Hamas launched a series of armed incursions against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. These attacks included kidnapping, rape, torture, and decapitation of Israeli citizens, a brutal day that has resulted in over 1,200 dead Israeli citizens. The fact that they posted their brutality on social media and bragged about it made it all the more abhorrent. Even from the onset, I knew that Israel was going to respond militarily and Israel was going to hit hard. I was worried about waning global support for Israel because the goal of eradicating Hamas was not going to be an easy feat and not achievable in a matter of hours or even days. Given the short news cycle that is stunted by social media, it turns out that I was right.
It has been a little over two months and many have either forgotten why the Israeli Defense Forces are in Gaza in the first place or simply do not care what happened to Israeli citizens on October 7. Not only is the United Nations pushing for a ceasefire, but an old trope is reemerging. Which trope is that? The reemerging trope is the accusation that Israel is committing genocide. I call it an old trope for two reasons. One is that the accusation of blood libel against the Jews goes back centuries. The second is because accusing Israel of genocide has been going on for decades now. On my blog, I first addressed the accusation back in 2014.
This accusation has a number of problems. One is that it ignores that 377,000 have been killed in the Yemen War and that over 300,000 civilians were killed in the Syrian Civil War, including 3,146 Syrian Palestinians. In an unsurprisingly hypocritical fashion, the pro-Palestinian protestors only lose their collective mind when Israel does anything, including taking a metaphorical breath or sneezing the wrong way. Another issue is that genocide is not synonymous with "action resulting in multiple deaths that I personally find detestable or morally problematic." If words are to mean anything, you do not get to lob around loaded terms solely because you strongly disapprove of current events. The word "genocide" has a specific definition with specific requirements for it to constitute genocide. The United Nations first recognized it as a crime under international law in 1946. The definition below is contained under Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which is the standard used in international law. After providing this definition below, I am going to delve into why Israel is not committing genocide.
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Israel has stated that it does not have genocidal intent. As we see from Article II of the Convention defining genocide, intent is a legal prerequisite to be classified as genocide, vis-à-vis the clause "with intent to destroy." The other major part of the intent stated in Article II is wanting to destroy the group as a group, which is important since every provision in Article II emphasizes the group component.
The statements made by the government of Israel since October 7 do not constitute genocidal intent. Even when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his controversial Amalek reference on November 3, he also made it clear that the goal "is to destroy the brutal and murderous Hamas-ISIS enemy," not the Palestinian people. A few days later, Netanyahu said that civilian deaths are unfortunate and that the blame should fall on Hamas. Netanyahu also disciplined a cabinet member for calling for a nuclear strike on Gaza since that would skyrocket the civilian death toll to unacceptable levels.
Contrast that with Hamas, which has been blatantly overt since its founding in 1988 about its goals to wipe out Israel and the Jewish people. Shortly after the October 7 attack, Hamas official Ghazi Hamad declared on Lebanese television that Hamas will repeat the October 7 attack until Israel is annihilated. That sounds an awful lot like genocidal intent to me. Plus, the October 7 attack gives us a good idea of what they would do if the IDF decided to lay down its arms.
The Israeli Defense Force's actions indicate a desire to mitigate harm, not cause it. It would be one thing if Israel were saying one thing while doing the opposite thing. Fortunately, that is not the case here. I can simultaneously recognize that the death of innocent civilians is both an inevitable outcome in war and that such civilian deaths are also a tragedy. That being said, there are several indicators that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is doing its utmost to minimize civilian casualties.
Before its ground invasion, the IDF called for the evacuation of Gazan citizens by dropping leaflets and online videos, which is something it has done in past incursions. The IDF even held off its ground invasion for a week. The IDF has a practice of calling off a military attack if the civilians remain in the area, with calling off an airstrike in May 2021 being but one example. No other military in human history has given advance warning to the other side of its attacks because it means losing element of surprise, as well as giving enemy combatants the opportunity to escape. A similar consideration goes for Israel's implementation of a humanitarian corridor and daily four-hour pauses of fighting. What frustrates me is that the anti-Israel forces are so hellbent on discrediting Israel that they partake in the mental gymnastics to argue that these measures are genocidal. If Israel were truly intent on genocide, it would give no such warnings or relief to Gazan civilians. The IDF would simply use its military capabilities that ran in the Top 20 of the Global Firepower Index and attack Gaza with everything they have.
You do not need to solely read the IDF's description of how it minimizes harm to civilians in Gaza. As a paper from the Naval War College Review details (Merriam and Schmitt, 2015), the IDF has a track record of minimizing civilian casualties. We can also look at the civilian-combatant ratio to have a metric of how the IDF is performing. The estimated civilian-combatant ratio in the latest Israel-Hamas War is about 2:1, which is comparable to other major wars. This ratio would indicate that the IDF's actions are not beyond the pale when it comes to its goal of targeting Hamas' military installations, especially given the context that I highlight throughout today's piece.
Israel is responding to a pogrom that was carried out by Hamas. Israel did not start this war. On the contrary! Prior to October 7, the IDF did not have a military presence in Gaza since it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The war was imposed on Israel because a terrorist organization decided to carry out the largest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Israel is interested in eradicating the terrorist organization Hamas, bringing the remaining hostages home, and defending its people, the latter of which is a right under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. The idea that hunting down terrorists with genocidal intent is genocide is yet another example of jaw-dropping doublespeak that has emerged in recent years.
Whether reflected in words or deeds, the IDF's military campaign is the opposite of what eliminating Gazans would look like. Given Hamas' genocidal intent (see previous paragraph) and the fact that Hamas has launched at least 11,000 rockets into Israel since October 7, Israel is well within its right to use significant military force to defend its borders, provided of course that it is directed at legitimate military targets, e.g., Hamas' network of 1,300 tunnels. Rather than violate international law, Israel's actions have been informed by the rules of International Humanitarian Law.
Palestinian population growth disproves the accusation of genocide. The charge of Israel committing genocide is not unique to 2023, but rather an argument that has been made over the past few decades. If Israel were committing genocide against Palestinians over time (in what is referred to as "incremental genocide"), the proof would be in the pudding, i.e., the population statistics. Other genocides that have taken place, whether the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, or the Srebrenica massacre, had notable population declines in the targeted group.
There would be a similar decline in the Palestinian population if genocide were taking place. What took place in West Bank and Gaza was the opposite. The raw population data show that Israel has not partaken in genocide. In 1950, the population was below 1 million. In 1990, it was 1.97 million and increased to 5.04 million in 2022 (World Bank). Either Israel is comprised of the most incompetent génocidaires on the planet or the much more plausible response is that Israel is not committing genocide.
Postscript. The IDF has a very tough task. A ground invasion in an urban area (and one of the most densely populated areas on the planet to boot) that has steadily been losing international support. If that were not enough, IDF's efforts are hampered when Hamas uses its citizens as human shields, launches military operations from civilian sites, and urges Gazans to ignore the IDF and stay put. The Gazan civilian death toll would be lower if Hamas stopped exploiting civilians to improve its public image in the international community. To destroy Hamas and minimize civilian casualties given the circumstances is indeed a tall order for the IDF.
Yes, Hamas is being pursued aggressively. Israel's actions in Gaza are grave because what happened to Israel on October 7, 2023 was also grave. War is prima facie a nasty business, regardless of the justification. With all the aforementioned context factored in, does it make the IDF's military operations genocide? Absolutely not! If you paint it with that broad of a stroke, any act of war, whether offensive or defensive, whether justified or not, would be genocide. As sad as civilian casualties are, they do not automatically constitute as genocide.
We have to be able to distinguish between general and/or legitimate types of warfare versus a deliberate policy of mass extermination. To reiterate, genocide has a specific meaning with serious connotations. Throwing around the word "genocide" so capriciously and with such carelessness means that the term loses its moral and legal meaning. It should not be used as a cudgel in a political war against Israel. By rendering the word to such meaninglessness, the framework of international law ends up being undermined:
"A society which does not understand the moral distinction to be drawn between the IDF's campaign in Gaza...and the Holocaust, and uses the same word, 'genocide,' to describe those events, is a society which is simply not serious about morality at all. It is a society which does not understand the difference between tragedy and hatred, or the moral implications of either."
Some believe that Israel is justified in its actions to uproot Hamas to make sure that they can never harm Israeli civilians again. Others believe that the civilian casualties are too high of a cost to pay. We can get into a debate about whether Israel's response has been measured or excessive, whether their tactics are proper, or where there is room for improvement in how the IDF operates in Gaza. That sort of conversation would be within the bounds of political discourse and dissent. But let's steer clear of loaded terminology that is both inaccurate and does nothing to advance civil society because we should fight for a world in which the meaning of words still matters.
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