WATCH: Are Israelis committing genocide in Gaza? Of course not – Here’s a video with 5 clear, simple points you can share with family, friends and coworkers explaining the truth
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL – 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 in calling Israel a genocidal enemy.
A senior official in the United Nations has also formally accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians.
But not everyone agrees.
“WHAT’S HAPPENING IN GAZA IS NOT GENOCIDE,” SAYS PRESIDENT BIDEN
U.S. President Joe Biden, for example, has categorically rejected the accusation, even though he does have significant disagreements with the Israeli government 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.”
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 in various statements.
But this is because, he said, Hamas has embedded itself inside the civilian population in Gaza – and has been firing rockets at Israel and Israeli civilians from 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. “We want Hamas defeated. We're working with Israel to make that happen.”
CANADIAN, BRITISH, AND GERMAN LEADERS ALSO SAY ISRAEL IS NOT COMMITTING GENOCIDE
The leaders of other countries – such as Canada, 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.”
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.
GENOCIDE REQUIRES INTENT
What exactly does “genocide” mean?
Here’s the official definition according to the United Nations’ official “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” commonly known as “The Genocide Convention.”
“[G]enocide 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.”
This important element of international law was adopted by the United Nations on Dec. 9, 1948, shortly after World War II.
Why?
Well, it was a specific reaction to Nazi war crimes in the Holocaust and the related and ghastly war crimes that the German government and military committed under the reign of terror of Adolf Hitler.
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 made it crystal clear they intended 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.
A WAR OF SELF-DEFENSE IS THE MORAL RESPONSIBILITY OF LEGITIMATE, SOVEREIGN NATIONS WHOSE PEOPLE ARE UNDER ATTACK
Engaging in war itself – especially a war of self-defense – is not genocide.
Indeed, Article 51 of the UN Charter specifically states, “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.”
This is exactly what Israel has been engaged in – 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 had to endure because of this war that Hamas started – a war that Hamas invited, a war that Hamas continues to perpetrate – 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.
HERE ARE FIVE SIMPLE, CLEAR POINTS YOU CAN SHARE WITH OTHERS TO DEFEND ISRAEL AGAINST CHARGES OF GENOCIDE
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, at school, or even at church or other places where people are saying, “How can you defend Israel when they’re committing genocide?”
Israel is not committing genocide, so 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 after took more than 250 people hostages and dragged them into those 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 waited for three weeks.
Part of that reason was that the IDF was mobilizing reservists and getting them trained and ready to move into Gaza.
The IDF was also moving tanks and other materials to the Gaza border.
But during that time, they also began warning Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza constantly, and in every possible way, that Israel was about to invade and that they should move south to get out of harm’s way.
Israel made 20,000 live phone calls to Palestinians, urging them to head south and giving them precise instructions on exactly where to go to find shelter, food, water and medical supplies.
In addition, Israel sent some 5 million text messages to the phones of Palestinians in northern Gaza with the same information.
What’s more, Israel dropped 15 million printed leaflets to warn civilians of imminent invasion by the IDF and provided them maps and instructions in Arabic on 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 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 in the world if they had not been stopped and defeated by the international military alliance against them.
In the 1970s, Pol Pot – the genocidal tyrant of Cambodia – certainly didn’t warn his enemies that he was about to go on a murderous rampage.
Pol Pot didn’t tell his victims where they could go to find a safe haven.
Instead, he sent the Khmer Rouge – communist terrorists – 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 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 created.
This is important.
Israel is not only showing Palestinians how to get to safety and find food, water, and medical supplies.
Israel is facilitating the arrival of massive amounts of food, water, medical supplies, and so forth.
In fact, the Israeli military is making it possible for more than 1,000 trucks per week to bring food, water, medical supplies and other humanitarian relief into Gaza.
Israel has also made it possible for Arab and European countries to drop humanitarian aid into Gaza by air.
The Israeli military has made it possible for the U.S. military to build a special pier on the Gaza coast to bring humanitarian relief supplies into Gaza by sea.
This is what Israel is doing.
This is not what a genocidal country does.
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 every person in Gaza. We’re not trying to kill civilians at all. Israel is only trying to capture or kill every Hamas terrorist that poses a clear and present danger to the safety and security of Israeli civilians.
A fourth point: Israel even provides medical care for Palestinian terrorists. 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 that when Yahya Sinwar – the main Hamas leader in Gaza today, the man who was the mastermind of the Oct. 7 invasion and massacre of Israelis – faced cancer while serving time in an Israeli prison for terrorism, Israeli doctors actually treated him? Israeli doctors and nurses actually saved his life.
And then Israel released Sinwar and let him go back to Gaza in an exchange to get back one Israeli who had been held hostage in Gaza for years. If Israel had engaged in genocide against the Palestinians, would we have saved Yahya Sinwar’s life or set him free?
A fifth and final point: For years, Israel has been giving work permits to Palestinian civilians in Gaza so that they could enter Israel and get good jobs – especially those in construction – to make money to care for their families back in Gaza. Does a nation that is trying to eradicate and annihilate its neighbors provide them with such opportunities to work and make money? Of course not. But Israel has done 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 the following 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 against Israel.”
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.
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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.
