There’s no guise. This is the way war has been prosecuted for millennia. The Geneva Convention, UNHRC, etc. are blips. War is genocide and always has been. Only in the late modern to post-modern era has war been something other than the complete annihilation of your enemies and their culture, including all the infanticide and rape that implies. If you’re, for instance, the US prosecuting a war for nebulous geopolitical reasons, then you can slap up a veneer of rules and conduct. If it’s a war of territorial expansion, on the other hand, you’d better be prepared to do what it takes to stamp out any trace of the people who originally lived there, or at least leave those who remain so broken and disempowered that they’ll never pose a threat.
Expect more like Ukraine & Palestine as the US’s grip on hegemony slips, and as we continue to slowly forget the lessons of the World Wars.
Not quite true. While there were many wars of cultural genocide, (culture is a great control tool), wars of physical genocide were largely reserved for religious wars and punishment wars. Not gonna pay that tithe or surrender the second you see us? Congratulations, you’re an example. Espouse a different religious truth? You’re a threat that must be made an example.
For the most part they understood the value of human capital and didn’t want to destroy it if they didn’t have to.
This is not true. There are hundreds of cultures around today who were conquered and just left to live until their conquerors eventually moved out. The Jews themselves have literally been conquered a dozen times.
I have one of Mahmoud Darwish’s books right here, goes into pretty significant detail about Israel’s attempts to stamp out Palestinian culture in the earliest years:
There’s no guise. This is the way war has been prosecuted for millennia. The Geneva Convention, UNHRC, etc. are blips. War is genocide and always has been. Only in the late modern to post-modern era has war been something other than the complete annihilation of your enemies and their culture, including all the infanticide and rape that implies. If you’re, for instance, the US prosecuting a war for nebulous geopolitical reasons, then you can slap up a veneer of rules and conduct. If it’s a war of territorial expansion, on the other hand, you’d better be prepared to do what it takes to stamp out any trace of the people who originally lived there, or at least leave those who remain so broken and disempowered that they’ll never pose a threat.
Expect more like Ukraine & Palestine as the US’s grip on hegemony slips, and as we continue to slowly forget the lessons of the World Wars.
Not quite true. While there were many wars of cultural genocide, (culture is a great control tool), wars of physical genocide were largely reserved for religious wars and punishment wars. Not gonna pay that tithe or surrender the second you see us? Congratulations, you’re an example. Espouse a different religious truth? You’re a threat that must be made an example.
For the most part they understood the value of human capital and didn’t want to destroy it if they didn’t have to.
This is not true. There are hundreds of cultures around today who were conquered and just left to live until their conquerors eventually moved out. The Jews themselves have literally been conquered a dozen times.
I have one of Mahmoud Darwish’s books right here, goes into pretty significant detail about Israel’s attempts to stamp out Palestinian culture in the earliest years:
https://blogs.transparent.com/arabic/write-down-i-am-an-arab/
https://www.wrmea.org/2017-november-december/id-card-by-mahmoud-darwish-a-translation-and-commentary.html
As the book details, he wrote this and then performed it on a stage in Israel, to their outrage, I think it said around 1958.