Maliciously false accusations that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been flying thick and fast since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023.
South Africa levelled that calumny at the International Court of Justice more than a year ago.
A few days ago, Bernie Sanders became the first U.S. senator to label Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide. “The intent is clear,” he said. “The conclusion is inescapable: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.”
Another Jewish member of Vermont’s delegation in Congress, Rep. Becca Balint, the granddaughter of a Jew murdered during the Holocaust, wrote an op-ed piece branding Israel’s offensive in Gaza as genocide.
This unfounded accusation has filtered down to the masses at street level, as I discovered two weeks ago. While cycling in downtown Toronto, I passed a long column of elderly women on a sidewalk holding aloft placards promoting the canard that genocide is unfolding in Gaza.
Last week, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory hurled that accusation at Israel as well.
The commission is chaired by Navi Pillay, a South African who formerly headed the UN’s Human Rights Council, a notoriously anti-Israel body.
Last week, it released its 72-page report.
Claiming there are reasonable grounds that Israel committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention, it singled out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and the former minister of defence, Yoav Gallant, for having “incited” genocide in their speeches and statements.
By its accounting, Israel has targeted members of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, caused serious bodily or mental harm to these individuals, deliberately created conditions to bring about their destruction, and imposed measures intended to prevent births.
These are extremely serious charges, especially in light of the fact that Israel — the national home of the Jewish people — emerged as a sovereign state only three years after Nazi Germany’s genocidal project to wipe out the Jewish population of Europe in the Holocaust.
Let’s be clear.
Israel is waging a war of self-defence in Gaza to eradicate Hamas as a military and governing force. Period. In pursuit of this worthy objective, Israel is exerting enormous pressure on Hamas. But Israel is not conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians, even though tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in the crossfire.
According to UN Watch, a reputable organization, the commission has twisted and distorted the narrative surrounding Israel’s just and necessary offensive. It has presented civilian casualties in Gaza as “prima facie proof of genocidal intent rather than as tragic and unavoidable consequences of urban warfare, exacerbated by Hamas’ human shield strategy.”
Strangely enough, the commission ignored this widely-used and cynical strategy, which Hamas has deployed in mosques, schools, residential buildings, and hospitals to conceal command posts, arms factories, weapons storage facilities and attack tunnels. Israel’s attacks on these sites were incorrectly portrayed by the commission as deliberate assaults on Palestinian civilians.
The plain and unvarnished truth is that Israel has been targeting Hamas combatants, not Palestinian civilians per se.
Israel is not trying to wipe out the Palestinians, with whom it hopes to coexist once Hamas has been removed from the equation.
As genocide is defined by the United Nations, Israel has not attempted “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”
If Israel was a genocidal state, the picture in Gaza would have been radically different. Given the firepower at its disposal, Israel could have inflicted infinitely more crushing pain on the Palestinians than it has until now.
Indeed, if the commission’s misleading narrative is to be believed, Israel could have taken aim at its two million Palestinian citizens and the three million Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank. These ghastly scenarios have not occurred.
The commission also erred when it depicted Israel’s military campaign as evidence of genocide rather than as the outcome of fierce urban conflict. Given these circumstances, Palestinians have been displaced and have experienced difficulty in buying food and accessing health care.
Much of Gaza has been destroyed in the past two years as fighting has raged, but the commission cited this large-scale widespread damage as proof of genocide. It blindly ignored the harsh reality that urban combat produces extensive destruction, particularly when Hamas foot soldiers are embedded within civilian infrastructure and refuse to surrender.
In this respect, the commission’s report failed to acknowledge that Israeli forces are engaged in bitter combat with thousands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters. Yet the report wrongly implied that Israel is waging war on women and children. From this perspective, Hamas, the initiator of this war, has been erased from the narrative, as UN Watch aptly says.
The commission, in this connection, neglected to mention Hamas’s 17-year military buildup in Gaza, including its vast tunnel network, booby-trapped buildings, and massive arms buildup. “By ignoring this reality, the report strips the conflict of its military context and recasts lawful military targets as evidence of genocide.”
As UN Watch correctly points out, the commission omitted a vitally important chapter — Hamas’ abduction of Israeli hostages and the reign of terror to which it has subjected them since October 7, 2023. “This omission is consistent with the broader erasure of Hamas as an active actor in Gaza, removing essential context from the commission’s narrative.”
Finally, the commission willfully ignored the obvious. The suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza could have been significantly reduced, even ended, if Hamas had released all the hostages at once, laid down its weapons and relinquished control of Gaza.
It would appear that Hamas is unwilling to spare the Palestinians. Judging by the past 23 months, Hamas is perfectly ready to sacrifice the lives of Gazans on the altar of self-interest while falsely accusing Israel of the crime of genocide.
Gazans will be able to breathe a sigh of relief, and Israelis will feel far more secure and safer, once Hamas has been flushed out of existence.
Israel is pursuing this goal as these words are written.