When is mass slaughter, destruction, and starvation genocide? To read many American Evangelicals, only when Israel is not committing it.
In a July 29 column at World Opinion, North Greenville University professor, Dr. Nathan Finn, took to task the thousands of rowdy, loud, and even lawless protestors at and around Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent address to Congress. Netanyahu, the disastrous prime minister of Israel, longtime disruptor of Middle East peace efforts, and now internationally charged war criminal was invited by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
Finn’s primary complaint regards the protestors, but that is not my concern. My concern is the mischaracterization of two important points.
Firstly, Finn writes,
Some protestors chanted, “Bibi, Bibi, we’re not done! The intifada has just begun!” The intifada refers to the now three-decade history of pro-Palestinian terrorists violently resisting the Jewish occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
Though it’s how Finn’s sentence can be read, there has been no continuous intifada that has lasted three decades. Sustained resistance against Israel’s brutal, illegal occupation? Yes; except that’s been over 50 years.
The First Intifada lasted from 1987–1993 and Second Intifada from 2000–2005. There has been no third, though there have been many rumblings. As importantly, the intifadas were not instigated by “pro-Palestinian terrorists.” Historian of Palestine, Zachary Foster, noted on X: “From late 1987–1988, Palestinians in Gaza rose up in a series of non-violent demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, & protests. They killed 0 Israelis. They were unarmed. In response, Israel killed 142 Palestinians in Gaza.” He then screenshot Jean-Pierre Fuliu’s Gaza: A History, p 206.
Both intifadas eventually erupted in violence including the horrific suicide bombing campaign against Israel from 2000–2005 during which 138 Palestinians killed themselves and hundreds of others. As is the historical norm, though, more Palestinians were killed than Israelis—1,409 vs 271 in the First Intifada and 3,000 vs 1,000 in the Second, as well as an additional 6,371 vs 1,083 in between the two.
The second exception to be taken with the column are these two paragraphs, stunningly missing the mark.
Others chanted, “Netanyahu, you can’t hide. You’re committing genocide.” This claim is patently false since Israel neither intends genocide nor has acted in a manner in which it could result. Regrettably, some innocent Palestinians have been killed unintentionally by Israel’s response to Hamas, which is a lamentable outcome in any armed conflict. But the number of such deaths has been elevated considerably—despite ongoing Israeli efforts to minimize civilian causalities—precisely because Hamas operates from sites such as schools and hospitals. This strategy effectively uses Palestinian noncombatants as human shields whose deaths will provoke international outrage.
The claim of genocide is also breathtakingly hypocritical. While there are significant tensions between Jews and Palestinians, and while Israeli policy toward Palestine is open to critique, it is not Israel that wishes to commit genocide against Arabs and other non-Jews in the region. (Italics added.)
The question of genocide is not related to generic Arabs nor other non-Jews in the region. We are dealing with Gaza; the protests are connected to Gaza. And, yes, Virginia, there is genocide is happening in Gaza.
As early as November 10, Jewish intellectuals were warning of potential genocide. Here’s Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University:
My greatest concern watching the Israel-Gaza war unfold is that there is genocidal intent, which can easily tip into genocidal action. On Oct. 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Gazans would pay a “huge price” for the actions of Hamas and that the Israel Defense Forces, or I.D.F., would turn parts of Gaza’s densely populated urban centers “into rubble.” On Oct. 28, he added, citing Deuteronomy, “You must remember what Amalek did to you.” As many Israelis know, in revenge for the attack by Amalek, the Bible calls to “kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings.”
The deeply alarming language does not end there. On Oct. 9, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said, “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” a statement indicating dehumanization, which has genocidal echoes. The next day, the head of the Israeli Army’s coordinator of government activities in the territories, Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed the population of Gaza in Arabic: “Human animals must be treated as such,” he said, adding: “There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”
The same day, retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland wrote in the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, “The State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in.” He added, “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieving the goal.” In another article, he wrote that “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.” Apparently, no army representative or politician denounced this statement.
I could quote many more.
Controversial Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, who has written books and numerous articles on the history of Israel and Palestine especially ethnic cleansing, believes it to be genocide.
Raz Segal minces no words in Jewish Currents: it’s “a textbook case of genocide.”
Israel’s campaign to displace Gazans—and potentially expel them altogether into Egypt—is yet another chapter in the Nakba, in which an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel. But the assault on Gaza can also be understood in other terms: as a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes.
Not only do untold numbers of Jewish people worldwide recognize it as genocide, Palestinians do as well. Here’s Quaker and former resident of Gaza, Yousef Aljamal, writing for the American Friends Service Committee. Here’s Riyad Monsour, Palestinian Ambassador to the UN, who calls it “the most documented genocide in history.”
Dr. Ramzy Baroud writes, “Indeed, there is no other honest way of phrasing what is taking place in Gaza but as a genocide, one for which only Israel – a military occupier and apartheid state – can be blamed.”
Then there’s this recent report from Boston University School of Law’s International Human Rights Clinic, representing a consortium of human rights centers:
The report’s conclusions are based on internationally agreed upon definitions of genocide. “As set forth in the Genocide Convention of 1948,” the report reads, “the crime of genocide requires that a perpetrator kill, seriously harm, or inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of a group, in whole or in part, with the intent to destroy the group as such.” The report continues: “after reviewing the facts established by independent human rights monitors, journalists, and United Nations agencies, we conclude that Israel’s actions in and regarding Gaza since October 7, 2023, violate the Genocide Convention.”
Finally, Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese told television station France24 that genocide is obvious, even saying it is “ostentatious.”
As the special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, Albanese issued a report in late March to the UN Human Rights Council in which she stated that there were clear indications that Israel had violated three of the five acts listed under the UN Genocide Convention in its war on Gaza.
“This is one of the most critical cases of genocide, a tragedy foretold, because of the intent to eliminate the Palestinians with all means available – be it transferring them or neutralising them or segregating them … The situation today in Gaza cannot be analysed or qualified otherwise than as a genocide. I have not seen a genocide where the intent was so ostentatious and vindicated over and over,” Albanese told FRANCE 24.
And after all this, tragically, the estimated number of dead—around 40,000 at this writing—may be far low. The Lancet reports the total as of a few weeks ago could be then as high as 186,000:
Armed conflicts have indirect health implications beyond the direct harm from violence. Even if the conflict ends immediately, there will continue to be many indirect deaths in the coming months and years from causes such as reproductive, communicable, and non-communicable diseases. The total death toll is expected to be large given the intensity of this conflict; destroyed health-care infrastructure; severe shortages of food, water, and shelter; the population’s inability to flee to safe places; and the loss of funding to UNRWA, one of the very few humanitarian organisations still active in the Gaza Strip.
In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2,375,259, this would translate to 7.9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is either committing genocide or has the most incompetent military in the world. But, hey, not everyone thinks it’s genocide. President Joe Biden rejects the idea.
A brief aside: Israel is currently roiled after sexual abuse allegations toward Palestinian prisoners by IDF personnel have surfaced. Nine soldiers are being detained. However, in an attempt to free the accused, “On Monday, several hundred protesters [including members of parliament and at least two government ministers] broke into the facility in southern Israel, known as Sde Teiman, and then later into the military base where the soldiers were being held.” [Source, also Axios] One current Knesset member defended the sexual abuse of Palestinians in custody, answering the direct question, “To insert a stick in a person’s rectum, that is legitimate,” answered angrily, “Everything is legitimate.”
“Iran’s useful idiot’s”? Where is mention of the sustained protests against Netanyahu in Israel. Literally. Happening. For. Months. Are all these Israeli protesters Iran’s useful idiots? Or did Netanyahu make useful idiots out the United States Congress?
Ignoring or misrepresenting facts to oppose out-of-control protestors is not necessary. Most adults could cite some such instances from broken windows, to riots, to an insurrection on January 6 that protests spiraled out of control. But to wave away the calculated murder of civilians, massive, intentional destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, universities, libraries, mosques, and churches with innocuousness like “some innocent Palestinians have been killed unintentionally” is troubling, and patently false.
fides quaerens intellectum
