 |
Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments: Critical Thinking
about the Israel-Hamas War
Note to readers: See previous APOLOGIA post for Chapter 10. (Also, Table of Contents with links is listed below. Or download pdf of the whole book here.)
Note to critics: Please read the whole of my little book (including notes) before offering criticism. Thanks.
Chapter 11: Israel is guilty of genocide?
Objection: In its war against Hamas, Israel is
committing genocide against Gazans.
Reply 1
No. Israel is defending against aggressors who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023. Reminder: In that invasion Gazans led by Hamas brutally and indiscriminately murdered 1200+ Israelis, including women, children, babies, and the elderly plus injured many others. The invaders also took an estimated 240 hostages, many of whom were also women, children, babies, and the elderly. (At time of writing, 112 hostages have been released.) The invaders have made it clear that they wish to repeat the October 7th invasion over and over again. That is, the invaders have made it clear that they—the invaders—wish to commit genocide against Israel. In other words, Israel is engaged in a defensive war against an enemy whose intent is to wipe out Israel. Israel is defending against a genocidal regime.
Moreover, and significantly, Israel’s defence is not genocidal. Israel is targeting terrorists, not civilians. In addition, Israel has been warning civilians of danger (via leaflets, phone calls, text messages, knocking) and providing humanitarian corridors and safe zones to Gazan civilians. Surely, protecting the civilians in which a terror organization has embedded itself is not an act of genocide.
Yes, many Gazan civilians have been killed by Israel. But this is because Hamas uses civilians as human shields and has deeply embedded itself in civilian infra-structure (homes, schools, mosques, hospitals).
Consider the following from British journalist Douglas Murray in a New York Post article tellingly titled “Hamas’ philosophy: All civilians, all children are tools of war.”1 Murray conducts interviews in Gaza with IDF soldiers and a special forces soldier fighting on behalf of the IDF (a soldier Murray calls “Major Y”) and Murray learns that, contrary to Geneva and other conventions, Hamas stores its weapons “routinely” in civilian homes. So routinely, in fact, that “about one in every two or three homes in Gaza they go into has military weaponry, including AK47s, grenades and rocket launchers.” And not just weaponry, but also terror tunnel entrances—usually in the bedrooms of children. In addition, the soldiers tell Murray that “every single mosque they go into has a Hamas weapons store. As has every UN school that they go into.”2 And these schools include kindergartens. Again, this violates the Geneva and other conventions concerning war. Murray also reports the following story from Major Y:
On one occasion recently his unit spotted an old lady in a wheelchair alone on a street corner in the south of Gaza. They approached the elderly lady ‘who looked like my grandmother’ ac-cording to the major. And as they approached her they were suddenly fired on by a Hamas terrorist. He had placed himself under her wheelchair in order to fire on the Israeli soldiers. This is the Hamas that pretends to care for Palestinians but would even use an elderly dis-abled Palestinian woman as a human shield.3
Murray continues:
On another occasion recently the major says that his unit was beside an UNWRA school. The soldiers saw a 13-year old boy running with a bag near one of the schools. He put it down and ran away. A few minutes later it detonated, badly wounding one of the Israeli soldiers nearby. When people ask how Israel could treat even some children as potential terrorists, this is why. As the major said, Hamas didn’t think for a moment “about the Palestinian civilians” who were nearby when the bomb went off.4
Again, Israel’s
defence is not genocidal. Israel is targeting terrorists, not civilians. But
Hamas uses Gazan civilians as human shields and has deeply embedded itself in
Gaza’s civilian infrastructure (homes, schools, mosques, hospitals). Hamas’s
strategy is to weaponize civilians (including children) to make it look like
Israel is genocidal, but Israel’s actions and intent are not genocidal. The fact is that Hamas’s
actions and intent are genocidal in two ways: wipe out all Jews and sacrifice
any or all Gazan civilians in the process.
Reply 2
From The Economist:
In December 1948, in the aftermath of the second world war, the UN adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention defines a genocide as acts intended “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” …
By the UN definition, Hamas is a genocidal organisation. Its founding charter, published in 1988, explicitly commits it to obliterating Israel. Article 7 states that “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them.” Article 13 rejects any compromise, or peace, until Israel is destroyed. Hamas fighters who burst into Israel on October 7th and killed more than 1,400 Israelis (and other nationalities) were carrying out the letter of their genocidal law.
Israel, by contrast, does not meet the test of genocide. There is little evidence that Israel, like Hamas, “intends” to destroy an ethnic group—the Palestinians. Israel does want to destroy Hamas, a militant group, and is pre-pared to kill civilians in doing so. And while some Israeli extremists might want to eradicate the Palestinians, that is not a government policy….5,6
In sum, even
though one might think Israel’s killing of so many Gazan civilians (killed as
collateral unintentional damage as Israel targets Hamas terrorists) is
wrong—perhaps even as serious and heinous as genocide, which I do not believe
is the case—the fact remains that Israel’s killing of Gazan civilians is not genocide. And, even if it is
seriously wrong, one should keep in mind that Hamas—a genocidal regime with no
regard for its own citizens—forced Israel to do this wrong. Hamas forced Israel
to face two dark options: (a) kill Hamas and thereby unintentionally (but foreseeably)
kill Gazan citizens that Hamas hides behind or (b) let Hamas murder, rape, and
torture all Israelis. Because Hamas has ensured (wickedly) that there is no
third option, Israel is morally obliged to choose the first option instead of
the second. Either way, and tragically, wrong was/is done. Nevertheless, in
both scenarios Hamas is to blame.
Hamas is the moral culprit, not Israel. And Hamas, not Israel, has been—and
is—committing genocide.7,8,9,10
NOTES
1. Douglas Murray, Hamas’ philosophy: All civilians, all children are tools of war, New York Post, December 28, 2023.
2. Murray, “Hamas’ philosophy.”
3. Murray, “Hamas’ philosophy.”
4. Murray, “Hamas’ philosophy.”
5. How the term ‘genocide’ is misused in the Israel-Hamas war, The Economist, January 10, 2024.
6. About the angry genocidal remarks made by some Israeli officials—remarks that, contrary to what much media would have us think, do not constitute Israeli government policy—see Olivia Flasch, Rebutting Allegations of Genocide Against Israel, EJIL: Talk! Blog of European Journal of International Law, January 10, 2024.
7. On my view that Hamas forced Israel to do this wrong, see previous chapters “Israel’s attack on Gaza is as bad (or worse) as Gaza’s attack on Israel?” and “Israel is wrong to cause Gaza to suffer?”
8. It should also be noticed that prior to October 7, the Gazan population was growing—which means charges that Israel was attempting genocide on Gaza prior to the Hamas invasion of Israel fall flat on their face. And the charges fall especially flat when one keeps in mind that Israel withdrew in 2005 from Gaza to let it be governed by itself. And keep in mind that Gaza was previously a territory justly won militarily by Israel in self-defence when Egypt and other Arab countries attempted to attack Israel in 1967.
9. Sometimes the genocide charge against Israel is made with reference to The Nakba (“catastrophe”) of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war in which 750,000 Arabs were displaced from Israel. It should be noted that the term nakba was originally used by Arabs to refer to the embarrassing-to-them defeat of Arabs by Jews when in 1948 the Arabs attacked the new state of Israel. The goal of the Islamist Arabs, led by Nazi-collaborator Haj Amin al-Husseini and company, was to exterminate the Jews. But the Arabs failed miserably. And this failure was, for Islamists, a catastrophic humiliation. Why? Because it was a self-inflicted wound (Arabs started the war—and lost—thereby being the main cause of the refugee problem); and because, according to Islamists, all once-Muslim lands belong to Islam; and because Islam is the true religion, not Judaism. But now nakba has a meaning used by Palestinian propagandists to divert attention away from Arab antisemitic violent aggression and instead promote Palestinian victimhood. Nakba now means an alleged 1948 ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel by Israel. But this narrative is false. Yes, many Arabs, especially those deemed hostile to Israel, were forced out by Israel in 1948. This is truly tragic. But it was war—a war started by the Arabs. And these facts remain: many Arabs left Israel willingly because a war (to exterminate Jews) was at hand (and these fleeing Arabs planned to return to Israel after Israel was destroyed); many Arabs left Israel because the surrounding Arab nations (wishing to wage genocidal war on the Jews) told them to leave (and return later); many Arabs who were not hostile to Israel stayed in Israel (as citizens of Israel). In other words, the criterion for Arabs being forced out of Israel was not whether they were Arab, but whether they were hostile to Israel. This distinction shows that The Nakba was not genocide. Hostility, not ethnicity or religion, was the concern. (And, for perspective, keep in mind that whereas 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were pushed out of Israel during the 1948 war, in subsequent years 850,000 Jews were expelled from surrounding Arab countries.) (See Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace [New York: All Points Books, 2020] and see Noa Tishby’s “A State is Born,” which is chapter 6 of her book Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth [New York: Free Press, 2021].)
10. Sometimes critics charge Israel with “collective punishment” of Gaza. But this charge is faulty, too. Oved Lobel: “Palestinians are suffering from actions aimed at Hamas, which has turned nearly the entirety of the Gaza Strip’s civilian infrastructure into military targets by building tunnels underneath and throughout cities and using everything from hospitals to mosques to UN schools as arms depots and HQs, or areas close enough to endanger them. Unfortunately, any rocket launched from a civilian area turns that area into a military target. It absolutely is not ‘collective punishment’ against innocent Palestinians to attack legitimate military targets, even if civilians are affected by those attacks.” (Oved Lobel, Blatant Misuse of International Law: ‘Proportionality,’ ‘Collective Punishment’ and ‘Genocide’, Australia/ Israel and Jewish Affairs Council [AIJAC], October 25, 2023.)
Table of Contents (links)
Chapter 1. Israel is engaging in colonial retaliation?
Chapter 2. Israel is a powerful state and thus the oppressor?
Chapter 3. Israel is not a legitimate state?
Chapter 4. Israel occupies Gaza?
Chapter 5. Gaza is like a Jewish ghetto?
Chapter 6. What about Gabor Maté?
Chapter 7. What about Gabor Maté, again?
Chapter 8. Israel targets a hospital?
Chapter 9. Israel’s attack on Gaza is as bad (or worse) as Gaza’s attack on Israel?
Chapter 10. Israel is wrong to cause Gaza to suffer?
Chapter 11. Israel is guilty of genocide?
Chapter 12. Israel’s response to Hamas is not proportional?
Chapter 13. Israel should agree to a permanent ceasefire?
Chapter 14. Israel should embrace a two-state solution?
Chapter 15. Conclusion and prayer
Appendix 1: Criticizing Islam is Islamophobic? (Part 1 of 2)
Appendix 2: Criticizing Islam is Islamophobic? (Part 2 of 2)
No comments:
Post a Comment