The charge of genocide in Gaza

An open letter to my friends who believe Israel is not committing and has not committed genocide against Gaza:

1a) You are certainly right that the charge of genocide is being used to generate hatred against all of Israel and hatred against Jews, and to equate Israel with the Nazis. Such implications are used for evil purposes. But that does not mean ab initio that the charge is false.

1b) You may be right that it is not genocide – the legal definition of genocide is complex, and the question of intent is both paramount and difficult to prove.

2) But you may be wrong: the extent of the damage, and the razing of so much of Gaza to the ground, the wanton destruction of agriculture, water treatment and infrastructure, the hospital equipment destroyed that has no possibly military function (such as equipment in any NICU unit), the documented establishment of kill zones in cases where the lines of those kill zones were not communicated to the local populace, the attacks that happened in zones previously deemed “humanitarian corridors”, the targeting of medical workers and journalists, and on and on and on, is consistent with the intention of making Gaza uninhabitable. This level of damage is not explained by the need to destroy Hamas’s tunnel network.

3) If it is not genocide, which requires specific intention on a policy level, it almost certainly meets the conditions for being ethnic cleansing, which does not have intention as a necessary and special element. That is still a crime against humanity. And in the context of war, a war crime.

4) Citing the percentage of Gazans killed as proof that it is not genocide is actually irrelevant. Citing the fact that Israel could have killed many hundreds of thousands more is not relevant.

5a) Citing one military analyst, who is partisan, who claims that the civilian to combatant kill ratio in Gaza was historically low for urban warfare, is also irrelevant. You would need to also quote the analysts who say the opposite AND prove that they are wrong, and that your single source that goes against those other sources is right. But you won’t be able to, because there is no simple answer.

5b) Retweeting/reposting a false rightwing analysis of the B’Tselem report maybe feels good, but if you did that, all you have done is delay our reckoning with reality. Injustice and state-backed violence have to end.

6) The fact that you are debating the proper kill ratio should give you pause to consider how low on the moral scale we all have sunk.

7) Most of you inveterately fail to acknowledge or quote the many many soldiers and generals and IDF rabbis and halakhic poskim who have expressly endorsed genocide. Those people are generally not the people deciding IDF policy. But some of them are deciding tactics in the middle of battle. Some are actually part of formulating policy. And among the people who have control of the government there are two fascist ministers who can threaten to take down the Yahu coalition who expressly endorse genocide and ethnic cleansing. I notice that you don’t often deal with those facts.

8) The murder of the World Central Kitchen workers, and the massacre/execution of medics and the burial of their bodies along with their ambulances in the sand – if that’s not evidence that at least some people making decisions would endorse careless disregard for Palestinian lives, and, especially in the latter case, genocide, then perhaps there is no evidence that could impact your desire to exonerate Israel.

9a) I hope that you are right – that the ICJ determines after real trial proceedings that Israel did not have the intent to inflict a genocide. I even still believe you may end up being right. But your arguments are nevertheless mostly fallacious, selective in what incidents and evidence you pay attention to, and disingenuous about what you choose to ignore.

9b) Maybe that is just evidence that all you are seeing are rightwing newsfeeds that lie and lie. That excuse can work for awhile. It cannot work for two, almost three, years.

10a) Whether the “g word” applies or does not apply, something horrible has happened, and is happening, something that makes vast stretches of Gaza uninhabitable.

10b) And in the meanwhile, the administration of “justice” in the West Bank is still about as close to apartheid as you can get. (Just ask Yinon Levy, the settler who murdered Awdah Al-Hathaleen, of blessed memory, but suffered zero consequences until a few days ago when he was indicted – though the chance of a conviction are vanishingly small.) And we are watching in real time the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from major parts of the West Bank. A certain crime against humanity. If you can’t outspokenly oppose that, and if you can’t oppose violence and harassment and intimidation by settler extremists backed up by the army, then how can you realistically claim to have a morally clear voice about the “g word”?

11-100) INJUSTICE AND STATE-BACKED VIOLENCE HAVE TO END. If we have any right to be in the land, the basis of that right is the covenant, and that basis depends on justice for the poor and the stranger. If you ignore that, you are locking in Israel’s covenantally-prophesied destruction. (Also, if you think that’s a bunch of hooey and that might makes right, then you don’t believe in a Jewish state at all, but rather an anti-Jewish state.)

101) I know many people do all this because they care about the Jewish people and our fate. I feel for you and empathize with that desire. That’s not a justification for bypassing justice.

ציון במשפט תפדה ושביה בצדקה