The Genocide Slander: A Torah Perspective

1. To Slander the Land and its People

Headlines recently blared across the world declaring that the so-called “International Association of Genocide Scholars” voted by 86% to accuse Israel of genocide. It only took a few days for it to be exposed that this association is open to anyone willing to pay 30 dollars to be a part of it, including activists, artists, and scholars in unrelated fields. And, that of this group’s 500 members, only 129 voted on the resolution, and that no discussion or debate was allowed before the vote. Just another cautionary tale of how slander can spread across the world before the truth even has the chance to put its pants on, as the expression goes.

In the halachic work Mishpetei Hashalom, about Jewish interpersonal ethics by R. Yitzchak Silber, the author records the following: “It is forbidden to say Lashon Hara (slander) about Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel): its fruits, its people or any other aspect of it.”

It’s important to note that this author is Haredi, and not sociologically classified as a “Zionist”. He’s simply recording ancient Jewish Law. Similarly, R. Yosef Shalom Elyashiv zt’l the leading Haredi (non-Zionist) sage of his day until his death a decade ago, is quoted as saying that this prohibition applies to anything which is an integral part of the Land, such as the climate, the landscape, etc.

In the Talmud Ketubot 112a-b we find the following (translation from Sefaria):

“Rabbi Abba would kiss the rocks of Akko, which was on the coast of Eretz Yisrael. Rabbi Ḥanina would repair its stumbling blocks, i.e., any potholes in the land, so that travelers would not fall and consequently speak ill of Eretz Yisrael. Rabbi Ammi and Rabbi Asi would stand and pass from a sunny spot to a shady one, and from a shady spot to a sunny one, so that they would always sit in comfort and never have cause to remark that they were uncomfortable in Eretz Yisrael. Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Gamda would roll in the dust of the land, as it is stated: “For Your servants take pleasure in her stones, and love her dust” (Psalms 102:15)”.

This all derives from the verse in Numbers 14:35 –

“And the men whom Moses had sent to spy out the land – when they returned from their mission, they caused the entire community to complain against him by spreading their slander about the land”.

There are, of course, reasonable exceptions to this rule. Lashon Hara is permitted when there’s a benefit, when it can prevent harm. I imagine that any time that one sincerely finds it beneficial to call out the State of Israel for its perceived misdeeds, it can be said to be permitted, for the sake of the benefit involved, and for the prevention of harm. Whenever I teach halachot such as that, a law which has many exceptions, my congregants always express the same frustration: ok, so you’re saying that it’s forbidden, except for when it’s not! Then what’s the difference? What are we to learn from a rule with so many exceptions?

I’ve come to respond as follows: when you have a rule with many exceptions, what the rule does is establish a bar; it shifts the burden of proof. Yes, you can criticize any aspect of Eretz Yisrael and its People if you feel that it’s genuinely beneficial and that it might prevent harm. But the burden of proof rests squarely on you; and if you’re wrong, then you have violated a biblical prohibition. So you’d better be sure. And this brings us to the slander du jour of the People of Eretz Yisrael: the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

2. Semantics and Politics

The word genocide only has power in relation to the Holocaust because you first start with the horrors and facts of the Holocaust, and then you employ the term genocide to provide a one word framing for those horrors. You don’t need to then say, no, the holocaust actually fits the LEGAL and technical definition of genocide, as evidenced by the following scholarly texts and arguments; here’s a scholar of genocide who says that the Holocaust was a genocide! None of that is necessary.

Those accusing Israel of genocide today, on the other hand, have to start with a tendentious appeal to scholars and legalities, because the facts alone won’t do the job. This exposes their abuse of language as a cudgel against Israel.

Some scholars of genocide have indeed accused Israel of such. Others have nobly and capably pushed back against this slander. What of the scholars in the former group? How can people so knowledgeable in the field possibly be wrong, and who are we simple laymen to stand up to them on that front? We first need to understand what the term scholarship and expertise means in that field.

Academics working in the sciences have a sense of authority that comes from their theories being testable and falsifiable. Academic scholars of genocide who accuse Israel of such are, on the other hand, opining about the inherently subjective meaning of a highly politicized and relatively newly invented word. They don’t have a different set of underlying facts than the rest of us. And therefore, invoking the logical fallacy of appeal to authority in this case is rather meaningless, and should be viewed for what it is, as an agenda driven cudgel to be wielded by biased observers.

If the findings of these scholars really are correct, then it depends only on the merit of their arguments, and not on any appeal to their authority. And unlike the arguments of physicists or biologists, where a layman might not understand the underlying data, in this case, we are all fit to make our own judgments.

Look at how easily confirmation bias works when you start out with an assumption and then set out to find the facts to confirm it: White Nationalists have long used their Great Replacement Theory to accuse Jews of genocide in America. Jews advocate for liberal immigration of nonwhites into America, which deprives white people of their majority in this country, which constitutes the legal definition of genocide (destroying a white majority nation), they argue. As far as I’m concerned, this argument from the far right is just as “strong” as the arguments from the far left accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. They’re both just examples of confirmation bias at play. They each start with an axiomatic hatred of Jews (or the Jewish State) as uniquely evil, and they then find the facts to fit that presupposition.

3. Just War Theory

General David Petraeus was the commander of US and Coalition forces in Iraq when I joined the US Army Chaplaincy Corps in 2008. He is also a former director of the CIA, and author of the book “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine”. He has been described as the world’s leading expert in counterinsurgency warfare.

General Petraeus declared already in 2023, shortly after October 7th, that Israel in Gaza faced “the most fiendishly difficult and challenging urban operation [in the world] since 1945”. What we’re seeing in Gaza is simply that overwhelmingly challenging reality playing itself out. Privileged armchair critics of the IDF, who live in Western comfort without ever having had to face a monstrous terrorist army on their border which seeks to murder them and their children, have no conception of the scope of this challenge, nor do they have any real interest in learning about it.

Even some of Israel’s supporters have turned against it based on the notion that the war is no longer moral. I’m not referring to those who believe that the war has gone on too long for Israel’s own strategic interests, but to those who say that the war began as a moral one, but no longer is, since it has gone on for too long and the humanitarian toll is too high.

Their sentiment appears to be based on the Middle Ground Fallacy: If Israel would have fought in Gaza for, say, six months and the civilian casualty number were, say, five thousand or so, that could be tolerable. But the fighting has gone on now for close to two years and the civilian casualties are apparently at above thirty thousand.

(That estimate is based on the assessment of Colonel John Spencer, the expert in Urban Warfare at West Point Military Academy, who estimates that about half of the total reported casualties are Hamas fighters, collaborators, or other legitimate targets, which would be the best ratio ever achieved in urban combat).

Too long and too high compared to what benchmark? How long do you think it should take for tiny Israel to defeat Hamas in what Petraeus described as the most complex war in modern history, and to do so with fewer civilian casualties, and can you present a militarily credible plan for doing so? Just War Theory teaches that civilian casualties are tragic but morally acceptable when civilians aren’t being targeted, but will inevitably be killed in the course of the fighting. That principle remains just as true even when scaled up to the unique and tragic urban circumstances in Gaza.

4. Rosh Hashanah and the Ever-Morphing Antisemite

The genocide scholars aren’t usually scholars of Jewish history either. Jews have always been accused of the worst sins of the age. In the Middle Ages it was Deicide. Today it’s genocide.

I can imagine what Israel’s far left-wing progressive critics must think in response:

Those older forms of criticizing Jews were completely different, you see, because the ideologies behind them (Medieval Christianity, Nazism) were superstitious and irrational; whereas the beliefs of hyper progressives today are just the self-evident truth of the world. (Every ideologue feels that the idol of their worship is not an idol at all, but simply the self-evident truth of the world).

Because this time, you see, The Popular Thing is correct. And so, the uncanny correspondence of the demonization of Israel today with the classical antisemitic patterns of the past is, in their mind, apparently just a massive and unfortunate coincidence that we should all ignore. It’s just a tragic case of the Boy who Cried Wolf: this time, the Jews really do deserve the scorn!

This Rosh Hashanah we begin the year 5786, a count referred to it in Latin as Anno Mundi – the Year of the World. Jewish tradition teaches that God created the world beginning with the Foundation Stone on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and then expanding outward from there. The Temple Mount is therefore referred to in Latin as Axis Mundi: the Center of the World.

As we approach the new Anno Mundi, the world remains fixated on the events in the Axis Mundi, on the behavior of those peculiar Israelite People, “who dwell at the Navel of the World (Ezekiel 38:12)”, and whose values never quite conform to the contemporary reigning ideals.

We take solace in knowing that God protects the dwellers of Israel from the judgmental and all too often violent gaze of its haters, from one Rosh Hashanah to the next. Deuteronomy 11:12 –

“It is the land that the Lord your God watches over. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year”.

This Rosh Hashanah season, my top prayer is for the twenty living hostages to be home for Simchat Torah, the second anniversary of their abduction, and for the bodies of the 28 deceased hostages to be brought home for proper burial, in the Land, and the State, of Israel.