Sandwell Councillor defects to Reform

[Pontificator]

Ahhh so we should just be sound with genocide 

You are Cathy Newman and I claim my £5.

1. We should not be "sound" with the death of innocent people (grades 1-10) anywhere.

2. Nor should we stand shoulder to shoulder with people who do not believe the state of Israel should exist. Unfortunately many of you do just that, and anyone who’s been on any of those marches certainly does. Anti-semitism laundered as "opposition to Israel".

1. Never been on a march

2. I can criticise Israel and not be anti-semitic. In fact, the only true anti-semitism I see on here is people who continually weaken the true meaning by misrepresenting what it is and isn’t

3. I don’t like Hamas either 

4. I’d like the State of Israel to exist with respect for international law, life and without a bunch of far right nutcases causing the problems that they are (you say different)

You mean like you weaken the meaning of genocide 

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
   
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
   
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
   
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
   
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
   

The key elements are:

• The intent to destroy (intent is essential),
  
• The group must be national, ethnic, racial, or religious,
  
• At least one of the listed acts must be committed.
  

Just for clarity - which of those elements do you think have NOT been met?

Even accepting Hamas’s 70,000 death figure, which counts no militants and includes natural deaths, the civilian-to-combatant ratio, using IDF estimates, is under 1.5 to 1, far below the global war average of about 9 to 1 - No army fighting a justifiable war has done more to avoid civilian deaths than the IDF. Civilian casualties do not prove intent