The Wildly Unjust Claim of Genocide in Gaza

When Vice President JD Vance was recently heckled for supporting genocide in Gaza, it was made clear that even after the war in Gaza has wound down, the charge that Israel is a genocidal state still lives.¹ The International Court of Justice is still investigating Israel. Advocacy groups across Europe have opened criminal complaints against their governments for complicity in genocide for supporting Israel with arms.² And the charge has now been resuscitated about Israel’s recent actions against Lebanon.³

This charge, often delivered with fervor and hatred that barely masks anti-Israel prejudice, carries enormous moral weight for many people as it invites comparisons to the Holocaust. Let’s break down why this claim has no basis in reality.

The Holocaust is the paradigmatic case of genocide. Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews and millions of others.⁴ What distinguished this massacre from others?

Genocide has a specific motivation: Perpetrators of genocide judge certain groups to be inherently superior to others.⁵ The Nazis believed that Jews and others were corrupting the German race through intermarriage. From this warped perspective, the mass deportation and murder of millions of innocent and unarmed people was rationalized by the Nazis as an act of self-defense.

But of course the Jews posed no real threat of violence to anyone in Germany, none that could possibly justify removing them by force. Instead, they were merely an obstacle in the way of the perverse goal of racial purification. Thus, in reality, genocide is not any kind of “self-defense” but unprovoked aggression against innocent individuals.

By contrast, Hamas has long posed a military and terrorist threat against Israel, since its founding in 1987. Since it consolidated dictatorial rule in Gaza in 2007, it’s launched numerous rocket attacks on Israel. On October 7th, 2023, their operatives invaded Israel, murdering 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 hostages. It was the worst terrorist attack in Israeli history. Israel rightfully demanded the immediate return of the hostages, and Hamas refused. Israel did not want war: It wanted to hold the perpetrators of October 7th responsible for their crimes, and to allow its citizens to continue with their lives in a free society. In stark contrast with the Nazi genocide, Israel’s war was truly motivated by self-defense.

The attack by Hamas on October 7th, on the other hand, was genuinely genocidal: It aimed at killing Jews and at destroying the nation of Israel out of religiously inspired antisemitic hatred. The 1988 Hamas Charter cites Islamic texts: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees.”⁶ Sickeningly, Hamas frames the killing of Jews as virtuous and deserving of divine reward, and teaches children in schools that Jews are inherently corrupt, violent, and treacherous.⁷ All of this aims at fomenting ongoing hatred against Jews, using antisemitic tropes, such as claims of global financial manipulation and warmongering. They eerily echo Nazi propaganda.

Moreover, to the extent that civilians in Gaza suffer from the war, it is the moral responsibility of Hamas. It initiated a barbaric attack, leading Israel to retaliate in self-defense. Further, Hamas treats Palestinians as mere pawns to be sacrificed in their religious and racial war. Hamas orders Gazans to ignore Israeli evacuation orders, intentionally putting them in harm’s way, and uses houses, schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure as command centers or arms depots.

By contrast, Israel clearly has no such mission to kill all Palestinians: It sought the destruction of Hamas. If Israel did want to kill all the Palestinians in Gaza, it could do so easily, by simply smothering Gaza with bombs indiscriminately. Instead, Israel minimizes violence against noncombatants, via humanitarian corridors, bomb warnings, and the use of precision weapons. I would argue that Israel goes too far in attempting to protect enemy civilians. But even if you thought Israel’s military tactics were unjust, this would still provide no basis for the charge of genocide.

The charge of Israeli genocide is morally corrupt. It requires an incredible series of evasions. It evades that Israel’s motivation is self-defense, and that Hamas’s is actually to commit genocide. It evades that Israel seeks to defend its citizens against a genocidal opponent that repeatedly attacks them. In truth, Israel’s war to defeat a fanatical enemy is the moral opposite of genocide.

Consider the moral inversion: The focus of Israel as the perpetrator of genocide not only distracts from this reality but treats the real perpetrators of genocide (Hamas and its many supporters) as victims. Giving Hamas this moral cover enables their genocide.

Justice demands that we condemn this inversion and dismiss the mendacious charge of genocide against Israel.

Image credit: HAZEM BADER / AFP via Getty Images