Offense or Defense, Thing or Term?

Words as tools to point at the world and communicate with each other

“Self-defense isn’t genocide!” shout some supporters of Israel.

“Genocide isn’t self-defense!” shout some critics of Israel.

I think I can untangle this in a way that sheds light on defense and genocide and Israel and us. A rough transcript is below. Take a listen:

Thank you for your interest friends and enemies and internet strangers.

Rough Transcript:

Alright I'm looking at a tweet, and the tweet it’s quoting says “the atrocities Hamas committed on October 7th were evil and I strongly condemn Hamas. The genocide Israel has committed since October 7th is worse, and I also condemn the Israeli government.” And the quote tweet says “self-defense isn't genocide, you moral monsters.” This person supports Israel, and is saying what Israel is doing a self-defense, it's not genocide.

So how would other people respond? How would the people supporting the Palestinians respond? They wouldn't say “self-defense IS genocide.” No they would agree with the statement self-defense is not genocide, and in fact they say it themselves, we say it ourselves. Self-defense is not genocide, or reversed, genocide is not self-defense.

So both sides agree on that statement, but mean it to apply in opposite ways. And I think I can untangle this in a way that'll shed some light on both sides and on the idea of genocide.

00:54

So some folks, the way they like to think about language, both of these parties are wrong. It's not genocide. Genocide's not in play. Quit saying genocide. Genocide only means United Nations genocide convention, those elements, as applied by the International Criminal Court. Don't use it any other way, you're wrong and stupid.

01:15

That's fine if you want to roll that way. I'm going to roll a different way, and be concerned with what do these people intend by the words that they're saying?

01:25

So the initial tweet is saying, hey I condemn Hamas and what they did on October 7th, and then I also condemn the Israeli government, the 15,000 people that they've killed since then,

01:34

so many of them women and children. That slaughter of a whole lot of women and children, and the different scenes you get of that, these bodies left by the bombing. And all the children dead under rubble. Parents holding dead children, or pieces of children. That is what is being pointed to by this word genocide.

01:59

And I've made this point elsewhere, but maybe you think that that's a really mistaken way to use that word. That's fine. Maybe you're right about that. But what is the bigger concern here? Somebody's using a word wrong? Or thousands of children brutally dying? There's a real big difference in the stakes. Okay? So you can think that they're wrong about the word. And in proportion you can make that point. But wake up, that is not the biggest issue in play here. Okay?

02:33

The way that I made this point elsewhere is okay imagine an even worse use of the word genocide. One that I myself would see as not just different but as mistaken. So for example, referring to 300 rapes by saying hey that's a genocide. Okay, so somebody used the word wrong.

02:50

And if your reaction is to say no no it's not genocide! You used the word wrong, you used the word wrong, you're stupid! It's not a genocide.

Okay. You're correct. But isn't the bigger thing to focus on here the 300 rapes?

03:04

And let's do an iteration here. Some people don't just say hey you're using the word wrong, you're stupid. But they say you're manipulative, this is a political move to try to rile people up. Okay. Grant that. What is the bigger issue here? That political move being made by this person, or by their political tribe or intellectual tribe? Or the 300 rapes? The 15,000 dead? There's no comparison.

Alright so to these two tweets though. Self-defense is not genocide, you moral monsters. And the other side would say, yeah self-defense isn't genocide, the genocide that Israel's doing is not self-defense.

So here's one way we could frame things at this stage. It's a question of, is what Israel is doing self-defense, and therefore not genocide? Or is what Israel is doing genocide, and therefore not self-defense?

One take would be, it's neither. It's neither genocide nor self-defense.

So you could then say both of you were dumb and wrong, I win. Or we can abstract away, try to extract what is the debate then? Or maybe even if we're changing the debate, what can be extracted from the debate that then we can investigate? How can we rephrase these ideas, or related ones, in a way to keep investigating this?

We might say, is Israel responding to an attack or a threat in a way that's basically legitimate? Basically good and okay? Or is Israel killing a whole bunch of people that it doesn't need to kill, killing a whole bunch of innocent people?

Now THAT is pretty hard to disagree with, or discount, or cry wolf, or cry language police about. Is Israel responding to the attack of the seventh, and the ongoing threats, in a way that's good and okay? Or no, are they killing too many innocent people, and it's not good or okay?

So I can't speak for every person in the world, but that's the question I'm interested in. And I think that's the question that most of us are usually interested in. How good or bad is what Israel's doing? Should Israel be supported or opposed? Isn't that the question most of us are usually interested in?

We're not actually that interested in, in comparison to that—that's central. Compared to that, how interested are we in whether this meets a legal definition that some dead folks made up in 1948? I'm not saying that's irrelevant, it's not. But how often is that actually what we care most about? Actually what we take ourselves to be talking about? I don't think all that often.

We're asking okay if any Israelis end up on trial in a couple years, in a few years, in a couple decades, will the court have the right evidence to convict them according to the legal standard?

06:24

That matters some. How much? Is that really what we're focused on very often? I don't think it is. It's not what I'm focused on.

But we've got this ability, or this disability, of getting off track without realizing it, and getting a step removed, two steps removed, five steps removed, from the thing we started with. We start off caring about that, caring about what is happening there,

06:54

what should we do about it? And pretty soon we're arguing on Twitter that some stranger doesn't care about words because of something they said about something somebody else said about what somebody else said about genocide. Let's snap our fingers, slap ourselves in our respective faces, and focus on the THING, not the terms.