Experts on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said a judgment on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is unlikely before the end of 2027 at the earliest, amid warnings that the international community should not use the court’s glacial proceedings as an excuse to put off action to stop the killing.
Israel was originally due to present its rebuttal to the genocide charge brought by South Africa on Monday, but the court has granted its lawyers a six-month extension.
The South African legal team countered that none of the arguments given by Israeli lawyers were a legitimate reason for delay, and dragging out the case was unjustifiable in view of the humanitarian emergency in Gaza. But the court sided with Israel, which now has until next January to present its case.
“The second round is usually around six months each, so that’s another year, and then that brings us to January 2027,” said Michael Becker, who served as a legal officer at the ICJ from 2010 to 2014, and who is now assistant professor of international human rights law at Trinity College Dublin.
A range of factors could drag the case into 2028 however, including demands by other countries to intervene.
The article on the same site you shared here (https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/royal-canadian-mounted-police) about the RCMP goes over their history as the NWCP, who were created to control “unrest” among indigenous people and settlers (I.e. the people that were stealing their land). You can read about the Indian Act, which exists to this day. That book goes over the laws I mentioned about the police enforcing the potluck bans and how they punished indigenous people who went off reserve (similarly to how Israeli forces keep Palestinians within their own areas and don’t allow them travel outside without a pass). There’s a shorter version of the 21 things you may not know about the Indian act Here, and Bob Joseph is one the most renowned indigenous scholars in Canada. Police officers were also the ones who would “arrest” children and take them to the residential schools. orangeshirtday.org
As for the sixties scoop, there are a few things at play. One, the reservations were kept under-served (meaning in terms of electricity, etc) by the very systems the government had created. Two, as you mentioned, they did not own the land (and legally weren’t allowed to) so they were all “poor” in the eyes of the government. But most importantly, its the basis that the white government workers who were deciding what is or isn’t a good “fit” for the child were doing so based on their own cultural values
As a consequence, indigenous children were greatly over-represented in the child welfare system: by your own source, its a low estimate to say that 20,000 children were taken from their homes.
You mentioned that school age mortality was around 1 in 250. In residential schools, that same mortality was 1 in 25 (conservatively). The medical inspector of these schools himself even called out the conditions of these schools in his book A National Crime.
As for the savage comment, I barely even want to respond to that but White Canadians most certainly also had slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries, and I promise you that is not why he was calling then “savages”.
The definition of genocide:
The government itself recognized the actions as genocide, and what is disingenuous is to downplay the genocide of one group of peoples over another just because one was “less effective” at destroying a culture and murdering people.
I know I’m not going to change your mind so I’m going to stop replying after this. I want you to know that I don’t think Canada, or Canadians, are “bad” people, just like how I don’t think Israelis are necessarily “bad” people. The government does fucked up shit. All governments do fucked up shit. None of it is okay, and none of it is “better” just because it is less successful at its goal of erasing entire cultures. Yes, even those slave trading indigenous groups were doing fucked up shit, and no, that also was not okay. That doesn’t mean it’s okay to kill them all and replace them with your own fucked up shit.
You’re right, we likely won’t convince each other of the other’s view point, so not much point labouring over it in regards to Canada’s actions explicitly.
That said, back to the core point, I don’t think anything you’ve said changes my position that equating these two things cheapens the word Genocide.
To take a similar situation to clarify: Rape. Go back a decade or two, and Rape brought forward images of like, a guy hiding in a dark parking lot at night, jumping out and violently forcing himself on a woman. Or cases where the rapist broke into a single woman’s home and assaulted her. Now, in Canada for example, when a woman has an orgy with 5 guys, is recorded saying shit like “Get over here and fuck me you pussy”, and later decides she didn’t want to do that… it’s called rape. Or the Harvey situation, where women consenting to sex in exchange for power/privilege, is called rape. Advocacy groups make claims like over 50% of women have been raped, with the ‘broader’ understanding of the word. Even if some legal gits have structured arguments and bullshit so that the term ‘technically’ fits in the broader sense, people care a lot less now when someone like Trump is called a Rapist – the words been diluted to a point where its lost its power. If everyone’s a rapist, why be morally outraged?
Calling Canada’s actions over the course of more than a century a genocide does the same thing. Calling Canada’s actions a genocide, while dithering on whether Israel’s actions count, makes the term genocide far less impactful.