On July 25, after a couple of months of debate, the Wikipedia entry “Allegations of genocide in the 2023 Israeli attack on Gaza” was changed to “Gaza genocide.” This was done despite the fact that the International Court of Justice in the Hague has not made an official ruling on the matter, in the wake of South Africa’s petition to the court alleging that Israel is committing or facilitating genocide in Gaza.
The Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal, which followed the Wikipedia discussion and vote, wrote that the editors who voted on this change claimed to be relying on an academic consensus based on statements of experts on genocide, human rights, human rights law and Holocaust historians.
Its likely too early (For Wikipedia) just because the ICJ hasn’t made a ruling. The genocide however is pretty plain to see and has been all year. Wikipedia has always done weird and often inconsistent things around the evidence allowed and sufficient to support statements in its articles so its not a new issue.
The ICJ ruling will take years though.
I think the most similar genocide to the Gaza genocide is the Bosnian genocide. The Srebrenica massacre took place in 1995 and the ICJ ruled in 2007.
So, the Gaza genocide might take until 2035 before it is all legally settled.
In the interim, Wikipedia and all of us need to decide what to call it.
Since it looks like a genocide and the initial findings support the case that genocide is likely being committed, it seems to border on genocide denial to call it anything else.
Edit to add: I also don’t see people complaining about Wikipedia calling the Rohingya genocide a genocide, even though it is legally in the same phase as the Gaza genocide.
In the interim, Wikipedia and all of us need to decide what to call it.
Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, shits like a duck. Probably a duck.
Totally okay with calling it a genocide- and while they dither on what a slow-as-fuck court says, people are dying en masse.
Israel is starving the population, bombing them, shooting them, blockading them, it has destroyed all the medical facilities, educational institutions, all the infrastructure, it has cut off electricity and water and blocks or kills anyone trying to help the people to live. Israeli leaders openly express genocidal intent. There’s no doubt this is genocide.
shits like a duck.
In ponds?
Kidding aside, it’s ABSOLUTELY a genocide. There’s no doubt about it by any credible definition.
That Wikipedia has started calling it a genocide is a much needed step that removes one of the few remaining straws that Hasbarists and other genocide deniers have left to grasp at.
In the interim, Wikipedia and all of us need to decide what to call it.
i mean, we could also just not have started referring to it as a genocide, but uh, we jumped the gun there a little bit.
It’s always interesting to me how people will latch on to certain words so aggressively and refuse to cede even minor ground if it requires changing wording.
i mean even referring to it as “likely genocide” would make it like 10x more palatable.
Yeah. One time I edited the Wikipedia article on the human pancreas to say it was just a worthless organ taking up valuable internal real estate. My edit got redacted pretty quickly.
