Ron Unz is interviewed by Mike Whitney at unz.com:
“Israel has Absolutely No Legitimate Case Whatsoever for Its Attacks on Gaza”
Question 1: The ICJ Genocide Ruling
In your opinion, is the ICJ’s ‘genocide’ ruling convincing or overstated?
Ron Unz—From the beginning I’ve been extremely reluctant to characterize the Israeli attack on Gaza as being a “genocide” because use of that term has become so wildly inflated and distorted in recent years, converted by dishonest Western governments and their mainstream media lackeys into a propaganda-weapon used to vilify countries whose governments they seek to undermine.
Most people understand “genocide” to mean killing a large fraction of a given population group as part of an effort aimed at total extermination. But in early 2021, the outgoing Trump Administration and incoming Biden officials both publicly declared that the Chinese government was committing a “genocide” against the Uighur people of Xinjiang Province despite failing to provide any evidence that any significant number of Uighurs had actually been killed, and the media heavily promoted those accusations. If the bipartisan political leaders of America and our complicit mainstream media can declare a “genocide” without any apparent killings, the word has become so totally corrupted that I’m loath to consider using it.
If you are trying to remove the people by any means necessary and take their land then that is a genocide.
The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks. ~ Lord Acton