Through the Soldier’s Eyes: Disproving the Four ‘GAWP’ Libels Against Israel

In the flood of accusations levelled at Israel since October 7th, four words get thrown around constantly, and understood correctly almost never: “Genocide,” “Apartheid,” “War Crimes,” and “Proportionality” — GAWP. Virtue-signalling activists, filmmakers like the two behind “NAZA,” B-grade celebrities, and musicians with fading careers have all climbed aboard the GAWP bandwagon, repeating accusations they have never bothered to test against the law or the facts.

It is worth pausing to ask what these terms actually mean, and whether they apply to the conduct of the IDF. I write with the added perspective of having served in an IDF PALMAR medical extraction unit since the start of this war, watching firsthand, through the soldier’s eyes, what is happening on the ground. What I have witnessed does not resemble genocide, does not resemble apartheid, does not resemble war crimes, and does not resemble a disproportionate response. It resembles something closer to the opposite: a democracy fighting, under enormous restraint, against an enemy that has openly declared its intent to destroy it.

War Crimes

International law defines war crimes with specificity: deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure such as airports or nuclear facilities; tunnelling into another state’s territory to murder or kidnap civilians; using protected sites like schools, hospitals, and mosques to store munitions or launch attacks; breaching agreed ceasefires; recruiting child soldiers; using civilians as human shields; and firing rockets indiscriminately at civilian populations. Read that list again. Nearly every item on it describes Hamas’s own conduct, not Israel’s.

The protected status of a school or hospital is not unconditional. both Colonels John Spencer, the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, and Richard Kemp CBE, former British commander of forces in Afghanistan, have explained that when a military has credible reason to believe such a site is being used to store weapons or fire on soldiers, it legally forfeits protection under the Geneva Convention and becomes a lawful target. This is not a loophole, it is the law, built specifically to prevent armed groups from exploiting civilian infrastructure as a shield.

Hamas’s use of human shields serves two purposes: physically protecting its weapons and fighters, and manufacturing civilian casualties for propaganda, knowing the world will blame Israel for deaths Hamas itself engineered. Intent is the legal crux here. IDF policy prohibits deliberately targeting civilians. When civilian harm occurs despite precautions, without prior knowledge of civilian presence, that is an operational tragedy under the laws of armed conflict, not a war crime, which, by definition, requires intent. Kemp’s own conclusion, drawn from decades of military command, stands:

The Israeli army has taken greater steps than any other army in the history of warfare to minimise the harm to innocent civilians in a combat zone.

Proportionality

The claim goes: because more people have died in Gaza than in Israel, the war is disproportionate. This is not what proportionality means in international humanitarian law. Proportionality weighs the anticipated military advantage of a strike against expected civilian harm; it is not a scoreboard of bodies. Author Douglas Murray exposed the absurdity of the casualty-count argument: by that logic, Israel would have had to replicate the atrocities of October 7^th, the same number of murders, the same number of rapes, town for town, a standard no legitimate military ethic would ever impose on a nation defending itself.

No army is legally required to warn an enemy before a strike. Israel does so anyway, publishing evacuation maps and safe corridors ahead of operations, and sends its own soldiers on foot, street by street, rather than flattening buildings from the air, a choice that has cost the IDF significant soldier casualties because it places civilian protection above force protection.  I have personally, with my team, treated and evacuated severely wounded soldiers, and unfortunately casualties, because of this policy.

Genocide

Genocide, under the 1948 UN Convention, requires proven specific intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or in part. Israel has facilitated hundreds of thousands of tons of humanitarian aid, medicine, inoculations, and fuel into Gaza throughout the war, repeatedly opened and expanded crossings under international and even domestic political pressure, and issued advance evacuation warnings before strikes, actions fundamentally incompatible with genocidal intent, which, by definition, seeks not to warn a population but to eliminate it. Gaza’s population has grown substantially over the decades of conflict, not collapsed, a demographic reality irreconcilable with the charge! (If one wants to understand what genocide is, there are, unfortunately, many examples, including  the slaughter of two thirds of Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust.)

Compare this to Hamas’s founding charter, which explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, and to its own leaders’ public statements; including declarations that they intend to repeat the October 7th massacre “again and again” until Israel is annihilated. Hamas filmed its own atrocities on GoPro cameras, broadcasting the murder, rape, and kidnapping of 1,200 people with pride. If genocidal intent exists anywhere in this conflict, the documentation is not hidden. It was filmed by the perpetrators themselves!

Apartheid

Apartheid describes systematic legal segregation and disenfranchisement of a racial group by law. Arab citizens of Israel make up roughly a fifth of the population, vote in every election, serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, serve as doctors and hospital directors across the country, serve in the IDF, and enjoy the same civil rights and legal protections as any other citizen. Israeli Arab judges have sentenced Israeli Jewish prime ministers to prison. This is not the architecture of apartheid; it is the architecture of a flawed but functioning democracy; the only one in the Middle East.

Cause and Effect, Reversed

What has happened since October 7th is a total inversion of victim and perpetrator. Israel was attacked, invaded, in fact, by a terrorist organisation that murdered, raped, brutally tortured, and kidnapped over 1,200 people in a single morning, filming much of it themselves in celebration. Israel, a democracy, responded within the bounds of international law against an enemy that operates entirely outside them. Yet somehow, through a campaign of distortion embraced by the ignorant and the hateful, the country that was attacked has been recast as the aggressor, and the aggressor recast as a victim!

Those pushing the GAWP libels are not seeking truth. Those who traffic in these accusations without ever weighing the law or the facts against them are, at best, wilfully ignorant, and at worst, driven by an animus toward Jews and the Jewish homeland that predates October 7th by generations.

The facts run the other way. It was Israel that buried 1,200 of its people. It is Hamas’s own charter, own footage, and own words that meet the legal definition of genocidal intent. It is Israel’s Arab citizens, not Israel’s Arab neighbours, who sit on its Supreme Court. Before repeating any of the four GAWP libels, it is worth asking: have you weighed these words against the law, or only against a headline?

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Dr. Tuvia Book currently serving on IDF reserve duty.  He is the author of  Heroes of Palmar: How one IDF Unit Revolutionized Combat Medicine in Gaza.  It is published by Gefen Publishing House and is available either from gefen.com or Amazon.com.  He also authored  “For the Sake of Zion, A Curriculum of Israel Education” and “Jewish Journeys” books on both the First Temple and Second Temple periods (Koren).  In addition, Tuvia is a much sought after public speaker and is a Ministry of Tourism licensed Tour Guide, Jewish educator and a Judaica artist. www.booktuvia.com.