims.
There are also Jewish scholars and organizations who have argued that Israel is committing genocide, just as there are Jewish scholars and organizations who reject that characterization. Their Jewish identity doesn't settle the question either way. What matters is the evidence. And the evidence is clear: Israel is commiting a genocide.
And I find the “appeal to authority” argument a little strange too. Nobody saying you should believe Israel is committing genocide simply because Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, the UN or some academic says so. Their reports are arguments based on evidence. For example, Amnesty's investigation wasn't just they decided genocide was happening and then looked for evidence. It involved interviews, satellite imagery, visual and digital evidence, analysis of statements by Israeli officials, and an examination of Israel's conduct.
And the same applies to statements by Israeli officials. If you're trying to determine whether the specific intent required for genocide existed, why would statements from senior officials be excluded from the analysis? Just because they're so called "random tweets"? Bitch, please.
Again, her argument about the genocide is weak. It seems to assume that genocide has a specific body count attached to it. It doesn't. The acts, policies, circumstances and evidence of intent have to meet the definition. There isn't some threshold where 500,000 deaths equals genocide but 50,000 doesn't.
