Are We Witnessing a Genocide?
Many critics of Israel are calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide, but not everyone agrees with that assessment.
It’s been just over six weeks since the Israeli government began regularly bombing Gaza in response to Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel on October 7, and there appears to be no long term end in sight to the ongoing violence.
When justifying Israel’s response, many Israel supporters argue that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and can’t let the atrocities committed by Hamas go unpunished. They claim Israel is conducting this bombing campaign and ground invasion in such a way as to specifically target Hamas, and the civilian casualties within Gaza are an unfortunate but necessary price to pay. Any civilian deaths are Hamas’ fault anyway, so the claim goes, due to the group’s decision to attack and kill over a thousand Israelis, including civilians, and its tactic of hiding out among the civilian population, using innocent Palestinians as “human shields.”
Absent any other context, that argument may sound reasonable enough. When one takes into account the extensive history between Israel and the Palestinians, however, as well as the shockingly high civilian death count, the siege that’s been placed on Gaza that limits access to food, water, fuel, and medical supplies to all Gazans, not just militants, and the blatant war crimes that Israel has been committing on a near daily basis for the last month and a half, it becomes very difficult to morally justify the actions being taken by the Israeli government.
The current death count in Gaza is over 14,000 people, a very significant portion of which have been women and children. Despite the massive civilian death toll, it has been reported that the upper and middle leadership of Hamas remain practically untouched, at least according to an anonymous US official speaking to The New York Times. If true, that would damage the argument that the Israeli government cares about Palestinian life. It would also imply that a high civilian death count could possibly even be a goal of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. If Israel’s airstrikes and raids have actually been targeted solely at militants, and if Hamas is operating out of civilian infrastructure as often as the Israeli government claims, then how could such a high civilian death count not correspond with much more significant damage to Hamas as a whole?
Many Israel supporters seem willing to defend any and all actions taken by the Israeli government, even if those actions continue to result in thousands upon thousands of dead children.
Among those Israel supporters are many people who are ostensibly “antiwar” or believers in an “America First” foreign policy, but this recent conflict seems to have caused them to forget about those principles. Despite how fervently many Americans who support Israel apparently want it to be so, Israel is not actually a part of the United States of America, and we should not be forced to fund this war with our tax dollars. I also fail to see how someone who claims to oppose war (or claims to be a libertarian, which means adhering to the nonaggression principle) could hold such a view but then get caught up on the nuance of “mass murder”, which is what all war essentially is.
There have been examples of Palestinian supporters excusing or justifying the violent actions taken by Hamas as well, even when those actions have resulted in the death of innocent civilians. If we are to apply a consistent moral standard, then it should not be at all controversial to condemn the violence committed by either side. Most people probably agree that killing civilians is wrong, no matter who is doing the killing, but that seemingly common sense stance is being overshadowed by the deeply passionate and irrational partisans on either side of this issue. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been a very polarizing topic, but Hamas’ attack and Israel’s ongoing response has extremely exacerbated that polarization.
The Israel-Gaza War
Aside from the the minority of people who have tried to justify the violence perpetrated by Hamas, most people whose sympathies lean more toward the Palestinians don’t actually support acts of terrorism. They can just see that what Israel is doing in Gaza right now — and what it has done to the Palestinians historically — is objectively immoral, inexcusable, and completely disproportionate to the crimes committed by Hamas. If all innocent human life is equally valuable, then how does Hamas’ murder of 1,200 Israelis go on to justify Israel’s murder of more than 14,000 Palestinians? (An obvious disparity in civilian casualties which is not going unnoticed by most of the world.)
Clearly, the only morally consistent stance to take is one which recognizes that every civilian death is unjustifiable, and every possible effort should be made to bring an end to this violence.
There’s also a pretty significant power disparity in this conflict, which is that Israel is a wealthy country with a powerful military, sophisticated weaponry, the full backing of the US empire, and it has occupied the Palestinian territories for decades, whereas Hamas is basically a gang with home-made rockets, operating in the world’s largest open air prison which is heavily controlled and surveilled by Israel. That power-imbalance, and Israel’s seeming insistence to continue killing large amounts of civilians, has caused many critics of the Israeli government to call what Israel is doing in Gaza a genocide. However, there are certainly many people who disagree with that assessment.
In an opinion piece published by The New York Times earlier this month, Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, argues that what is happening in Gaza does not fit the definition of a genocide yet, but the situation could eventually escalate to that point.
“As a historian of genocide,” Bartov writes, “I believe that there is no proof that genocide is currently taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening.”
Later on in the article, Bartov goes on to say that “functionally and rhetorically we may be watching an ethnic cleansing operation that could quickly devolve into genocide, as has happened more than once in the past.”
In a separate opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, Raz Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University, makes the argument that what is happening in Gaza is already a genocide, citing the extraordinarily high death count, Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza, and the genocidal and dehumanizing rhetoric that has come from many Israeli officials.
Bartov and Segal are both Jewish Israeli historians, which makes it difficult to frame their opinions as stemming from antisemitism or some sort of animosity toward Israelis, as many critiques of Israel are often portrayed. Though they may disagree on whether or not this situation constitutes a genocide at this moment, their respective opinion pieces share a lot of similarities. One of which is that they both point out how alarming much of the rhetoric coming out of the Israeli government has been over the course of this conflict.
Obviously, many Israeli officials (as well as many ordinary Israelis) have long held a deep prejudice toward Palestinians, but the dehumanizing language that has been used recently has been surprisingly blatant and vitriolic. The extreme rhetoric is causing many people — including those who would otherwise be indifferent toward this issue — to question the official narrative, which is that Israel is simply defending itself against an unprovoked act of aggression by a terrorist group that has no legitimate grievances, and it is also attempting to minimize civilian casualties while it does so.
There are far too many examples of this sort of language to mention them all here (there are also many examples of Israel supporters and even US officials saying similar things), but it’s worth highlighting some of the more egregious instances.
When announcing the “complete siege” that was put on Gaza at the very start of the war, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel is “fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” One could argue that Gallant was referring to Hamas and not Palestinians in general, but that argument is weakened by the fact that the siege Gallant was announcing affects all Gazans indiscriminately.
About a week into the war, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, suggested that there’s no such thing as an innocent Palestinian civilian, since Hamas was technically elected in 2006. The problem with that argument — aside from the fact that claiming civilians are legitimate targets because of the actions of their elected leaders is the same logic used by terrorists — is that children make up about half the population of Gaza, which means they couldn’t have participated in that election anyway and should therefore not be held responsible, even according to Herzog’s warped line of thinking.
More recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew criticism when he referenced a story from the Hebrew Bible when announcing the start of Israel’s ground invasion into Gaza.
As Middle East Monitor reported last month:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been slammed as calling for “a holy war of annihilation” against the Palestinian people in the besieged Gaza Strip after he invoked the “Amalek”, a nation in the Hebrew Bible that the Israelites were ordered to wipe out in an act of revenge.
Critics have highlighted that the text in the Hebrew Bible which addresses revenge on the Amalek constitutes a narrative of “genocide”. “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
This week, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) Nissim Vaturi claimed that the Israeli government is being “too humane” toward Gazans, and called for Gaza to “burn”.
“All of this preoccupation with whether or not there is internet in Gaza shows that we have learned nothing,” he said. “We are too humane. Burn Gaza now no less!”
As I said before, these are only a few examples (and I didn’t even mention any of the statements from people suggesting Israel should nuke Gaza). The point being there has been no shortage of deranged and genocidal rhetoric coming out of the Israeli government. Regardless of where one stands on this conflict, we should all be able to see how spiteful many of these Israeli officials truly are by how brazenly they’ve made these remarks, seemingly without any sense of remorse.
Some people might argue that some examples of genocidal statements made by a few Israeli officials is not enough to prove that a genocide is actually being perpetrated, and they would be correct. However, there is more evidence of genocidal intent than just mere rhetoric, or the staggering death toll in Gaza, which is already pretty damning evidence in and of itself.
“Israeli culture magazine Mekomit published on 28 October a leaked document issued by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence recommending the occupation of Gaza and total transfer of its 2.3 million inhabitants to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula,” The Cradle reported last month.
“The document recommends that Israel evacuate the Gazan population to Sinai during the war, establish tent cities and new cities in northern Sinai to accommodate the deported population, and then create a closed security zone stretching several kilometers inside Egypt. The deported Palestinians would not be allowed to return to any areas near the Israeli border.”
“The existence of the document does not necessarily indicate that its recommendations are being implemented by Israel’s security establishment,” the article continues. “However, recent statements by Israeli government officials and actions by the Israeli army in Gaza suggest the plan is indeed being implemented.”
The article goes on to describe some of the plan that the paper lays out, which includes forcing the Gazan population to move to southern Gaza, followed by the beginning of Israel’s ground invasion, both of which have since occurred. The Ministry of Intelligence is essentially an Israeli government think tank, not an actual intelligence agency, but the fact that this paper was written up at all, and that some of the plan has seemingly already been implemented, should be enough to cause concern.
Recently, Israel’s Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel wrote an op-ed for The Jerusalem Post, in which he proposed the “voluntary resettlement” of Palestinians in Gaza. This adds to the evidence which suggests the Israeli government is conducting its military operations with the intention of driving as many Palestinians out of Gaza as possible.
Should the population of Gaza be forced to relocate into Egypt — or anywhere else — that would technically be a form of ethnic cleansing rather than an all-out genocide. As Omer Bartov stated in his opinion piece for The New York Times, however, such an operation “could quickly devolve into genocide”.
There has also been an increase of violence in the occupied West Bank in the six weeks since the attack of October 7, particularly from Israeli settlers who practically have the full backing of the Israeli government. This goes to show the animosity that exists within Israel toward all Palestinians, not just those in Gaza.
Despite all of this, there are many people who still refuse to even consider the possibility that Israel’s actions could constitute a genocide — in fact, it’s the Palestinians who want to genocide Jews, they argue. (Which does have some truth to it, at least in regard to Hamas, and if the tables are ever turned and Palestinians begin oppressing Israelis, we should all be willing to call that out as well. However, that is not the case at the moment, so that hypothetical situation has little relevance to the question of whether or not Israel’s current military operations inside Gaza are moral or justified.)
Personally, I think Israel is well on its way to committing genocide — if it’s not there already — but regardless of what this war ends up being labeled as in history books sometime in the future, the fact remains that more than 14,000 Palestinians are dead, and more are dying by the day. All of which has been a direct result of Israel’s bombing campaign, ground invasion, and siege of Gaza.
One reason I think many people are unable to consider the possibility that Israel’s actions are genocidal is because the term “genocide” has been overused to the point of being meaningless.
For example, over the last few years western populations have been told by our governments and media that the Chinese government is committing genocide against Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang province of China, despite the fact that the data which is often cited to make that assertion is deeply flawed, if not completely false.
It’s objectively true that China has conducted counterterrorism operations in Xinjiang, which has included placing some Uyghurs, and other ethnic minorities, into re-education camps. I have no doubt that those policies have resulted in horrific human rights abuses — the concept of a “re-education camp” in general is extremely authoritarian — but to call what China is doing a “genocide” is an inaccurate framing.
Western populations have also been told that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reached the level of genocide; a term which was used by President Joe Biden just a few months into that war.
The war in Ukraine has been ongoing since February 2022, and the total civilian death toll only recently passed 10,000 people. I say that not to minimize the loss of those who have been killed by Russia’s invasion, but to point out that thousands more civilians have been killed in Gaza in less than two months than have been killed in Ukraine in almost two years. If Russia has committed genocide in Ukraine based solely on civilian casualties, as we have been told time and time again, then surely that label should apply to Israel’s war in Gaza.
A war with a significantly higher death toll but which rarely gets called a genocide by the corporate press or western governments is the war in Yemen, which has been waged by a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States. That war has resulted in the death of nearly 400,000 people, many of which have been children.
The War in Yemen
Most recently, Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan, was retaken by the Azerbaijani government, which caused nearly 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee the territory.
As the Associated Press reported in September:
While Azerbaijan has pledged to respect the rights of ethnic Armenians in the region, most are now fleeing, because they don’t believe that Azerbaijani authorities will treat them fairly and humanely or guarantee them their language, religion and culture.
Oddly enough, Israel has been complicit in Azerbaijan’s ethnic cleansing by supplying large amounts of weapons to Azerbaijan. The US also gives aid to Azerbaijan, but a bill which recently passed the US Senate aims to suspend that aid for at least the next two years.
Regardless of whether any of the situations I just mentioned actually classify as a genocide or not, my point is that the word itself has been used so selectively over the last few years that it’s actual meaning has been effectively diluted to the point of losing all impact. Conveniently, the governments which tend to be in the crosshairs of the US empire are the ones that frequently get accused of genocide, whereas the US’s allies or client states rarely face that same accusation.
As is the case in the war in Yemen, the US government is wholly complicit in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza. The US has provided aid to Israel for decades through both Republican and Democratic administrations, and President Joe Biden has spent his entire career being staunchly pro-Israel.
Throughout the last six weeks, the Biden administration has attempted to portray itself as powerless to prevent — or at least scale back — the complete and utter devastation that Israel has unleashed on Gaza. The idea that the US government has no ability to affect this situation is absolutely ridiculous.
As the great Caitlin Johnstone so eloquently stated recently:
Of course the US can stop this. Of course it can. The US is currently pouring weapons into Israel on an almost daily basis, is pouring billions of dollars into Israel and is preparing to pour in billions more, and is currently physically assisting Israeli operations in Gaza with drones and special operations forces while US warships swarm the eastern Mediterranean. All of this can easily be pulled away if Israel refuses to stop murdering children by the thousands in an indiscriminate bombing campaign that reportedly isn’t even doing any meaningful damage to Hamas.
It should be noted that just this week Israel and Hamas agreed to a deal in which Israel will pause its onslaught for four-days in exchange for Hamas’ release of 50 hostages — out of over 200 people the group took captive during its October 7 attack. The US, as well as Qatar, were both part of the negotiations which led to that deal — and a four-day pause is better than nothing — but the fact that it took over six weeks for such a deal to be struck shows how little the US has tried to stop this violence.
Before that deal was voted on by the Israeli cabinet, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that this pause in violence won’t last, saying “We are at war, and we will continue the war”.
Not only has the Biden administration done very little to stop the ongoing onslaught on Gaza, but it has even refused to use certain rhetoric that could be perceived as calling for an end to Israel’s mass murder campaign.
Very early into this conflict, it was reported that US State Department employees were told to avoid using phrases such as “de-escalation/ceasefire”, “end to violence/bloodshed”, and “restoring calm”. The fact that the State Department — which is the diplomatic arm of the Executive Branch of the US government — has been ordered to avoid such terms should highlight how complicit the Biden administration has been in Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza.
That complicity has been so blatant that it has led to a surprising amount of dissent from within the US government.
“More than 400 US officials from 40 government agencies have sent a letter to President Biden criticizing his unconditional support for Israel’s war in Gaza in the latest example of dissent from within the US government,” Antiwar’s Dave Decamp reported last week. “Besides the new letter, Biden’s full-throated support for the brutal war has drawn three dissent memos from State Department employees and an open letter signed by more than 1,000 employees of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).”
Members of Congress have called on the Biden administration to attempt to de-escalate this situation as well, and a State Department official recently resigned from his position over the administration’s support for this war.
It’s not just US government officials who seem to disagree with the Biden administration’s stance on this conflict, either. There have been several examples of journalists within the corporate media failing to push the official narrative or provide cover for Israel’s war crimes, which is surprising considering how infrequently corporate journalists show any sort of criticism toward US foreign policy or Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
The majority of the US population is also against Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, at least according to a recent poll by Reuters/Ipsos, which found that 68 percent of respondents support a ceasefire. An earlier poll published by Data for Progress came to a similar conclusion, which found that 66 percent of respondents support a ceasefire.
Clearly, many people within the US reject the narrative that Israel’s actions are noble and justified, but even those who support Israel should be able to see that the US’s support of and involvement in this conflict is damaging to our own national interest.
Over the last few weeks, US forces in Iraq and Syria have been attacked tens of times since mid-October, largely because of the US’s support for Israel. Each time US military bases are attacked, and each time the US responds to those attacks, the risk of escalation and the US getting fully drawn into this conflict — or causing an even greater conflict to erupt — increases significantly.
Last month, the US State Department issued a travel advisory warning US citizens traveling abroad about the risk of attacks on Americans — again, because of our support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza. That advisory wasn’t directed at Americans traveling only to the effected region, but all over the world.
Considering the danger to US citizens and service members our support for Israel has caused, it’s difficult to understand how anyone could argue that the Biden administration’s unwavering commitment to Israel is in our national interest. And that’s without even mentioning all of the many issues Americans are facing here at home, while we watch our tax dollars fund the murder of countless Palestinians.
The actions which have been taken by the Israeli government since October 7 may not technically constitute a genocide — yet — but even if that’s the case, that in no way justifies the murder of thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, the majority of which have been children and other innocent civilians.
That isn’t to say that Israel has no right to respond to Hamas’ attack, just that it does not have the right to drop large amounts of explosives on civilian infrastructure in a densely populated area or deprive the entire population of Gaza of food, water, fuel, and medical supplies. Frankly, I’m amazed that this point even has to be made — and that it causes such backlash from Israel supporters — and I’m disgusted and deeply saddened by the massive amount of death and destruction we’ve seen over the last six weeks.
If the US government wasn’t actively funding this war and aiding Israel in a myriad of other ways, then I would have far less incentive to publicly state my opinion on this war. Of course, I would still find the loss of innocent life repulsive, but it would at least be an issue completely removed from myself and my country. However, since that is not the case, I feel obligated to continue to be a vocal opponent of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, and to call out the atrocities which are being supported and defended by our own government.
More than 14,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, and that number is rising by the day, if not by the hour. Whether that constitutes a genocide or not, I honestly struggle to comprehend how anyone can continue to support this depravity. It needs to stop, and we as US citizens need to hold our government officials accountable for the role they have played in facilitating and prolonging this brutal campaign of mass murder.
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