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Whatâs Happening in Gaza is No Genocide
The war in Gaza is no genocide, and labeling it as such contributes to the most virulent type of Jew-hatred.
R. Yoshi Zweiback, Jewish Journal. January 5, 2024.
I think I first learned about the Cambodian genocide when I was in elementary school, probably when I was in fourth grade, in 1979. Maybe it was as part of a current events curriculum, or maybe I saw coverage about it on the nightly news with my parents. By that time, Iâd already learned about the Holocaust, so the idea of another genocide wasnât too difficult to fathom. In time, I would learn about other attempts to exterminate whole peoples in places like Armenia and Rwanda.
Yesterday, I took my family to the killing fields just outside of Phnom Penh. In that one location, more than 21,000 souls were brutally murdered by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979. Throughout Cambodia, somewhere between two and three million people were slaughtered. We saw a memorial where more than 5,000 skulls of the murdered were stacked in silent judgment of a world that largely did nothing to stop the killing. Additionally, we visited a tree upon whose trunk Khmer Rouge soldiers crushed the skulls of babies.
Iâve been to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, Babi Yar and Birkenau.
When I see these places and learn about the complex and well-planned operations designed to exterminate the lives of children and women, whole families and villages, ethnicities, nationalities and religions, I am both horrified and mystified. How could a personâwhole groups of people in factâperform such acts?
The recorded history of genocide goes back to biblical times. This week, we begin the book of Exodus. Our Torah tells us of the genocide that Pharaoh plans against the children of Israel. At the end of the first chapter, we read: âThen Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, âEvery boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but let every girl liveââ (Ex. 1:22).
It doesnât make sense to me, how anyone ever could order such a thing or do such a thing.
I reflect on all of this as I read about how Israel is being accused of perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. Such an accusation insults the memories of those killed by the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis. Urban warfare in a place as densely populated as Gaza will inevitably result in civilian casualties, even in the thousands. That Hamas uses its people as human shields as a strategy makes matters much worse.
Such an accusation insults the memories of those killed by the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis.
The IDFâs bombing is not âindiscriminate,â and the current campaign does not constitute genocide any more than the Alliesâ bombing of urban targets during World War II. In both the European and Asian theatres, hundreds of thousands of non-combatants were killed. This was not a campaign to erase Germany or Japan from the map of the world or to exterminate an entire ethnic group; rather there were clear military objectives at play. We sought to end the murderous German and Japanese occupations of sovereign nations, free hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers and civilians dying in Nazi and Japanese prisons and concentration camps, and eliminate Hitlerâs control of Germanyâs government and armed forces as well as the military cabal leading Japan.
The IDF, too, has military objectivesâand a widely known ethical codeâguiding their campaign. The IDF aims to destroy Hamasâ ability to murder and kidnap Israeli citizens via rocket fire and cross-border invasion, return the remaining hostages to their homes, and free Gaza from Hamasâ jihadist leadership that turns billions of dollars in international aid into vast networks of tunnels hidden under hospitals and mosques, filled with weapons. (They also use those same aid dollars to fund private bank accounts for themselves in Qatar and elsewhere.)
As regrettable and heartbreaking as the loss of non-combatants in Gaza is, it is not the goal or strategy of the IDF. Certainly, it would be to Israelâs advantage not to kill any Gazan civilians. And unfortunately, it is to Hamasâs benefit for innocents to die in Gaza, preferably at the hands of the IDF.
To call what is happening in Gaza a genocide is to intentionally, and without regard to objective reality, equate the IDF, Israel and, by extension, even Jews who donât live in Israel (like American college students being assaulted verbally and physically on university campuses) with the worst of the worst: the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge.
This is an act of demonization of the most despicable level, one that, ultimately, God forbid, might be used to justify an actual attempt at genocide on Israelis and the Jewish People.
It is just such an act of demonization on Pharaohâs part that makes his attempted genocide of the children of Israel possible. He accuses us, a tiny fraction of the Egyptian populace, of being âtoo numerous,â a fifth column that might lead to Egyptâs downfall.
The real threat to the Egyptians, of course, was Pharaoh himself. Just as Hitler was to Germany, and Hamas is to Gaza.
Iâve been to the killing fields and to extermination camps. Iâve studied genocide and Iâve seen its terrible and tragic consequences. The war in Gaza is no genocide, and labeling it as such contributes to the most virulent type of Jew-hatred.
jewishjournal.com
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The real genocides the world ignores.
Instead of standing up to genuine crimes against humanity, the international community hurls blood libels at Israel.
Shoshana Bryen.
(Jan. 18, 2024 / JNS)
âGenocideâ is a word that should never be used lightly.
According to legal scholars Amichai Cohen and Yuval Shany, the definition of genocide is âwell settledâ and âcommonly agreed.â There is a consensus that âgenocide involves killing members of a national or ethnic group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the groupâs physical destruction in whole or in part.â
Despite the baseless accusations against Israel at the International Court of Justice, this is not happening in Gaza. Nonetheless, the ICJ blood libel is an object lesson in how the international anti-Israel mob works. Slandering Israel and Jews is a time-honored method of diverting attention from the depredations of others. It also erases the victims of these crimes without so much as a crocodile tear.
Here are some examples of such depredations:
Darfur, Sudan: In 2007, then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell described the situation in Darfur as genocide. The U.N. estimates that by 2016, 300,000 people had been killed and there was credible evidence that the Sudanese government used chemical weapons against the local population. Since Feb. 2023, government-sponsored militias have killed an estimated 400,000 people through starvation and disease. Mass rape has also occurred. More than 2.5 million people have been internally displaced and over 200,000 have fled to Chad.
Rwanda: From April-July 1994, an estimated 800,000 peopleâone-tenth of the entire populationâwere killed and much of the remaining population displaced.
Bosnia: In 1992, more than 200,000 Muslim civilians were systematically murdered and two million became refugees at the hands of the Serbs. Rape was a systematic part of these atrocities.
Cambodia: From 1975-1979, 25% of the population died from starvation, overwork and execution under the Khmer Rouge.
East Timor: During a 24-year occupation by Indonesia that ended in 1999, more than 20% of the population was massacred and 80% of structures in the country were incinerated.
Guatemala: From 1978-1983, government forces carried out massacres and civilian executions of an estimated 200,000 people. There were at least 40,000 âdisappearances.â The Maya population constituted 83% of the identified victims. The event is known as the Maya Genocide.
Armenia: From 1915-1916, between 664,000 and 1.2 million Armenians were killed by Turkey, either in mass executions and individual killings or from the brutality and deprivation of forced deportations.
Add to that the horrific death counts that may or may not meet the precise definition of genocide. Approximately 500,000 Syrians, mostly Sunni Muslims, have been killed by dictator Bashar Assadâs regime, including through the use of chemical weapons. More than 11 million Syrians have become either internal or external refugees.
Nearly 400,000 have been killed in Yemen. The International Rescue Committee estimates that 5.4 million Congolese have been killed in a war that continues today, with Christians being disproportionately targeted. As of 2023, 187,000-210,000 are estimated to have been killed in Iraq and 236,000 in Afghanistan.
China gets special mention.
The countryâs 1958 âGreat Leap Forwardâ destroyed the agricultural system, causing a famine in which 27 million people starved to death. This was not directed at a specific ethnic group, so it may not qualify as genocide; but in 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Chinaâs treatment of its Turkic Muslim Uyghur population a genocide.
Findings by Genocide Watch bear him out:
Since 2017, between 800,000-2,000,000 million Uyghurs have been held in Xinjiangâs concentration prisons, commonly referred to as âreeducation camps.â Uyghurs are forced to participate in [Chinese Communist Party] indoctrination programs in which detainees are forced to abandon their Muslim faith and culture. The CCP forbids use of the Uyghur language and imposes Mandarin Chinese within these camps. Inside camps, CCP officials subject Uyghurs to physical beatings, sexual assault and gang rapes of women.
Despite all this, the international community prefers to focus on defaming Israel for daring to conduct a legitimate war of self-defense launched only after Hamas raped, tortured, mutilated and burned to death 1,200 Israelis and carried off 240 more as hostages.
One of the most powerful denunciations of this campaign of slander came from a country that actually committed a genocide: Germany.
German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in a statement last week, âIn light of German history and the crimes against humanity of the Shoah, the German government is particularly committed to the [U.N.] Genocide Convention.â For this reason, he said, âWe stand firmly against a political instrumentalizationâ of the Convention.
Acknowledging divergent views in the international community on Israelâs military operations, he nonetheless asserted, âThe German government decisively and expressly rejects the accusation of genocide brought against Israel before the International Court of Justice. The accusation has no basis in fact.â
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Student Life Newspaper.
Forum | Letter to the Editor.
Letter to the Editor: Questioning the claims of a genocide in Gaza
Jim East | Class of 1997 May 2, 2024.
In regards to your April 21 article âStudent demonstration in solidarity of suspended peers disbanded by administrators,â I object to you printing two quotations without a necessary fact check or a question asking the speakers to validate their statements.
First: âI saw the videos. I thought it was a pretty heroic statement by the students who are concerned about the ongoing genocide in Palestine,â Bret Gustafson said.
Second: âWe were very intentional when organizing this â we [did] not want to do chants or occupy space in a way that is disruptive or obstructs the normal activity of the [South] 40,â Sonal Churiwal said. âThis was performance art that was done in solidarity with Palestinians who are living under genocide and with students, especially Black and brown students, who have been facing the wrath of the overly punitive measures of WashU.â
The Palestinians are not and have never been âliving under genocide.â Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, has repeatedly stated they are determined to commit a genocide against all Jewish people, in Israel and beyond. Israelâs military approach is clearly designed to minimize civilian casualties.
Gustafson and Churiwal have a First Amendment right to use the term âgenocide.â The freedom of speech includes the freedom to lie or to say things that might be false (I wonât presume to know if these people were lying or ignorant).
The problem is that Student Life did not ask follow-up questions pressing them to explain how what is happening to the Palestinians is a genocide.
The history of this is simple and fresh. Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, launched an unprovoked and barbaric attack on innocent civilians in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. In my opinion, everything the Israeli military has done to Palestinians in Gaza since that date is a direct result of the act of war perpetrated by Hamas.
Israelâs military response has been precise and methodical, warning Palestinians in Gaza in advance in an attempt to minimize civilian casualties. It is, however, unavoidable that civilians will die during any war. Hamas places their citizens in harmâs way because it wants Palestinians to be caught in the crossfire; then easily manipulated Americans will accept the Hamas propaganda and think they are righteous to protest in support of Palestinians and Gaza.
Anyone who cared about the quality of life in Gaza would be able to see that Hamas is the root cause of suffering there and that suffering began long before Oct. 7.
There is no genocide against the Palestinians. As journalists, you have an ethical duty to push back on statements that are provably untrue. Do better.
www.studlife.com
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Israel is not conducting a genocide in Gaza
Natasha Hausdorff, The Spectator, June 2025
Since Hamasâs brutal attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, the Jewish Stateâs most vociferous critics have been busy. Their most egregious claim is that Israel is committing a genocide. As is so often the case with Israel, the crimes it is accused of are rooted in an inversion of the truth.
Genocide has been committed during this conflict: by Hamas terrorists who rampaged through southern Israel and massacred over 1,000 innocents, targeting Jews. They executed their barbaric atrocities in the hope this would inspire simultaneous attacks on Israelâs other borders. On that day, Yahya Sinwarâs terror army invaded Israel with a mission to kill as many Israelis as possible; their dream was that the âal-Aqsa Floodâ would inspire other groups to join in and together bring about the final destruction of the Jewish state.
While these Palestinian terrorists failed and were not joined by other Iranian terror proxies on the 7 October invasion, they were able to count on support from Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Islamic Republic of Iran in the subsequent months. They have also been supported by throngs of extremists in the West who took to the streets and university campuses to celebrate and encourage âthe resistanceâ; support for the murder, rape, torture and kidnap in the civilian communities in the South of Israel. Despite repeated lip service about âNever Againâ, genocidal acts against the Jews have unfolded to the tune of thunderous applause.
The 1951 Genocide Convention compels its signatories to prevent and punish genocide. There are surely few more compelling cases in that mission than Israelâs fight to punish and prevent the genocide of Jews that occurred on 7 October and which Hamas has threatened to repeat over and over again. The war against Hamas, in order to remove it from power in Gaza and prevent it from making good on these threats, demands the support of every signatory of that treaty.
Yet regrettably much of the world has chosen instead to ignore Hamasâs crimes while charging Israel with genocide. South Africa and Ireland (two of the countries most determined to see Israel as âborn with original sinâ) have obsessively pursued Israel through the International Court of Justice. Neither country seems quite so animated by any of the other major conflicts raging around the world. The reason why is simple: their stance arises from an obsessional focus on Israel and a pathological need to promote falsehoods about the Jewish state.
The genocide libel against Israel rests on a concerted mass-disinformation campaign that began shortly after October 7.
Israel has most recently been accused of attempting to starve Gaza into submission. The falseness of this allegation is laid bare by the 1,790,878 tonnes of aid facilitated into Gaza by Israel over the war. These supplies are sufficient to meet the needs of the civilian population of Gaza. The new initiative of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by Israel and the United States, seeks to deliver aid without diversion by Hamas, because stolen aid funds its terror army. It is therefore unsurprising that Hamas has threatened its own people if they collect aid from the GHF. That many NGOs have also discouraged civilians from accessing this aid tells us much about their true agenda.
There is no doubt that Gaza is a miserable place to live today and that civilians have been killed in this conflict This is the reality of war; a war started by Hamas. Yet Israelâs relentless efforts to prevent civilian casualties have given rise to an unprecedentedly low civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio for urban armed conflict.
There is simply no basis to claim that Israelâs aim in this war is to wipe out the Palestinian population of Gaza. As one of the most powerful militaries in the world, it would have done so long ago if it so wished. All the evidence, including in relation to the provision of aid and the targeting of strikes, points in entirely the opposite direction.
Those who accuse Israel of genocide also conveniently ignore the definition of genocide, as recognised in international law. This requires the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such. Attributing such intent to Israel, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is the modern version of the ancient blood libel that Jews gleefully kill Christian children for their blood.
Whatever one may think of Israelâs prosecution of the war, the term genocide is a legal term, not a political one. Israel is not conducting a genocide in Gaza. Those who claim otherwise must stop politicising and weaponising international law to spread blood libels about the Jewish State.
www.spectator.co.uk
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There Is No âGenocideâ in Gaza.
By using the word, we insult, not only the truth of facts and names, but the holy memory of the victims of the genocides of the last century.
Bernard-Henri LĂŠvy. The NY Sun, Nov. 21, 2024.
www.nysun.com
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Column.
Debunking the Gaza âgenocideâ blood libel wonât dissuade Israel-haters.
Hamas casualty and famine claims continue to be exposed as lies. But as long as much of the world accepts the canard that the Jewish state is illegitimate, that wonât matter.
Jonathan S. Tobin.
(Dec. 27, 2024 / JNS)
The effort to discredit and delegitimize Israel is a project that never allows the facts to get in the way of a fictitious âgenocideâ narrative. Thatâs something that is made clear not so much by efforts by the Jewish stateâs defenders as it is by that of its critics like The New York Times. But even if the worst smears of Israel are debunked by those who seek to brand its soldiers and leaders as war criminals, donât expect that to change many minds.
This was amply demonstrated by a major investigative piece published this week by the Times that required the efforts of seven of its reporters who claim to have interviewed â100 soldiers and officials in Israel, dozens of victims of the strikes in Gaza, and experts on the rules of armed conflict.â While the headline promised scandalous findings that might bolster the bogus claim that the Israel Defense Forces were indeed carrying out illegal or even criminal strikes on Palestinian Arabs in Gaza. But the entire article could be summed up in a single sentence. After Hamas terrorists and other Palestinians attacked the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023, the IDF responded with greater force and under slightly looser rules of engagement against its foes than it had before that event.
Thatâs it.
All of the effort and reporting that went into the feature did nothing more than establish the following painfully obvious fact. Once Hamas launched the current war by breaching the border between Gaza and Israelâand engaging in an orgy of murder, torture, rape, kidnapping and wanton destructionâIsraelâs military adopted different and more aggressive tactics than it had before its foes ended the ceasefire that existed on Oct. 6, 2023.
The truth about the IDF.
Those differences amounted to loosening the rules of engagement that would allow strikes on Hamas leaders that might not have been allowed during a period of relative quiet. That meant that attacks on enemies responsible for not just starting a war but the barbaric crimes of Oct. 7 were permitted, even if up to 20 civilians were present. That allowed the IDF to take out these criminals in their own homes, as opposed to previously when they could only be targeted if they were out in the open with few people around them.
Inevitably, that has led to higher civilian casualties. Then again, if Hamas operatives didnât want civilians to be endangered, they would avoid using them as human shields. The terrorist group admits to actively seeking not just to hide among and behind non-combatants but to increase the number of those killed and wounded for propaganda and public relations purposes. And, as the Times also reported, when the IDF blundered, officers responsible for mistakes carried out in the heat of an ongoing battle were rightly disciplined. To claim that Israelâs loosened rules are unjustified requires one to accept the idea that terrorists waging an active war with blood on their hands ought to have the impunity to commit as many crimes as they like so long as they keep their family and friends around them.
The genocide claim is again given the lie by the Times reporting, which notes that even with these âloosened rules,â the process by which Israeli commanders are able to order strikes on Hamas targets is still rigorous and far from indiscriminate or intended to mass casualties. This is something backed up by experts on the laws of war like West Pointâs John Spencer and Britainâs Col. Richard Kemp.
Indeed, the only real findings back up reports from both Israeli and Palestinian sources that 80% of the casualties in the Gaza Strip have been suffered by Hamas fighters and their relatives. That means the claim that Israel was deliberately targeting civilians in order to supposedly destroy the Palestinian population is an obvious falsehood.
This doesnât even take into account that the total number of casualties provided to journalists by Hamas sources like the Gaza Ministry of Health, which have been uncritically accepted and broadcast around the world, has been debunked by those who study statistics.
None of this violates commonly accepted notions about what is or isnât now permitted under international law during a war, which, as the Times conceded, consists of loosely defined concepts and rules.
The upshot of all this reporting is the entirely unremarkable conclusion that when terrorist groups start wars, more of the people they purport to represent and use as pawns are likely to be hurt. Equally unremarkable is the fact that nations involved in wars in which their civilians have been deliberately targeted for barbarous war crimes by terrorists are bound to be less restrained in their efforts to eradicate their enemies than in times of relative peace.
So, while the headline and the framing of the story may have sounded like fodder for those determined to demonize the Jewish state and its post-Oct. 7 efforts to destroy Hamas, the result of all that research and writing was so slender that one wonders why the newspaper bothered to explore the subject in the first place.
The reason for a food shortage
The same is true of its efforts to back up the claim that Israel is deliberately starving Gazans since the war beganâanother of the main planks in the attempt to justify the use of the term âgenocideâ to describe Israeli tactics.
A Times article published days before its report on Israeli rules of engagement provided some interesting details about the delivery of food to Gaza. Contrary to the claims that Israel is preventing humanitarian aid from reaching the coastal enclave, the Times confirmed Israelâs arguments that the fault lies with the Palestinians rather than its actions, albeit while framing it in the most negative manner possible.
As the newspaper told its readers, the primary obstacle to getting food to Gazans is Palestinian.
Hamas has been brazenly stealing aid intended for civilians and reserving it for its own use, with some of the thefts caught on film. Those shipments that were not taken by the terrorists who ruled Gaza before Oct. 7 are now being stolen by criminal gangs that operate in areas where Hamas is no longer active.
This is happening because the United Nations and its aid agencies have systematically refused to allow the IDF to guard the route and trucks through which food is distributed. That is why as many as 800 truckloads of food remain at a standstill in Israel at any given time since the various international aid agencies are afraid to send them into Gaza. The only secure route for food delivery is the one that Israel has supervised along the route from Egypt into Gaza.
So, again, the mainstream Western media that is hostile to Israel is providing reporting that gives the lie to the genocide narrative. This means that much of the ammunition that Israelâs defenders need to refute what amounts to a modern blood libel is being offered up by media sources whose coverage is consistently skewed against the Jewish state.
There is no genocide happening in Gaza. The war that Hamas started and continues to fight by refusing to free the Israeli hostages it took from their homes and a young personâs musical festival on Oct. 7 has indeed also taken many Palestinian lives. But about half of the fatalities have been Hamas fighters and operatives, and many of the civilians were those directly connected to them. Israelâs goal has been to defeat and destroy Hamas, not the Palestinians as a wholeâwho, even if you believe the terroristsâ statistics, have lost only a tiny percentage of the 2.1 million people believed to be in Gaza before Oct. 7.
To believe the genocide charge, every war in history must be labeled as a genocide. That drains a word coined to describe the Holocaust of any real meaning. That doesnât even take into account that the explicitly stated goal of Hamas is the destruction of Israel and its populationâthe Oct. 7 atrocities were merely a trailer for what it wanted to do to the rest of the Jewish state.
Ideology over facts.
These are findings that should be trumpeted to as wide an audience as possible. Yet even as outlets like the Times undermine their own editorial position with this sort of reporting, fair-minded observers should temper their expectation that this will help turn the tide in the information war being fought about the conflict.
Thatâs because those journalists, international âhuman rightsâ activists and politicians who continue to assert that what is going on in Gaza is a genocide of Palestinians donât care about what is actually happening there. Even as they hyped Hamasâs misleading casualty numbers, they have not bothered to answer or take into account coverage that makes it clear what is happening is a war but not an ethnic cleansing.
Why?
The answer is that once the false narrative implicit in critical race theory and intersectional ideology is accepted and applied to the Middle Eastâwhere Israel and the Jews are falsely labeled as âwhiteâ oppressorsâit doesnât matter what either side actually does. Every institution that adheres to the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that is used as a formula to justify discrimination against Jews and Israelis is the problemânot just the lies told by Hamas.
As best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates asserted in his ignorant pro-Hamas screed The Message, which was rapturously received by the mainstream media, the facts about Palestinian terrorism, Hamas intentions and the many Israeli efforts to achieve a compromise peace that would have created a Palestinian state that the Palestinians rejected, donât matter. Such people believe Israel is in the wrong and has no right to exist or defend itselfâever. What either side does is therefore of no consequence. The Times and other left-wing outlets can publish daily articles debunking the genocide claim, and it would make no difference to those who throw the term around to drain its actual meaning.
This doesnât mean that supporters of Israel should not continue to point out these facts and make the argument that its cause is just and its tactics defensible (and legal). But unless society is also prepared to attack the toxic woke ideologies that are the foundation of the baseless genocide charge, then it wonât matter how effective any arguments might be.
The target of fair-minded observers shouldnât only be the flimsy and easily disproved libelous assertions about Israel but the entire edifice of woke ideology, which allows both the ignorant and those with malevolent antisemitic intentions to engage in fact-free smears of the Jewish state. Without tackling these ideologies, the lies about the Middle East will continue to proliferate, regardless of how often they are disproved.
www.jns.org
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No evidence of genocide in Gaza, UK lawyers say in arms export case.
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor. The Guardian. May 13, 2025.
No evidence has been seen that a genocide is occurring in Gaza or that women and children were targeted by the IDF, UK government lawyers have claimed, as a high court case opened into the handling of arms exports controls to Israel.
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No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza.
By Bret Stephens. The New York Times.
Jul 22, 2025 â It may seem harsh to say, but there is a glaring dissonance to the charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. To wit: If the Israeli governmentâs intentions and actions are truly genocidal â if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans â why hasnât it been more methodical and vastly more deadly? Why not, say, hundreds of thousands of deaths, as opposed to the nearly 60,000 that Gazaâs Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths, has cited so far in nearly two years of war?
A voice of reason.
Brett Stephens: There is No Genocide in Gaza.
There is no Genocide in Gaza and there never has been. Further, the fault for any suffering being endured lies squarely at the door of Hamas, who could end the war at any moment.
Gila Isaacson, JFeed, Jul 25, 2025.
www.jfeed.com
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Exposing Gaza genocide liars one fact at a time.
Contrary to popular assertions, nothing in Israel's actions these past 22 months shows that it intends to harm the civilian population.
James Sinkinson (Aug. 27, 2025 / JNS).
In June, Spanish President Pedro Sanchez joined the shameless chorus of Israelâs slanderers, asserting, falsely, that Gaza is in a âcatastrophic situation of genocide.â
Israelâs enemiesâcollege radicals, mainstream media, NGOs, U.N. officials, celebrities and even heads of stateâhave cast accusations of genocide in the current Gaza war as wildly as rice at a wedding. Despite their frequency, such accusations are outright lies, disproven by hard, unassailable facts.
These lies can be destroyed using two powerful truths. First, nothing in Israelâs conduct of its war against Hamas indicates any intention of eliminating Gazaâs population. To the contrary, Israelâs policies show exactly the opposite, remarkably effective efforts to protect Gazaâs civilian population.
Second, nothing in Gaza death-toll demographics indicates that Israel has actually targeted innocent Palestinians. Rather, again, itâs just the opposite: Facts show Gaza death tolls are heavily skewed toward combatants. Moreover, overall deaths in the conflict reveal it to be one of the least deadly wars to the enemyâs population compared to any previous conflict in the last century. Finally, most public health estimates place the number of births in Gaza during the war far higher than war-related deaths, hardly a diminishing population.
Outrageously, instead of praising Israelâs efforts to save civilian lives, increasing members of the âinternational communityâ slander the Jewish state, using the genocide accusation in the same manner that blood libels were used to discredit, delegitimize and physically attack Jews over the centuries. Simultaneously, these enemies viciously parrot Hamasâs fake death statistics, while ignoring Hamasâs war crimes and its own genocidal strategy of human sacrifice.
Israelâs actions utterly fail to support the accusation that it intends to eliminate or diminish the Palestinian people. Remember that a key legal requirement of the crime of genocide is that the perpetrator intendsto decimate an enemy population.
Yet it is irrefutable that the Israel Defense Forces targets only terrorists. In fact, to avoid harming innocents, the IDF consistently gives warnings to civilians of impending attacks. It uses phone calls, SMS messages, leaflets, social media and âroof-knocking,â in which the Israeli Air Force fires a non-explosive missile or sound munition at the roof or upper edge of a targeted building a few minutes before the actual strike.
The IDF also issues evacuation warnings to Palestinian civilians, encouraging them to move to areas where they will face less danger from combat operations. For example, in mid-October 2023, the IDF issued evacuation warnings to approximately 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to move south, where they would be safer. Israel similarly plans to warn civilians to evacuate Gaza City ahead of an upcoming offensive. The IDFâs painstaking efforts to separate civilians and combatants are inconsistent with genocide.
In addition, the IDF has allowed massive deliveries of humanitarian aid, about 2 million tons of it, meant to preserve civilian life. In fact, John Spencer, chairman of urban warfare studies at West Point, wrote of Israelâs humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza: âThere is no historical precedent for a military providing the level of direct aid to an enemy population that Israel has provided to Gaza.â
How can a country that provides its enemy with such ample humanitarian assistance be rationally accused of genocide?
Finally, Israel has been adamant that its war is against Hamas, not the Palestinians of Gaza, though polls show many of them support the terrorist group. Indeed, Israel has consistently stated its goals to be a) destroying Hamasâs military and governing capabilities; b) securing the release of all hostages; and c) ensuring that Gaza never again threatens Israel. Whatâs more, as noted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, âIf we had wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon.â
Actual death toll numbers confirm that Israel has targeted Hamas fighters, not Palestinian civilians. Israel has been successful in minimizing the number of deaths of non-combatant Gazans compared with armed combatants. A study by the Tamaror research group for Israeli-Palestinian conflict studies indicates that during this war, âthe proportion of (potential) armed casualties increased beyond 45%, indicating increasingly precise targeting and corresponding civilian casualty reductions.â Itâs no surprise, then, that the ratio of civilians to combatants in Gaza is much lower than in comparable wars. Whereas the civilian-fighter ratio in Gaza is estimated to be 1.5:1, the average ratio in urban warfare, in general, according to the United Nations, is 9:1 civilians to fighters. This alone destroys the genocide argument.
Despite the war, Gazaâs population, measured by births vs. violent deaths, has actually increased. Estimates by organizations such as the United Nations Population Fund project births in Gaza from Oct. 7, 2023, to the present at about 124,245. Contrast that with violent deaths estimated at 75,200 during the same period by the independent Gaza Mortality Survey. Using births vs. violent deaths, the territory actually experienced a net gain in population, the opposite effect of a genocide.
Finally, how do overall Gaza deaths compare to other wars in the last century? Consider that 16 to 17 million people perished in World War I; 70 to 85 million died in World War II; 3 to 4 million in the Korean War; 2.5 to 3.5 million in the Vietnam War. Most recently, an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 people died in Syriaâs civil war. Notably, none of these conflicts was termed a âgenocide.â In contrast, according to Gazaâs Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health and others, some 62,000 to 75,000 Gazans have died in the current war, out of an estimated population of 2.1 million. Again, these numbers donât come close to genocide proportions; rather, they are simply the result of a brutal urban war, one that Hamas started and in which it uses its citizens as human shields.
In short, despite countless baseless assertions by media, NGOs, the United Nations, radical leftists and clueless celebrities, all hard data about deaths in Gaza unassailably refute accusations that Israel is committing genocide. The truth is, Israel takes extraordinary measures to limit civilian casualties, especially given the fact that the IDF possesses military power that could inflict many more deaths without such precautions.
We can fight these enemies of Israel by using hard facts to expose the genocide slander every time it is uttered, condemning their lies and cursing their shameless immorality.
The war in Gaza is no genocide, and labeling it as such contributes to the most virulent type of Jew-hatred.
R. Yoshi Zweiback, Jewish Journal. January 5, 2024.
jewishjournal.com
The real genocides the world ignores.
Instead of standing up to genuine crimes against humanity, the international community hurls blood libels at Israel.
Shoshana Bryen.
(Jan. 18, 2024 / JNS)
Student Life Newspaper.
Forum | Letter to the Editor.
Letter to the Editor: Questioning the claims of a genocide in Gaza
www.studlife.com
Israel is not conducting a genocide in Gaza
Natasha Hausdorff, The Spectator, June 2025 .
www.spectator.co.uk
Column.
Debunking the Gaza âgenocideâ blood libel wonât dissuade Israel-haters.
Hamas casualty and famine claims continue to be exposed as lies. But as long as much of the world accepts the canard that the Jewish state is illegitimate, that wonât matter.
Jonathan S. Tobin.
(Dec. 27, 2024 / JNS)
www.jns.org
No evidence of genocide in Gaza, UK lawyers say in arms export case.
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor. The Guardian. May 13, 2025.
No evidence has been seen that a genocide is occurring in Gaza or that women and children were targeted by the IDF, UK government lawyers have claimed, as a high court case opened into the handling of arms exports controls to Israel.
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No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza.
By Bret Stephens. The New York Times.
Jul 22, 2025 â
Exposing Gaza genocide liars one fact at a time.
Contrary to popular assertions, nothing in Israel's actions these past 22 months shows that it intends to harm the civilian population.
James Sinkinson (Aug. 27, 2025 / JNS).
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Calling the war a âgenocideâ is a blood libel, not scholarship.
A group of activists masquerading as scholars has rushed to brand Israel with historyâs darkest crime.
Stephen M. Flatow.
(Sept. 8, 2025 / JNS)
Letâs be clear: What Israel is doing in Gaza is not genocide. To claim otherwise is to twist language, distort history and turn international law into a political weapon.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) just passed a resolution accusing Israel of âgenocide.â The Washington Post dutifully reported it, as if it were a verdict handed down from Sinai. (The paper didnât even bother to note that the vote was a small percentage of the membership.) But it is not law. Itâs not binding. Itâs not even serious scholarship but politics dressed up in academic robes.
Genocide has a strict legal meaning. It requires a proven intent to wipe out an entire people. That was the Nazisâ âFinal Solution.â That was Rwanda in 1994. That was Bosnia in Srebrenica. It is not Israel, defending itself after the Hamas-led massacre in southern Jewish communities on Oct. 7, 2023, when 1,200 men, women and children were slaughtered, and 215 others kidnapped and dragged into Gaza. Some 50 remain captive there, some dead and some still alive.
Hamas openly declares that it will repeat Oct. 7 âagain and again.â That is genocidal intent. Israelâs intent is the opposite: to dismantle a terror machine that hides in hospitals, schools and mosques, deliberately putting Gazans in harmâs way. The terrible civilian suffering in Gaza is real, but it is the direct result of Hamasâs strategy, not Israelâs goal.
If Israel truly wanted genocide, the coastal enclave would have been flattened long ago. Instead, Israel has warned civilians to evacuate, opened humanitarian corridors and allowed aid trucks to enterâsteps no genocidal regime has ever taken.
Even former President Joe Biden (hardly Israelâs biggest cheerleader) said bluntly: âWhatâs happening in Gaza is not genocide.â
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has not ruled otherwise. Only the IAGS, a group of activists masquerading as scholars, rushed to brand Israel with historyâs darkest crime. They spouted their claim with only 30% of their organization voting in favor of hechshering the word; the voting itself came in the form of a listserv, according to news reports, without prior discussion of the matter among members.
Letâs call this what it is: a modern blood libel. Just like in the Middle Ages, when Jews were accused of murdering Christian children to justify hatred against them, today Israel is accused of genocide to delegitimize its very existence. The goal is the same: to turn Jews into monsters and strip them of the right to defend themselves.
Words matter. If everything is genocide, then nothing is. Diluting the term makes it harder to act when real genocides occur. Itâs an insult to the victims of the Holocaust, Rwanda and Bosnia to equate Israelâs war of survival with their extermination.
Israel is not committing genocide. Israel is fighting to survive. And those who slander it with the worldâs most heinous crime are not defending human rights are providing cover for terrorists who openly seek the next Oct. 7.
Thatâs why the world cannot be silent. Every time this lie is repeated, it gains traction. Pro-Israel voicesâand the voices of all who recognize truthâmust push back in the press, on campus and in the halls of government. Call it out, write about it, challenge it. The stakes are not only Israelâs reputation. They are the integrity of international law itself.
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Lies of genocide against Israel distort truth and endanger Jews.
Anti-Israel activists take a lesson from the Nazis, repeating monstrous falsehoods often enough so that people would eventually believe them.
(Sept. 5, 2025 / The Focus Project)
The accusation of genocide against the Jewish state is being used as a moral weapon. It is not just a false legal claim; the explosive yet deceptive charge is being used to stigmatize Jews everywhere. By branding Israel as a âgenocidal state,â anti-Israel activists provide cover for those who threaten or attack Jews in America and around the world. Even some activists acknowledged that Israel does not meet the accepted legal standard of genocide, which is why they argue the definition must be ârevisedâ or âbroadenedâ to apply to Israel.
Accusing Jewsâthe very people who suffered in the Holocaustâof committing genocide turns history on its head. Yet recently, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) passed a resolution declaring that Israel is committing âgenocideâ in Gaza. These dubious claims distort international law and put Jews everywhere in greater danger. A group of 20 young men recently attacked a Jewish man speaking Hebrew in Santa Monica, Calif., tearing off his Star of David necklace and injuring him.
Israelâs intent: Defeating Hamas, not destroying a people
The U.N. Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts committed âwith intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.â
The critical element is intent. Israelâs official goal is to dismantle Hamas, the Iranian-backed terror group responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre. While tragically, Palestinian civilian lives have been lost, they were never Israelâs target. Nearly two years ago, Hamas murdered more than 1,200 people, including teens and young adults, at a music festival in Israel, and forcibly kidnapped more than 250 Israelis and foreign nationals while openly declaring its longtime goals of destroying Israel and killing all Jews worldwide.
(Genocide, Facts Chart.
[https://me.jnsi.org/uploads/2025/09/Genocide-Facts-Chart.png].
Chart showing the claim of genocide versus facts).
The Israeli government recently announced a new budget of $473 million for Gaza humanitarian aid while cutting 3% of Israelâs budget for education, health care and the environment. West Point Military Academy scholar John Spencer emphasized that âIsrael has delivered more humanitarian aidâ2 million tonsâto Gaza than any military in history has provided to an enemy population during wartime.â
Israel also has helped the World Health Organization vaccinate 600,000 Gazan children against polio, repaired water pipelines and helped nearly 40,000 patients leave Gaza for treatment abroad.
Israelâs actions throughout the war clearly contradict the charge of genocide.
Hamas strategy: Palestinian suffering as a weapon.
Palestinian civilians in Gaza are truly suffering and the tragedy is real. The genocide scholarsâ resolution listed destruction, displacement and hunger, but suffering in war is not proof of genocide. The resolution fails to acknowledge Hamasâs attack and warfare tactics, including launching barrages of missiles against Israeli civilians.
(IDF Finds Weapons Cache in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip.
[https://me.jnsi.org/uploads/2024/03/IDF-Finds-Weapons-Cache-in-Khan-Yunis-Gaza-2.jpeg].
A weapons cache discovered by the Israel Defense Forces in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, March 2024).
The Palestinian terror group exploits the suffering of Gazans to achieve its militant goals. This is why Hamas embeds its fighters and weapons in homes, U.N.-run schools and playgrounds, hospitals, mosques and other civilian infrastructure. Mohammed Saqer, the nursing director at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, revealed that Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists threatened him for treating wounded Palestinian civilians.
Hamas shows the same disregard for its own civilians as it does for Israeli hostages, 20 out of 50 deemed alive and still being held in captivity without access to the Red Cross and any medical care.
This war could end immediately if Hamas released all hostages, laid down its arms and allowed new leadership in Gaza. Civilian suffering is tragic, but it is not evidence of genocide.
Echo chamber: UN, academics, NGOs amplify false consensus.
One of the most misleading parts of the genocide accusation is the claim of consensus. The IAGS resolution relied on reports by officials and organizations with documented records of anti-Israel bias. In some cases, these officials have made comments condemned as antisemitic, yet their words are recycled as authoritative evidence.
(Propaganda Chart.
[https://me.jnsi.org/uploads/2025/09/Propaganda-Chart.png].
Chart showing forms of propaganda, old and new).
IAGS member and genocide scholar Sara E. Brown: âThe content of the resolution and the way it was forced through without the usual transparency speak to an embarrassing absence of professionalism. It favored activists seeking to advance a false narrative about Israel.â
Only 140 membersâless than 30% of the groupâvoted, and the IAGS resolution was pushed through without its traditional debate. Still, media headlines portrayed it like a unanimous declaration from âthe worldâs leading genocide experts.â
The same U.N. agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and activist academics often cite each other in a closed loop, creating the illusion of a consensus. This âincestuous cycleâ amplifies recycled claims until they sound like fact.
Legal malpractice: Redefining words to target Israel.
Accusations of genocide against Israel rest not on evidence but on the manipulation of language. Amnesty International and other activist organizations have admitted that the accepted legal definition of genocide is âtoo narrowâ to apply to Israel, so they call for ârevisingâ or âbroadeningâ it.
The same pattern has been used with other terms: âapartheidâ stretched beyond recognition, ârefugeeâ status redefined for generations and âstatehoodâ applied differently for political purposes. Rewriting important terms for political objectives does not create truth and undermines international law.
Points to consider:
False genocide charges put Jews everywhere at risk.
The accusation of genocide against Israel is not an abstract debate. It stigmatizes Jews worldwide, giving cover to those who intimidate, harass and attack Jews on the street, in synagogues and at kosher restaurants. Students are bullied, mezuzahs torn down from doorposts, and community organizations need constant police protection. This genocidal lie fuels the hatred of Jews (antisemitism) and threatens the safety of Jews everywhere.
Accusations of genocide target the Jewish people, not just Israel.
Labeling Israel a âgenocidalâ state is not just about one nation. It paints all Jews as complicit in humanityâs worst crime. These accusations are designed to alienate Jews from public life, delegitimize Jewish voices and rewrite Jewish history. The danger extends far beyond Israelâs bordersâto the United States, Australia, Europe and the rest of the world.
Activists rewrite definitions to fit accusations against Israel.
Genocide is the âcrime of crimes.â Diluting the term through false accusations cheapens the suffering of Armenians, Rwandans and other actual victims of genocide. Anti-Israel activist groups like Amnesty International admitted that Israel does not meet the accepted definition of genocide, so they argue the term must be ârevisedâ or âbroadened.â This is part of a larger pattern: âapartheid,â ârefugeeâ and âstatehoodâ have all been twisted into political weapons against Israel.
Hamasâs agenda is openly genocidal.
Hamas openly declares in its founding charter the goal of killing Jews everywhere: âThe Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews.â Leaders of the Iranian-backed terror group threaten âa million Oct. 7sâ and that âOct. 7 assaults will be repeated from the West Bank.â These declarations excuse the genocidal intent of Hamas.
Civilian suffering in war is not proof of genocide.
War is tragic, and the suffering of Palestinians is real. But suffering in war is not proof of genocide; it must be tied to an intention to wipe out a people. Israel allows aid into Gaza, facilitates Palestinian medical treatment abroad and risks its own soldiersâ lives in ground combat to reduce civilian casualties. International law requires intent, and Israelâs actions directly contradict this claim. Even some anti-Israel activists acknowledge that the legal definition of genocide does not apply to Israelâs war goals.
Hamas uses civilians as weapons of war.
Hamas turns Gaza hospitals, mosques and schools into military bases by placing its fighters and weapons among patients, worshippers and students. The terror group steals humanitarian aid to feed its terrorists instead of civilians and traps Gazan families inside buildings as shields. This strategy prolongs suffering and deliberately sacrifices Palestinian lives to drive its global propaganda efforts.
The news media amplified a flawed vote into global headlines.
A small minority of IAGS members pushed through its Gaza âgenocideâ resolution without full debate. One member called the process âan embarrassing absence of professionalism.â Yet reporters framed the conclusion as if the worldâs genocide scholars had reached a unanimous determination, helping to spread misinformation and turning a disputed vote into worldwide headlines.
Echoes of the past: Twisting the Holocaust against Jews.
Weaponizing the term âgenocideâ against the Jewish state perverts the memory of the Holocaust. The Nazis perfected the âBig Lie,â repeating a monstrous falsehood often enough so that people would eventually believe it. With horrific irony, anti-Israel activists use the same tactic today, repeating the genocide smear until it appears to be truth.
Peace is possible if Hamas chooses life over death
This war could have ended long ago. And it could end today if Hamas releases the hostages, lays down its weapons and allows new leadership for Gaza. Hamas clings to its genocidal dream while Palestinian civilians pay the price. True peace will come only when Hamas abandons death and chooses lifeâfor Israelis, Palestinians and humanity.
[The Focus Project is a consensus initiative of major American Jewish organizations that provides crucial news, talking points and background content about issues affecting Israel and the Jewish people, including antisemitism, anti-Zionism and relevant events in the Middle East].
The war in Gaza is no genocide, and labeling it as such contributes to the most virulent type of Jew-hatred.
R. Yoshi Zweiback, Jewish Journal. January 5, 2024.
I think I first learned about the Cambodian genocide when I was in elementary school, probably when I was in fourth grade, in 1979. Maybe it was as part of a current events curriculum, or maybe I saw coverage about it on the nightly news with my parents. By that time, Iâd already learned about the Holocaust, so the idea of another genocide wasnât too difficult to fathom. In time, I would learn about other attempts to exterminate whole peoples in places like Armenia and Rwanda.
Yesterday, I took my family to the killing fields just outside of Phnom Penh. In that one location, more than 21,000 souls were brutally murdered by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979. Throughout Cambodia, somewhere between two and three million people were slaughtered. We saw a memorial where more than 5,000 skulls of the murdered were stacked in silent judgment of a world that largely did nothing to stop the killing. Additionally, we visited a tree upon whose trunk Khmer Rouge soldiers crushed the skulls of babies.
Iâve been to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, Babi Yar and Birkenau.
When I see these places and learn about the complex and well-planned operations designed to exterminate the lives of children and women, whole families and villages, ethnicities, nationalities and religions, I am both horrified and mystified. How could a personâwhole groups of people in factâperform such acts?
The recorded history of genocide goes back to biblical times. This week, we begin the book of Exodus. Our Torah tells us of the genocide that Pharaoh plans against the children of Israel. At the end of the first chapter, we read: âThen Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, âEvery boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but let every girl liveââ (Ex. 1:22).
It doesnât make sense to me, how anyone ever could order such a thing or do such a thing.
I reflect on all of this as I read about how Israel is being accused of perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. Such an accusation insults the memories of those killed by the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis. Urban warfare in a place as densely populated as Gaza will inevitably result in civilian casualties, even in the thousands. That Hamas uses its people as human shields as a strategy makes matters much worse.
Such an accusation insults the memories of those killed by the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis.
The IDFâs bombing is not âindiscriminate,â and the current campaign does not constitute genocide any more than the Alliesâ bombing of urban targets during World War II. In both the European and Asian theatres, hundreds of thousands of non-combatants were killed. This was not a campaign to erase Germany or Japan from the map of the world or to exterminate an entire ethnic group; rather there were clear military objectives at play. We sought to end the murderous German and Japanese occupations of sovereign nations, free hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers and civilians dying in Nazi and Japanese prisons and concentration camps, and eliminate Hitlerâs control of Germanyâs government and armed forces as well as the military cabal leading Japan.
The IDF, too, has military objectivesâand a widely known ethical codeâguiding their campaign. The IDF aims to destroy Hamasâ ability to murder and kidnap Israeli citizens via rocket fire and cross-border invasion, return the remaining hostages to their homes, and free Gaza from Hamasâ jihadist leadership that turns billions of dollars in international aid into vast networks of tunnels hidden under hospitals and mosques, filled with weapons. (They also use those same aid dollars to fund private bank accounts for themselves in Qatar and elsewhere.)
As regrettable and heartbreaking as the loss of non-combatants in Gaza is, it is not the goal or strategy of the IDF. Certainly, it would be to Israelâs advantage not to kill any Gazan civilians. And unfortunately, it is to Hamasâs benefit for innocents to die in Gaza, preferably at the hands of the IDF.
To call what is happening in Gaza a genocide is to intentionally, and without regard to objective reality, equate the IDF, Israel and, by extension, even Jews who donât live in Israel (like American college students being assaulted verbally and physically on university campuses) with the worst of the worst: the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge.
This is an act of demonization of the most despicable level, one that, ultimately, God forbid, might be used to justify an actual attempt at genocide on Israelis and the Jewish People.
It is just such an act of demonization on Pharaohâs part that makes his attempted genocide of the children of Israel possible. He accuses us, a tiny fraction of the Egyptian populace, of being âtoo numerous,â a fifth column that might lead to Egyptâs downfall.
The real threat to the Egyptians, of course, was Pharaoh himself. Just as Hitler was to Germany, and Hamas is to Gaza.
Iâve been to the killing fields and to extermination camps. Iâve studied genocide and Iâve seen its terrible and tragic consequences. The war in Gaza is no genocide, and labeling it as such contributes to the most virulent type of Jew-hatred.
Whatâs Happening in Gaza is No Genocide
The war in Gaza is no genocide, and labeling it as such contributes to the most virulent type of Jew-hatred.
jewishjournal.com
____
The real genocides the world ignores.
Instead of standing up to genuine crimes against humanity, the international community hurls blood libels at Israel.
Shoshana Bryen.
(Jan. 18, 2024 / JNS)
âGenocideâ is a word that should never be used lightly.
According to legal scholars Amichai Cohen and Yuval Shany, the definition of genocide is âwell settledâ and âcommonly agreed.â There is a consensus that âgenocide involves killing members of a national or ethnic group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the groupâs physical destruction in whole or in part.â
Despite the baseless accusations against Israel at the International Court of Justice, this is not happening in Gaza. Nonetheless, the ICJ blood libel is an object lesson in how the international anti-Israel mob works. Slandering Israel and Jews is a time-honored method of diverting attention from the depredations of others. It also erases the victims of these crimes without so much as a crocodile tear.
Here are some examples of such depredations:
Darfur, Sudan: In 2007, then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell described the situation in Darfur as genocide. The U.N. estimates that by 2016, 300,000 people had been killed and there was credible evidence that the Sudanese government used chemical weapons against the local population. Since Feb. 2023, government-sponsored militias have killed an estimated 400,000 people through starvation and disease. Mass rape has also occurred. More than 2.5 million people have been internally displaced and over 200,000 have fled to Chad.
Rwanda: From April-July 1994, an estimated 800,000 peopleâone-tenth of the entire populationâwere killed and much of the remaining population displaced.
Bosnia: In 1992, more than 200,000 Muslim civilians were systematically murdered and two million became refugees at the hands of the Serbs. Rape was a systematic part of these atrocities.
Cambodia: From 1975-1979, 25% of the population died from starvation, overwork and execution under the Khmer Rouge.
East Timor: During a 24-year occupation by Indonesia that ended in 1999, more than 20% of the population was massacred and 80% of structures in the country were incinerated.
Guatemala: From 1978-1983, government forces carried out massacres and civilian executions of an estimated 200,000 people. There were at least 40,000 âdisappearances.â The Maya population constituted 83% of the identified victims. The event is known as the Maya Genocide.
Armenia: From 1915-1916, between 664,000 and 1.2 million Armenians were killed by Turkey, either in mass executions and individual killings or from the brutality and deprivation of forced deportations.
Add to that the horrific death counts that may or may not meet the precise definition of genocide. Approximately 500,000 Syrians, mostly Sunni Muslims, have been killed by dictator Bashar Assadâs regime, including through the use of chemical weapons. More than 11 million Syrians have become either internal or external refugees.
Nearly 400,000 have been killed in Yemen. The International Rescue Committee estimates that 5.4 million Congolese have been killed in a war that continues today, with Christians being disproportionately targeted. As of 2023, 187,000-210,000 are estimated to have been killed in Iraq and 236,000 in Afghanistan.
China gets special mention.
The countryâs 1958 âGreat Leap Forwardâ destroyed the agricultural system, causing a famine in which 27 million people starved to death. This was not directed at a specific ethnic group, so it may not qualify as genocide; but in 2021, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Chinaâs treatment of its Turkic Muslim Uyghur population a genocide.
Findings by Genocide Watch bear him out:
Since 2017, between 800,000-2,000,000 million Uyghurs have been held in Xinjiangâs concentration prisons, commonly referred to as âreeducation camps.â Uyghurs are forced to participate in [Chinese Communist Party] indoctrination programs in which detainees are forced to abandon their Muslim faith and culture. The CCP forbids use of the Uyghur language and imposes Mandarin Chinese within these camps. Inside camps, CCP officials subject Uyghurs to physical beatings, sexual assault and gang rapes of women.
Despite all this, the international community prefers to focus on defaming Israel for daring to conduct a legitimate war of self-defense launched only after Hamas raped, tortured, mutilated and burned to death 1,200 Israelis and carried off 240 more as hostages.
One of the most powerful denunciations of this campaign of slander came from a country that actually committed a genocide: Germany.
German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in a statement last week, âIn light of German history and the crimes against humanity of the Shoah, the German government is particularly committed to the [U.N.] Genocide Convention.â For this reason, he said, âWe stand firmly against a political instrumentalizationâ of the Convention.
Acknowledging divergent views in the international community on Israelâs military operations, he nonetheless asserted, âThe German government decisively and expressly rejects the accusation of genocide brought against Israel before the International Court of Justice. The accusation has no basis in fact.â
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Student Life Newspaper.
Forum | Letter to the Editor.
Letter to the Editor: Questioning the claims of a genocide in Gaza
Jim East | Class of 1997 May 2, 2024.
In regards to your April 21 article âStudent demonstration in solidarity of suspended peers disbanded by administrators,â I object to you printing two quotations without a necessary fact check or a question asking the speakers to validate their statements.
First: âI saw the videos. I thought it was a pretty heroic statement by the students who are concerned about the ongoing genocide in Palestine,â Bret Gustafson said.
Second: âWe were very intentional when organizing this â we [did] not want to do chants or occupy space in a way that is disruptive or obstructs the normal activity of the [South] 40,â Sonal Churiwal said. âThis was performance art that was done in solidarity with Palestinians who are living under genocide and with students, especially Black and brown students, who have been facing the wrath of the overly punitive measures of WashU.â
The Palestinians are not and have never been âliving under genocide.â Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, has repeatedly stated they are determined to commit a genocide against all Jewish people, in Israel and beyond. Israelâs military approach is clearly designed to minimize civilian casualties.
Gustafson and Churiwal have a First Amendment right to use the term âgenocide.â The freedom of speech includes the freedom to lie or to say things that might be false (I wonât presume to know if these people were lying or ignorant).
The problem is that Student Life did not ask follow-up questions pressing them to explain how what is happening to the Palestinians is a genocide.
The history of this is simple and fresh. Hamas, the elected government of Gaza, launched an unprovoked and barbaric attack on innocent civilians in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. In my opinion, everything the Israeli military has done to Palestinians in Gaza since that date is a direct result of the act of war perpetrated by Hamas.
Israelâs military response has been precise and methodical, warning Palestinians in Gaza in advance in an attempt to minimize civilian casualties. It is, however, unavoidable that civilians will die during any war. Hamas places their citizens in harmâs way because it wants Palestinians to be caught in the crossfire; then easily manipulated Americans will accept the Hamas propaganda and think they are righteous to protest in support of Palestinians and Gaza.
Anyone who cared about the quality of life in Gaza would be able to see that Hamas is the root cause of suffering there and that suffering began long before Oct. 7.
There is no genocide against the Palestinians. As journalists, you have an ethical duty to push back on statements that are provably untrue. Do better.
Letter to the Editor: Questioning the claims of a genocide in Gaza - Student Life
There is no genocide against the Palestinians. As journalists, you have an ethical duty to push back on statements that are probably untrue. Do better.
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Israel is not conducting a genocide in Gaza
Natasha Hausdorff, The Spectator, June 2025
Since Hamasâs brutal attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, the Jewish Stateâs most vociferous critics have been busy. Their most egregious claim is that Israel is committing a genocide. As is so often the case with Israel, the crimes it is accused of are rooted in an inversion of the truth.
Genocide has been committed during this conflict: by Hamas terrorists who rampaged through southern Israel and massacred over 1,000 innocents, targeting Jews. They executed their barbaric atrocities in the hope this would inspire simultaneous attacks on Israelâs other borders. On that day, Yahya Sinwarâs terror army invaded Israel with a mission to kill as many Israelis as possible; their dream was that the âal-Aqsa Floodâ would inspire other groups to join in and together bring about the final destruction of the Jewish state.
While these Palestinian terrorists failed and were not joined by other Iranian terror proxies on the 7 October invasion, they were able to count on support from Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Islamic Republic of Iran in the subsequent months. They have also been supported by throngs of extremists in the West who took to the streets and university campuses to celebrate and encourage âthe resistanceâ; support for the murder, rape, torture and kidnap in the civilian communities in the South of Israel. Despite repeated lip service about âNever Againâ, genocidal acts against the Jews have unfolded to the tune of thunderous applause.
The 1951 Genocide Convention compels its signatories to prevent and punish genocide. There are surely few more compelling cases in that mission than Israelâs fight to punish and prevent the genocide of Jews that occurred on 7 October and which Hamas has threatened to repeat over and over again. The war against Hamas, in order to remove it from power in Gaza and prevent it from making good on these threats, demands the support of every signatory of that treaty.
Yet regrettably much of the world has chosen instead to ignore Hamasâs crimes while charging Israel with genocide. South Africa and Ireland (two of the countries most determined to see Israel as âborn with original sinâ) have obsessively pursued Israel through the International Court of Justice. Neither country seems quite so animated by any of the other major conflicts raging around the world. The reason why is simple: their stance arises from an obsessional focus on Israel and a pathological need to promote falsehoods about the Jewish state.
The genocide libel against Israel rests on a concerted mass-disinformation campaign that began shortly after October 7.
Israel has most recently been accused of attempting to starve Gaza into submission. The falseness of this allegation is laid bare by the 1,790,878 tonnes of aid facilitated into Gaza by Israel over the war. These supplies are sufficient to meet the needs of the civilian population of Gaza. The new initiative of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), backed by Israel and the United States, seeks to deliver aid without diversion by Hamas, because stolen aid funds its terror army. It is therefore unsurprising that Hamas has threatened its own people if they collect aid from the GHF. That many NGOs have also discouraged civilians from accessing this aid tells us much about their true agenda.
There is no doubt that Gaza is a miserable place to live today and that civilians have been killed in this conflict This is the reality of war; a war started by Hamas. Yet Israelâs relentless efforts to prevent civilian casualties have given rise to an unprecedentedly low civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio for urban armed conflict.
There is simply no basis to claim that Israelâs aim in this war is to wipe out the Palestinian population of Gaza. As one of the most powerful militaries in the world, it would have done so long ago if it so wished. All the evidence, including in relation to the provision of aid and the targeting of strikes, points in entirely the opposite direction.
Those who accuse Israel of genocide also conveniently ignore the definition of genocide, as recognised in international law. This requires the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such. Attributing such intent to Israel, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is the modern version of the ancient blood libel that Jews gleefully kill Christian children for their blood.
Whatever one may think of Israelâs prosecution of the war, the term genocide is a legal term, not a political one. Israel is not conducting a genocide in Gaza. Those who claim otherwise must stop politicising and weaponising international law to spread blood libels about the Jewish State.
Israel is not conducting a genocide in Gaza
Israel's critics must stop politicising and weaponising international law to spread blood libels about the Jewish State
www.spectator.co.uk
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There Is No âGenocideâ in Gaza.
By using the word, we insult, not only the truth of facts and names, but the holy memory of the victims of the genocides of the last century.
Bernard-Henri LĂŠvy. The NY Sun, Nov. 21, 2024.
There Is No âGenocideâ in Gaza
By using the word, we insult, not only the truth of facts and names, but the holy memory of the victims of the genocides of the last century.
www.nysun.com
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Column.
Debunking the Gaza âgenocideâ blood libel wonât dissuade Israel-haters.
Hamas casualty and famine claims continue to be exposed as lies. But as long as much of the world accepts the canard that the Jewish state is illegitimate, that wonât matter.
Jonathan S. Tobin.
(Dec. 27, 2024 / JNS)
The effort to discredit and delegitimize Israel is a project that never allows the facts to get in the way of a fictitious âgenocideâ narrative. Thatâs something that is made clear not so much by efforts by the Jewish stateâs defenders as it is by that of its critics like The New York Times. But even if the worst smears of Israel are debunked by those who seek to brand its soldiers and leaders as war criminals, donât expect that to change many minds.
This was amply demonstrated by a major investigative piece published this week by the Times that required the efforts of seven of its reporters who claim to have interviewed â100 soldiers and officials in Israel, dozens of victims of the strikes in Gaza, and experts on the rules of armed conflict.â While the headline promised scandalous findings that might bolster the bogus claim that the Israel Defense Forces were indeed carrying out illegal or even criminal strikes on Palestinian Arabs in Gaza. But the entire article could be summed up in a single sentence. After Hamas terrorists and other Palestinians attacked the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023, the IDF responded with greater force and under slightly looser rules of engagement against its foes than it had before that event.
Thatâs it.
All of the effort and reporting that went into the feature did nothing more than establish the following painfully obvious fact. Once Hamas launched the current war by breaching the border between Gaza and Israelâand engaging in an orgy of murder, torture, rape, kidnapping and wanton destructionâIsraelâs military adopted different and more aggressive tactics than it had before its foes ended the ceasefire that existed on Oct. 6, 2023.
The truth about the IDF.
Those differences amounted to loosening the rules of engagement that would allow strikes on Hamas leaders that might not have been allowed during a period of relative quiet. That meant that attacks on enemies responsible for not just starting a war but the barbaric crimes of Oct. 7 were permitted, even if up to 20 civilians were present. That allowed the IDF to take out these criminals in their own homes, as opposed to previously when they could only be targeted if they were out in the open with few people around them.
Inevitably, that has led to higher civilian casualties. Then again, if Hamas operatives didnât want civilians to be endangered, they would avoid using them as human shields. The terrorist group admits to actively seeking not just to hide among and behind non-combatants but to increase the number of those killed and wounded for propaganda and public relations purposes. And, as the Times also reported, when the IDF blundered, officers responsible for mistakes carried out in the heat of an ongoing battle were rightly disciplined. To claim that Israelâs loosened rules are unjustified requires one to accept the idea that terrorists waging an active war with blood on their hands ought to have the impunity to commit as many crimes as they like so long as they keep their family and friends around them.
The genocide claim is again given the lie by the Times reporting, which notes that even with these âloosened rules,â the process by which Israeli commanders are able to order strikes on Hamas targets is still rigorous and far from indiscriminate or intended to mass casualties. This is something backed up by experts on the laws of war like West Pointâs John Spencer and Britainâs Col. Richard Kemp.
Indeed, the only real findings back up reports from both Israeli and Palestinian sources that 80% of the casualties in the Gaza Strip have been suffered by Hamas fighters and their relatives. That means the claim that Israel was deliberately targeting civilians in order to supposedly destroy the Palestinian population is an obvious falsehood.
This doesnât even take into account that the total number of casualties provided to journalists by Hamas sources like the Gaza Ministry of Health, which have been uncritically accepted and broadcast around the world, has been debunked by those who study statistics.
None of this violates commonly accepted notions about what is or isnât now permitted under international law during a war, which, as the Times conceded, consists of loosely defined concepts and rules.
The upshot of all this reporting is the entirely unremarkable conclusion that when terrorist groups start wars, more of the people they purport to represent and use as pawns are likely to be hurt. Equally unremarkable is the fact that nations involved in wars in which their civilians have been deliberately targeted for barbarous war crimes by terrorists are bound to be less restrained in their efforts to eradicate their enemies than in times of relative peace.
So, while the headline and the framing of the story may have sounded like fodder for those determined to demonize the Jewish state and its post-Oct. 7 efforts to destroy Hamas, the result of all that research and writing was so slender that one wonders why the newspaper bothered to explore the subject in the first place.
The reason for a food shortage
The same is true of its efforts to back up the claim that Israel is deliberately starving Gazans since the war beganâanother of the main planks in the attempt to justify the use of the term âgenocideâ to describe Israeli tactics.
A Times article published days before its report on Israeli rules of engagement provided some interesting details about the delivery of food to Gaza. Contrary to the claims that Israel is preventing humanitarian aid from reaching the coastal enclave, the Times confirmed Israelâs arguments that the fault lies with the Palestinians rather than its actions, albeit while framing it in the most negative manner possible.
As the newspaper told its readers, the primary obstacle to getting food to Gazans is Palestinian.
Hamas has been brazenly stealing aid intended for civilians and reserving it for its own use, with some of the thefts caught on film. Those shipments that were not taken by the terrorists who ruled Gaza before Oct. 7 are now being stolen by criminal gangs that operate in areas where Hamas is no longer active.
This is happening because the United Nations and its aid agencies have systematically refused to allow the IDF to guard the route and trucks through which food is distributed. That is why as many as 800 truckloads of food remain at a standstill in Israel at any given time since the various international aid agencies are afraid to send them into Gaza. The only secure route for food delivery is the one that Israel has supervised along the route from Egypt into Gaza.
So, again, the mainstream Western media that is hostile to Israel is providing reporting that gives the lie to the genocide narrative. This means that much of the ammunition that Israelâs defenders need to refute what amounts to a modern blood libel is being offered up by media sources whose coverage is consistently skewed against the Jewish state.
There is no genocide happening in Gaza. The war that Hamas started and continues to fight by refusing to free the Israeli hostages it took from their homes and a young personâs musical festival on Oct. 7 has indeed also taken many Palestinian lives. But about half of the fatalities have been Hamas fighters and operatives, and many of the civilians were those directly connected to them. Israelâs goal has been to defeat and destroy Hamas, not the Palestinians as a wholeâwho, even if you believe the terroristsâ statistics, have lost only a tiny percentage of the 2.1 million people believed to be in Gaza before Oct. 7.
To believe the genocide charge, every war in history must be labeled as a genocide. That drains a word coined to describe the Holocaust of any real meaning. That doesnât even take into account that the explicitly stated goal of Hamas is the destruction of Israel and its populationâthe Oct. 7 atrocities were merely a trailer for what it wanted to do to the rest of the Jewish state.
Ideology over facts.
These are findings that should be trumpeted to as wide an audience as possible. Yet even as outlets like the Times undermine their own editorial position with this sort of reporting, fair-minded observers should temper their expectation that this will help turn the tide in the information war being fought about the conflict.
Thatâs because those journalists, international âhuman rightsâ activists and politicians who continue to assert that what is going on in Gaza is a genocide of Palestinians donât care about what is actually happening there. Even as they hyped Hamasâs misleading casualty numbers, they have not bothered to answer or take into account coverage that makes it clear what is happening is a war but not an ethnic cleansing.
Why?
The answer is that once the false narrative implicit in critical race theory and intersectional ideology is accepted and applied to the Middle Eastâwhere Israel and the Jews are falsely labeled as âwhiteâ oppressorsâit doesnât matter what either side actually does. Every institution that adheres to the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that is used as a formula to justify discrimination against Jews and Israelis is the problemânot just the lies told by Hamas.
As best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates asserted in his ignorant pro-Hamas screed The Message, which was rapturously received by the mainstream media, the facts about Palestinian terrorism, Hamas intentions and the many Israeli efforts to achieve a compromise peace that would have created a Palestinian state that the Palestinians rejected, donât matter. Such people believe Israel is in the wrong and has no right to exist or defend itselfâever. What either side does is therefore of no consequence. The Times and other left-wing outlets can publish daily articles debunking the genocide claim, and it would make no difference to those who throw the term around to drain its actual meaning.
This doesnât mean that supporters of Israel should not continue to point out these facts and make the argument that its cause is just and its tactics defensible (and legal). But unless society is also prepared to attack the toxic woke ideologies that are the foundation of the baseless genocide charge, then it wonât matter how effective any arguments might be.
The target of fair-minded observers shouldnât only be the flimsy and easily disproved libelous assertions about Israel but the entire edifice of woke ideology, which allows both the ignorant and those with malevolent antisemitic intentions to engage in fact-free smears of the Jewish state. Without tackling these ideologies, the lies about the Middle East will continue to proliferate, regardless of how often they are disproved.
Debunking the Gaza âgenocideâ blood libel wonât dissuade Israel-haters
Hamas casualty and famine claims continue to be exposed as lies. But as long as much of the world accepts the canard that the Jewish state is illegitimate, that wonât matter.
www.jns.org
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No evidence of genocide in Gaza, UK lawyers say in arms export case.
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor. The Guardian. May 13, 2025.
No evidence has been seen that a genocide is occurring in Gaza or that women and children were targeted by the IDF, UK government lawyers have claimed, as a high court case opened into the handling of arms exports controls to Israel.
____
No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza.
By Bret Stephens. The New York Times.
Jul 22, 2025 â It may seem harsh to say, but there is a glaring dissonance to the charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. To wit: If the Israeli governmentâs intentions and actions are truly genocidal â if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans â why hasnât it been more methodical and vastly more deadly? Why not, say, hundreds of thousands of deaths, as opposed to the nearly 60,000 that Gazaâs Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths, has cited so far in nearly two years of war?
A voice of reason.
Brett Stephens: There is No Genocide in Gaza.
There is no Genocide in Gaza and there never has been. Further, the fault for any suffering being endured lies squarely at the door of Hamas, who could end the war at any moment.
Gila Isaacson, JFeed, Jul 25, 2025.
Brett Stephens: There is No Genocide in Gaza - JFeed
There is no Genocide in Gaza and there never has been. Further, the fault for any suffering being endured lies squarely at the door of - JFeed Israel News
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Exposing Gaza genocide liars one fact at a time.
Contrary to popular assertions, nothing in Israel's actions these past 22 months shows that it intends to harm the civilian population.
James Sinkinson (Aug. 27, 2025 / JNS).
In June, Spanish President Pedro Sanchez joined the shameless chorus of Israelâs slanderers, asserting, falsely, that Gaza is in a âcatastrophic situation of genocide.â
Israelâs enemiesâcollege radicals, mainstream media, NGOs, U.N. officials, celebrities and even heads of stateâhave cast accusations of genocide in the current Gaza war as wildly as rice at a wedding. Despite their frequency, such accusations are outright lies, disproven by hard, unassailable facts.
These lies can be destroyed using two powerful truths. First, nothing in Israelâs conduct of its war against Hamas indicates any intention of eliminating Gazaâs population. To the contrary, Israelâs policies show exactly the opposite, remarkably effective efforts to protect Gazaâs civilian population.
Second, nothing in Gaza death-toll demographics indicates that Israel has actually targeted innocent Palestinians. Rather, again, itâs just the opposite: Facts show Gaza death tolls are heavily skewed toward combatants. Moreover, overall deaths in the conflict reveal it to be one of the least deadly wars to the enemyâs population compared to any previous conflict in the last century. Finally, most public health estimates place the number of births in Gaza during the war far higher than war-related deaths, hardly a diminishing population.
Outrageously, instead of praising Israelâs efforts to save civilian lives, increasing members of the âinternational communityâ slander the Jewish state, using the genocide accusation in the same manner that blood libels were used to discredit, delegitimize and physically attack Jews over the centuries. Simultaneously, these enemies viciously parrot Hamasâs fake death statistics, while ignoring Hamasâs war crimes and its own genocidal strategy of human sacrifice.
Israelâs actions utterly fail to support the accusation that it intends to eliminate or diminish the Palestinian people. Remember that a key legal requirement of the crime of genocide is that the perpetrator intendsto decimate an enemy population.
Yet it is irrefutable that the Israel Defense Forces targets only terrorists. In fact, to avoid harming innocents, the IDF consistently gives warnings to civilians of impending attacks. It uses phone calls, SMS messages, leaflets, social media and âroof-knocking,â in which the Israeli Air Force fires a non-explosive missile or sound munition at the roof or upper edge of a targeted building a few minutes before the actual strike.
The IDF also issues evacuation warnings to Palestinian civilians, encouraging them to move to areas where they will face less danger from combat operations. For example, in mid-October 2023, the IDF issued evacuation warnings to approximately 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to move south, where they would be safer. Israel similarly plans to warn civilians to evacuate Gaza City ahead of an upcoming offensive. The IDFâs painstaking efforts to separate civilians and combatants are inconsistent with genocide.
In addition, the IDF has allowed massive deliveries of humanitarian aid, about 2 million tons of it, meant to preserve civilian life. In fact, John Spencer, chairman of urban warfare studies at West Point, wrote of Israelâs humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza: âThere is no historical precedent for a military providing the level of direct aid to an enemy population that Israel has provided to Gaza.â
How can a country that provides its enemy with such ample humanitarian assistance be rationally accused of genocide?
Finally, Israel has been adamant that its war is against Hamas, not the Palestinians of Gaza, though polls show many of them support the terrorist group. Indeed, Israel has consistently stated its goals to be a) destroying Hamasâs military and governing capabilities; b) securing the release of all hostages; and c) ensuring that Gaza never again threatens Israel. Whatâs more, as noted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, âIf we had wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon.â
Actual death toll numbers confirm that Israel has targeted Hamas fighters, not Palestinian civilians. Israel has been successful in minimizing the number of deaths of non-combatant Gazans compared with armed combatants. A study by the Tamaror research group for Israeli-Palestinian conflict studies indicates that during this war, âthe proportion of (potential) armed casualties increased beyond 45%, indicating increasingly precise targeting and corresponding civilian casualty reductions.â Itâs no surprise, then, that the ratio of civilians to combatants in Gaza is much lower than in comparable wars. Whereas the civilian-fighter ratio in Gaza is estimated to be 1.5:1, the average ratio in urban warfare, in general, according to the United Nations, is 9:1 civilians to fighters. This alone destroys the genocide argument.
Despite the war, Gazaâs population, measured by births vs. violent deaths, has actually increased. Estimates by organizations such as the United Nations Population Fund project births in Gaza from Oct. 7, 2023, to the present at about 124,245. Contrast that with violent deaths estimated at 75,200 during the same period by the independent Gaza Mortality Survey. Using births vs. violent deaths, the territory actually experienced a net gain in population, the opposite effect of a genocide.
Finally, how do overall Gaza deaths compare to other wars in the last century? Consider that 16 to 17 million people perished in World War I; 70 to 85 million died in World War II; 3 to 4 million in the Korean War; 2.5 to 3.5 million in the Vietnam War. Most recently, an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 people died in Syriaâs civil war. Notably, none of these conflicts was termed a âgenocide.â In contrast, according to Gazaâs Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health and others, some 62,000 to 75,000 Gazans have died in the current war, out of an estimated population of 2.1 million. Again, these numbers donât come close to genocide proportions; rather, they are simply the result of a brutal urban war, one that Hamas started and in which it uses its citizens as human shields.
In short, despite countless baseless assertions by media, NGOs, the United Nations, radical leftists and clueless celebrities, all hard data about deaths in Gaza unassailably refute accusations that Israel is committing genocide. The truth is, Israel takes extraordinary measures to limit civilian casualties, especially given the fact that the IDF possesses military power that could inflict many more deaths without such precautions.
We can fight these enemies of Israel by using hard facts to expose the genocide slander every time it is uttered, condemning their lies and cursing their shameless immorality.
The war in Gaza is no genocide, and labeling it as such contributes to the most virulent type of Jew-hatred.
R. Yoshi Zweiback, Jewish Journal. January 5, 2024.
Whatâs Happening in Gaza is No Genocide
The war in Gaza is no genocide, and labeling it as such contributes to the most virulent type of Jew-hatred.
jewishjournal.com
Instead of standing up to genuine crimes against humanity, the international community hurls blood libels at Israel.
Shoshana Bryen.
(Jan. 18, 2024 / JNS)
Student Life Newspaper.
Forum | Letter to the Editor.
Letter to the Editor: Questioning the claims of a genocide in Gaza
Letter to the Editor: Questioning the claims of a genocide in Gaza - Student Life
There is no genocide against the Palestinians. As journalists, you have an ethical duty to push back on statements that are probably untrue. Do better.
Israel is not conducting a genocide in Gaza
Natasha Hausdorff, The Spectator, June 2025 .
Israel is not conducting a genocide in Gaza
Israel's critics must stop politicising and weaponising international law to spread blood libels about the Jewish State
www.spectator.co.uk
Column.
Debunking the Gaza âgenocideâ blood libel wonât dissuade Israel-haters.
Hamas casualty and famine claims continue to be exposed as lies. But as long as much of the world accepts the canard that the Jewish state is illegitimate, that wonât matter.
Jonathan S. Tobin.
(Dec. 27, 2024 / JNS)
Debunking the Gaza âgenocideâ blood libel wonât dissuade Israel-haters
Hamas casualty and famine claims continue to be exposed as lies. But as long as much of the world accepts the canard that the Jewish state is illegitimate, that wonât matter.
www.jns.org
No evidence of genocide in Gaza, UK lawyers say in arms export case.
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor. The Guardian. May 13, 2025.
No evidence has been seen that a genocide is occurring in Gaza or that women and children were targeted by the IDF, UK government lawyers have claimed, as a high court case opened into the handling of arms exports controls to Israel.
____
No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza.
By Bret Stephens. The New York Times.
Jul 22, 2025 â
Exposing Gaza genocide liars one fact at a time.
Contrary to popular assertions, nothing in Israel's actions these past 22 months shows that it intends to harm the civilian population.
James Sinkinson (Aug. 27, 2025 / JNS).
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Calling the war a âgenocideâ is a blood libel, not scholarship.
A group of activists masquerading as scholars has rushed to brand Israel with historyâs darkest crime.
Stephen M. Flatow.
(Sept. 8, 2025 / JNS)
Letâs be clear: What Israel is doing in Gaza is not genocide. To claim otherwise is to twist language, distort history and turn international law into a political weapon.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) just passed a resolution accusing Israel of âgenocide.â The Washington Post dutifully reported it, as if it were a verdict handed down from Sinai. (The paper didnât even bother to note that the vote was a small percentage of the membership.) But it is not law. Itâs not binding. Itâs not even serious scholarship but politics dressed up in academic robes.
Genocide has a strict legal meaning. It requires a proven intent to wipe out an entire people. That was the Nazisâ âFinal Solution.â That was Rwanda in 1994. That was Bosnia in Srebrenica. It is not Israel, defending itself after the Hamas-led massacre in southern Jewish communities on Oct. 7, 2023, when 1,200 men, women and children were slaughtered, and 215 others kidnapped and dragged into Gaza. Some 50 remain captive there, some dead and some still alive.
Hamas openly declares that it will repeat Oct. 7 âagain and again.â That is genocidal intent. Israelâs intent is the opposite: to dismantle a terror machine that hides in hospitals, schools and mosques, deliberately putting Gazans in harmâs way. The terrible civilian suffering in Gaza is real, but it is the direct result of Hamasâs strategy, not Israelâs goal.
If Israel truly wanted genocide, the coastal enclave would have been flattened long ago. Instead, Israel has warned civilians to evacuate, opened humanitarian corridors and allowed aid trucks to enterâsteps no genocidal regime has ever taken.
Even former President Joe Biden (hardly Israelâs biggest cheerleader) said bluntly: âWhatâs happening in Gaza is not genocide.â
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has not ruled otherwise. Only the IAGS, a group of activists masquerading as scholars, rushed to brand Israel with historyâs darkest crime. They spouted their claim with only 30% of their organization voting in favor of hechshering the word; the voting itself came in the form of a listserv, according to news reports, without prior discussion of the matter among members.
Letâs call this what it is: a modern blood libel. Just like in the Middle Ages, when Jews were accused of murdering Christian children to justify hatred against them, today Israel is accused of genocide to delegitimize its very existence. The goal is the same: to turn Jews into monsters and strip them of the right to defend themselves.
Words matter. If everything is genocide, then nothing is. Diluting the term makes it harder to act when real genocides occur. Itâs an insult to the victims of the Holocaust, Rwanda and Bosnia to equate Israelâs war of survival with their extermination.
Israel is not committing genocide. Israel is fighting to survive. And those who slander it with the worldâs most heinous crime are not defending human rights are providing cover for terrorists who openly seek the next Oct. 7.
Thatâs why the world cannot be silent. Every time this lie is repeated, it gains traction. Pro-Israel voicesâand the voices of all who recognize truthâmust push back in the press, on campus and in the halls of government. Call it out, write about it, challenge it. The stakes are not only Israelâs reputation. They are the integrity of international law itself.
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Lies of genocide against Israel distort truth and endanger Jews.
Anti-Israel activists take a lesson from the Nazis, repeating monstrous falsehoods often enough so that people would eventually believe them.
(Sept. 5, 2025 / The Focus Project)
The accusation of genocide against the Jewish state is being used as a moral weapon. It is not just a false legal claim; the explosive yet deceptive charge is being used to stigmatize Jews everywhere. By branding Israel as a âgenocidal state,â anti-Israel activists provide cover for those who threaten or attack Jews in America and around the world. Even some activists acknowledged that Israel does not meet the accepted legal standard of genocide, which is why they argue the definition must be ârevisedâ or âbroadenedâ to apply to Israel.
Accusing Jewsâthe very people who suffered in the Holocaustâof committing genocide turns history on its head. Yet recently, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) passed a resolution declaring that Israel is committing âgenocideâ in Gaza. These dubious claims distort international law and put Jews everywhere in greater danger. A group of 20 young men recently attacked a Jewish man speaking Hebrew in Santa Monica, Calif., tearing off his Star of David necklace and injuring him.
Israelâs intent: Defeating Hamas, not destroying a people
The U.N. Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts committed âwith intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.â
The critical element is intent. Israelâs official goal is to dismantle Hamas, the Iranian-backed terror group responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre. While tragically, Palestinian civilian lives have been lost, they were never Israelâs target. Nearly two years ago, Hamas murdered more than 1,200 people, including teens and young adults, at a music festival in Israel, and forcibly kidnapped more than 250 Israelis and foreign nationals while openly declaring its longtime goals of destroying Israel and killing all Jews worldwide.
(Genocide, Facts Chart.
[https://me.jnsi.org/uploads/2025/09/Genocide-Facts-Chart.png].
Chart showing the claim of genocide versus facts).
The Israeli government recently announced a new budget of $473 million for Gaza humanitarian aid while cutting 3% of Israelâs budget for education, health care and the environment. West Point Military Academy scholar John Spencer emphasized that âIsrael has delivered more humanitarian aidâ2 million tonsâto Gaza than any military in history has provided to an enemy population during wartime.â
Israel also has helped the World Health Organization vaccinate 600,000 Gazan children against polio, repaired water pipelines and helped nearly 40,000 patients leave Gaza for treatment abroad.
Israelâs actions throughout the war clearly contradict the charge of genocide.
Hamas strategy: Palestinian suffering as a weapon.
Palestinian civilians in Gaza are truly suffering and the tragedy is real. The genocide scholarsâ resolution listed destruction, displacement and hunger, but suffering in war is not proof of genocide. The resolution fails to acknowledge Hamasâs attack and warfare tactics, including launching barrages of missiles against Israeli civilians.
(IDF Finds Weapons Cache in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip.
[https://me.jnsi.org/uploads/2024/03/IDF-Finds-Weapons-Cache-in-Khan-Yunis-Gaza-2.jpeg].
A weapons cache discovered by the Israel Defense Forces in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, March 2024).
The Palestinian terror group exploits the suffering of Gazans to achieve its militant goals. This is why Hamas embeds its fighters and weapons in homes, U.N.-run schools and playgrounds, hospitals, mosques and other civilian infrastructure. Mohammed Saqer, the nursing director at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, revealed that Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists threatened him for treating wounded Palestinian civilians.
Hamas shows the same disregard for its own civilians as it does for Israeli hostages, 20 out of 50 deemed alive and still being held in captivity without access to the Red Cross and any medical care.
This war could end immediately if Hamas released all hostages, laid down its arms and allowed new leadership in Gaza. Civilian suffering is tragic, but it is not evidence of genocide.
Echo chamber: UN, academics, NGOs amplify false consensus.
One of the most misleading parts of the genocide accusation is the claim of consensus. The IAGS resolution relied on reports by officials and organizations with documented records of anti-Israel bias. In some cases, these officials have made comments condemned as antisemitic, yet their words are recycled as authoritative evidence.
(Propaganda Chart.
[https://me.jnsi.org/uploads/2025/09/Propaganda-Chart.png].
Chart showing forms of propaganda, old and new).
IAGS member and genocide scholar Sara E. Brown: âThe content of the resolution and the way it was forced through without the usual transparency speak to an embarrassing absence of professionalism. It favored activists seeking to advance a false narrative about Israel.â
Only 140 membersâless than 30% of the groupâvoted, and the IAGS resolution was pushed through without its traditional debate. Still, media headlines portrayed it like a unanimous declaration from âthe worldâs leading genocide experts.â
The same U.N. agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and activist academics often cite each other in a closed loop, creating the illusion of a consensus. This âincestuous cycleâ amplifies recycled claims until they sound like fact.
Legal malpractice: Redefining words to target Israel.
Accusations of genocide against Israel rest not on evidence but on the manipulation of language. Amnesty International and other activist organizations have admitted that the accepted legal definition of genocide is âtoo narrowâ to apply to Israel, so they call for ârevisingâ or âbroadeningâ it.
The same pattern has been used with other terms: âapartheidâ stretched beyond recognition, ârefugeeâ status redefined for generations and âstatehoodâ applied differently for political purposes. Rewriting important terms for political objectives does not create truth and undermines international law.
Points to consider:
False genocide charges put Jews everywhere at risk.
The accusation of genocide against Israel is not an abstract debate. It stigmatizes Jews worldwide, giving cover to those who intimidate, harass and attack Jews on the street, in synagogues and at kosher restaurants. Students are bullied, mezuzahs torn down from doorposts, and community organizations need constant police protection. This genocidal lie fuels the hatred of Jews (antisemitism) and threatens the safety of Jews everywhere.
Accusations of genocide target the Jewish people, not just Israel.
Labeling Israel a âgenocidalâ state is not just about one nation. It paints all Jews as complicit in humanityâs worst crime. These accusations are designed to alienate Jews from public life, delegitimize Jewish voices and rewrite Jewish history. The danger extends far beyond Israelâs bordersâto the United States, Australia, Europe and the rest of the world.
Activists rewrite definitions to fit accusations against Israel.
Genocide is the âcrime of crimes.â Diluting the term through false accusations cheapens the suffering of Armenians, Rwandans and other actual victims of genocide. Anti-Israel activist groups like Amnesty International admitted that Israel does not meet the accepted definition of genocide, so they argue the term must be ârevisedâ or âbroadened.â This is part of a larger pattern: âapartheid,â ârefugeeâ and âstatehoodâ have all been twisted into political weapons against Israel.
Hamasâs agenda is openly genocidal.
Hamas openly declares in its founding charter the goal of killing Jews everywhere: âThe Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews.â Leaders of the Iranian-backed terror group threaten âa million Oct. 7sâ and that âOct. 7 assaults will be repeated from the West Bank.â These declarations excuse the genocidal intent of Hamas.
Civilian suffering in war is not proof of genocide.
War is tragic, and the suffering of Palestinians is real. But suffering in war is not proof of genocide; it must be tied to an intention to wipe out a people. Israel allows aid into Gaza, facilitates Palestinian medical treatment abroad and risks its own soldiersâ lives in ground combat to reduce civilian casualties. International law requires intent, and Israelâs actions directly contradict this claim. Even some anti-Israel activists acknowledge that the legal definition of genocide does not apply to Israelâs war goals.
Hamas uses civilians as weapons of war.
Hamas turns Gaza hospitals, mosques and schools into military bases by placing its fighters and weapons among patients, worshippers and students. The terror group steals humanitarian aid to feed its terrorists instead of civilians and traps Gazan families inside buildings as shields. This strategy prolongs suffering and deliberately sacrifices Palestinian lives to drive its global propaganda efforts.
The news media amplified a flawed vote into global headlines.
A small minority of IAGS members pushed through its Gaza âgenocideâ resolution without full debate. One member called the process âan embarrassing absence of professionalism.â Yet reporters framed the conclusion as if the worldâs genocide scholars had reached a unanimous determination, helping to spread misinformation and turning a disputed vote into worldwide headlines.
Echoes of the past: Twisting the Holocaust against Jews.
Weaponizing the term âgenocideâ against the Jewish state perverts the memory of the Holocaust. The Nazis perfected the âBig Lie,â repeating a monstrous falsehood often enough so that people would eventually believe it. With horrific irony, anti-Israel activists use the same tactic today, repeating the genocide smear until it appears to be truth.
Peace is possible if Hamas chooses life over death
This war could have ended long ago. And it could end today if Hamas releases the hostages, lays down its weapons and allows new leadership for Gaza. Hamas clings to its genocidal dream while Palestinian civilians pay the price. True peace will come only when Hamas abandons death and chooses lifeâfor Israelis, Palestinians and humanity.
[The Focus Project is a consensus initiative of major American Jewish organizations that provides crucial news, talking points and background content about issues affecting Israel and the Jewish people, including antisemitism, anti-Zionism and relevant events in the Middle East].
