WhatsappA group of activists masquerading as scholars has rushed to brand Israel with history’s darkest crime.
(JNS)
Let’s be clear: What Israel is doing in Gaza is not genocide. To claim otherwise is to twist language, distort history and turn international law into a political weapon.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) just passed a resolution accusing Israel of “genocide.” The Washington Post dutifully reported it, as if it were a verdict handed down from Sinai. (The paper didn’t even bother to note that the vote was a small percentage of the membership.) But it is not law. It’s not binding. It’s not even serious scholarship but politics dressed up in academic robes.
Genocide has a strict legal meaning. It requires a proven intent to wipe out an entire people. That was the Nazis’ “Final Solution.” That was Rwanda in 1994. That was Bosnia in Srebrenica. It is not Israel, defending itself after the Hamas-led massacre in southern Jewish communities on Oct. 7, 2023, when 1,200 men, women and children were slaughtered, and 215 others kidnapped and dragged into Gaza. Some 50 remain captive there, some dead and some still alive.
Hamas openly declares that it will repeat Oct. 7 “again and again.” That is genocidal intent. Israel’s intent is the opposite: to dismantle a terror machine that hides in hospitals, schools and mosques, deliberately putting Gazans in harm’s way. The terrible civilian suffering in Gaza is real, but it is the direct result of Hamas’s strategy, not Israel’s goal.
If Israel truly wanted genocide, the coastal enclave would have been flattened long ago. Instead, Israel has warned civilians to evacuate, opened humanitarian corridors and allowed aid trucks to enter—steps no genocidal regime has ever taken.
Even former President Joe Biden (hardly Israel’s biggest cheerleader) said bluntly: “What’s happening in Gaza is not genocide.”
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has not ruled otherwise. Only the IAGS, a group of activists masquerading as scholars, rushed to brand Israel with history’s darkest crime. They spouted their claim with only 30% of their organization voting in favor of hechshering the word; the voting itself came in the form of a listserv, according to news reports, without prior discussion of the matter among members.
Let’s call this what it is: a modern blood libel. Just like in the Middle Ages, when Jews were accused of murdering Christian children to justify hatred against them, today Israel is accused of genocide to delegitimize its very existence. The goal is the same: to turn Jews into monsters and strip them of the right to defend themselves.
Words matter. If everything is genocide, then nothing is. Diluting the term makes it harder to act when real genocides occur. It’s an insult to the victims of the Holocaust, Rwanda and Bosnia to equate Israel’s war of survival with their extermination.
Israel is not committing genocide. Israel is fighting to survive. And those who slander it with the world’s most heinous crime are not defending human rights are providing cover for terrorists who openly seek the next Oct. 7.
That’s why the world cannot be silent. Every time this lie is repeated, it gains traction. Pro-Israel voices—and the voices of all who recognize truth—must push back in the press, on campus and in the halls of government. Call it out, write about it, challenge it. The stakes are not only Israel’s reputation. They are the integrity of international law itself.
