The Reality on the Ground in Gaza: No ‘Genocide’ and No ‘Apartheid’

A new study concludes that there is no evidence to support the charges of “apartheid” and “genocide” that are continuously made against the Jewish state: “Israel not conducting genocide, not guilty of apartheid, new academic study shows,” by Alex Carson, Jerusalem Post, September 28, 2026:

Additionally, the study notes that the survival and incorporation of approximately 160,000 Arab residents who remained inside Israel after the 1948 war “complicate the claim that state formation was conceived and executed as a preexisting comprehensive program of Indigenous removal.”

There was no wholesale “removal” of Arabs from Israel in the 1947-1949 period. Many of the approximately 700,000 Arabs who left the area, starting in November 1949, did so because Arab radio broadcasts from abroad encouraged them to do so. Those broadcasts urged them to leave Mandatory Palestine (and after May 24, 1948, the State of Israel) so that they could get out of the way of the invading Arab armies. They were assured that after the Arab victory, they could return, along with those triumphant armies, to claim both their own properties and those that the Jews left behind. It was assumed that all the Jews would have been killed or expelled. Some Jews were glad to see the Arabs go, but many others, including the Mayor of Haifa and leaders of Histadrut, appealed to the Arabs to stay. And the 160,000 Arabs who remained in Israel, far from being mistreated, managed to thrive and now number more than two million.

On the accusation of genocide, the study evaluates conditions in Gaza against Article II of the Genocide Convention, focusing on provisions concerning the deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction and measures intended to prevent births.

Analyzing data from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the authors note that the dataset records “at least 1,341,904 tons of food associated with 63,191 truckloads on land and maritime routes,” which “weaken the inference that deprivation resulted from a food-entry policy calculated to bring about the population’s physical destruction.”

1.34 million tons of food have so far entered Gaza, humanitarian aid that the IDF facilitated. Does that suggest “genocide” to you?

While addressing the March to May 2025 suspension of aid, the authors state that “the suspension by itself [does not] establish a purpose of physically destroying the population,” noting that the broader record supports “a competing inference that the restrictions served military or operational purposes.”

Israel instituted the two-month halt in aid in order to pressure Hamas into accepting America’s ceasefire terms and agreeing to release more of the hostages it still held. UNICEF itself has admitted that there was never any “famine” in Gaza; there was at times “food insecurity” or “malnutrition,” which is a different thing. In fact the average caloric intake of Gazans has been higher than that of Egyptians.

Examining the destruction of the Al-Basma IVF clinic, the study notes that the UN Commission of Inquiry found that the strike used “a large caliber projectile, most probably a shell fired from an Israeli security forces tank” and relied on “the precision of the strike,” but the authors argue that “intent to destroy a clinic or reproductive material is not by itself intent to prevent births so as to contribute to the physical or biological destruction of the protected group.”…

The IDF has said it was not deliberately firing at the IVF clinic; nor did it know the building contained such a clinic. It was an errant missile that hit the clinic where Palestinian embryos were stored. Israel has no desire to prevent Palestinians from having children. The IDF has vaccinated more than a million children in Gaza to keep them alive. It has transferred Gazan children needing special medical treatment to hospitals in Jordan.

And in 1967, when Israel took over Gaza, its population was 400,000; in 2005, when Israel left, its population had more than tripled, to 1.4 million. It was the same story in Judea and Samaria. In 1967, when Israel took possession of that territory, there were 660,000 Arabs; today, there are more than three million. No wonder Karpe and Jikeli dismiss the charge of “genocide.”

Karpe and Jikeli dispassionately examined each of these claims — apartheid, genocide, and settler-colonialism — separately. For the first two claims, the evidence of intent is simply nonexistent. And even if there had been such intent, the reality on the ground shows that there has been no “apartheid” and no “genocide.” As to the third charge, the of settler-colonialism, they deem that to be an “inadequate” classification, as it does not cover the particular nature of the “settlements” on land that by right belongs to the Jewish state. Instead of “colonials” coming from a far-off metropole to settle a place to which they have no claim or connection (the way British colonists went to Kenya, or the French settled in Algeria), the Jews of Israel have settled in their ancient homeland, to which 3000 years of history give them title.