What is Genocide?

The term "genocide" is legally and historically defined with specific criteria. According to the United Nations Genocide Convention, genocide involves acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. These acts can include killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting conditions designed to bring about the group's physical destruction, and other acts intended to destroy the group.

In the context of the Israel-Gaza conflict, there are some key points to consider:

Genocide involves a deliberate intent to annihilate a specific group. Israel was violently attacked on October 7th, 2023 by Hamas, massacring over 1200 innocent people and kidnapping more than 200 others. Israel stated its goals for this operation as getting rid of a terrorist organization, Hamas, that has threatened to continue with “October 7th” attacks until they destroy Israel and the goal to return the innocent hostages home to their families.  Israel’s stated goals do not include the intention to destroy Palestinians as a group, but instead to destroy the terrorists who also are threatening to the lives of the Palestinians. This is a key distinction in determining whether genocide is occurring.

 

Israel has taken various measures to mitigate civilian harm, such as issuing warnings before attacks, providing humanitarian aid, and attempting to avoid civilian casualties despite the complexities of urban warfare. Israel does more to avoid civilian death than any army in history of the world.  The IDF (Israel’s Defense Force) prioritizes defense of the country and the civilians, they have never initiated a war.  Furthermore, Israel has worked tirelessly to secure a ceasefire agreement so that the hostages come home however, Hamas has not been willing to make an agreement.  Israel is risking the lives of its own soldiers by sending them into tunnels that are occupied by terrorists so that they can find the hostages and avoid civilian deaths.  If they didn’t care about civilian deaths, they could simply blanket bomb the area and avoid sending soldiers into enemy territory.

The Holocaust was a genocide.  The Nazis rounded up all the European Jewish population and systematically murdered them.  There were 6 million innocent civilians murdered by the Nazis and people were not warned in any way.  The Nazis didn’t build areas to keep people safe from the war zones, they didn’t send leaflets to warn Jews to move to safer areas.  They intended to murder them all and they did whatever they could to achieve this goal.  That is a genocide! The war in Gaza, although it is tragic and it involves civilian deaths, which all wars do, it is a military conflict between a terrorist organization and a sovereign nation that is being threatened.  There is absolutely no genocidal intent.

 

Furthermore, once again Israel is being judged by a different standard as the rest of the world.  There are millions of people in Yemen who are being starved by the Houthis, yet no one screams GENOCIDE!

 

There are Hindus being massacred in Bangladesh but the UN has not issued any charges of GENOCIDE!

 

There are hundreds of thousands being killed and victimized in Sudan but again….no GENOCIDE!

Hamas has openly stated that its intent is to kill all Jewish people and annihilate Israel.  They have always said it, they will not recognize Israel’s sovereignty, they have a charter that states their intent on committing genocide and they attempted to commit genocide on October 7th, 2023.  Yet, once again they have not been condemned or accused of a GENOCIDE.

 

Whereas, Israel defends itself from Hamas, tries to rescue innocent hostages and tries to secure its borders from being invaded again in the future…the world screams GENOCIDE.

 

Double Standards = ANTISEMITISM