Biden: What's happening in Gaza is not genocide
Biden: What's happening in Gaza is not genocide
US President Joe Biden strongly defended Israel on Monday, saying Israeli forces are not committing genocide in their military campaign against Hamas militants in Gaza.
"What's happening in Gaza is not genocide. We reject that," Biden said at a Jewish American Heritage Month event at the White House.
I can't tell if he's pandering or trying to lose the election
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Original article: https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-whats-happening-gaza-is-not-genocide-2024-05-20/
It's pretty clear to me Biden's trying to thread the needle on this in a gruesome way. The argument seems to follow the form of: civilian deaths are collateral damage, this is unfortunate but this is war and they are not purposely being targeted and so this is not genocide.
However that almost willfully ignores the denial and blocking of aid to the same affected civilians, which is a deliberate action that despite the cover story being to prevent it reaching Hamas, falls entirely flat as regardless, it results in direct suffering and death of the civilians. I say almost because some small efforts have been made to push back against the denial of aid, but as is evident to anyone monitoring the situation, these efforts are all far too small to address the widespread suffering and death of the Gazan people.
This whole semantics game around genocide is simply disgusting. You know those in government know exactly what people mean when they're calling it that, they want an end to the killing and an end to the deaths of civilians, whether from military strikes or denial of aid.
Genocide shouldn’t be a “we don’t actually mean literal genocide but you know what we mean” type of thing.
What is with the desire to dilute words? If you mean something else, use a different fucking word.