Recent coverage of Gaza and the West Bank illustrates that, while corporate media occasionally outright call for expelling Palestinians from their land, more often the way these outlets support ethnic cleansing is by declining to call it ethnic cleansing.
If you want to argue a dictionary then be my guest.
maybe read the actual convention on genocide instead of relying on a dictionary then?
because the case of abducted children stated above is explicitly stated in the convention…the dictionary definition you found is simply wrong and incomplete.
The definition isn’t wrong, they just didn’t read it correctly. Those things in the UN convention are methods that could be used to “cause the destruction of a people”. They’re spelled out to avoid people misinterpreting the definition just like they did.
yes, true, but not exactly why i used the phrasing “wrong AND incomplete”:
i wrote it that way, because without clarifying that “destruction” means many different things apart form the common interpretation of “to kill”, it’s difficult for a casual reader to know what the convention actually says.
if anyone wants to shorten the definition to fit into a dictionary, they should be more responsible in their phrasing, so that this exact problem is less likely to occur.
so i do fault merriam webster here for providing an incomplete, oversimplified definition.
Nobody is saying the dictionary is wrong, they’re saying that there are international groups that have specific definitions for what qualifies as genocide and those don’t necessarily line up with the dictionary. Saying the dictionary is wrong because of the organizations’ use or the organizations are wrong because of the dictionary’s use are both foolish.
I’d argue that the convention on genocide serves as a dictionary in this case. It’s the most common and accepted definition, and it includes cultural forms of genocide, not just physical ones.
Neither is wrong, they just serve different purposes. Dictionaries track usage of the general populace, not industry experts. It’s wrong to use the dictionary as evidence that the convention on genocide is using the term incorrectly though, definitely.