Since October 2023, Israel has been fighting a war it did not start. It is fighting an enemy in Gaza that neither has respect for international law nor for the wellbeing of its civilians. Aside from the military war happening in the Middle East, Israel has been fighting against misinformation. Israel has been called an apartheid state, an occupier, a colonizer, and most egregiously, a state hellbent on committing genocide. The problem with all these charges, but especially the genocide charge, is that they are patently false. The supposed human rights organization Amnesty International recently released a report on the bogus charge of Israel committing genocide. It has raised my ire enough where we are on Part III of this blog series refuting the charge of genocide.
In Part I, I outlined the legal definition of genocide under international law and how Israel's actions do not constitute genocide. In a predetermined fashion, Amnesty International assumed Israel's guilt, which included complaining that international law does not conform to their predetermined conclusions, ignoring Hamas' genocidal intent, and taking Israel's actions out of context. The genocide charge also ignores Gaza's growing population. News flash: if there's actual genocide, the population notably declines; it does not increase.
In Part II, I pointed out that Israel would not have a multiethnic society with 1.8 million Muslims if it was intent on wiping out Arab Muslims. I then mention how a genocidal regime would not try for "land for peace" for seven decades; it would simply wipe out the intended target. Afterwards, I detail how Israel has done its way to avoid civilian harm in a manner unprecedented in military history. I want to start Part III today by showing how Hamas' action by illustrating that Hamas has no disregard for civilian life.
Hamas' actions towards its civilians during wartime needlessly increases casualties. In contrast to the IDF doing its best in urban warfare conditions, Hamas hides its weapons in civilian infrastructure and has been using its citizens as human shields since 2007. Why? Such a strategy means that either the IDF's operations are undermined or there will be higher civilian casualties. In either way, Hamas wins because it does not care about civilians dying.
Combined with the fact that this war is happening in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, I find it impressive that the IDF can keep the civilian to combatant ratio as low as it has. The United Nations has found that civilians have accounted for 90 percent of modern-day wartime casualties, which has been corroborated by other research.
I do not trust Hamas' claim that 46,000 Palestinians have died in the Israel-Hamas war because they have been guilty of fatality data manipulation. This December 2024 report from the Henry Jackson Society sheds some light on the matter. But let us assume that the 46,000 figure is correct, as well as the IDF's estimate that 17,000 of those deaths were Hamas militants (although it's an undercount since the figure is from October). Even if some claimed correctly that the number of dead militants is actually only 8,500 dead, that 18.5 percent of the deaths being combatants would still be below the civilian-to-combatant ratio for modern-day warfare. It would be all the more impressive if the "17,000 dead militants" figure is correct (meaning 37 percent were combatants).
Amnesty International is not a trustworthy source. For one, let us start with the fact that Amnesty International's own employees in Israel disagree with the assessment. Do the employees at Amnesty Israel think that the IDF's actions are problematic? Yes. Do they amount to genocide? Not according to Amnesty Israel. In terms of the assessment itself, much of the citations are either self-referencing or a referencing the terrorist organization Hamas in a one-sided fashion.
Amnesty International has never accused another nation of committing genocide in recent history. That includes the 580,000 dead Muslims under Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, ISIS' attacks on the Yezidi minority in Syria, the 233,000 Muslims killed in the Yemeni Civil War, the 150,000 murdered in the current civil war in Sudan, or the Chinese government's persecution of the Muslim Uyghur population. There are multiple countries riddled with war and conflict that have higher death tolls than the highest estimates than the current Israel-Hamas War, and AI alleges that only one country -- Israel -- is committing genocide? It is the similar bias with which the United Nations passes more resolutions against Israel than it does any other nations, including the aforementioned nations killing thousands of their own citizens.
Also, notice what there is not coming from AI, which is reporting on Hamas' dehumanizing racist rhetoric. It is not exactly a secret that Gazan society is full of Jew hatred. After all, UNRWA teachers have been teaching this anti-Jewish bigotry at UNRWA schools for years. In spite of the genocidal intentions that Hamas has explicitly expressed since its founding in 1988, AI manufactures the bogus case that only Israel is guilty. AI took a similar potshot its 2022 report lobbing the false accusation of apartheid against Israel, not to mention the number of other times AI has exhibited a blatant anti-Israel bias over the years.
Postscript. Israel's actions in Gaza are not genocide, either in demonstrable, moral, or legal terms. Hamas initiated an unjust war with mass attacks on noncombatants and population centers. There is a difference between fighting a just war jus ad bellum that the other side started versus committing a genocide. It is not genocide when the Palestinians are losing a war that they started with a blatant human rights violation. Instead of intentionally killing civilians, the IDF has tried its utmost to save Palestinian civilians, even in spite of Hamas' best efforts to use their citizens as human shields and maximize casualties. Put the blame where it rightfully belongs: Hamas, the de facto ruling government of Gaza.
Amnesty International pre-determined that Israel was guilty before it wrote the report. Having found no actual genocide, Amnesty International dismisses international law and attempts to redefine genocide while taking quotes out of context to make Israel look worse than it is. What has become clear is that Amnesty International is more interested in smearing Jews than it is in actual human rights advocacy. AI's bias reminds us that the anti-Semites believe that "if there are no Jews, it is not news." That is how messed up this latest form of anti-Semitism is, especially when the anti-Semites declared Hamas' actions on October 7 as resistance. Judging Israel by a different legal and moral standard than everyone else while judging the terrorist Hamas regime by zero standards is "undiluted bigotry."
By accusing Israel of genocide, Amnesty International attempts to neuter Jewish trauma in order to wage political war against Israel. It is the positing of this false moral equivalency that has permitted anti-Semitism to fester and explode across the world since October 7, 2023. It also diminishes the meaning of genocide and those who were brutally murdered in past genocides. The accusation of genocide against Israel is not only wrong, but it is morally reprehensible. We should muster the courage to push back against such a fallacious libel that is not only causing harm to the Jewish people, but making it that much more difficult to do real work for human rights.
