• t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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    8 months ago

    For a more informative explanation of this chart, and what’s right, and what’s wrong:

    • After the 6 Day War in 1967, when Israel attacked 3 of its neighboring countries, many of those countries and other states either allied to them or sympathetic, DID actively persecute and expel large parts of their Jewish populations, and seized their homes and valuables. That WAS ethnic cleansing.
    • In the 1948 Palestine War, Israel violently displaced 750,000 Palestinians, which was more than half of the population, and the military and settler militias killed many thousands more. That was ALSO ethnic cleansing. This is completely erased by this chart.
    • In the 2023-2024 Israel-Gaza conflict, Israel has displaced over half of Palestinians in Gaza, destroyed their homes and livelihoods, and targeted essential infrastructure like water and power, and denied food entry, in order to make Gaza unlivable. This is ALSO ethnic cleansing. This is also completely erased by this chart.

    The chart is inherently biased by another key point, which is that ethnic cleansing is not based on national borders. A UN commission of experts on humanitarian law violations defines Ethnic Cleansing as: “…a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”

    The Commission of Experts also stated that the coercive practices used to remove the civilian population can include: murder, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, extrajudicial executions, rape and sexual assaults, severe physical injury to civilians, confinement of civilian population in ghetto areas, forcible removal, displacement and deportation of civilian population, deliberate military attacks or threats of attacks on civilians and civilian areas, use of civilians as human shields, destruction of property, robbery of personal property, attacks on hospitals, medical personnel, and locations with the Red Cross/Red Crescent emblem, among others.

    The UN themselves has identified Israel’s action in Gaza in 2023-2024 as an ethnic cleansing.