1. The most annoying thing about the Ezra Klein interview with Philippe Sands is his use of Lemkin to maintain that 7 October was a genocide. It is had to reconcile this with Lemkin's actual book. A brief 🧵
2. The glaring omission from this statement by Sands are the words "occupation" and "coordinated plan"; and thus the recognition of the gross power asymmetry between Israelis and Palestinians. To begin with, here is Lemkin's definition:
3. Lemkin continues: genocide has 2 phases...
(Who has confiscated the lands and displaced the residents? Who has de-nationalised? Who has imposed their national pattern? who is the occupier?)
4. Lemkin: "In this respect genocide is a new technique of occupation aimed at winning the peace even though the war itself is lost." (who is occupying, according to the @CIJ_ICJ July 2024?)
5. For Lemkin, Genocide is not merely discriminatory killing, as Sands implies. Rather it is "a concentrated and coordinated attack upon all elements of nationhood" - as Israel has been doing for decades through "Judaization" policies, expulsion, occupation, apartheid, and siege.
6. Lemkin talks about "disrupting the national unity of the local population" and a "system of colonization" that removes natives and gives their property to the settlers.
7. Lemkin: the destruction of the national pattern, the attack on the intelligentsia, imposition of occupier's language and laws
8. Lemkin: the attack on cultural life of the nation
9. Lemkin: the attack on the economic foundations of the national group (who imposed a siege for 16 years before Oct 7? who "de-developed" the Palestinian economy including in Gaza?)
10. In short, to use Lemkin's conception to say that Hamas committed genocide on 7 October is absurd. It requires Sands to ignore the power assymetry. Palestinians have never exercised this kind of power over Israelis.
11. By claiming it is genocide on "both sides" one muddies the water and makes the Israeli genocide "understandable".
12. I've written before regarding Sands' equivocation when it comes to naming the Israeli commission of genocide from a legal perspective opiniojuris.org/2024/05/07/on-…
13. As @AdHaque110 shows, Sands overstates what the law (court jurisprudence) is
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