We’re constantly being told that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. This is untrue. No court has found that Israel is committing or has committed genocide in Gaza. True, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel came to this conclusion, but as I explain in Are You Antisemitic? It Depends on Your Choice of Comrades in the Israel-Gaza Conflict, their findings are untrustworthy because of anti-Israel bias.
Whether a crime has occurred or is occurring depends on a legal definition. Absent a precisely defined statute, no crime has occurred. This is the Roman legal maxim nullum crimen sine lege. The maxim is basic to the rule of law. Genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention is not simply mass killing or even war crimes. Genocide requires specific intent (in legal parlance, dolus specialis) to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such.
A court can infer intent from a pattern of conduct and statements. However, in the case of genocide, courts have required that destruction of the group be the aim of aggression. Defeating an enemy or dispersing a population is insufficient grounds to apply the definition of genocide; these are the typical entailments of total war. Total war is not inherently genocidal, and it is absurd to suggest otherwise.
War is a hideous thing, but it is rarely genocidal. At least not in the modern epoch. At least not among modern peoples. The National Socialist project of eradicating the Jews was exceptional. But it is not the only one. Hamas’s goal of driving Jews into the sea is genocidal. Yet it is Israel that is accused of genocide.
The reality of the situation is that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute an act of self-defense after being attacked. Even when not accused of genocide, Israel is condemned for bringing death and destruction to Gaza when Hamas is to blame. As with any other war, it is not possible to hold Hamas accountable without collateral damage. But the premise is wrong. It’s not as if Hamas is a terrorist organization acting independently of the will of Gazans. Hamas is the Gazan government. Hamas represents the Gazan people, just as the Nazi regime represented the German people in World War II.
This is an historic analogy to the Israeli-Gaza situation: Germany attacked its neighbors, triggering a world war. It would be incorrect to say that because one in ten Germans was a Nazi, the Allies should not have addressed the German people with total war. Moreover, many more Germans supported the Nazi Party than were official party members.
Likewise, Hamas enjoys the support of a majority of Gaza’s residents. Support for the terrorist government extends beyond Gaza. If Hamas were allowed to run for elections in the West Bank, polls show that a majority of Arab Muslims living there would put them in office. October 7 was an act of the whole Gazan population. The grim truth is that the majority of Arab Muslims want to see Israel wiped off the Middle East map.
It follows that the death and rubble left in the wake of Israel’s retaliation against Gazans after October 7 are analogous to the death and rubble in Germany following Allied bombing and the ground invasion. It would be absurd to accuse the Allies of genocide because hundreds of thousands of Germans were killed, maimed, and displaced during combat (another 1.5 to 3 million died as a result of the war). It is likewise absurd to accuse the Israelis of genocide because tens of thousands of Gazans were killed and even more were displaced during combat. Again, this is the nature of total war.
There is a high-intensity urban war with large Gazan casualties after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. But it is not a genocide. Frankly, even if a court found Israel guilty of the crime of genocide, it would be a bad verdict, driven by Jew hatred. One need not wait for authority to tell us what is happening in Gaza. We know why Israel is treated differently than other countries.
The lesson is this: When your government pursues aggressive war, you suffer the consequences. War crimes aside (which must be proved in court by impartial judges), the death and destruction of your fellows are your responsibility.
What did Gazans expect? There is no rational nation that will—or should—allow a foreign army to invade and kill its citizens and take hostages without retaliation. Poke Israel, and Israel strikes back. It must retaliate for its citizens’ sake.
The death and destruction that follow aggressive war are attributable to your government and therefore to you if your government takes you to war. If you do not wish to be on the receiving end of the right to self-defense, then don’t vote Nazis or Islamists into power. It’s that basic.
freedom and reason 