Irrationalizations like charges of genocide against Israel

Rationalizations are the worst excuse
that we can make for errors, an abuse
of reason that’s the reason that they prove
that we have no intention to improve.
The first exception to this major rule
is poetry, irrationalizing what
cannot be solved by rational thinking, tool
that makes unblameworthy the blot
created by irrationalization.
We must treat with more indignation
the most irrational application
of “genocide,” once suffered by our nation,
alleging Israel committed genocide,
the very crime committed against them.
This charge the whole world should deride,
deciding rationally to reject and to condemn.
Attributing this crime to Jews is worse’
than verse made by irrationality perverse,
unlike how Balaam managed to reverse
words blessing Jews whom he once aimed to curse.

In Num. 24:5 the gentile prophet Balaam, hired to curse Israel says:
מַה־טֹּ֥בוּ אֹהָלֶ֖יךָ יַעֲקֹ֑ב מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶ֖יךָ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
How fair are your tents, O Jacob, Your dwellings, O Israel!
In “No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza,” NYT, 7/22/25, Bret Stephens, responding to” A
Genocide Scholar on the Case Against Israel,” NYT, 7/23/25, writes:
It may seem harsh to say, but there is a glaring dissonance to the charge that Israel is committing
genocide in Gaza. To wit: If the Israeli government’s intentions and actions are truly genocidal — if it
is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans — why hasn’t it been more
methodical and vastly more deadly? Why not, say, hundreds of thousands of deaths, as opposed to
the nearly 60,000 that Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between
combatant and civilian deaths, has cited so far in nearly two years of war?
It’s not that Israel lacks the capacity to have meted vastly greater destruction than what it has
inflicted so far. It is the leading military power of its region, stronger now that it has decimated
Hezbollah and humbled Iran. It could have bombed without prior notice, instead of routinely warning

Gazans to evacuate areas it intended to strike. It could have bombed without putting its own
soldiers, hundreds of whom have died in combat, at risk.
It isn’t that Israel has been deterred from striking harder by the presence of its hostages in Gaza.
Israeli intelligence is said to have a fairly good idea of where those hostages are being held, which is
one reason, with tragic exceptions, relatively few have died from Israeli fire. And it knows that, as
brutal as the hostages’ captivity has been, Hamas has an interest in keeping them alive.
Nor is it that Israel lacks diplomatic cover. President Trump has openly envisaged requiring all
Gazans to leave the territory, repeatedly warning that “all hell” would break out in Gaza if Hamas
didn’t return the hostages. As for the threat of economic boycotts, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has
been the world’s best-performing major stock index since Oct. 7. 2023. With due respect to the risk
of Irish boycotts, Israel is not a country facing a fundamental economic threat. If anything, it’s the
boycotters who stand to suffer.
In short, the first question the anti-Israel genocide chorus needs to answer is: Why isn’t the death
count higher?

The answer, of course, is that Israel is manifestly not committing genocide, a legally specific and
morally freighted term that is defined by the United Nations convention on genocide as the “intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”