Growing up as the only Jewish kid in an Irish and Italian neighborhood, and then later as an Israeli soldier and diplomat, I experienced many different forms of antisemitism. I’ve gone from being labeled a Christ-killer to a money grubber to a child murderer. But I’ve never in my many years encountered anything like today’s wholesale Jew-hatred, which accuses us of committing humanity’s most heinous crimes.
Now, in addition to baseless accusations of orchestrating global pedophile rings, promoting wars, and fabricating terrorist attacks to garner international sympathy, we’re charged with committing genocide in Gaza.
The accusation, like those before it, is false. Israel’s policy has never been to exterminate the Palestinians, nor is it today in Gaza. And the charge is easily refuted. “Genocide requires clear, provable intent to destroy a people through sustained, deliberate actions,” wrote Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) John Spencer, combat veteran and the world’s leading authority on urban warfare. “That burden of proof has not been met.” The laws of war, Spencer stresses, do not prohibit war itself. New York Times columnist Bret Stephens tautologically asked: Why hasn’t Israel, with its vast military capacity, killed millions of Palestinians? “Furious comments in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities hardly amount to a Wannsee conference,” he concluded. “I am aware of no evidence of an Israeli plan to deliberately target and kill Gazan civilians.”
Still, those charging Israel with genocide point to Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and, at various stages in the war, denying them food and water. Much of Gaza has been reduced to a moonscape. Israeli politicians, meanwhile, have been quoted calling the Gazans “animals” and likening them to Amalek, a Biblical enemy deserving of annihilation. Israeli ministers from the radical right have recommended erasing Gaza entirely. Among the most outspoken of those branding the Jewish State genocidal are numerous Jews, American and Israeli alike.
Why, then, does the libelous charge of genocide resonate so widely in the West? What makes accusing Israel of striving to wipe out the Palestinians in any way antisemitic?
