The Israeli Genocide of ‘Palestinians’: A Brief History

For its enemies, in addition to being an “apartheid” state, and a “colonial-settler” state, Israel is also a “genocidal” state. This claim has been made ad nauseam since October 7, but it was made frequently before then as well. Yet both before and after October 7, those making it never adduce any evidence to support the charge. This lack of evidence, however, doesn’t stop them, and much of the world that is so ready to believe the worst of the Jewish state, from accepting this claim without examination. More on this charge can be found in this pre-October 7 article that still holds true: “Deconstructing the Israeli Genocide Libel,” by Chaim Lax, HonestReporting, March 5, 2023:

One of the most pernicious lies that continues to be spread about Israel is the claim that the Jewish state has committed (and continues to commit) the crime of genocide against the local Arab population, including the Palestinians. 

Whether it’s being advanced by Hollywood superstars like Mark Ruffalo, noted legal scholars, or United Nations officials, the genocide claim is one of the most popular and harmful libels about Israel to be spread in the 21st century. 

Here we deconstruct the genocide libel. 

What is Genocide?

The term “genocide” was coined in 1944 as a means of describing the atrocities that were then taking place in Nazi-controlled Europe as well as other instances of ethnic annihilation, such as the Armenian Genocide in 1915.

In 1948, the newly-formed United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, codifying the crime of genocide. 

According to Article II of the Convention, genocide refers to a number of acts that are “committed with an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

The acts, as enumerated by the Convention include killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting conditions of life that would bring about the group’s physical destruction, imposing measures to prevent births within the group, or transferring children out of the group.

The Legal Genocide Libel

Those who accuse Israel of committing genocide tend to focus on a number of claims:

Claim: The exodus of 700,000 Palestinian refugees in 1948 (along with the killing of Palestinians during the Israeli War of Independence) is tantamount to genocide.

The charge is inapplicable as:

• There is no intent to destroy (in whole or in part) an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group…

Israel in the 1948 war had no “intent to destroy” the Palestinian Arabs; it was the Arab states that intended to destroy Israel, and to expel or kill all of the country’s Jews. On May 14, 1948, when it declared its independence, Israel offered the hand of peace to all the Arabs, both those living in the new state and those living in countries abroad. But when the armies of five Arab states invaded Israel in an attempt to crush the nascent Jewish state, those Palestinian Arabs who joined in the fight were naturally fought by the Haganah. Arabs had been leaving Israel in large numbers even before the war, beginning at the end of 1947, when the area was still Mandatory Palestine; they continued to leave during the war, not because they were being “destroyed” by Israel, but because they heeded Arab broadcasts from abroad that urged them to leave in order to “get out of the way” while the fighting went on, and then, they were assured, those Arabs who had left Mandatory Palestine (or, after May 14, 1948, Israel) could safely return once the war was over, and all the Jews had been either expelled or killed. It was not to be. It was the Arabs, not the Jews, who were defeated. The “Nakba” or “catastrophe” is the name the Arabs give to their failure to crush the Jewish state, and to destroy the Jews of Israel.

During the war some Israeli leaders, like the mayor of Haifa, pleaded with the Arabs not to leave. In a handful of places, Israeli fighters moved Arab civilians from villages located in strategic positions, such as hilltops, not intending to expel them, but only to temporarily relocate them until the fighting ended. This was not “genocide.”

Almost all of the Palestinian Arabs who did leave Israel just before, and during, the 1948 war, did so because they were worried about being caught up in the conflict, or because they had been warned to leave by Arab leaders. Their voluntary flight, which made perfect sense, since they were assured they would soon be returning with the triumphant Arab armies, was not “genocide.”

In 1967, 66,000 Palestinian Arabs lived in east Jerusalem when Israel took possession of the area following the Six-Day War. In 2022, there were 366,000 Palestinian Arabs living in east Jerusalem – an increase of 600%. This is not “genocide.” In 1967, there were about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank. Now there are 2.2 million, an increase of more than 300%. That is not “genocide.” At the end of the 1948 war, there were 166,000 Arabs living in Israel. Today there are 2 million Israeli Arabs, an increase of more than 1200%. That is not “genocide.”

So we must ask the enemies of Israel: “Genocide”? What “genocide”?