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1332 points Qem | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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dluan ◴[] No.45271565[source]
Seeing PG slowly turn on this issue, from nothing into recognition and now into advocacy has been wild. Presumably because he has kids, and like many parents you understand with your eyes first, and then your heart.

PG wields some amount of power in SV, but YC and others are still inextricably tied to what's happening. Thiel was just in Israel with elad gil, rabois, alex karp, joe lonsdale. It's just too much to list.

I guess my point is when does recognition turn into action.

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nakamoto_damacy ◴[] No.45273157[source]
I used to shame PG for his elitist views. Now I celebrate his moral courage.

One man cannot fix everything.

Dear PG (I'm sure you don't read HN, but this is yet another echo),

As I said on X, your own platform (YCombinator) is still full of hateful bigots who would censor/downvote even the mildest form of speaking against the genocide. Proof: this comment being downvoted. Downvoting as a mechanism is akin to censorship. It's being abused.

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adastra22 ◴[] No.45273365[source]
Having a difference of opinion on a very complicated geopolitical situation that is the culmination of a century of regional conflict is not being a "hateful bigot" or abuse.
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nakamoto_damacy ◴[] No.45273407[source]
Genocide is not complicated.
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trhway[dead post] ◴[] No.45273587[source]
[flagged]
iainmerrick ◴[] No.45274191[source]
You're reading an awful lot into something not being included in a radio interview.

We should consider the possibility that the UN report does in fact cover that point. To find out we should look at the original source: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies...

There are many occurrences of "intent" and "destroy" in that document. It includes both the definition you mentioned, and analysis of how it applies in Gaza.

To answer the point that a lot of the data comes from Hamas, the other major data source is the Israeli military (e.g. the "COGAT" link somebody posted above with pictures of grocery stores overflowing with produce) so it's surely equally suspect. If third parties were given free access to do their own investigations, that would be useful, to be sure. The party blocking access (and blocking humanitarian aid) is the Israeli military.

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trhway ◴[] No.45274509{3}[source]
>You're reading an awful lot into something not being included in a radio interview.

It isn't something. It is the primary thing here. For a professional such an omission can be only deliberate. The radio interview would be heard by millions of people while the report would be read by a much-much-much smaller number of people. Such an omission in the whole context of the other things - like not calling out genocide of Jewish people by HAMAS on Oct 7, 2023 - can lead to only one conclusion.

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1. iainmerrick ◴[] No.45275104{4}[source]
Okay, I'll bite. You said:

today on NPR the head of that UN agency which produced that conclusion of genocide in Gaza failed to give proper definition of genocide which was the very first question by the interviewer. The part she omitted? She omited "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,"

From your link to NPR's transcript of the interview:

CHANG: So first, can you just define for us what is genocide, according to the U.N. Genocide Convention?

PILLAY: Firstly, it's accepted by all that genocide is a monstrous crime, an extremely serious crime, which is the killing and destruction of a people in whole or in part. That's why we say it has a specific overarching intent.

The phrasing is a bit clumsy (e.g. "that's why we say") but the idea that Pillay is trying to sneakily hide something here is rather bizarre. It seems very likely that "specific overarching intent" is meant to refer to the specific clause you highlighted. Obviously a live radio interview is going to be a bit less polished than the final written conclusions of a two-year study; that hardly implies malice.

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2. trhway ◴[] No.45275206[source]
>The phrasing is a bit clumsy (e.g. "that's why we say")

You're kidding. "Top UN legal investigator" on genocide is clumsy with genocide definition. And not on some detail. She is "clumsy" on the main thing delineating genocide from the other crimes otherwise similar.

That isn't clumsy. That is absolutely incorrect. It isn't "why ... intent" . The intent in genocide is the "why". She obviously knows it, and thus does it deliberately. There is no other explanation here.

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3. iainmerrick ◴[] No.45275526[source]
The full report itself has all the precise detail you're asking for. It's not like the interviewee is insinuating one thing but the report actually says something else. What exactly do you think is being covered up in this interview?
4. lcnPylGDnU4H9OF ◴[] No.45280792[source]
> clumsy with genocide definition

That's not what they said the UN investigator was clumsy with. They said she was clumsy with how she orally delivered their justification for why they think it fits the definition of genocide.

> Firstly, it's accepted by all that genocide is a monstrous crime, an extremely serious crime, which is the killing and destruction of a people in whole or in part.

The UN investigator is saying that the genocide as it's been perpetrated leaves no doubt that it is intentional by observing of the scale and horror of the destruction. "That's why [they] say it has a specific overarching intent."