Israel commits “genocide” in Gaza. That’s what thousands of campus nitwits from sea to shining sea have been claiming. So does Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Khan Younis). So does Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Cambridge). So does the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, who just announced his government will break diplomatic relations with Israel effective May 2, because, Petro claims, not for the first time, that Israel’s siege in Gaza constitutes “genocide.” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, will tell anyone who will listen that Israel is “committing genocide” in Gaza. And so do many more, ”too numerous to mention.”
The British journalist Peter Harris takes quite a different view. He reminds us of why the IDF is, in British Colonel Richard Kemp’s view, “the most moral army in the world,” and in the view of West Point Professor John Spencer “has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties in urban warfare than any other military in the history of war.”
More on Harris’ rebuttal of the charge of “genocide” now being flung at Israel can be found here: “This Is No Genocide,” by Peter Harris, The Daily Sceptic, April 29, 2024:
As I write, students in universities across the U.S. are occupying their campuses in protest at what they consider to be Israel’s genocide against the Gazan people….
What makes these illegal occupations particularly contemptible is the antisemitism of some of those taking part. Jewish students and university staff have been harassed with taunts of “Go back to Poland” and “October 7th is about to be every day for you”.
These barbs are not only revolting, they also display the monumental moral stupidity of those conducting this harassment. How can a person demonstrate against what they think is a genocide in Gaza whilst calling for the genocide of Jews? But what did we expect – irrationality is integral to extremism.
But there is also the empirical question of whether Israel’s actions in Gaza actually are a genocide. It is time to listen to an expert rather than students who mentally and emotionally are still in nappies. Enter John Spencer, the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point and a former infantry soldier of 25 years’ service.
In an article for Newsweek, Spencer, who studies and advises the American military on the kind of warfare in which Israel is currently engaged, namely urban warfare, argues that no other nation in history has shown as much concern to protect civilians as the Israeli Defence Force has done in Gaza. If the IDF were carrying out a genocide, civilians would be targeted too, but they are not. Yet still the international community does not acknowledge Israel’s concern for non-combatants and continues to scold it for failing to protect them. So exemplary has the IDF been in minimising civilian casualties, it is Spencer’s opinion that the U.S. ought to learn the IDF’s methods.
What is more remarkable, according to Spencer, is that Israel’s concern for Gazan civilians defies military orthodoxy regarding offensives. According to the theory and praxis of manoeuvre warfare, the attacker must smash an enemy morally and physically with surprise, overwhelming force and speed, and destroy political and military centres. Warning civilians to evacuate is forbidden as enemy forces would learn of the coming attack.
Yet this is what the IDF has done before almost every move it has made, thus ceding the advantage of surprise and allowing Hamas to relocate its ununiformed forces inside Gaza’s dense urban spaces where they can mingle with civilians and hide in their labyrinth of tunnels. Spencer confirms that Israel warned civilians in northern Gaza weeks in advance before launching its ground offensive. Israel also made over 70,000 phone calls, sent over 13 million text messages and left more than 15 million pre-recorded voicemails to warn civilians in that region to leave combat zones and to advise on where they should go and how to get there. Additionally, the IDF has used drones with speakers to exhort civilians to leave and has conducted frequent pauses of operations to allow any civilians who have not left battle zones to do so. These efforts resulted in an impressive evacuation of 85% of civilians in northern Gaza….
Along with the 70,000 phone calls, 13 million text messages, and more than 15 million pre-recorded voicemails, the IDF has also dropped 14 million leaflets warning civilians to leave certain areas that are about to become combat zones, instructing first the people in northern Gaza on where they should move to be safe. In this way 85% of those living in northern Gaza left for the safety that the IDF assured them they would have south of the Wadi Gaza during the initial phase of the war. In addition, the IDF also has delivered millions of warnings, by prerecorded calls, text messages, and leaflets, about specific buildings — schools, apartment houses, mosques, and hospitals — where Hamas has embedded both fighters and weapons, and that were soon to be targeted by the IDF. The IDF warns civilians to flee to safe sites, which it clearly indicates on maps it sends both with email messages and on its leaflets.
Does a country hellbent on “genocide” send out millions upon millions of warnings, by leafletting, messaging, and telephoning, to warn away from danger those it supposedly wants to mass murder? Does a country hellbent on “genocide” direct its pilots to call off missions at the last minute if they detect too many civilians at or near their targets? Does a country hellbent on “genocide” let hundreds of trucks enter Gaza daily, each full of hundreds of tons of food and other humanitarian aid? Does a country wanting to commit “genocide” in Gaza allow its population to increase from 400,000 in 1967, when Israel took over the Strip, to 1.3 million in 2005, when Israel pulled all of its civilians and soldiers from Gaza? Does a country determined to commit a “genocide” of the Arabs inside Israel proper allow 160,000 of them in 1949 to grow to 2 million today? Would a country wanting to engage in the “genocide” of Palestinian Arabs let those in the West Bank, who numbered 900,000 in 1967, when Israel took possession of that territory, grow in population to three million today?
There has been a “genocidal” impulse on display recently in the part of Israel that borders Gaza. It was demonstrated not by the IDF, but by Hamas on October 7. It was on that day that 3,000 Hamas operatives smashed into Israel, in cars and on tractors, on motorbikes and on paragliders, and proceeded to murder 1,200 Israeli men, women and children. The victims were not merely murdered, but also tortured, raped, mutilated. Small children were burned alive. Girls were gang-raped, and their rapists then shot or stabbed them in their vaginas. Some of them were raped even after they were dead. Women had their breasts sliced off; they were then used by the Hamas killers in a ghoulish came of catch. Men had their genitalia cut off, and their eyes gouged out. That is what “genocide” looks like. It does not look like those millions of IDF warnings on leaflets, in messages, and in telephone calls to civilians, so as to keep their losses to a minimum.
Remember all that you’ve just read above, and bring it to bear next time someone starts to rant about “Israel’s genocide” in your presence.
dumbledoresarmy says
I followed the link and read the article: and then I skimmed through the comments, which were …. mind-boggling, because 9 out of 10 were by deluded, crazed, jihad groupie Jew-haters. Jew-hatred is indeed a pathological condition; and the sheer volume of what Martha Gellhorn called ‘madhattery’, spewed forth by the haters of Zion, by Muslims and deluded others, particularly nowadays via chinese-owned tik-tok (which all manner of people are gobbling up; even one of my own siblings – a supposedly rational atheist the last person you’d expect to become a jihad groupie – swallows everything there unquestioningly and is now filled with what he fondly believes to be just and righteous rage against the eeeeevil Jooooooz.
Dave says
Neither the UN nor any world body has the authority to define “genocide”. History has defined it. Jews in Germany were a peaceful group of civilians fully integrated (they thought) into German society until singled out for extermination. They were hunted down and transported outside Germany for extermination.
Gazans attacked civilians in Israel. This was an act of war. If ALL Gazans were exterminated as a result, it still would not qualify as genocide. The US nuked Japan twice. Women, children, puppies, and kittens were killed. That was NOT genocide, it was war.
Mick says
I read genocide to mean the cleansing of an area by the mass killing of a race or religion, eg Armenians, ‘Mohicans’, Hottentots, Jews, Biafrans, Kurds, Rwandans, Christian Africans and Levantines.
The Turks in 1915 knew they could not kill the 50% of Armenians living in Russia. But they did their best and some called it a ‘holocaust’.
Maybe best, as you suggest, to avoid the words and the pedantic debate, and just call it “war”.
Walter Sieruk says
As for that bogus claim of Israeli genocide in Gaza, the reality that the actual , real, intention of Hamas is the genocide of the Jewish people that’s the goal of Hamas and not of those in power in the State of Israel regarding the “Palestine” people.
About innocent those children who died in Gaza because the jihadists Hamas hiding among places with children. Also this current war that Hamas started this with Israel on October 7th when it launched its brutal vicious and murderous and even vile and heinous jihadist attacks on the peaceful Jewish citizens of the State of Israel.
Those innocent children who died in Gaza because of Israel’s air force was not the intention of the government and military officials of Israel.
Those youngster who had been killed had died because those despicable jihadists of Hamas, because they are so very callous and cruel that they deliberately stationed their jihad strategy command and weapon centers at buildings that have children in and around those places.
Therefore the bloodguilt for the death of those children of Gaza on the wicked hands of the Hamas jihadists.
Walter Sieruk says
In the newspaper The Epoch Times April 3-6, 2024, A14 the reader in informed about “Civilian Casualties.” For it reads, “Israel risks the lives of its soldiers to prevent civilians deaths. Hamas risks the lives of civilians to prevent terrorist’s death. Israel considers it a failure, and Hamas considers it a globally advantageous when civilians die than its soldiers.”
The contrast between Israel and Hamas is vast and outstanding.
rick says
Are there unfortunate deaths of non combatants in Gaza? Yes. But you must remember that when there is a war against a Nazi enemy which is supported by the vast majority of the people in the geography that the Nazi armed forces control, then there is a surety that there will be many civilian deaths. It was so In Germany in WW II as well as Japan and that is the situation in Gaza.
Hamas is a Nazi like military whose only purpose is to kill Jews while committing inhuman acts against them and destroying Israel. The people of Gaza voted Hamas in power. Whether the civilians knew or even cared that this was a “one time only vote” is unknown. However we do know that the genocidal and sick act of Oct. 7th was greeted with near unanimous acclaim by the civilians of Gaza. In fact many Gazans participated by capturing Jewish civilians and bringing them back to Gaza for a money bounty paid by Hamas for hostages. There are no reports of people in Gaza openly denouncing the events of Oct. 7th. That is proof of popular support for Hamas and for the inhuman acts of Oct. 7th. Disagreeing publicly with Nazi rule is a very unhealthy thing to do. Why there is no protest of Hamas may be fear, but it also speaks for approval of Hamas.
Wellington says
Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza and it is absurd to assert such but those accusing Israel of genocide would be just fine with genocide committed against Israelis. Classic projection of sorts.
Jack Reynolds says
https://jihadwatch.org/2024/05/nigeria-muslims-murder-over-30-christians-including-a-mother-and-her-baby
patriotliz says
Was the US Army “genocidal” against German citizens in WWII when multiple cities were bombed like Dresden? What about atomic bombs in Nagasaki and Hiroshima? If anything, IDF prolongs the war by publicly divulging where they are going to target Hamas in order to spare civilians who are probably not free to evacuate by the Hamas Nazis. I don’t feel sympathy for civilian Muslims who cheered 9/11 and Oct. 7. They are irredeemably indoctrinated to hate Israel and the US.
JS says
Islam has bred its way to conquer the world and take over with death and destruction. Yes, that sounds harsh but it’s true and just today there was a story on ID about an Iranian family that immigrated to the US with some of their small children. Now one of their children now all grown up is accused of kidnapping a man and taking him to the California desert where he beat him (almost to death) and taking a knife to his private part and while sawing back & forth singing, while he cut it off and took it with him so it couldn’t be reattached. Then got on a plane back to Iran, hiding for two plus years. My point? These people are unlike any enemy the world has ever seen and nations must take their gloves off when fighting these people without our ‘humanitarian’ laws that they don’t follow. They are lawless in all respects and we can either get tough or die.
OLD GUY says
Israel is doing the world a BIG favor by taking HAMAS and the fighters for Palestine OUT. I support ISRAEL and AMERICA.
JS says
Absolutely. Israel is fighting terrorism for the entire world – all alone and the cowards of the West are condemning them. It’s crazy that Western nations that condemn Israel are having the same problems and will soon end up in either war or something else. I can’t even think of what that something else’ is because they are so emboldened by what they’ve been allowed to get away with worldwide. I’ll leave it at that.