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mcstevieboy · 23 days ago

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Is what Israel is doing in Gaza genocide?

I expect to get lots of hateful Anon Asks from Israel detractors for this...and probably a couple from Israel supporters.

Is Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza?

If we want to hold people accountable for serious crimes, we need to be serious about the words we use.

"Genocide" is not a vibe or a metaphor. It isn't a synonym for "really bad thing" or "many people dying."

It’s a legal term with a specific legal definition. Using the word accurately matters - not just for justice in this conflict, but for justice anywhere the term is invoked.

Where the Word "Genocide" Comes From

The word "genocide" was coined in 1944 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin to describe what the Nazis were doing to Jews, Roma, and others in Europe. Lemkin combined the Greek word genos (race or tribe) with the Latin -cide (killing) to describe the deliberate destruction of a people.

His idea became the foundation for the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, or "Genocide Convention." This treaty - ratified by nearly every country in the world - defines what genocide is under international law. It's the legal standard we still use today.

The Legal Definition of Genocide

Under Article II of the Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as:

Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:" (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

[source]

Three key points matter here:

Intent is required. Accidental or collateral harm does not qualify.

The targeted group must be destroyed "as such." That means killing or harming people because they belong to the group - not because they are, say, enemy combatants.

The acts must aim at physical destruction. Displacement, hardship, or even occupation are not themselves genocide unless they're part of a plan to wipe out the group.

Does What Israel Is Doing in Gaza Meet the Legal Definition of Genocide?

1. Is there an intent to destroy Palestinians "as such"?

No. This is the core element of genocide, and it’s the one that is not present. Israel’s stated goal in Gaza is the destruction of Hamas—a terrorist organization that murdered over 1,200 civilians on October 7, 2023, and continues to fire rockets and hold hostages.

Israel has repeatedly said it is not at war with the Palestinian people. Its military objectives, whether you agree with their execution or not, are directed at Hamas fighters, infrastructure, and command centers.

Even critics of Israel’s conduct, including legal scholars, acknowledge that intent is not demonstrated.

Intent to destroy a group is very different from intent to destroy an enemy that embeds itself within that group. The tragedy is real—but tragedy is not the same as genocide.

2. Are civilians being killed because they are Palestinian?

No. Civilian casualties in Gaza are not being targeted "as such," but occur in the context of urban warfare where Hamas deliberately embeds itself in hospitals, schools, mosques, and densely populated civilian areas.

This is a tactic Hamas has publicly embraced. Hamas senior leader Khaled Mashal stated on October 19, 2023 that he views the current loss of civilian life in Gaza – brought about by Hamas' strategy of using human shields – as essential: "No nation is liberated without sacrifices... In all wars, there are some civilian victims. We are not responsible for them."

When combatants hide behind civilians, it leads to civilian casualties. That's tragic, and under the laws of war, precautions must still be taken - but this is not the same as intentionally targeting civilians for the purpose of destroying them as a group.

3. Are conditions of life being inflicted to bring about destruction of the group?

No. This clause refers to tactics like starvation, medical denial, or forced exposure that are part of a coordinated plan to kill off a population.

While there have been devastating humanitarian consequences from the war - including shortages of food, fuel, and medical supplies - there is no evidence that these are intended to destroy the Palestinian people.

In fact, Israel has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid, even while fighting Hamas. It has opened multiple aid corridors, coordinated with international partners, and even paused military operations to allow supplies in.

The IDF has also implemented leaflet drops, text messages, and broadcast warnings to urge civilians to evacuate combat zones. You can disagree with how effective or sufficient these measures are - but they are not consistent with a strategy of genocide.

Popular Genocide Claims From Social Media

"The International Court of Justice said Israel is committing genocide!"

False. South Africa brought a case to the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide. The ICJ has not ruled that genocide is occurring. They didn't even rule that a genocide could plausibly be happening.

Don't take my word for it, listen to the ICJ's president, Joan Donoghue:

youtube

So this claim based on citing the ICJ is misleading at best...and dishonest at worst.

"Israel’s leaders said they wanted to destroy Gaza - what more proof do you need!?"

Several inflammatory quotes have been circulated, and some of them are even real. A few Israeli politicians and military spokespeople have made irresponsible or dehumanizing comments.

They are fucking assholes and I hope the universe eventually delivers unto them the justice they deserve for their callous, disgusting rhetoric.

But genocidal intent is not proven by statements alone, especially not without context and intent. Courts look at official policy, military orders, patterns of conduct, and evidence of systematic destruction - not just quotes in the press.

Many of the quotes are mistranslated, edited, or pulled out of context. For example, the much-circulated quote "we will erase Gaza" was from a political statement about Hamas - not about the civilian population.

What Gallant said:

Gaza will not return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate it all.

In context, we can see that "It" = Hamas.

Hateful rhetoric is wrong and should be condemned, but hyperbole and cruelty ≠ genocide.

"Look at the death toll! That many deaths must be genocide."

Civilian deaths are horrible - but numbers alone don’t prove genocide. The US-led campaign against ISIS in Mosul killed thousands of civilians. So did Russia's bombing of Grozny. These were brutal campaigns, but they were not declared genocides.

Despite the intense scrutiny and global outrage, civilian casualties in Gaza are relatively low compared to historical benchmarks for urban warfare - especially given the population density, the length of the conflict, and Hamas's tactic of embedding itself among civilians.

The UN says 54,607 of 2.3 million Gazans have perished since the start of the war on 10/7/23. Even if we assume every reported death is a civilian (which we shouldn’t), that’s roughly 2.4% of Gaza’s pre-war population - a tragic toll, but nowhere near the catastrophic losses seen in other conflicts of similar scale.

For comparison: In the 2004 U.S. battle of Fallujah, civilian casualties were estimated to be between 800 and 1,000 - out of a population of about 300,000, in just a few weeks of fighting. In the Battle of Mosul (2016–2017), where US-led forces fought ISIS in a densely populated Iraqi city, more than 9,000 civilians were killed in just nine months in a city of 1.5 million. And in WWII’s Battle of Dresden, tens of thousands of civilians were killed over a few nights of bombing alone.

I'm not trying to minimize deaths, but to contextualize them. Civilian deaths in Gaza are the tragic result of a brutal war - not a systematic extermination. Compared to other modern urban conflicts, Israel's operations, despite their flaws, have resulted in fewer civilian casualties per capita and per square kilometer than in accepted wartime precedents. That doesn't excuse mistakes or excesses, but it does challenge the narrative that what’s happening is uniquely or intentionally genocidal.

A legal determination of genocide is based on intent and targeting, not death tolls.

War Crimes Have Almost Certainly Occurred

There are strong reasons to believe that some IDF soldiers or commanders have committed war crimes. Civilians have been killed. Homes and hospitals have been destroyed. There's never been a war in which war crimes didn't take place.

Allegations of war crimes must be fully investigated by Israel's judicial system - and if it fails to produce accountability, by independent international mechanisms. Accountability is essential.

But again: war crimes are not genocide.

Genocide is a unique legal crime requiring specific intent to eliminate a group. Other violations - like disproportionate force, failure to distinguish civilians, or destruction of infrastructure - fall under different categories of international law.

The distinction isn't about excusing wrongdoing. It’s about naming things precisely so justice can be served correctly and according to the rule of law.

"Not Genocide" ≠ "No Wrongdoing"

Some of Israel's supporters seem to suggest if what has happened in Gaza isn't genocide, then everything must be fine.

That's not my argument here.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is awful. The war has caused immense suffering. There are open questions about proportionality, humanitarian access, and command decisions.

You can believe Israel had a right to respond militarily and still believe that some responses are morally questionable or legally wrong. These are not mutually exclusive and criticism on these grounds isn't just fair, but necessary.

But moral revulsion is not the same thing as a legal definition. The difference matters if we want language and justice to mean something.

Genocides Don't Have Exit Ramps

Hamas could end the war at any time. Genocides are not conditional. The Holocaust didn’t stop when Jews surrendered because the goal was elimination, not negotiation. In Gaza, the war has clear and consistent conditions for ending: return the hostages and disarm.

Israel isn’t fighting Gaza because it exists. Israel is fighting Hamas because of what Hamas did and continues to do. If Hamas were to surrender and release all hostages, the war would stop tomorrow.

That alone disqualifies this war as a genocide.

Holocaust Inversion and the Weaponization of Language

If you've spent more than ten minutes on social media since October 7, you’ve probably seen some version of this grotesque claim: "Israel is doing to Palestinians what the Nazis did to Jews."

This is not just a bad analogy. It's not just ignorant. It's part of a long-running strategy called Holocaust inversion - a deliberate rhetorical weapon that turns Jewish trauma inside-out and throws it back in Jews' faces. This tactic is central to the argument that Israel is committing genocide.

What is Holocaust Inversion?

Coined by scholars of antisemitism, "Holocaust inversion" refers to the practice of depicting Jews—especially the Jewish state—as the new Nazis. It doesn't just compare Israel to Nazi Germany—it implies that Jews, once the victims of genocide, are now the perpetrators.

It’s often paired with visual and verbal symbols meant to provoke:

Israeli flags with swastikas scribbled over the Star of David

Cartoons of Netanyahu in SS uniform

Palestinian children dressed in striped pajamas like Auschwitz prisoners

Protest signs reading “Stop the Holocaust in Gaza” or “Gaza = Auschwitz”

This isn’t subtle, and it isn’t new. Holocaust inversion gained momentum after the 2001 Durban Conference on Racism - where Israel was accused of committing "a new kind of Holocaust" - and has only intensified since.

It's not just offensive. It's deliberately false and strategically deployed.

Why It’s a Lie

Bluntly, there is no meaningful equivalence between the Holocaust and Israel’s war in Gaza.

The Holocaust was the state-planned, industrialized extermination of six million Jews - murdered in gas chambers, shot over mass graves, starved in ghettos, and reduced to ash.

Gaza is a battlefield, where a terrorist army rules over a civilian population and embeds itself in civilian infrastructure while carrying out war crimes against Israelis.

The Israeli government is not trying to eliminate Palestinians "as such." It is trying to eliminate a genocidal organization, Hamas, that publicly calls for the death of Jews, hides among civilians, and has vowed to repeat the atrocities of October 7 "again and again."

There are no gas chambers. There are no death camps. There is no plan to exterminate a people. There is no Wannsee Conference. There are military operations - some excessive, some tragically misjudged - but nothing even close to the mechanized genocide of the Holocaust.

To say otherwise is not only dishonest - it’s a desecration of history.

The claim that Jews are behaving like Nazis relies on DARVO:

Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.

Deny the Jewish people's trauma and history.

Attack their legitimacy, self-defense, and motives.

Reverse the roles - so that Jews are no longer victims of antisemitic violence, but perpetrators of racist evil.

This tactic allows people to avoid grappling with what happened on October 7, or why Israel is at war, by flipping the moral script. If Israel is the "real Nazi," then everything else is justified - even Hamas terrorism.

Why Holocaust Inversion Is Dangerous

This isn't just a matter of bad taste. Holocaust inversion is dangerous for three reasons:

It makes justice impossible. If Israel is Nazi Germany, then negotiation, ceasefires, and diplomacy make no sense. You don’t talk to Nazis - you destroy them. That framing encourages violence and eliminates space for peace.

It erases actual genocide. If everything is genocide, then nothing is. When we use Holocaust terms for conventional wars - even brutal ones - we cheapen the language needed to describe Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, or the real Holocaust. It becomes harder to name and stop actual genocides when the term is worn out.

It fuels antisemitism. By branding Jews as the new Nazis, Holocaust inversion turns one of history's most demonized peoples into villains. It justifies hate crimes. It encourages mob violence. It turns "Never Again" into a joke.

This isn't theoretical. Since October 7, antisemitic attacks have surged globally. Jewish students have been barricaded in libraries. Synagogues have been vandalized. Two were shot in DC. Senior citizens were set on fire in Boulder.

And when protesters wave signs saying "Keep the world clean," like these...?

The language of Holocaust inversion is helping to justify that behavior.

Imagine if it was a cross in the trash on those signs. Or the star and crescent. Would this seem acceptable? Would the ghoulishness of the glee on the protestor's face now be clear to you?

Words Matter

So, is what Israel is doing in Gaza genocide?

No.

Not by the letter of the law.

Not by the evidence.

Not by the standards we use anywhere else.

That doesn't mean everything is justified, it doesn't mean no crimes have been committed, it doesn't mean civilians haven't suffered.

It means we need to be careful, responsible, and honest when we use words like "genocide," because once those words are emptied of meaning, they lose their power to stop the very horrors they were meant to prevent.

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