President in effect endorses ethnic cleansing of territory before hosting meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu

Donald Trump has said that Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza due to the devastation left by Israel’s war on Hamas, in effect endorsing ethnic cleansing of the territory over the opposition of Palestinians and the neighbouring countries.

Speaking as he prepared to host Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Tuesday, Trump repeated the suggestion that Gaza’s population should be relocated to Jordan and Egypt – something both countries have firmly rejected.

Trump claimed Palestinians would “love to leave Gaza”, telling reporters: “I would think that they would be thrilled.”

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  • bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    322·
    1 day ago

    Population transfers aren’t unheard of. In Greece/Turkey, Italians from eastern Adriatic, German from Prussia and Silesia, Pakistan/India millions of people moved.

    This Holocaust comparison is completely dishonest and betrays any knowledge of how it happened. Used in this context, it’s Holocaust relativism at best and likely antisemitic.

    • Siegfried@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      1 day ago

      Well, i have bad news… all of those were genocides

      Edir: purging an etnicity from a land to gain a claim over that territory makes it sound bad enough?

    • ToastedPlanet@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      5·
      23 hours ago

      I found this quote useful so I’m going to put it here as well as it seems incredibly relevant.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing

      “How could ‘forced deportation’ ever be achieved without extreme coercion, indeed violence? How, indeed, could deportation not be forced? How could people not resist? How could it not involve the destruction of a community, of the way of life that a group has enjoyed over a period of time? How could those who deported a group not intend this destruction? In what significant way is the forcible removal of a population from their homeland different from the destruction’ of a group? If the boundary between ‘cleansing’ and genocide is unreal, why police it?”

      • bestboyfriendintheworld@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        11·
        7 hours ago

        From the same Wikipedia article.

        Ethnic cleansing has been described as part of a continuum of violence whose most extreme form is genocide. Ethnic cleansing is similar to forced deportation or population transfer. While ethnic cleansing and genocide may share the same goal and methods (e.g., forced displacement), ethnic cleansing is intended to displace a persecuted population from a given territory, while genocide is intended to destroy a group.

        Your quote is just a bunch of insinuations leading questions without an answer. Pure bad faith.

        • ToastedPlanet@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          1·
          3 minutes ago

          Your argument’s defense of a nonexistent boundary between genocide and ethnic cleansing boils down to genocide denial. There is no agreed upon definition of ethnic cleansing. There is no way to peacefully forcefully relocate a group of people. An attempt to forcefully relocate a group of people is motivated by the desire to destroy that group in whole or in part.

          The quote from the wiki article points out everything I have now written down in this comment. It’s written as a series of rhetorical questions with clear answers. Your argument’s effort to misrepresent the wiki page’s descriptive analysis of ethnic cleansing as an official definition is an attempt to police a none existent boundary. You argument left out the last part of that section.

          Multiple genocide scholars have criticized distinguishing between ethnic cleansing and genocide, with Martin Shaw arguing that forced deportation necessarily results in the destruction of a group and this must be foreseen by the perpetrators.

          A call for ethnic cleansing is a call for genocide. There is no way to engage in peaceful forceful deportation or population transfer. There is no meaningful difference between getting rid of a group by forcefully removing them and destroying them.

          The Armenian genocide involved death marches, into the desert without food or water. What’s the meaningful difference between sending people to die in the desert and destroying them? There isn’t one.

          https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/armenian-genocide