Rejecting the fake "genocide" propaganda initiated by Pallyweid
REJECTING THE "GENOCIDE" PROPAGANDA INITIATED BY PALLYWEID
NGO Atrocity Inversion: False Accusations of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing to Distract from Hamas Massacre. October 23, 2023 NGO-Monitor
Supporters of genocidal Hamas accuse Israel of genocide. The libel that Israel is committing a non-existent genocide or ethnic cleansing is a cruel irony.
Farley Weiss and Leonard Grunstein are authors of the new book Because It’s Just and Right: The Untold Back-Story of the U.S. Recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
(Jan. 2, 2024 / JNS) Hamas has made clear in its words and actions that it is committed to the genocide of the Jewish people, whether they live in Israel or not.
The crime of genocide is defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide approved by U.N. General Assembly Resolution 260 A (III) of Dec. 9, 1948 and entered into force on Jan. 12, 1951. The crime of genocide requires the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Hamas’ words and deeds clearly meet this requirement.
Thus, falsely accusing Israel of genocide in its current defensive war against Hamas is a particularly cruel and odious blood libel. After all, the crime of genocide was only recognized as a result of the Holocaust. The Nazis called their genocide the “final solution.” The hideous pro-Hamas chant there is “one solution, intifada revolution,” channels this horrific ambition.
Everyone, including the slanderers themselves, knows that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. Moreover, as the White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, Adm. John Kirby, noted, “I heard this word ‘genocide’ tossed around. Hamas actually does have genocidal intentions against the people of Israel. They’d like to see it wiped off the map. They’ve said so on purpose. That’s what’s at stake here”
Israel is not committing “ethnic cleansing” either. There is no precise legal definition of ethnic cleansing under international law, but it was used to describe atrocities committed during the wars that followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The U.N.’s Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect describes ethnic cleansing as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent or terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.” Employing the term “ethnic cleansing” against Israel rather than Hamas is preposterous incitement. JNS
Germany Rejects UN 'Genocide' Charge Against Israel. Jan 12, 2024 — The German government on Friday sharply rejected allegations before the UN's top court that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Barrons
France Rejects Genocide Accusations Against Israel in Gaza. Jan 17, 2024 — France on Wednesday became the latest Western country to reject accusations that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a charge that was recently brought before a United Nations court in The Hague. NYT
Accusing Israel of genocide is an inversion of the truth designed to leave it defenceless South Africa’s case before the ICJ is seeking to achieve via lawfare what Hamas attempts via warfare. By Charles Moore. 12 January 2024 Telegraph
Accusing Israel of genocide is a perverse moral inversion. If there is a genocidal force in this war, it must be Hamas. Incorrect use of the term will harm the cause of peace.
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. 20 January 2024.
Of all the deplorable crimes ever conceived by the human mind, one stands alone in its utter depravity, as the very epitome of evil... Telegraph
The absurdity of the Israeli genocide accusation. By Steve Ambler | Jan 24, 2024. The South African accusation of genocide against Israel lacks any credibility. (Steve Ambler is professor emeritus of economics in the École des sciences de la gestion, Université du Québec à Montréal.). TroyMedia
Unrwa, Hamas and the ‘Genocide’ Smear Against Israel. South Africa’s case at the ICJ is built on reports from groups with links to terrorist organizations. By Naftali Balanson Jan. 29, 2024.
Twelve employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, including seven primary- or secondary-school teachers, had links to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the Journal reported Monday, citing intelligence that Israel supplied to U.S. officials. Unrwa, which deals exclusively with Palestinians, also has a connection with last week’s proceedings at the International Court of Justice. Thirteen footnotes in South Africa’s petition cite Unrwa in support of its claim that the Jewish state is waging genocide against the Palestinians.
This isn’t justice but a dangerous aberration of the concept. South Africa is doing Hamas’s bidding, and the case is about more than false claims of genocide. In a war of narratives, the court, which refused to dismiss the petition, is essentially adopting a narrative that rejects Israel’s right to defend itself and to exist. WSJ
Understanding the ICJ's ruling on the Israel genocide case - analysis. By Mark Wess. February 10, 2024 Arguing it was acting to defend itself and was fighting Hamas, not the Palestinian population, Israel called on the court to dismiss the case as groundless. “This is no genocide,” lawyer Malcolm Shaw said, stressing that Israel respects international law and had a right to defend itself. JPost
In the propaganda war, Hamas is winning. No total victory for either side - opinion. By Alan Shatter. February 15, 2024. Neither Hamas, nor Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist leaders, nor their Iranian sponsors really care how many Palestinians are killed in Gaza. For strategic military reasons, they may momentarily regret their terrorist militants’ deaths. But they perceive the dead as beneficially sacrificed to achieve their main objectives – to demonize Israel and make it an international pariah and gain support for accomplishing their ultimate goals: Israel’s total destruction and the murder of the largest possible number of Israelis and Jews.
In their world, Palestinian deaths are celebrated as deceased martyrs, and exploited and denounced to depict Israel as the evil aggressor intent on Palestinian genocide. The fact that both Palestinian groups are death cults that value death over life is something too many in the West have difficulty understanding. Many also forget or choose to ignore, that Hamas initiated the current conflict on October 7 and has promised to repeat that day’s atrocities.... The writer is a former Irish justice and defense minister, a former chairperson of the Irish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and a fellow of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations. JPost
Pro-Palestinian groups file legal action against German politician over Gaza war. By Reuters. February 16, 2024. Volker Beck, in opinion pieces and media interviews, expressed support for Israel's military operation in Gaza, calling for making humanitarian aid conditional on Hamas freeing Israeli hostages..
Rejecting accusations of genocide Beck rejected the claims as "nonsense."
"There is no genocide in Gaza and I do not advocate genocide," he told Reuters, adding that he had filed complaints against the groups for defamation. JPost
U.S. Rejects ‘Unfounded’ Genocide Claim in UN Report Targeting Israel. March 29, 2024.
Washington on March 27 dismissed a new United Nations (UN) report that accuses Israel of genocide. “Allegations of genocide are unfounded,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller about the report, authored by UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Miller also stated that the Biden administration has “opposed the mandate of this special rapporteur,” noting “a history of antisemitic comments that she has made.” He added that she “appeared to justify the attacks of October 7th.” In her report, Albanese called for an arms embargo against Israel, a UN General Assembly plan to punish Israel for provoking the war Hamas launched, and an “international protective presence to constrain the violence” against Palestinians.
Expert Analysis. “It’s time to ask why the United States is still a member of a body that promotes antisemitism. Engagement in the UN Human Rights Council has not proved an effective strategy for reform.” — Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor
“Albanese’s false accusation that Israel is committing genocide is based on absurd and incompetent mischaracterizations of both the facts and the law. Albanese’s blatant anti-Israel bias, both prior to her current role and in her performance of it, means that her appointment was, and her service is, contrary to UN ethics rules. The appropriate remedy is to terminate Albanese’s appointment.” — Orde Kittrie, FDD Senior Fellow.
“Albanese has made a career of erasing Israel’s legitimate security concerns and arguing that Israel’s policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians can only be guided by hatred and malice. She fits well in a UN system irredeemably biased against the Jewish state.” — David May, FDD Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst.
Albanese’s History of Antisemitism and Justifying Terrorism... FDD
Germany denies accusation of aiding a genocide in Gaza at World Court. By Stephanie van den Berg. April 9, 2024. THE HAGUE, April 9 (Reuters) - Germany denied accusations on Tuesday that it was aiding genocide in Gaza by selling Israel arms in a suit to the top U.N. court by Nicaragua reflecting mounting legal action in support of Palestinians. Reuters
Germany slaps down Nicaragua’s charge it facilitates 'genocide' in Gaza. Apr 9, 2024 — Germany has rejected Nicaragua's accusations that it is enabling a "genocide" by Israel in the Gaza Strip. Politico
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rejects accusations Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Many countries, including the U.S., have been critical of the way the Israel Defense Forces are conducting military operations in the Gaza Strip.
Austin: 'We don't have any evidence' of Israel committing genocide in Gaza. April 9, 2024. NBC
Opinion: The antisemitic lie at the heart of too many campus protests. Opinion by Frida Ghitis. May 7, 2024.
Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a senior columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
[...] The claim, the chants, the smearing of President Joe Biden as “Genocide Joe” (to former President Donald Trump’s delight) for his support for Israel are part of an astonishingly successful campaign to paint Israel’s defensive war against Hamas as an act of genocide.
The charge is not just absurd, it’s outrageous. Yet incredibly, it’s a smear that has gained traction.
Yes, Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians following the Hamas attacks of October 7. The suffering of the population in Gaza is heartbreaking, horrific. And Israel may not have done everything it could to minimize the civilian death toll. But the leap to brand its military campaign as a genocide — the depth of humanity’s depravity — is unconscionable.
Many people see, as I do, a direct connection in the genocide accusations to a centuries’ old calumny that has bedeviled the Jewish people, used since the Middle Ages to taunt them and even to justify massacring and exiling them. It’s called the blood libel, and it has long helped fuel the apparently undying fires of antisemitism.
The original blood libel claimed that Jews murdered Christians, particularly children, so they could use their blood in rituals. It may sound laughable, ridiculous, but across hundreds of years many have believed it. Some still do. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer confronted a Hamas official on air in 2014 about his assertion that Jews use Christian blood in the matzo they eat at Passover.
Over the centuries, this defamation gave rise to other well-worn antisemitic tropes — that Jews are vampires, blood-suckers and organ-harvesters. Images of Jews and Stars of David dripping blood have cropped up repeatedly since October 7.
Indeed, too many today are willing to assume the worst possible motives for the actions of Jews — or in this case, the Jewish state — making the historical blood libel the heir to an ever-evolving series of modern slanders culminating in genocide.
Genocide is a term that became enshrined in international law after Nazi Germany sought to annihilate every Jew in Europe, killing 6 million, including about 1.5 million children. It is something completely different from what is happening in Gaza.
The UN’s Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” The term was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish jurist who in the 1930s began to push for an international law barring such atrocities as Jews in Eastern Europe endured brutal pogroms. He escaped to the US and later helped prepare the Nuremberg trials against the Nazis who, among the millions they had killed, had murdered his family who remained behind in Europe.
Claims that Israel has been committing a genocide of Palestinians date to long before October 7. Yet the population of Gaza was estimated to be less than 400,000 when Israel captured the territory from Egypt in a war against multiple Arab countries in 1967. It’s now estimated at just over 2 million. Population growth of almost 600% would make it the most inept genocide in the history of the world.
What about now?
Those repeating the word genocide over and over, turning it into a mantra that penetrates the public consciousness, smearing Israel and anyone who supports it, ignore the facts of this war.
This is not an unprovoked war, like Russia’s against Ukraine. It’s not a civil war between rival militias, like the one raging in Sudan — which, by the way, is being ignored by almost everyone, even though the UN describes it as one of the “worst humanitarian crises in recent memory,” where a famine could kill 500,000 people.
No, Israel was attacked. On October 7, Hamas launched a gruesome assault on Israeli civilians, killing some 1,200 — including many women and children — and dragging hundreds of them as hostages into Gaza. Today dozens — including many women and children — remain in captivity.
Those who keep saying that Israel’s response is an act of revenge rather than the strategic, defensive war that most Israelis view as a fight for national survival against a determined enemy backed by a powerful country are deliberately distorting reality. In doing so, they are perversely evoking the same false blood lust and grotesqueness embedded in the blood libel archetype.
Hamas’ massacre, its wide-ranging sexual violence, its burning of entire families in their homes, its vow to do it again — these and other serious threats that the group poses to Israelis get ignored in the characterizations of the Israel Defense Forces as pursuing only vengeance by killing Gazan civilians.
Indeed, Hamas’ actions, which precipitated this war, don’t seem to exist in the minds of ostensibly humanitarian-minded protesters. Nor even the fate of the hostages, still captive in Hamas tunnels.... CNN
White House sees no genocide in Gaza, condemns aid convoy attacks. By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason May 14, 2024.
WASHINGTON, May 13 (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday that President Joe Biden's administration does not view the killings of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel in its war with Hamas as genocide. Sullivan said the United States wants to see Hamas defeated. He also said that Palestinians caught in the middle of the war were in "hell" and that a major military operation by Israel in Rafah would be a mistake. Reuters
Biden: What's happening in Gaza 'is not genocide'. May 20, 2024 — “What's happening is not genocide. We reject that,” Biden said during a speech in the Rose Garden. Politico
IDF ‘most moral army in the world’. Gisborne Herald. 16 Jan, 2024.
by Patrick Cooper.
Does the Israeli Defence Force deliberately rape, torture and kill Palestinian civilians, as Hamas terrorists did to innocent Israelis on October 7, condemning themselves as they joyfully recorded these atrocities? Even the Nazis attempted to conceal evidence of the Holocaust when they realised they were going to lose the war. No, the IDF goes to great lengths to avoid non-combatant casualties.
The UN claims that in all conflicts since World War 2, the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths on average has been nine to one. The American and British armies have worked hard to bring it down to three to one, as was the case in Iraq. In the Gaza war, the IDF believes it has killed 9500 Hamas terrorists and the Palestinian Health Authority claims that there have been 22,500 Palestinian deaths, not distinguishing between combatants and civilians. This gives us a ratio of 130 to 95 or much less than two to one civilian-to-combatant deaths — surely not an indication of genocide.
British Colonel Richard Kemp has called the IDF “the most moral army in the world”. Before the Israeli offensive began, the IDF dropped
1.5 million leaflets on northern Gaza advising the population there to move south for their own safety; 900,000 Gazans complied. When the focus moved to attacking Hamas in the south, maps of safe havens were dropped or emailed to the Palestinian population beforehand. The occupants of buildings that were going to be attacked were messaged, emailed or telephoned in advance. The Israelis also used the “knock on roof” technique whereby non-explosive or low-yield devices are dropped on roofs of buildings that are going to be bombed.
The Israeli lawyers might point out that numerous Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilians have received life-saving treatment in Israeli hospitals during the conflict. Also, during the period between 1967 and 2005 when Israel took over military control of Gaza, the population rose from 340,000 to 1.4 million. Hardly evidence of genocide.
Some statistics for South Africa: 40 percent of the population are unemployed, 60 percent live under the poverty line and 32 million people receive an income from the state. Murders went up 14 percent between July and September as compared with the same period in 2021 when 6163 people were killed — including almost 1000 women. Rape was up 11 percent with 10,000 cases opened last year. Kidnappings rose to more than 4000. Carjackings were up 24 percent to more than 6000. Between April and September, 550 children were killed.
Shouldn’t South Africa be removing the plank from its own eye? NZHerald
Why there is no genocide in Gaza being committed by Israel. Posted by Family First Party on May 21, 2024.
“The ratio of civilian to military casualties is the lowest in any conflict that I’m aware of, anywhere in the world.” – Colonel Richard Kemp
The conflict in Gaza has ignited global debates, with many quick to condemn Israel’s military actions as “genocidal”.
However, a closer examination of the facts and context reveals this to be a lie.
Former British army commander Colonel Richard Kemp’s speech last night at the North Shore Synagogue, organized by the Australian Jewish Association, offers a comprehensive insight into why Israel’s actions in Gaza are a justified response to terrorism and not an act of genocide as leftists and Muslim leaders like to portray.
Israel is actually fighting a war on behalf of all civilised people because if Hamas succeeds, they won’t stop with destroying the Jews.
Urban warfare inevitably and regrettably involves civilian casualties, Kemp said.
Every loss of civilian life is a tragedy yet Hamas are not just using them as human shields.
“I would describe them more accurately as human sacrifices,” Kemp said.
But despite the complexities, Israel has shown remarkable restraint and precision. Colonel Kemp said that “the ratio of civilian to military casualties is the lowest in any conflict that I’m aware of, anywhere in the world.”
This ratio stands at 0.8 civilians for every combatant killed, he said.
In contrast, similar conflicts such as the American and British operations in Afghanistan and Iraq had ratios of 5:1 and 3:1, respectively.
The UN reports an average of 9:1 for urban conflicts since World War II.
Yet the media does not report this and worse, has created a narrative that the ratio is unacceptable and that Israel must cease its operations to destroy Hamas.
Colonel Kemp said Israel had gone to great lengths to minimize civilian harm. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) distributed millions of leaflets, made countless phone calls, and sent text messages to warn civilians to evacuate combat zones.
This level of effort to protect non-combatants is unprecedented and demonstrates a commitment to avoiding unnecessary civilian deaths.
Gaza presents an extraordinarily complex battlefield. According to Kemp, “The Israelis are fighting in the most complex battlefield that any army has ever had to fight in.” Hamas has spent decades preparing Gaza for conflict, with extensive tunnels, booby traps, and fortified positions. These conditions complicate military operations and heighten the risk of civilian casualties, yet the IDF continues to prioritize precision strikes and intelligence-driven operations.
One of the most insidious tactics used by Hamas involves the storage of arms in civilian houses. Colonel Kemp observed, “Almost every house in some parts of Gaza have a stash of weapons. They have explosives, they have grenades, they have rocket launchers, they have machine guns.”
This tactic allows terrorists to walk around unarmed, blending in with the civilian population, and making it extraordinarily difficult for IDF soldiers to identify them. Kemp explained, “Very few terrorists ever wear uniforms...they never carry weapons.”
This strategy forces the IDF to destroy houses suspected of storing weapons, further complicating the conflict and increasing the risk of civilian casualties.
Accusations of genocide against Israel are not only unfounded but also deeply offensive given the historical context.
As Kemp poignantly noted, “That accusation of genocide is nothing short of an obscenity. It accuses a nation built partially on the survivors of a genocide and a nation that is fighting to defend its own population against genocide.”
Hamas, recognised as a terrorist organisation by many countries, explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews worldwide.
Its charter and the actions of its militants on October 7th and 8th, as described by Kemp, reveal a genocidal intent. Israel’s military response is a necessary measure to ensure its survival against an adversary that seeks its annihilation.
Despite the vocal anti-Israel protests, there is significant support for Israel’s right to defend itself.
Kemp emphasized that “the Arab world supports Israel. Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia...they want Israel to defeat Hamas.”
This support, although sometimes subtle, underscores a regional desire for stability and a common stance against extremist ideologies being pushed largely by Iran.
Israel’s actions in Gaza are not about genocide but about survival and self-defence in the face of relentless terrorism.
The civilian casualty rate, efforts to minimise harm, the complex nature of urban warfare, and the deceptive tactics of Hamas all illustrate a commitment to ethical conduct in combat.
The world must recognise the truth of the situation: Israel is defending its people and its right to exist, not committing genocide.
Colonel Richard Kemp's extensive military experience, including commanding British forces in Afghanistan, along with his long-standing support and advisory roles with Israeli defence strategies and connections with key Israeli political and military leaders, make him a highly qualified commentator on the Israel-Hamas conflict. Family First Party
Expert: Genocide allegations are unfounded considering IDF efforts to avoid civilian casualties
The Jerusalem Post. Jul 28, 2024.
LIVE: Former British army commander Colonel Richard Kemp in a one-on-one conversation with Jerusalem Post Diaspora Affairs Corresponded Michael Starr. Kemp discusses the stark differences between genocides and the IDF's actions. YouTube
Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza The vile allegations made by Hamas and its useful idiots bear no relation to the facts on the ground. By Jake Wallis Simons. 22 June 2024. Telegraph
Jake Wallis Simons @JakeWSimons After the atrocities of last October, Israel had a right to defend itself. So much we may concede. But the killing rage it visited upon the innocents of Gaza was indefensible. It has bombed the Al-Ahli hospital, killed 37,000 people, 70 per cent of whom were women and children, and set dogs on Gazan detainees. It has starved Gaza, a charge for which Benjamin Netanyahu may face an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. So runs the folk story of Jewish genocide. It has been related by international bodies, politicians and the broadcast media, which pumps pictures of civilian suffering – and only civilian suffering – into our homes. The problem is that it is untrue. Every aspect has been either disproven or cast into irretrievable doubt… My @Telegraph .. Jun 23, 2024 X
From ashes to art: Arthur Essebag's journey of healing through Israeli creativity. By Neria Barr. September 20, 2024. “There’s no genocide, but it’s painful to see how blind people have become.” Yet, even amid these challenges, Arthur remains hopeful: “We survived the Nazis, we survived the pharaohs, and we will survive Hamas and the left-wing extremists. The truth is always stronger.” JPost
Cease stupid, not fire. If Biden has some notion about how to end this war, he should consider this easy-to-remember maxim.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. His most recent book is “Saving Free Speech ... From Itself.”
(June 3, 2024 / Jewish Journal) Perhaps I heard it wrong. But I could swear that President Joe Biden just delivered a televised address at the White House about the war in Gaza. (Note, no matter how loud it’s shouted by well-meaning ignorant people, or Jew-haters who side with savages, there is no “genocide” in Gaza.) JNS
'Not genocide': Biden rejects anti-Israel claims Oct 7, 2024 — “Contrary to allegations against Israel made by the International Court of Justice, what's happening is not genocide,” Biden said on Monday.. JNS
UK party expels MP for saying there’s no genocide in Gaza. John Mason of the Scottish National Party has not retracted his statement. (Oct. 16, 2024 / JNS) JNS
Harris campaign says VP did not agree with protester accusing Israel of genocide. By Jacob Magid. 20 Oct 2024. TOI
WJC Rejects UN Special Rapporteur Report Accusing Israel of Genocide
31 Oct 2024. The World Jewish Congress, on Wednesday, strongly rejected two anti-Israel reports presented to the United Nations by Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur (SR) on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory, and by Navi Pillay, Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Both documents, from the SR and the CoI, demonstrate a fundamental prejudice against Israel, providing a distorted narrative that ignores Hamas's terrorism while demonizing Israel's legitimate right to self-defense.
Anti-Israel Bias Embedded Within: Below are some of the most serious allegations in SR Albanese's report to the UN Third Committee, which presents a distorted narrative that blatantly disregards Hamas's terrorism while making extreme accusations against Israel's actions and its fundamental right to defend its citizens:
1. Genocide Accusation: The report falsely asserts that Israel's actions constitute genocide aimed at systematically erasing the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank. It claims these actions are intentional, state-organized, and aligned with the goal of territorial expansion.
2. Humanitarian Crisis Allegations: The report alleges that Israel’s policies deliberately worsen living conditions in Gaza, leading to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, with references to alleged targeted attacks on healthcare, education, and food distribution systems.
3. Ethnic Cleansing and Forced Displacement Allegations: Israeli policies are framed as “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians through forced displacement, restricted humanitarian aid, and military control over large swathes of Gaza.
4. International Law Violation Allegations: The report suggests that Israel's actions contravene multiple international laws, including the Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention, and calls for Israel’s alleged war crimes to be addressed through international legal mechanisms.
Pilay, separately, presented the independent Commission of Inquiry's (COI) report, which accuses Israel of widespread human rights violations in Gaza and the West Bank. The report, which was previously presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council, has faced criticism due to the biases of certain Commission members, including their history of antisemitic remarks. Additionally, the COI on Israel is the only one with a permanent mandate, raising questions about the objectivity and fairness of the Commission’s investigations and conclusions.
The following are several significant allegations and calls for actions made by the Commission of Inquiry. The report presents a distorted view that, again, overlooks Hamas's terrorism while levying serious accusations against Israel's measures to protect its citizens:
1. Unlawful Occupation: The report accuses Israel of maintaining an unlawful occupation that must end as rapidly as possible. It quotes the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which determined in a highly problematic non-binding advisory opinion that Israel's prolonged occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza violates international law, asserting that Israel must cease its presence, halt all new settlement activities, and evacuate existing settlements.
2. Settlement Activities: The Commission asserts that Israel must cease all settlement activities and dismantle existing settlements without delay. It interprets "immediately" to mean that Israel should take swift action to evacuate all Israelis living in the West Bank and allow displaced Palestinians to return to their properties.
3.Restitution and Reparations: Israel is required to make reparations for damages caused in the Palestinian Territories, which include returning land and cultural property seized since 1967. If restitution is not possible, it calls for compensation to be provided to those affected.
4. International Responsibility: The Commission argues that other states have a legal obligation not to recognize or support Israel's presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to avoid aiding or supporting the alleged occupation.
What WJC Has to Say: In a post on X, the World Jewish Congress issued the following statement:
The latest report by Francesca Albanese is a gross perversion of history, weaponizing Holocaust comparisons to demonize Israel while ignoring the terror of Hamas. This inflammatory rhetoric must be confronted.
@UN, it’s time to stop platforming antisemitism.
The World Jewish Congress demands that the United Nations holds Francesca Albanese accountable and stops permitting its platforms to be hijacked by individuals who exploit them to spread hate and undermine the UN’s mission of promoting peace and human rights.
Albanese’s Problematic History of Antisemitism... WJC
Predetermined conclusions': Amnesty Israel workers slam parent group’s ‘genocide’ charge. Local branch rejects report's conclusion, but says Israeli actions 'may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing'; US also rejects genocide conclusion. By Jeremy Sharon, Jacob Magid and ToI Staff. 5 December 2024. TOI
A Genocide Ignored in Sudan. Civilians killed by ‘the color of their skin,’ as the world vilifies Israel. By The Editorial Board. Jan. 13, 2025.
Genocide became a degraded term in 2024, as Israel’s critics used it to smear the Jewish state’s defensive military action against Hamas. But actual genocide has been under way for months in Sudan. Last week Secretary of State Antony Blinken officially recognized the carnage that has killed tens of thousands and left hundreds of thousands suffering at risk of famine.
Since the conflict began in April 2023, Mr. Blinken said, the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces have “systematically murdered men and boys—even infants—on an ethnic basis,” while they targeted women and girls on an ethnic basis for rape and “other forms of brutal sexual violence.” This is the definition of genocide—mass murder undertaken with the intent to destroy an ethnic group. College students, anyone up for a Sudan encampment?
Progressive activists mobilized against Israel on U.S. campuses within days of Hamas’s massacre in October 2023. Accusations of genocide shortly followed. So where are the protesters now? “Zero dopes have shown up at my home or office, or blocked a road to chant and protest over an actual genocide in Sudan,” Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) says. “South Africa engaged the International Court of Justice over Gaza, but not for an actual genocide on their own continent? Why is that?”
Good question. Don’t black lives matter when they’re overseas? WSJ
ADL.
NGO Atrocity Inversion: False Accusations of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing to Distract from Hamas Massacre. October 23, 2023 NGO-Monitor
Supporters of genocidal Hamas accuse Israel of genocide. The libel that Israel is committing a non-existent genocide or ethnic cleansing is a cruel irony.
Farley Weiss and Leonard Grunstein are authors of the new book Because It’s Just and Right: The Untold Back-Story of the U.S. Recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
(Jan. 2, 2024 / JNS) Hamas has made clear in its words and actions that it is committed to the genocide of the Jewish people, whether they live in Israel or not.
The crime of genocide is defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide approved by U.N. General Assembly Resolution 260 A (III) of Dec. 9, 1948 and entered into force on Jan. 12, 1951. The crime of genocide requires the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Hamas’ words and deeds clearly meet this requirement.
Thus, falsely accusing Israel of genocide in its current defensive war against Hamas is a particularly cruel and odious blood libel. After all, the crime of genocide was only recognized as a result of the Holocaust. The Nazis called their genocide the “final solution.” The hideous pro-Hamas chant there is “one solution, intifada revolution,” channels this horrific ambition.
Everyone, including the slanderers themselves, knows that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. Moreover, as the White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, Adm. John Kirby, noted, “I heard this word ‘genocide’ tossed around. Hamas actually does have genocidal intentions against the people of Israel. They’d like to see it wiped off the map. They’ve said so on purpose. That’s what’s at stake here”
Israel is not committing “ethnic cleansing” either. There is no precise legal definition of ethnic cleansing under international law, but it was used to describe atrocities committed during the wars that followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The U.N.’s Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect describes ethnic cleansing as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent or terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.” Employing the term “ethnic cleansing” against Israel rather than Hamas is preposterous incitement. JNS
Germany Rejects UN 'Genocide' Charge Against Israel. Jan 12, 2024 — The German government on Friday sharply rejected allegations before the UN's top court that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Barrons
France Rejects Genocide Accusations Against Israel in Gaza. Jan 17, 2024 — France on Wednesday became the latest Western country to reject accusations that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, a charge that was recently brought before a United Nations court in The Hague. NYT
Accusing Israel of genocide is an inversion of the truth designed to leave it defenceless South Africa’s case before the ICJ is seeking to achieve via lawfare what Hamas attempts via warfare. By Charles Moore. 12 January 2024 Telegraph
Accusing Israel of genocide is a perverse moral inversion. If there is a genocidal force in this war, it must be Hamas. Incorrect use of the term will harm the cause of peace.
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. 20 January 2024.
Of all the deplorable crimes ever conceived by the human mind, one stands alone in its utter depravity, as the very epitome of evil... Telegraph
The absurdity of the Israeli genocide accusation. By Steve Ambler | Jan 24, 2024. The South African accusation of genocide against Israel lacks any credibility. (Steve Ambler is professor emeritus of economics in the École des sciences de la gestion, Université du Québec à Montréal.). TroyMedia
Unrwa, Hamas and the ‘Genocide’ Smear Against Israel. South Africa’s case at the ICJ is built on reports from groups with links to terrorist organizations. By Naftali Balanson Jan. 29, 2024.
Twelve employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, including seven primary- or secondary-school teachers, had links to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the Journal reported Monday, citing intelligence that Israel supplied to U.S. officials. Unrwa, which deals exclusively with Palestinians, also has a connection with last week’s proceedings at the International Court of Justice. Thirteen footnotes in South Africa’s petition cite Unrwa in support of its claim that the Jewish state is waging genocide against the Palestinians.
This isn’t justice but a dangerous aberration of the concept. South Africa is doing Hamas’s bidding, and the case is about more than false claims of genocide. In a war of narratives, the court, which refused to dismiss the petition, is essentially adopting a narrative that rejects Israel’s right to defend itself and to exist. WSJ
Understanding the ICJ's ruling on the Israel genocide case - analysis. By Mark Wess. February 10, 2024 Arguing it was acting to defend itself and was fighting Hamas, not the Palestinian population, Israel called on the court to dismiss the case as groundless. “This is no genocide,” lawyer Malcolm Shaw said, stressing that Israel respects international law and had a right to defend itself. JPost
In the propaganda war, Hamas is winning. No total victory for either side - opinion. By Alan Shatter. February 15, 2024. Neither Hamas, nor Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist leaders, nor their Iranian sponsors really care how many Palestinians are killed in Gaza. For strategic military reasons, they may momentarily regret their terrorist militants’ deaths. But they perceive the dead as beneficially sacrificed to achieve their main objectives – to demonize Israel and make it an international pariah and gain support for accomplishing their ultimate goals: Israel’s total destruction and the murder of the largest possible number of Israelis and Jews.
In their world, Palestinian deaths are celebrated as deceased martyrs, and exploited and denounced to depict Israel as the evil aggressor intent on Palestinian genocide. The fact that both Palestinian groups are death cults that value death over life is something too many in the West have difficulty understanding. Many also forget or choose to ignore, that Hamas initiated the current conflict on October 7 and has promised to repeat that day’s atrocities.... The writer is a former Irish justice and defense minister, a former chairperson of the Irish Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and a fellow of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations. JPost
Pro-Palestinian groups file legal action against German politician over Gaza war. By Reuters. February 16, 2024. Volker Beck, in opinion pieces and media interviews, expressed support for Israel's military operation in Gaza, calling for making humanitarian aid conditional on Hamas freeing Israeli hostages..
Rejecting accusations of genocide Beck rejected the claims as "nonsense."
"There is no genocide in Gaza and I do not advocate genocide," he told Reuters, adding that he had filed complaints against the groups for defamation. JPost
U.S. Rejects ‘Unfounded’ Genocide Claim in UN Report Targeting Israel. March 29, 2024.
Washington on March 27 dismissed a new United Nations (UN) report that accuses Israel of genocide. “Allegations of genocide are unfounded,” said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller about the report, authored by UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Miller also stated that the Biden administration has “opposed the mandate of this special rapporteur,” noting “a history of antisemitic comments that she has made.” He added that she “appeared to justify the attacks of October 7th.” In her report, Albanese called for an arms embargo against Israel, a UN General Assembly plan to punish Israel for provoking the war Hamas launched, and an “international protective presence to constrain the violence” against Palestinians.
Expert Analysis. “It’s time to ask why the United States is still a member of a body that promotes antisemitism. Engagement in the UN Human Rights Council has not proved an effective strategy for reform.” — Richard Goldberg, FDD Senior Advisor
“Albanese’s false accusation that Israel is committing genocide is based on absurd and incompetent mischaracterizations of both the facts and the law. Albanese’s blatant anti-Israel bias, both prior to her current role and in her performance of it, means that her appointment was, and her service is, contrary to UN ethics rules. The appropriate remedy is to terminate Albanese’s appointment.” — Orde Kittrie, FDD Senior Fellow.
“Albanese has made a career of erasing Israel’s legitimate security concerns and arguing that Israel’s policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians can only be guided by hatred and malice. She fits well in a UN system irredeemably biased against the Jewish state.” — David May, FDD Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst.
Albanese’s History of Antisemitism and Justifying Terrorism... FDD
Germany denies accusation of aiding a genocide in Gaza at World Court. By Stephanie van den Berg. April 9, 2024. THE HAGUE, April 9 (Reuters) - Germany denied accusations on Tuesday that it was aiding genocide in Gaza by selling Israel arms in a suit to the top U.N. court by Nicaragua reflecting mounting legal action in support of Palestinians. Reuters
Germany slaps down Nicaragua’s charge it facilitates 'genocide' in Gaza. Apr 9, 2024 — Germany has rejected Nicaragua's accusations that it is enabling a "genocide" by Israel in the Gaza Strip. Politico
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rejects accusations Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Many countries, including the U.S., have been critical of the way the Israel Defense Forces are conducting military operations in the Gaza Strip.
Austin: 'We don't have any evidence' of Israel committing genocide in Gaza. April 9, 2024. NBC
Opinion: The antisemitic lie at the heart of too many campus protests. Opinion by Frida Ghitis. May 7, 2024.
Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a senior columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
[...] The claim, the chants, the smearing of President Joe Biden as “Genocide Joe” (to former President Donald Trump’s delight) for his support for Israel are part of an astonishingly successful campaign to paint Israel’s defensive war against Hamas as an act of genocide.
The charge is not just absurd, it’s outrageous. Yet incredibly, it’s a smear that has gained traction.
Yes, Israel has killed thousands of Palestinians following the Hamas attacks of October 7. The suffering of the population in Gaza is heartbreaking, horrific. And Israel may not have done everything it could to minimize the civilian death toll. But the leap to brand its military campaign as a genocide — the depth of humanity’s depravity — is unconscionable.
Many people see, as I do, a direct connection in the genocide accusations to a centuries’ old calumny that has bedeviled the Jewish people, used since the Middle Ages to taunt them and even to justify massacring and exiling them. It’s called the blood libel, and it has long helped fuel the apparently undying fires of antisemitism.
The original blood libel claimed that Jews murdered Christians, particularly children, so they could use their blood in rituals. It may sound laughable, ridiculous, but across hundreds of years many have believed it. Some still do. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer confronted a Hamas official on air in 2014 about his assertion that Jews use Christian blood in the matzo they eat at Passover.
Over the centuries, this defamation gave rise to other well-worn antisemitic tropes — that Jews are vampires, blood-suckers and organ-harvesters. Images of Jews and Stars of David dripping blood have cropped up repeatedly since October 7.
Indeed, too many today are willing to assume the worst possible motives for the actions of Jews — or in this case, the Jewish state — making the historical blood libel the heir to an ever-evolving series of modern slanders culminating in genocide.
Genocide is a term that became enshrined in international law after Nazi Germany sought to annihilate every Jew in Europe, killing 6 million, including about 1.5 million children. It is something completely different from what is happening in Gaza.
The UN’s Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” The term was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish jurist who in the 1930s began to push for an international law barring such atrocities as Jews in Eastern Europe endured brutal pogroms. He escaped to the US and later helped prepare the Nuremberg trials against the Nazis who, among the millions they had killed, had murdered his family who remained behind in Europe.
Claims that Israel has been committing a genocide of Palestinians date to long before October 7. Yet the population of Gaza was estimated to be less than 400,000 when Israel captured the territory from Egypt in a war against multiple Arab countries in 1967. It’s now estimated at just over 2 million. Population growth of almost 600% would make it the most inept genocide in the history of the world.
What about now?
Those repeating the word genocide over and over, turning it into a mantra that penetrates the public consciousness, smearing Israel and anyone who supports it, ignore the facts of this war.
This is not an unprovoked war, like Russia’s against Ukraine. It’s not a civil war between rival militias, like the one raging in Sudan — which, by the way, is being ignored by almost everyone, even though the UN describes it as one of the “worst humanitarian crises in recent memory,” where a famine could kill 500,000 people.
No, Israel was attacked. On October 7, Hamas launched a gruesome assault on Israeli civilians, killing some 1,200 — including many women and children — and dragging hundreds of them as hostages into Gaza. Today dozens — including many women and children — remain in captivity.
Those who keep saying that Israel’s response is an act of revenge rather than the strategic, defensive war that most Israelis view as a fight for national survival against a determined enemy backed by a powerful country are deliberately distorting reality. In doing so, they are perversely evoking the same false blood lust and grotesqueness embedded in the blood libel archetype.
Hamas’ massacre, its wide-ranging sexual violence, its burning of entire families in their homes, its vow to do it again — these and other serious threats that the group poses to Israelis get ignored in the characterizations of the Israel Defense Forces as pursuing only vengeance by killing Gazan civilians.
Indeed, Hamas’ actions, which precipitated this war, don’t seem to exist in the minds of ostensibly humanitarian-minded protesters. Nor even the fate of the hostages, still captive in Hamas tunnels.... CNN
White House sees no genocide in Gaza, condemns aid convoy attacks. By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason May 14, 2024.
WASHINGTON, May 13 (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday that President Joe Biden's administration does not view the killings of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel in its war with Hamas as genocide. Sullivan said the United States wants to see Hamas defeated. He also said that Palestinians caught in the middle of the war were in "hell" and that a major military operation by Israel in Rafah would be a mistake. Reuters
Biden: What's happening in Gaza 'is not genocide'. May 20, 2024 — “What's happening is not genocide. We reject that,” Biden said during a speech in the Rose Garden. Politico
IDF ‘most moral army in the world’. Gisborne Herald. 16 Jan, 2024.
by Patrick Cooper.
Does the Israeli Defence Force deliberately rape, torture and kill Palestinian civilians, as Hamas terrorists did to innocent Israelis on October 7, condemning themselves as they joyfully recorded these atrocities? Even the Nazis attempted to conceal evidence of the Holocaust when they realised they were going to lose the war. No, the IDF goes to great lengths to avoid non-combatant casualties.
The UN claims that in all conflicts since World War 2, the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths on average has been nine to one. The American and British armies have worked hard to bring it down to three to one, as was the case in Iraq. In the Gaza war, the IDF believes it has killed 9500 Hamas terrorists and the Palestinian Health Authority claims that there have been 22,500 Palestinian deaths, not distinguishing between combatants and civilians. This gives us a ratio of 130 to 95 or much less than two to one civilian-to-combatant deaths — surely not an indication of genocide.
British Colonel Richard Kemp has called the IDF “the most moral army in the world”. Before the Israeli offensive began, the IDF dropped
1.5 million leaflets on northern Gaza advising the population there to move south for their own safety; 900,000 Gazans complied. When the focus moved to attacking Hamas in the south, maps of safe havens were dropped or emailed to the Palestinian population beforehand. The occupants of buildings that were going to be attacked were messaged, emailed or telephoned in advance. The Israelis also used the “knock on roof” technique whereby non-explosive or low-yield devices are dropped on roofs of buildings that are going to be bombed.
The Israeli lawyers might point out that numerous Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilians have received life-saving treatment in Israeli hospitals during the conflict. Also, during the period between 1967 and 2005 when Israel took over military control of Gaza, the population rose from 340,000 to 1.4 million. Hardly evidence of genocide.
Some statistics for South Africa: 40 percent of the population are unemployed, 60 percent live under the poverty line and 32 million people receive an income from the state. Murders went up 14 percent between July and September as compared with the same period in 2021 when 6163 people were killed — including almost 1000 women. Rape was up 11 percent with 10,000 cases opened last year. Kidnappings rose to more than 4000. Carjackings were up 24 percent to more than 6000. Between April and September, 550 children were killed.
Shouldn’t South Africa be removing the plank from its own eye? NZHerald
Why there is no genocide in Gaza being committed by Israel. Posted by Family First Party on May 21, 2024.
“The ratio of civilian to military casualties is the lowest in any conflict that I’m aware of, anywhere in the world.” – Colonel Richard Kemp
The conflict in Gaza has ignited global debates, with many quick to condemn Israel’s military actions as “genocidal”.
However, a closer examination of the facts and context reveals this to be a lie.
Former British army commander Colonel Richard Kemp’s speech last night at the North Shore Synagogue, organized by the Australian Jewish Association, offers a comprehensive insight into why Israel’s actions in Gaza are a justified response to terrorism and not an act of genocide as leftists and Muslim leaders like to portray.
Israel is actually fighting a war on behalf of all civilised people because if Hamas succeeds, they won’t stop with destroying the Jews.
Urban warfare inevitably and regrettably involves civilian casualties, Kemp said.
Every loss of civilian life is a tragedy yet Hamas are not just using them as human shields.
“I would describe them more accurately as human sacrifices,” Kemp said.
But despite the complexities, Israel has shown remarkable restraint and precision. Colonel Kemp said that “the ratio of civilian to military casualties is the lowest in any conflict that I’m aware of, anywhere in the world.”
This ratio stands at 0.8 civilians for every combatant killed, he said.
In contrast, similar conflicts such as the American and British operations in Afghanistan and Iraq had ratios of 5:1 and 3:1, respectively.
The UN reports an average of 9:1 for urban conflicts since World War II.
Yet the media does not report this and worse, has created a narrative that the ratio is unacceptable and that Israel must cease its operations to destroy Hamas.
Colonel Kemp said Israel had gone to great lengths to minimize civilian harm. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) distributed millions of leaflets, made countless phone calls, and sent text messages to warn civilians to evacuate combat zones.
This level of effort to protect non-combatants is unprecedented and demonstrates a commitment to avoiding unnecessary civilian deaths.
Gaza presents an extraordinarily complex battlefield. According to Kemp, “The Israelis are fighting in the most complex battlefield that any army has ever had to fight in.” Hamas has spent decades preparing Gaza for conflict, with extensive tunnels, booby traps, and fortified positions. These conditions complicate military operations and heighten the risk of civilian casualties, yet the IDF continues to prioritize precision strikes and intelligence-driven operations.
One of the most insidious tactics used by Hamas involves the storage of arms in civilian houses. Colonel Kemp observed, “Almost every house in some parts of Gaza have a stash of weapons. They have explosives, they have grenades, they have rocket launchers, they have machine guns.”
This tactic allows terrorists to walk around unarmed, blending in with the civilian population, and making it extraordinarily difficult for IDF soldiers to identify them. Kemp explained, “Very few terrorists ever wear uniforms...they never carry weapons.”
This strategy forces the IDF to destroy houses suspected of storing weapons, further complicating the conflict and increasing the risk of civilian casualties.
Accusations of genocide against Israel are not only unfounded but also deeply offensive given the historical context.
As Kemp poignantly noted, “That accusation of genocide is nothing short of an obscenity. It accuses a nation built partially on the survivors of a genocide and a nation that is fighting to defend its own population against genocide.”
Hamas, recognised as a terrorist organisation by many countries, explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews worldwide.
Its charter and the actions of its militants on October 7th and 8th, as described by Kemp, reveal a genocidal intent. Israel’s military response is a necessary measure to ensure its survival against an adversary that seeks its annihilation.
Despite the vocal anti-Israel protests, there is significant support for Israel’s right to defend itself.
Kemp emphasized that “the Arab world supports Israel. Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia...they want Israel to defeat Hamas.”
This support, although sometimes subtle, underscores a regional desire for stability and a common stance against extremist ideologies being pushed largely by Iran.
Israel’s actions in Gaza are not about genocide but about survival and self-defence in the face of relentless terrorism.
The civilian casualty rate, efforts to minimise harm, the complex nature of urban warfare, and the deceptive tactics of Hamas all illustrate a commitment to ethical conduct in combat.
The world must recognise the truth of the situation: Israel is defending its people and its right to exist, not committing genocide.
Colonel Richard Kemp's extensive military experience, including commanding British forces in Afghanistan, along with his long-standing support and advisory roles with Israeli defence strategies and connections with key Israeli political and military leaders, make him a highly qualified commentator on the Israel-Hamas conflict. Family First Party
Expert: Genocide allegations are unfounded considering IDF efforts to avoid civilian casualties
The Jerusalem Post. Jul 28, 2024.
LIVE: Former British army commander Colonel Richard Kemp in a one-on-one conversation with Jerusalem Post Diaspora Affairs Corresponded Michael Starr. Kemp discusses the stark differences between genocides and the IDF's actions. YouTube
Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza The vile allegations made by Hamas and its useful idiots bear no relation to the facts on the ground. By Jake Wallis Simons. 22 June 2024. Telegraph
Jake Wallis Simons @JakeWSimons After the atrocities of last October, Israel had a right to defend itself. So much we may concede. But the killing rage it visited upon the innocents of Gaza was indefensible. It has bombed the Al-Ahli hospital, killed 37,000 people, 70 per cent of whom were women and children, and set dogs on Gazan detainees. It has starved Gaza, a charge for which Benjamin Netanyahu may face an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. So runs the folk story of Jewish genocide. It has been related by international bodies, politicians and the broadcast media, which pumps pictures of civilian suffering – and only civilian suffering – into our homes. The problem is that it is untrue. Every aspect has been either disproven or cast into irretrievable doubt… My @Telegraph .. Jun 23, 2024 X
From ashes to art: Arthur Essebag's journey of healing through Israeli creativity. By Neria Barr. September 20, 2024. “There’s no genocide, but it’s painful to see how blind people have become.” Yet, even amid these challenges, Arthur remains hopeful: “We survived the Nazis, we survived the pharaohs, and we will survive Hamas and the left-wing extremists. The truth is always stronger.” JPost
Cease stupid, not fire. If Biden has some notion about how to end this war, he should consider this easy-to-remember maxim.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. His most recent book is “Saving Free Speech ... From Itself.”
(June 3, 2024 / Jewish Journal) Perhaps I heard it wrong. But I could swear that President Joe Biden just delivered a televised address at the White House about the war in Gaza. (Note, no matter how loud it’s shouted by well-meaning ignorant people, or Jew-haters who side with savages, there is no “genocide” in Gaza.) JNS
'Not genocide': Biden rejects anti-Israel claims Oct 7, 2024 — “Contrary to allegations against Israel made by the International Court of Justice, what's happening is not genocide,” Biden said on Monday.. JNS
UK party expels MP for saying there’s no genocide in Gaza. John Mason of the Scottish National Party has not retracted his statement. (Oct. 16, 2024 / JNS) JNS
Harris campaign says VP did not agree with protester accusing Israel of genocide. By Jacob Magid. 20 Oct 2024. TOI
WJC Rejects UN Special Rapporteur Report Accusing Israel of Genocide
31 Oct 2024. The World Jewish Congress, on Wednesday, strongly rejected two anti-Israel reports presented to the United Nations by Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur (SR) on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory, and by Navi Pillay, Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Both documents, from the SR and the CoI, demonstrate a fundamental prejudice against Israel, providing a distorted narrative that ignores Hamas's terrorism while demonizing Israel's legitimate right to self-defense.
Anti-Israel Bias Embedded Within: Below are some of the most serious allegations in SR Albanese's report to the UN Third Committee, which presents a distorted narrative that blatantly disregards Hamas's terrorism while making extreme accusations against Israel's actions and its fundamental right to defend its citizens:
1. Genocide Accusation: The report falsely asserts that Israel's actions constitute genocide aimed at systematically erasing the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank. It claims these actions are intentional, state-organized, and aligned with the goal of territorial expansion.
2. Humanitarian Crisis Allegations: The report alleges that Israel’s policies deliberately worsen living conditions in Gaza, leading to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, with references to alleged targeted attacks on healthcare, education, and food distribution systems.
3. Ethnic Cleansing and Forced Displacement Allegations: Israeli policies are framed as “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians through forced displacement, restricted humanitarian aid, and military control over large swathes of Gaza.
4. International Law Violation Allegations: The report suggests that Israel's actions contravene multiple international laws, including the Geneva Conventions and the Genocide Convention, and calls for Israel’s alleged war crimes to be addressed through international legal mechanisms.
Pilay, separately, presented the independent Commission of Inquiry's (COI) report, which accuses Israel of widespread human rights violations in Gaza and the West Bank. The report, which was previously presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council, has faced criticism due to the biases of certain Commission members, including their history of antisemitic remarks. Additionally, the COI on Israel is the only one with a permanent mandate, raising questions about the objectivity and fairness of the Commission’s investigations and conclusions.
The following are several significant allegations and calls for actions made by the Commission of Inquiry. The report presents a distorted view that, again, overlooks Hamas's terrorism while levying serious accusations against Israel's measures to protect its citizens:
1. Unlawful Occupation: The report accuses Israel of maintaining an unlawful occupation that must end as rapidly as possible. It quotes the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which determined in a highly problematic non-binding advisory opinion that Israel's prolonged occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza violates international law, asserting that Israel must cease its presence, halt all new settlement activities, and evacuate existing settlements.
2. Settlement Activities: The Commission asserts that Israel must cease all settlement activities and dismantle existing settlements without delay. It interprets "immediately" to mean that Israel should take swift action to evacuate all Israelis living in the West Bank and allow displaced Palestinians to return to their properties.
3.Restitution and Reparations: Israel is required to make reparations for damages caused in the Palestinian Territories, which include returning land and cultural property seized since 1967. If restitution is not possible, it calls for compensation to be provided to those affected.
4. International Responsibility: The Commission argues that other states have a legal obligation not to recognize or support Israel's presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to avoid aiding or supporting the alleged occupation.
What WJC Has to Say: In a post on X, the World Jewish Congress issued the following statement:
The latest report by Francesca Albanese is a gross perversion of history, weaponizing Holocaust comparisons to demonize Israel while ignoring the terror of Hamas. This inflammatory rhetoric must be confronted.
@UN, it’s time to stop platforming antisemitism.
The World Jewish Congress demands that the United Nations holds Francesca Albanese accountable and stops permitting its platforms to be hijacked by individuals who exploit them to spread hate and undermine the UN’s mission of promoting peace and human rights.
Albanese’s Problematic History of Antisemitism... WJC
Predetermined conclusions': Amnesty Israel workers slam parent group’s ‘genocide’ charge. Local branch rejects report's conclusion, but says Israeli actions 'may amount to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing'; US also rejects genocide conclusion. By Jeremy Sharon, Jacob Magid and ToI Staff. 5 December 2024. TOI
A Genocide Ignored in Sudan. Civilians killed by ‘the color of their skin,’ as the world vilifies Israel. By The Editorial Board. Jan. 13, 2025.
Genocide became a degraded term in 2024, as Israel’s critics used it to smear the Jewish state’s defensive military action against Hamas. But actual genocide has been under way for months in Sudan. Last week Secretary of State Antony Blinken officially recognized the carnage that has killed tens of thousands and left hundreds of thousands suffering at risk of famine.
Since the conflict began in April 2023, Mr. Blinken said, the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces have “systematically murdered men and boys—even infants—on an ethnic basis,” while they targeted women and girls on an ethnic basis for rape and “other forms of brutal sexual violence.” This is the definition of genocide—mass murder undertaken with the intent to destroy an ethnic group. College students, anyone up for a Sudan encampment?
Progressive activists mobilized against Israel on U.S. campuses within days of Hamas’s massacre in October 2023. Accusations of genocide shortly followed. So where are the protesters now? “Zero dopes have shown up at my home or office, or blocked a road to chant and protest over an actual genocide in Sudan,” Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) says. “South Africa engaged the International Court of Justice over Gaza, but not for an actual genocide on their own continent? Why is that?”
Good question. Don’t black lives matter when they’re overseas? WSJ
ADL.
Allegation: Israel Commits Genocide Related Content. Backgrounder.
Published: 10.25.2023. Updated: 02.13.2025. Israel. In the heightened rhetoric of the present day and especially in the aftermath of Israel’s war against Hamas following the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel is often accused of committing “genocide,” “acts of genocide” or of having “genocidal intent” against the Palestinians. Genocide is a very specific crime with legal elements requiring intent and action that are difficult to meet, and in no way do Israeli policies and actions reach this legal threshold. Rather, the sensationalist use of the term genocide in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only inaccurate and misleading, but it unfairly serves to demonize the State of Israel and to diminish recognized acts of genocide.
The term genocide was first introduced by Polish-Jewish attorney Raphael Lemkin in 1944, with the construct of “genos” meaning race or tribe and "cide” meaning killing. Lemkin coined the term in response to the lack of existing terminology in international law to accurately describe, and consequently enable punishment of, the horrific offenses committed during the Holocaust, and earlier events, including the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The United Nations General Assembly recognized genocide as a crime under international law in 1946, and it was codified in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.
The definition of genocide under this convention reads:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
This is the same definition used in the Rome Statute for International Criminal Court.
While one may condemn particular Israeli policies or actions with regard to Palestinians, the fact remains that in no way has Israel engaged in any action with the intent to exterminate, in whole or in part, the Palestinian people.
In 2024, South Africa brough legal proceedings in an attempt to have Israel be held responsible for Genocide by the International Court of Justice. As of this writing, reports indicate that South Africa and its supporters failed to provide sufficient evidence to the court to support their claims. In fact, when seeking to join in support of South Africa’s case, the Irish government asked the court to “broaden” its interpretation of the definition of genocide according to the Convention in order to hold Israel responsible. Meaning, Ireland itself understood that Israel could not be found to be committing genocide under 76 years of legal precedent and interpretation of the Convention, and therefore requested that the definition of the crime be altered to prove the case against Israel.
Indeed, accusing Israel of genocide has the collateral effect of diminishing real acts of genocide – such as those that occurred in the Holocaust, against Armenians, in Rwanda, Bosnia or Sudan.
Furthermore, its deeply concerning that Israel is often one of the only countries accused by activist groups of engaging in genocide. This false claim singularly demonizes Israel by accusing it of committing a crime which has been suffered by the Jewish people - the people of Israel- and therefore some argue that this constitutes a perverse double standard.
Finally, claiming as some do, that there are many “types” of genocide, and Israel is, for example, committing “cultural” genocide, is equally problematic. Regardless of how the term is applied, the accusation is aimed at convincing the general-public that Israel is guilty of committing the most awful of human atrocities. Once levied, these charges tend to affect perception and confuse lay individuals, regardless of their falsity. ADL
Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.
The Genocide Libel.
(Suggested Citation: Goda, Norman JW. 2025. "The Genocide Libel: How the World Has Charged Israel with Genocide." ISCA Research Paper 2025-3. [1])
The Genocide Libel: How the World Has Charged Israel with Genocide by Norman JW Goda. February 2025.
This essay concerns the post-October 7 accusation of genocide against Israel. Genocide is the crime of crimes. States committing genocide are viewed as permanently illegitimate. By itself a genocide accusation is not antisemitic. During the Cold War, the charge was leveled dozens of times by government officials, legal scholars, and activists against France, Portugal, Nigeria, China, Cambodia, the US, and other states. Since the end of the Cold War, judicial proceedings for genocide have been carried out against officials from former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and elsewhere both in ad hoc tribunals and at the International Criminal Court.
Genocide accusations against Israel are different. First, Israel, unlike other states, has been charged with genocide throughout its existence. The genocide accusation is tied to charges of racism, colonialism, and other accusations leveled against Israel since the 1960s. Second, the speed and fury with which the accusations exploded after the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023, are unusual in the annals of lawfare. And yet regarding Israel’s 2023 war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, there has been not only a rush to judgment but an effort to redefine genocide itself so that the constitutive elements of the crime itself are lowered.
The genocide libel also deploys a range of antisemitic tropes. One is the linkage of genocide to violent passages in the Hebrew Bible, a linkage which plays on the theme of Jewish chosenness at the expense of others’ existence and which even claims that God is genocidal. Another is the whitewashing of Hamas’s own genocidal intent in lieu of tropes concerning the outsized Jewish thirst for vengeance in the form of disproportionate response. A third is the coupling of the genocide charge with the deliberate killing of children, images of whom are ubiquitous on NGO, social media, and other platforms that charge Israel with genocide. A fourth is the attribution of special powers to the Israeli government by which it and its supporters have fooled western governments into believing that Israel’s actions are legitimate and that the history of the Israeli- Arab conflict is too complex for snap judgments.
A fifth, and this is what makes the genocide libel particularly dangerous, is the association of all Jews with the crime. Jews worldwide are all in on it, either as Zionist enablers, as dishonest back-room lobbyists, or as community leaders who, we are told, “weaponize” the charge of antisemitism to silence the truth-tellers. Other genocide charges over time have not targeted Hutus living in Belgium or Serbs living in Germany. But the genocide libel, fueled by everything from electoral campaigns to public demonstrations to social media, drives rage against Jews throughout the world.
In North America, Europe, and Australia, antisemitic incidents have been too numerous to count, ranging from physical threats against Jews in New York City, to a pre-planned pogrom in Amsterdam, to synagogue attacks stretching from Montreal to Melbourne. And as the Conseil represéntatif des institutions juives de France [CRIF] noted in a January 2025 report concerning the nearly 1,600 antisemitic acts in France the previous year, “The hammering of the false genocide accusation, and its corollary of accusing Israel’s supporters of being ‘pro-genocide,’ have helped to demonize the image of Jews in France and justify hostile . . . behavior towards them.” ISCA
Belgian Premier Rejects Genocide Allegations Against Israel, Says Not the Time for ‘Palestinian State’ Recognition. by Ailin Vilches Arguello. May 1, 2025. Algemeiner
Pallyweid champion Amanpour tries to bait Wendy Sherman, fails| May 17, 2025.
Danon: UN accusation of genocide ‘without evidence’. Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon slammed the U.N.’s chief of humanitarian affairs for making baseless claims about the IDF’s war against Hamas. JNS Staff. (May 17, 2025 / JNS)
“To weaponize the word ‘genocide’ against Israel is not just distortion—it is the desecration and subversion of a term with unique force and weight,” the Israeli diplomat said.
Those who use the term seek to “demonize” their targets, Danon remarked.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a new U.S.-backed humanitarian group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), is set to begin operations in the Gaza Strip by the end of May.
The group aims to provide aid through a plan endorsed by Israel and supported by private American firms.
Anti-Israel propagandist C. Amanpour, (of the first "genocide" propaganda promoters already weeks after Oct 7), on May 15, 2025, so excited to play the propaganda rhetoric clip of that UN guy, tried to push Wendy Sherman to use the G word. Sherman, though a very liberal and a critic of Israel, especially radical against Netanyahu, still, did not follow Amanpour's order. Though she was caught in on the 'bash only Israel.' In not doing enough."
On that Sherman's rhetoric, activist replied: Arsen Ostrovsky
@Ostrov_A (May 16, 2025) On X: 'You’re right @wendyrsherman, you haven’t done everything possible. 'You could’ve held Hamas accountable. And you could have pressured Qatar, and Egypt and Turkey, as well as obviously Iran, to reign in Hamas and release the hostages. JustSayin'
Published: 10.25.2023. Updated: 02.13.2025. Israel. In the heightened rhetoric of the present day and especially in the aftermath of Israel’s war against Hamas following the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel is often accused of committing “genocide,” “acts of genocide” or of having “genocidal intent” against the Palestinians. Genocide is a very specific crime with legal elements requiring intent and action that are difficult to meet, and in no way do Israeli policies and actions reach this legal threshold. Rather, the sensationalist use of the term genocide in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only inaccurate and misleading, but it unfairly serves to demonize the State of Israel and to diminish recognized acts of genocide.
The term genocide was first introduced by Polish-Jewish attorney Raphael Lemkin in 1944, with the construct of “genos” meaning race or tribe and "cide” meaning killing. Lemkin coined the term in response to the lack of existing terminology in international law to accurately describe, and consequently enable punishment of, the horrific offenses committed during the Holocaust, and earlier events, including the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The United Nations General Assembly recognized genocide as a crime under international law in 1946, and it was codified in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948.
The definition of genocide under this convention reads:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
This is the same definition used in the Rome Statute for International Criminal Court.
While one may condemn particular Israeli policies or actions with regard to Palestinians, the fact remains that in no way has Israel engaged in any action with the intent to exterminate, in whole or in part, the Palestinian people.
In 2024, South Africa brough legal proceedings in an attempt to have Israel be held responsible for Genocide by the International Court of Justice. As of this writing, reports indicate that South Africa and its supporters failed to provide sufficient evidence to the court to support their claims. In fact, when seeking to join in support of South Africa’s case, the Irish government asked the court to “broaden” its interpretation of the definition of genocide according to the Convention in order to hold Israel responsible. Meaning, Ireland itself understood that Israel could not be found to be committing genocide under 76 years of legal precedent and interpretation of the Convention, and therefore requested that the definition of the crime be altered to prove the case against Israel.
Indeed, accusing Israel of genocide has the collateral effect of diminishing real acts of genocide – such as those that occurred in the Holocaust, against Armenians, in Rwanda, Bosnia or Sudan.
Furthermore, its deeply concerning that Israel is often one of the only countries accused by activist groups of engaging in genocide. This false claim singularly demonizes Israel by accusing it of committing a crime which has been suffered by the Jewish people - the people of Israel- and therefore some argue that this constitutes a perverse double standard.
Finally, claiming as some do, that there are many “types” of genocide, and Israel is, for example, committing “cultural” genocide, is equally problematic. Regardless of how the term is applied, the accusation is aimed at convincing the general-public that Israel is guilty of committing the most awful of human atrocities. Once levied, these charges tend to affect perception and confuse lay individuals, regardless of their falsity. ADL
Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.
The Genocide Libel.
(Suggested Citation: Goda, Norman JW. 2025. "The Genocide Libel: How the World Has Charged Israel with Genocide." ISCA Research Paper 2025-3. [1])
The Genocide Libel: How the World Has Charged Israel with Genocide by Norman JW Goda. February 2025.
This essay concerns the post-October 7 accusation of genocide against Israel. Genocide is the crime of crimes. States committing genocide are viewed as permanently illegitimate. By itself a genocide accusation is not antisemitic. During the Cold War, the charge was leveled dozens of times by government officials, legal scholars, and activists against France, Portugal, Nigeria, China, Cambodia, the US, and other states. Since the end of the Cold War, judicial proceedings for genocide have been carried out against officials from former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and elsewhere both in ad hoc tribunals and at the International Criminal Court.
Genocide accusations against Israel are different. First, Israel, unlike other states, has been charged with genocide throughout its existence. The genocide accusation is tied to charges of racism, colonialism, and other accusations leveled against Israel since the 1960s. Second, the speed and fury with which the accusations exploded after the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023, are unusual in the annals of lawfare. And yet regarding Israel’s 2023 war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, there has been not only a rush to judgment but an effort to redefine genocide itself so that the constitutive elements of the crime itself are lowered.
The genocide libel also deploys a range of antisemitic tropes. One is the linkage of genocide to violent passages in the Hebrew Bible, a linkage which plays on the theme of Jewish chosenness at the expense of others’ existence and which even claims that God is genocidal. Another is the whitewashing of Hamas’s own genocidal intent in lieu of tropes concerning the outsized Jewish thirst for vengeance in the form of disproportionate response. A third is the coupling of the genocide charge with the deliberate killing of children, images of whom are ubiquitous on NGO, social media, and other platforms that charge Israel with genocide. A fourth is the attribution of special powers to the Israeli government by which it and its supporters have fooled western governments into believing that Israel’s actions are legitimate and that the history of the Israeli- Arab conflict is too complex for snap judgments.
A fifth, and this is what makes the genocide libel particularly dangerous, is the association of all Jews with the crime. Jews worldwide are all in on it, either as Zionist enablers, as dishonest back-room lobbyists, or as community leaders who, we are told, “weaponize” the charge of antisemitism to silence the truth-tellers. Other genocide charges over time have not targeted Hutus living in Belgium or Serbs living in Germany. But the genocide libel, fueled by everything from electoral campaigns to public demonstrations to social media, drives rage against Jews throughout the world.
In North America, Europe, and Australia, antisemitic incidents have been too numerous to count, ranging from physical threats against Jews in New York City, to a pre-planned pogrom in Amsterdam, to synagogue attacks stretching from Montreal to Melbourne. And as the Conseil represéntatif des institutions juives de France [CRIF] noted in a January 2025 report concerning the nearly 1,600 antisemitic acts in France the previous year, “The hammering of the false genocide accusation, and its corollary of accusing Israel’s supporters of being ‘pro-genocide,’ have helped to demonize the image of Jews in France and justify hostile . . . behavior towards them.” ISCA
Belgian Premier Rejects Genocide Allegations Against Israel, Says Not the Time for ‘Palestinian State’ Recognition. by Ailin Vilches Arguello. May 1, 2025. Algemeiner
Pallyweid champion Amanpour tries to bait Wendy Sherman, fails| May 17, 2025.
Danon: UN accusation of genocide ‘without evidence’. Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon slammed the U.N.’s chief of humanitarian affairs for making baseless claims about the IDF’s war against Hamas. JNS Staff. (May 17, 2025 / JNS)
“To weaponize the word ‘genocide’ against Israel is not just distortion—it is the desecration and subversion of a term with unique force and weight,” the Israeli diplomat said.
Those who use the term seek to “demonize” their targets, Danon remarked.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a new U.S.-backed humanitarian group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), is set to begin operations in the Gaza Strip by the end of May.
The group aims to provide aid through a plan endorsed by Israel and supported by private American firms.
Anti-Israel propagandist C. Amanpour, (of the first "genocide" propaganda promoters already weeks after Oct 7), on May 15, 2025, so excited to play the propaganda rhetoric clip of that UN guy, tried to push Wendy Sherman to use the G word. Sherman, though a very liberal and a critic of Israel, especially radical against Netanyahu, still, did not follow Amanpour's order. Though she was caught in on the 'bash only Israel.' In not doing enough."
On that Sherman's rhetoric, activist replied: Arsen Ostrovsky
@Ostrov_A (May 16, 2025) On X: 'You’re right @wendyrsherman, you haven’t done everything possible. 'You could’ve held Hamas accountable. And you could have pressured Qatar, and Egypt and Turkey, as well as obviously Iran, to reign in Hamas and release the hostages. JustSayin'
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