Genocide in Gaza: The Latest Palestinian Lie

While the latest Palestinian slander against Israel of genocide is demonstrably false it is being widely disseminated and therefore requires rebuttal, so let us begin with some facts: Gaza has one of the fastest-growing populations in the world, with a 1.99% annual growth rate. Gaza’s population has risen by 2.84% in the past year, according to the UN. The rapid growth of Gaza’s population alone belies the Palestinian claim of genocide. As Douglas Murray explains in his excellent new book “On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization”

 “In 2005, when Israel withdrew all Jews from Gaza, the population of the Strip was around 1.3 million. By 2023 it was over 2 million…There was no population boom in Auschwitz in the 1940s.”

Gaza’s rapid population growth comes despite four wars started by Hamas. This could not be the case were Israel intent on genocide. Do those seeking to commit genocide move enemy civilians out of harm’s way and supply them with food, water, electricity, and fuel, as the IDF did in Gaza? Do victims of genocide start wars, terrorize, and bombard their supposed oppressors with rockets, as Hamas has done for years? Do genocide’s victims engage in massacres, mass rapes, or take hostages, as Hamas did on October 7?

The Palestinian accusation of genocide against Israel is based on casualty numbers. However, a recent report by UK think tank The Henry Jackson Society found that the numbers supplied to the media by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health contain “widespread inaccuracies and distortion.” The report found that Hamas’ casualty figures include combatants, those who died of natural causes, and those killed by Hamas’ own rocket fire. They also list people with male names as females and adults as children to increase their proportion among the casualties.

The report calculates 22,500 non-combatants killed in Gaza, while Israel confirms 20,000 Hamas terrorists killed. Even if we take Hamas’ total casualty figure of 50,000 at face value, that represents a ratio of roughly 1:1 civilians to combatants. That is possibly a lower percentage of civilian deaths than has been achieved by any other army in modern urban warfare. This ratio is especially low given that Israel is fighting an unprecedented three-dimensional war in a dense urban environment against an enemy who has built an underground terror tunnel network larger than the New York City subway system. Nor have other armies had to contend with an enemy that shoots their own civilians, as Hamas does when residents attempt to evacuate battle zones as instructed by the IDF. Moreover, Hamas purposely places its military infrastructure under schools, hospitals, and other civilian facilities to maximize civilian casualties, thereby increasing international condemnation and pressure on Israel. In fact, most of the tunnel entrances and weapons caches found by Israeli soldiers clearing residential areas in Gaza were located in children’s rooms, schools, and nurseries.

In any case, genocide in war is not defined by the number of casualties, or even the number of civilian casualties. Genocide is the intent to annihilate an entire people. Although the Allies killed eight million Germans during WWII, many through area bombing of German cities, this is not considered genocide because the goal was to defeat the Nazis and end their genocidal campaign, not to wipe out the German nation. Even the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan do not constitute genocide, as they were not intended to wipe out the Japanese nation, but rather to end Japan’s war of aggression.

Like many past Palestinian slanders against Israel, the genocide claim is not merely a lie but a reversal of the truth. It is the Palestinians who have, from the beginning, been intent on genocide against the Jews of Israel and not the other way around.[1] Palestinian claims of genocide against Israel are a projection of their own often-stated genocidal intentions, as codified in the Hamas and PLO charters and evidenced by their decades-long bloody campaign of terror against the Jews. They claim that the Jews intend to do to them what they actually intend to do to the Jews. Genocide and fighting genocide are not equivalent. There is a stark moral difference between those seeking to eliminate the Jewish People, and the Jewish people defending themselves from those who seek their annihilation.

Israel has survived despite the long odds against her because she won every war the Palestinians and their Arab allies launched. There were, however, instances in which the Palestinians temporarily gained ground, and in every case, they massacred every Jew they found. This happened in countless terrorist incidents and massacres, including the Hebron massacre of 1929,  the Kfar Etzion massacre of 1948, the Maalot massacre of 1974, and again on October 7, 2023 when they massacred 1,200 Israelis.

During the Middle Ages, as a prequel to shedding Jewish blood, antisemites routinely claimed that Jews used the blood of murdered Christian children to make matzah. The Palestinian claim of genocide against Israel is a modern version of the medieval blood libel. It is equally baseless and has the same goal: to demonize the Jews in preparation for genocide against them.

[1] The Nazi Roots of Palestinian Nationalism