WATCH: Are Israelis committing genocide in Gaza?
Here are 5 important points to consider
In this ALL ISRAEL 101 video, Joel C. Rosenberg addresses the accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Here are 5 important points to consider.
Click on the video above to watch or read the transcript – lightly edited for clarity – below.
Are Israelis committing genocide in Gaza in our war against Hamas?
That’s certainly what we’re being accused of.
In January, the government of South Africa formally charged Israel with genocide before the World Court in The Hague.
What’s more, South Africa says that more than 50 other countries around the world, including of course the Palestinian Authority, are standing with them in full solidarity calling Israel a genocidal enemy.
A senior official in the United Nations, who is in charge of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, is also formally accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians.
But not everyone agrees.
U.S. President Joe Biden, for example, has categorically rejected the accusation, even though he has significant disagreements with the Israeli government with Prime Minister Netanyahu on how best to prosecute the war.
“What's happening in Gaza is not genocide,” President Biden said on May 20, 2024 during remarks at the White House. “We reject that allegation,” he said.
Some of Biden’s most virulent critics are calling him “Genocide Joe.” Why? Because he supports Israel in its war against the Hamas terrorist organization. But the president insists that Israel is engaged in a just war of self-defense against the Hamas terror group.
Yes, the number of Palestinians who have died is tragically high, Biden has conceded over the past several months, but this is because, he says, Hamas has embedded itself inside the civilian population in Gaza – and has been firing rockets at Israel, at Israeli civilians – hospitals, schools, playgrounds, apartment buildings, mosques and other civilian centers – not because Israel is trying to kill civilians.
None of this, he argues, is evidence that Israel is committing genocide.
To the contrary, Biden says, the American people and the American government stand shoulder to shoulder with the people and government of Israel to defeat Hamas and liberate the Palestinians of Gaza from Hamas’ cruel tyranny.
“We stand with Israel to take out (Hamas leader Yahya) Sinwar and the rest of the butchers of Hamas,” Biden continued in his speech at the White House. “We want Hamas defeated. We're working with Israel to make that happen.”
The leaders of other countries – such as Canada and the United Kingdom and even Germany – have also rejected the argument that Israel is committing genocide.
Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, for example, believed that South Africa’s case is “completely unjustified and wrong.”
The government of Germany also strongly rejects the allegation that Israel is committing genocide or that the German government is aiding Israel in committing genocide. Berlin’s defense of Israel is particularly noteworthy. Why? Because in the 1940s, Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler itself was guilty of committing genocide against the Jewish people in what became known as the Holocaust.
What exactly does genocide mean?
Here's the official definition contained within the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and the Punishment of the crime of genocide, commonly known as the Genocide 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 harm 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."
This important element of international law was adopted by the UN on Dec. 9, 1948, shortly after World War II.
Why?
In specific reaction to the Nazi's war crimes in the Holocaust and the related and ghastly war crimes the German government and military committed under the reign of terror of Adolf Hitler.
Now the key word in the law is intent.
In his book Mein Kampf Hitler was explicit in his intention to exterminate the Jewish people. In numerous other official Nazi documents senior German officials also made it crystal clear their intention was to wipe out the Jewish people in whole or in part.
By sharp contrast the Israeli government has no intention, desire, plan or reason to destroy the Palestinian people.
Now, engaging in war itself, especially in a war of self-defense, is not genocide.
Indeed article 51 of the UN Charter specifically states that, "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations."
This is exactly what Israel is engaged in right now – a war of self-defense.
Yes, the war in Gaza is terrible and tragic.
Yes, the damage and destruction that has been wrought on Israeli communities near Gaza and on Palestinian communities in Gaza has been horrible.
The suffering that civilians on both sides have been forced to endure because of a war that Hamas started, a war that Hamas invited, a war the Hamas continues to perpetuate grieves me as it does anyone with a shred of humanity and compassion.
But again a war of self-defense is not only legal under international law. A war of self-defense is the obligation of, indeed a moral necessity for, legitimate sovereign governments to defend their people from barbaric attacks.
What, then, is the simplest, clearest, easiest case to make to defend Israel against such false and slanderous charges?
You may be getting these attacks at your office or at school or even at church or other places where people say, "How can you defend Israel when they are committing genocide."
Israel's not committing genocide.
Let me give you a few ideas on how you can respond in a very simple and clear way.
First, it’s important to point out that Israel has actually done more to protect Palestinian civilians during its military operations in wartime than any other military in the world has ever done during times of war.
After the Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7 – in which Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Jews, including shooting mothers in front of their children, children in front of their parents, beheading Jews, raping Jews, and burning entire Jewish families alive in their homes, and took more than 250 people hostages and dragged them into their terror tunnels in Gaza – Israel would have been justified if its military had invaded the Gaza Strip immediately to hunt down and destroy Hamas terrorists.
Instead, Israel actually waited for three weeks. Part of that reason was they were mobilizing reservists and getting them trained and ready to go into Gaza. But the IDF was also moving tanks and other material to the Gaza border. But during that time they began warning Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza, constantly and in every possible way, that Israel was about to invade. Israel sent text messages, phone calls, dropped 15 million leaflets to warn civilians of imminent invasion by the IDF and give them maps and instructions in Arabic, of course, where to go to find humanitarian safe zones.
That’s not what a genocidal army would do.
The Nazis in World War II certainly didn’t give Jews in Europe any warning that they were coming to exterminate them. The Nazis didn’t tell Jews where to go to be safe from Hitler’s genocidal kill squads and “death camps” like Auschwitz. Instead, the Nazis attacked the Jews without warning and murdered six million Jews, one out of every three Jews on the planet at that time. And the Nazis would have killed every Jew on the planet if they could, if they hadn't been stopped by the world's military alliance against them.
Or go to Cambodia in the 1970's, Pol Pot – the genocidal tyrant of Cambodia – certainly didn’t warn his enemies, his own people that he hated, that he was about to go on a murderous rampage. Pol Pot didn’t tell his victims that they could go to find a safe haven. Instead, he sent the Khmer Rouge, the communist terrorist, into the “killing fields” of Cambodia to murder three million helpless Cambodians.
That is genocide – not what Israel is doing in Gaza.
Here’s a second point you can make to show your friends or neighbors or people that want to challenge you that Israel is not engaged in genocide in the Gaza Strip: Israel is making sure that food, water, and medical supplies are entering Gaza to save the lives of those – Palestinian civilians – caught in this terrible war zone that Hamas has created.
This is important because it not just that Israel is showing people how to get to safety and how to find food, water and medical supplies. But Israel is facilitating the arrival into Gaza of a mass amount of food, water, medical supplies and so forth.
In fact, the Israeli military is making it possible for more than 1,000 trucks a week to bring food, water, medical supplies and other humanitarian aid relief into Gaza.
Israel has also made it possible for Arab and European countries to drop humanitarian aid into Gaza by air – and the Israeli military has made it possible for U.S. military to build a special pier to bring humanitarian relief supplies into Gaza by sea.
This is what Israel is doing.
But that is not what a genocidal country would do.
People committing genocide don’t move heaven and earth to get food, water and medical supplies – as well as tents, and clothes, and heaters in the winter, and other critically needed supplies – to their enemies.
But this is exactly what Israel is doing.
A third point: Israel has the military capability to kill every person in Gaza. But it’s not using such overwhelming force. Why not? Because Israel isn’t trying to kill the people of Gaza. We’re not trying to kill civilians at all. Israel is trying to protect civilians by warning them. Israel is only trying to capture or kill every Hamas terrorist that poses and clear and present danger to the safety and security of Israeli civilians, but are also posing a clear and present danger to Palestinian civilians.
This war would not be happening if Hamas had not set it into motion and was not continuing it by fighting Israel every single day.
A fourth point: Israel even provides medical care for Palestinian terrorists. Even when Hamas terrorists have been captured by Israel over the years, we don’t execute them, we put them in prison. And when they need medical care, Israel provides it.
Did you know, for example, that when Yahya Sinwar – the main Hamas leader in Gaza today who was the mastermind of the Oct. 7 invasion and massacre of Israelis – faced cancer while serving time in Israel for terrorism, Israeli doctors actually treated him? In fact, Israeli doctors and nurses actually saved his life. And then Israel released Sinwar and let him go back to Gaza in a prisoner exchange to get back one Israeli who had been held hostage in Gaza for years. If Israel was engaged in genocide against the Palestinians, would we have saved Yahya Sinwar’s life or set him free and sent him back to Gaza?
A fifth and final point: For years, Israel has been giving work permits to Palestinian civilians in Gaza so that they could enter Israel legally, get good jobs – especially those in construction – to make money to care for their families back in Gaza. Now tragically a number of those workers who worked in Israel began gathering intelligence on Israeli families who lived near the Gaza border and gave that intelligence to Hamas so they could pull off their barbaric attack on Oct. 7.
But think about that, that Israel has made it possible over many many years for Palestinians to come in from Gaza a very dangerous area – to Israel to work.
Does a nation that is trying to eradicate and annihilate its neighbors provide them such opportunities to work and make money? Of course not. But Israel does this because we are a nation trying to live at peace with our neighbors, not commit genocide.
Let’s be clear: Hamas is explicitly and proudly a terrorist organization that wants to commit genocide against Israel.
Read their 1987 charter; they don’t hide their desire to kill and destroy all Jews and wipe Israel off the map.
What’s more, one of their leaders actually said this on television shortly after Oct. 7.
“The al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time and there will be a second, a third, a fourth because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight.”
Make no mistake: Israel is not trying to commit genocide.
Hamas is.
Israel should not be on trial for genocide.
Hamas should be.
That’s the truth – one worth knowing and sharing with everyone who will listen.
Joel C. Rosenberg is the editor-in-chief of ALL ISRAEL NEWS and ALL ARAB NEWS and the President and CEO of Near East Media. A New York Times best-selling author, Middle East analyst, and Evangelical leader, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and sons.
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