After receiving the text for the ad quoted above, a representative from the advertising team suggested AFSC use the word “war” instead of “genocide” – a word with an entirely different meaning both colloquially and under international law. When AFSC rejected this approach, the New York Times Ad Acceptability Team sent an email that read in part: “Various international bodies, human rights organizations, and governments have differing views on the situation. In line with our commitment to factual accuracy and adherence to legal standards, we must ensure that all advertising content complies with these widely applied definitions.”

  • the_three_tomatoes@lemmy.world
    1·
    17 hours ago

    For example, reading the articles, it’s impossible to determine if you just read 10 articles about 10 different events, or 10 articles about the same event, because the articles don’t include enough detail. Yet, if people read the same headline then times, they’re going to think it must be true. I’ve gotten into it with people here on Lemmy where they tell me how wrong I am and just look at all these examples of Israel doing a thing, and then they post three examples all talking about the same one event and they don’t even realize.

    First off, thanks for the very detailed reply!

    This is a very important point. Any numbers can be inflated. When early Zionists committed the Deir Yassin (?) massacre, many Palestinian freedom fighters inflated the real numbers to fear-monger others to join them in their fight. Some also downplayed the numbers for their own reasons. This is one of the things I’ve learned recently just reading about the history of this long conflict. Very interesting!

    That being said, I’ve also come to understand that many evidence is video based and can be geolocated and confirmed using landmarks and so on. I doubt that they will only present their case using news articles with no footage/video evidence.

    I totally agree that a history of war crimes doesn’t mean Israel is committing all of them 🤣

    However one thing that stood out for me was not having allowed adequate aid in. On one hand, Israel says it’s providing enough aid. On the other hand, the UN and every other organization are talking about some of the difficulties of getting aid in and some decisions that Israel has taken sound ridiculous though! I read they didn’t allow dates in, and many everyday items were branded as “dual use” and banned from entering (like scissors!!).

    To me the news reports are too chaotic to make a case against Israel, but the throttling of aid entering while also conducting military operations at every single hospital in Gaza could, in my opinion, be strong indicators to use in a case against them at the ICC. Of course I know Hamas operates often from the midst of civilian crowds, but whether they were there in the hospitals or not may not play such a huge role because in the end a large number of civilians were harmed and life-saving and essential infrastructure was destroyed by Israel. It doesn’t look good for them even though I understand why it was necessary.