alt Hacker NewsI find it helpful to, let's call it "vibe-check" the headline statements in articles like this. Essentially I'm using the llm as a glorified search engine, and also hoping it will have, not zero bias, but less bias than I have.
Here, I asked:
"The international Court of Justice, all the major historians of genocide, the United Nations, all the major human rights organisations, the mainstream Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence and even a former Israeli Prime Minister all call the Gaza “war” a genocide." Please check and provide sources.
Highlights from its responses:
"The ICJ has not ruled that genocide occurred. What it has done in South Africa v. Israel is issue provisional measures (interim orders) and state that at least some rights claimed under the Genocide Convention are “plausible” and need urgent protection—this is not a final finding that genocide is happening."
Sourced to https://www.icj-cij.org/node/203447?utm_source=chatgpt.com, which indeed says "At the present stage of the proceedings, the Court is not required to ascertain whether any violations of Israel’s obligations under the Genocide Convention have occurred."
"some UN bodies and UN-appointed experts have used genocide language, but it’s not the same as “the UN” as a single institution making a binding legal determination (only a competent court can do that)."
Indeed, it cites 3 bodies. To me this seems "close enough", with due respect to the size and complexity of the UN bundle of institutions.
For human rights organizations it commented: "Overstated. Some major ones have used genocide language; not all have framed it that way" and similarly for historians. This is a fair point but doesn't have much empirical evidence, e.g. of any major HROs or historians who explicitly denied it was genocide.
It sourced the claim about Jennifer Lawrence, and it says of "the Israeli PM": "The most commonly cited former PM here is Ehud Olmert. He has very publicly accused Israel of war crimes and condemned specific plans/actions. But there are also interviews/articles noting that he stops short of calling it genocide." The last claim is accurately sourced to https://www.arabnews.com/node/2612893/middle-east.
I found this check helpful because it swiftly established that a key opening claim of the article is strongly overstated. If the author can't be trusted to fairly represent quite basic, public facts, then I have correspondingly less trust in what else they are going to argue, and less interest in spending my attention on it.
My meta-point is that when used with care, llms can swiftly source supporting evidence and/or rebuttals to other people's arguments.
From the ICJ doc you linked: > In the Court’s view, at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the Convention.
The doc establishes that “capable of falling within the provisions of the Convention” means “acts or measures which would be capable of killing or continuing to kill Palestinians, or causing or continuing to cause serious bodily or mental harm to Palestinians or deliberately inflicting on their group, or continuing to inflict on their group, conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. This is the definition of genocide.
So the court statement again but with a helpful substitution by me:
> In the Court’s view, at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be [genocide].
So the LLM is correct the ICJ has not yet issued its final ruling and also the author is correct to say the ICJ has called it genocide. And in my view you are incorrect to imply the author can’t be trusted.