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  • 21 Aug, 2019

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Talk:Gaza Genocide
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UNHR as a primary source?

Andrevan just reverted my edit saying the UNHR is a WP:PRIMARY source. That's news to me. WP:PRIMARY says that such sources are "close to an event" and "accounts written by people who are directly involved". But this report was "researched and written by UNHR members from LAW’s International Human Rights Clinic, ​​the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School, the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and the Lowenstein Human Rights Project at Yale Law School."[3] None of these institutions are located in Gaza or have any connection to the Gaza genocide. Indeed the report contains very little original research itself, instead almost entire depends on data and facts from secondary sources (which are all cited), and is probably akin to a WP:TERTIARY source.VR (Please ping on reply) 00:53, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd treat it more as an advocacy think tank report, the University Network for Human Rights isn't a journal or a book publisher, and the report is written by students. The release of the report is an event, and then secondary sources will comment on the report and interpret it. One clue is that there's no byline. Also, it's close to the event, as in time, doesn't necessarily have to be directly involved though that'd be a giveaway, but this report coming out in the midst of everything is an indicator that it's not sufficiently removed from the event itself, and actually it's kind of already out of date since it came out in May. TERTIARY would be more like an encyclopedia. Andre🚐 00:58, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A source released in May 2024 is "not out of date" and practically every source on this topic "is close to the event, as in time". You appear to misunderstand policy.VR (Please ping on reply) 01:23, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how that can be used for analysis. It's a report that doesn't even have an author. Inasmuch as its release is commented on by secondary sources, it can be used, but only if that interpretation is used. You're trying to use it for expert analysis. It was written by students. Andre🚐 01:28, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What part of that statement do you disagree with? M.Bitton (talk) 01:30, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I more object to the placement and arrangement of the content. As written it seems to imply some legal analysis and makes a comparison to precedent. A legal expert with proper credentials should be used for that kind of thing, who might analyze the data in this report. Andre🚐 01:33, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is an analysis of what has been published in reliable sources (all cited in the report). M.Bitton (talk) 01:51, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The full report includes authors:
  • International Human Rights Clinic of Boston University School of Law
  • INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS CLINIC of Cornell Law School
  • CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS from University of Pretoria
  • LOWENSTEIN HUMAN RIGHTS PROJECT from Yale Law School
It is a fairly comprehensive document, and other sources call the document:
  • a report from "a consortium of human right centers"[4]
  • "a report by U.S. human rights experts" [5]
  • "most thorough legal analysis yet" [6]
I see citations to the source by other reputable journal articles in:
It seems like at the very least we should be able to use it with attribution and arguably without it Bluethricecreamman (talk) 01:36, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Attribution would be better, but those are still students writing at those law schools. And the 3 cites above are not independent or reliable here (CAIR, BU, CommonDreams) but the ScienceDirect and UChicago journal are exactly the kind of sources we should use. Andre🚐 01:37, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Do you reckon it's better if we used the reliable sources that they are citing, such as "Final Report of the Commission of Experts established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992), etc"? M.Bitton (talk) 01:40, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That'd be even more of a primary source. Andre🚐 01:53, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We can't cite those sources directly because that would be WP:SYNTH. They are applying the learnings from previous genocide to this one. I think the source is perfectly reliable to make this synthesis.VR (Please ping on reply) 01:54, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That would be using a primary source (not more, just primary). The reason I asked is because I was baffled by your claim that the report is a primary source. M.Bitton (talk) 01:56, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An original research report without a single named author, put out by essentially a law review, I would consider that a primary source, and I'd want to see those journal articles distilling and contextualizing raw research in a review. Andre🚐 01:58, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
staff and advisory seem to indicate a wide range of highly reputable academic supervision from a few fields indicating some normal aspect of scholarship and citations by other reputable works indicates it should count by WP:SCHOLARSHIP. 2 citations (at least, i didnt do a good count) about about 4 months after publication is fairly alright for an article. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 01:42, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see no issue with using it (without attribution). M.Bitton (talk) 01:45, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
a paper reviewing existing research, a review article, monograph, or textbook is often better than a primary research paper Andre🚐 01:54, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is nothing primary about it since all its statements are attributed to other reliable sources, making the report a good secondary source. M.Bitton (talk) 01:58, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the footnotes appear to be to legal memoranda and trials and judgments. Andre🚐 01:59, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What do you expect them to be? M.Bitton (talk) 02:00, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm saying it's a raw research report compiled of primary source research, and it should be further contextualized by a secondary source like a reliably published academic book or journal article, or a reliable news outlet, that can remove us from the raw research. Andre🚐 02:03, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Basically, you're looking for a tertiary source (because the report is a secondary source). The question is, is that needed for the inclusion of material that isn't even disputed? M.Bitton (talk) 02:06, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
it cant be both a collection of cited primary sources (by definition a secondary source) and itself a primary source Bluethricecreamman (talk) 02:17, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll withdraw my objection on this basis, because I think our policy doesn't explain that a primary source, like a think tank report, can cite other sources that are also primary, like court precedent. I don't want to be WP:1AM on this, but I still don't think that this is the best source. Andre🚐 02:26, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is no policy against using primary sources anyway. This is a wikimyth. Zero 08:32, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not against using them at all but they aren't the best source, should be used with care, and have issues with weight and interpretation: WP:PRIMARY: Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. While a primary source is generally the best source for its own contents, even over a summary of the primary source elsewhere, do not put undue weight on its contents.... Do not analyze, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize material found in a primary source yourself; instead, refer to reliable secondary sources that do so. .. Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them Andre🚐 18:37, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

UNHR is student engagement organization. Its opinions are UNDUE. There will always be better, expert commentary on relevant issues. SPECIFICO talk 15:58, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

consisting of law students from prestigious schools with significant supervision from various tenured professors, creating documents that are cited in other scholarly journals, providing a report with direct citations to previous legal precedents. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 16:19, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In addition to the two journal articles that @Bluethricecreamman found here are more references to it:
VR (Please ping on reply) 16:30, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Those are not RS publicateions. Laurent, e.g. is a working paper. SPECIFICO talk 19:35, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with SPECIFICO. Andre🚐 22:36, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • At the very least we should try and find additional sources for the "minimum number of victims" section; it is perhaps undue to devote so much to a single source. But also, just... zooming out, what is this section saying? Why are we highlighting these particular bits from that massive report? Is there actually a dispute about the minimum number of victims? It reads like this is a part of an ongoing argument pulled out and dropped in without context, like someone was saying "this can't be a genocide, it doesn't meet the minimum number of victims!" but if so, we left that out, making it meaningless, so - why does the lack of a required minimum number of victims matter here? Either there's some context missing, or the section should be removed as tangential and giving undue weight to something that was just mentioned in passing in a single source and which isn't important to the topic as a whole. Finding more sources that connect all this to this topic in particular would also address this problem, in that it would at least establish that it does matter here even if the reason isn't obvious, but with just one source (and one that doesn't seem to spend a lot of time on it itself, relative to its length), I'm unclear why we're devoting a decently-sized paragraph and an entire subsection to this aspect. Note that we already say Applicable law does not require a minimum number of victims in the definition of genocide section - honestly I'm unsure why we even include that much, but that seems more proportional, at least, and more than sufficient. Do we really need this section on top of that? --Aquillion (talk) 19:33, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed Andre🚐 19:41, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Great question. I'll leave this section to focus on whether UNHR is RS, while starting a new discussion below on minimum number of casualties.VR (Please ping on reply) 14:41, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Relevance of number of casualties

Thanks Aquillion for bringing this up. ""this can't be a genocide, it doesn't meet the minimum number of victims!" is exactly a POV I've read, and the original version of the section said that. Here are some sources that discuss the relevance of number of casualties to support or deny the existence of genocide, or argue that its not relevant.

  • "There is no evidence that they have engaged in a deliberate campaign to “destroy, in whole or in part,” the Palestinian people — which is what “genocide” means in international law. Awful as the civilian deaths in Gaza have been, they still constitute less than 1 percent of the territory’s population. If Israel, with all the firepower at its disposal, had been trying to commit mass murder, the death toll would have been higher by orders of magnitude."[11] Max Boot, historian
  • "The brutal fact is that if Netanyahu and Gallant were the bloodthirsty genocidaires that their critics claim them to be, the death toll in Gaza would be orders of magnitude higher than what we see today. The Rwandan genocide, for example, was perpetrated over several weeks and resulted in 800,000 deaths, often at the hands of mobs equipped with machetes and gardening tools."[12] Raphael Cohen, professor at Pardee RAND
  • "Though some have pointed out that Israel could have killed even more people in Gaza if it really wanted to do so [quoting Dov Waxman, UCLA professor of Israel Studies], it does not necessarily have to unleash its full arsenal to commit genocide. “It’s quite plausible that the state uses some of its firepower and nevertheless is carrying out the attacks in the context of the destruction of the target group,” Verdeja said." Ernesto Verdeja is a University of Notre Dame professor in peace studies.
  • "No minimum number of victims is necessary to establish genocide, but the loss must be severe enough that it “will impact the group as a whole”. Since close to 50 families have already and horrifically been exterminated, and we’re only just past the first week of this carnage, what other word should we choose?" Moustafa Bayoumi
  • "Attacks on [Gaza] now alarmingly resemble those of genocidal campaigns in recent decades, such as in the 1982 genocide of Mayan people in Guatemala, the 1994 Rwandan genocide of Tutsis, the 1995 genocide of Bosnian Muslims, the 2003-2005 genocide in Darfur, the 2014 genocide against Yazidis in Iraq, and the 2016-17 genocide against Rohingyan Muslims. We emphasize that although the death tolls in these genocides vary considerably, they are considered genocides on account of the clear “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”." [13] Declaration by John Cox (professor of Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies at UNC Charlotte), Victoria Sanford (professor with many peer-reviewed publications on genocide) and Barry Trachtenberg (professor of Jewish history at Wake Forest University).
  • "Israel’s peak monthly killing rate of civilians in Gaza [10000 per month] is roughly equivalent to that in Darfur, and higher than in the other two recent cases, all of which our government labeled “genocide”."[14] Alan J Kuperman, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where his research focuses on the causes and prevention of genocide.
  • "Official U.N. figures from early September note that Russian attacks killed slightly fewer than 10,000 civilians since February 2022, and injured just above 17,500. Israel has so far killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, wounding nearly 30,000. It is important that Biden described Russia’s attack on Ukraine as “genocide” on April 12, 2022"[15]. Raz Segal, professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University.

So some mention of this discussion is WP:DUE.VR (Please ping on reply) 14:40, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Edit requests at RFPP

To the regulars here: There are a couple of edit requests at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection/Edit that seem reasonable and well-thought-out, deserving some attention. Would someone more familiar with this topic than the administrators who monitor that RFPP page have a look and weigh in? ~Anachronist (talk) 23:31, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Anachronist. Both have now been addressed.
I proposed the last sentence of the lead be replaced by: "The Israeli government rejected South Africa's allegations. Supporters of Israel say that accusing Israel of genocide is both antisemitic[16][17] and a form of Holocaust erasure[18], but others argue antisemitism shouldn't be exploited to shield Israel from such allegations.[19][20][21][22]. If anyone objects please say so below.VR (Please ping on reply) 14:58, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Total deaths

The following study from the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University establishes that, in addition to the officially reported deaths, over 10,000 people in Gaza are dead under the rubble and at least 67,413 have been killed from starvation and diseases, due to lack of access to healthcare, based on reliable data, making the total number of estimated Palestinian deaths over 120,000.

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2024/IndirectDeathsGaza

https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2024/10/08/israel-gaza-war-death-toll-exceeds-120000-if-indirect-causes-are-included-study-finds/

https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/middleeast/israel-gaza-war-death-toll-exceeds-120-000-if-indirect-causes-are-included-study-finds/ar-AA1rQIOg

I think that these numbers should be reported within this article.

David A (talk) 06:38, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Insufficient sourcing for German ban

The article currently says:

Karen Wells et al. highlight how Germany has entrenched its complicity in Israel's actions by banning use of the word "genocide" in reference to Israel.

The source used says:

Germany is supporting Israel at the ICJ and has banned the use of the word ‘genocide’ in relation to Israel, calling this charge ‘antisemitic’.

A straightforward reading of the source would indicate that the statement of the article is supported by the source. But the source itself doesn't cite any references with respect to this statement. And a google search also didn't yield much. If the German government has truly made such a ban it should be possible to find sources that directly support this (eg a source quoting the German government etc).VR (Please ping on reply) 14:34, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There is a lot of stuff going on in Germany, which is worth looking into generally, as far as a ban on the word, I could only find this:
"The police in North Rhine-Westphalia started circulating an information brochure to regional schools, in which it states that accusing Israel of committing a genocide may constitute hate speech and may thus be indictable as a criminal offense" along with complaints of arrest for carrying genocide placards, etcetera.
I doubt that you would see a gov statement saying there is such a ban. Selfstudier (talk) 15:06, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Vice regent Perhaps she is referring to this statement by Felix Klein:
"Anyone who accuses Israel of genocide is clearly acting in an antisemitic way because they are demonizing Israel, applying double standards, and specifically accusing the Jewish state of committing genocide like the Shoah. Because genocide would mean that the Israeli army is attacking to kill Palestinians - solely based on the fact that they are Palestinians."
Klein is Germany's Federal Commissioner for the Fight against Antisemitism. Kurat calls him "Germany's top bureaucrat dedicated to the fight against antisemitism," but this doesn't make his statements official political positions of Germany. DaWalda (talk) 19:00, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@DaWalda@Selfstudier@Vice regent: See e.g. this article, published this week. Describes the case of a Jewish woman arrested in Berlin last November for holding a sign saying: "Als Jüdin und Israelin: Stoppt den Genozid in Gaza" ("As a Jewish woman and an Israeli: Stop the genocide in Gaza"). The police say whether a statement like that is a hate crime is a "contextual decision arrived at on a case-by-case basis". (The case against the lady has since been dropped, without explanation.) Andreas JN466 22:04, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good source. I suspect, though, that the key basis for the suspicion of antisemitism is not the term 'genocide' itself, but rather its generalized association with Jewish/Israeli women (the police further explain: 'However, if the term genocide is used in connection with a blanket statement, for example, directed at the population of Israel, it could constitute a legally relevant statement.'). But by now, we would at least have enough for something like this:
While the accusation of genocide itself is not a criminal offense in Germany, the claim is widely condemned and often regarded with suspicion in public discourse.[FN 1: Germany’s Federal Commissioner for the Fight against Antisemitism has argued that accusing Israel of genocide is inherently antisemitic: Source] [FN 2: A brochure circulated by police advised schools that such accusations may constitute hate speech: Source 2] [FN 3: At least one instance is documented in which demonstrators were reported to authorities for using the term ‘genocide,’ though the case was dropped afterwards.] DaWalda (talk) 22:44, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Private court proceedings against Mark Regev

Mark Regev, former diplomat of Israel and adviser to Netanyahu, has had proceedings launched against him in Australia (where he has joint citizenship), for "advocacy for genocide". Wanting input on including a sentence on this in the legal proceedings section. Reported in:

-- Cdjp1 (talk) 23:37, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Including everything single legal proceeding on this article is a bit too much. Obviously it's totally notable for inclusion on Regev's own article. On the other hand, the growing number of legal cases concerning this event deserves a separate comprehensive list article. -- Sameboat - 同舟 (talk · contri.) 23:50, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yariv Levin calls for 20 year prison sentences for Israeli citizens that support sanctions

Something of possible interest to include in this and a few other related articles:

After Amos Schocken, the publisher of the Haaretz newspaper, called for international sanctions against Israel to put pressure for acceptance of a two-state solution and an end to ethnic cleansing, Israel's justice minister Yariv Levin demanded a new law imposing up to 20 years prison sentences for any Israelis who call for sanctions.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tQmE0o4C9dE

https://www.jns.org/israeli-justice-minister-urges-jail-time-for-boycott-calls-by-citizens/

https://skwawkbox.org/2024/11/02/israeli-justice-minister-calls-for-law-for-20yr-prison-sentences-for-israelis-who-call-for-sanctions/

David A (talk) 18:28, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This should be covered in Human rights in Israel, as part of the lack of freedom of speech. Dimadick (talk) 12:09, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are you willing to handle it please? David A (talk) 14:17, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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