The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #157339   Message #3716505
Posted By: Steve Shaw
14-Jun-15 - 06:01 AM
Thread Name: BS: Cultural genocide
Subject: RE: BS: Cultural genocide
Ethnic cleansing means trying to clear a particular ethnic group from a territory. That may or may not mean a nation. Ethnic cleansing does not necessarily mean putting everyone on big trucks and dumping them somewhere else, or lining everyone up and shooting them. You can attempt it by making life intolerable for the people you want out. Bulldozing mosques and homes, often whole villages, and cutting off natural water supplies, as the Israeli regime does to the Negev Bedouins, fit the bill. Israel wants the Bedouins out the Negev. Keith is, dishonestly as ever, trying to set a booby trap by forcing his own very narrow definition of ethnic cleansing, expressed, of course, in the precise way needed to exclude anything Israel does, then asking us whether Israel is guilty of it. Israel has expanded its occupation more and more, and makes life difficult or impossible for the people who formerly lived in those areas. It may not be mass murder, but it is still ethnic cleansing. If you take over a Palestinian area for settlements that are exclusively for Jewish people, what else would you call it, Keith? Application of the planning laws, maybe, so we just shrug?