The Genocide Libel

The claim that there is a genocide in Gaza is not only wrong but also dangerous.

Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

I’m disappointed The Conntrarian published Madeleine’s piece arguing for the “genocide” label for Gaza. While the journal should publish a wide variety of material, its point, I thought, was to express “contrary” opinions—and based on what students tell me about YikYak and student culture, there is a semi-totalitarian atmosphere of antizionism here. (I’m sure the students who abuse me on YikYak from the safety of their anonymity will enjoy the current essay.) Such a piece is not exactly “contrary” to popular opinion. Perhaps she should have published it elsewhere?

Still, I read it with interest. I admire its earnestness, and its compassion for human suffering, in addition to its dedication to research and its sources. Of course many of the “facts” it cites are contestable—but then again, one must admit it is hard to know the facts, not least because the competing echo chambers spin very dissimilar versions of reality. As problematic, however, is some of its reasoning. I’ll be brief here, but happy to engage further with anyone who cares to discuss the matter in good faith. (For those interested in a useful brief challenge to the “Genocide Libel” I commend this: https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/1957443108397781234.)

Let’s grant the significant destruction in Gaza, and at least the official number of 70,000-plus dead, reported by Hamas (whose credibility should surely be questioned). Madeleine’s key words are “going well beyond collateral damage” and “deliberate.” So the key questions in response are these: (1) Of the 70,000-plus dead, what is the ratio of civilian:combatant? And (2) What is the relevant sense of “deliberate” that would support “genocide”?

Re: (1), though this is not the place to litigate it, there is reason to believe—even accepting Hamas’s numbers—that the civilian:combatant ratio is among the lowest in modern urban warfare. (See urban warfare scholar John Spencer on that topic.) And even if that ratio weren’t historically low, ask yourself what ratio you would expect if a militant group that started a war embeds itself into “civilian” infrastructure, builds military tunnels under nearly everything, stores weapons nearly everywhere, fights in civilian clothes, fires rockets that fall short and kill their own people, etc? Even were that ratio very high you can only blame the militant group for those casualties—unless you accept their human-shield strategy of warfare, in which case you abandon all international law and consign the future of humanity to horrific lawless bloodshed. In short: if the ratio indeed is low the civilians are unambiguously acceptable (if tragic) “collateral damage,” and if it is high the responsibility is directly that of Hamas, for its many ways of using human shields. In either case the allegation of “genocide” borders on absurd.

And remember: Hamas started the war, continued to fight it for two years, refused to return the hostages and rejected numerous ceasefire offers, and to this day regularly violates the ceasefire, refuses to disarm, and announces its intentions to do “October 7”s over and over again. If this were a “genocide” it would be the first “genocide” in history where the alleged victim held the power, every day, to end the violence, and chose not to.

As for (2), see the answer to (1). Hamas’s use of hospitals for its war effort is well documented. Just this week it was revealed that a Hamas doctor executed an Israeli hostage in cold blood by injecting air into her veins, and did so in a hospital. The militarization of hospitals, tragically, makes them legitimate targets. Attacking them, in the appropriate conditions, is war, and it’s awful, but it has literally nothing to do with genocide.

Madeleine’s discussion of “intent” is also unpersuasive. The one quote she offers doesn’t even resemble either genocidal intent or “dehumanization.” There are better ones for that purpose she might have offered, invoked by the various reports alleging “genocide,” but you really should read those reports yourselves to see how ridiculous they are. Random quotes, taken out of context, in most cases actually mean nothing like what the reports claim they mean; look at the widely discussed “Amalek” example to see how silly the claims actually are. But even if you take these scattered quotes to suggest genocidal intent, that evidence must surely be weighed against the voluminous counter-evidence in the actual behavior of Israel during the war: civilian warnings, evacuations, using ground troops instead of bombing from air, coordinating and delivering literally unprecedented and massive amounts of humanitarian aid, etc. If Israeli intent were “genocide” then why wouldn’t Israel just bomb the place into nothingness, which they could, but did not, do?

True, the facts are contested, and Madeleine obviously relies on her sources—and could be expected to do no differently, because all of us can only know what the available sources teach us. But to my eye the claims that Israel has a “complete siege,” “blocks humanitarian aid,” “prevents evacuees from reaching safe zones,” etc. are obvious and demonstrable falsehoods. (In fact I believe they are outright lies perpetrated by the various sources Madeleine relies on.) If these allegations were even close to true, wouldn’t everyone in Gaza, literally everyone, be dead? A “complete” siege? No aid at all? People forced to stay in bomb zones? How could anyone survive two-plus years of that?

And yet some 97% of the population has survived, according to official numbers, two years of relentless “genocide” by one of the world’s more powerful armies.

War is awful. Tragic. Devastating. Particularly war fought in those urban conditions.

But war is not “genocide.”

We agree that words matter. But the defamatory use of the word “genocide,” the libel, against Israel is a malicious attempt to delegitimize Israel’s perfectly just war of self-defense against an enemy sworn not merely to its destruction but ultimately to the murder of every Jew on earth—an “intent” you don’t have to invent in made up or distorted quotes but which the enemy openly declares in its foundational charter, has repeated explicitly and regularly for nearly 40 years, has repeated explicitly nearly daily for the past two years, and openly reveals in almost all its actions: the militarization of Gaza, the diversion of billions of dollars of international aid into tunnels and military equipment, the launching of tens of thousands of rockets and six wars since taking over Gaza in 2007, and the act of mass slaughter perpetrated on October 7 2023. There is only one “genocide” that has been committed in the past two years, and it is the one attempted by Hamas on October 7. Israel’s response has not been one of “genocide” but of anti-genocide, as it attempts to remove the true genocidal entity from its side.

In fact the defamatory libel of “genocide” against Israel is worse: it is an attempt to mark the Jewish state, and the many Jews who support it, for marginalization, ostracization, and violence. To designate justified Jewish self-defense, pursued via just means, as “genocidal” is to forbid Jews from defending themselves from actual genocide.

And that is to support, promote, and be complicit in the genocidal campaign against the Jews.

As I write news comes in of at least sixteen dead and dozens injured in a shooting attack on a Hanukkah party in Australia, and of a Jewish home having 20 bullets shot into it in California. This follows months of violent attacks on Jewish institutions, synagogues, and individuals (including numerous murders) across the globe. When there is a global campaign to malign “Zionists” around the world as genociders, one can hardly be surprised when individuals decide to be heroes and gun down the “Zionists” in their midst.

The Genocide Libel marks Jews around the world for violence.

Words—and lies—have consequences.