Blood Libel #1 | “Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.”

Anti-Zionist:

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Pro-Zionist:

How do you define genocide?

(Pause here to allow them to attempt a distorted or an emotional definition)

Pro-Zionist:

While deaths are a tragic consequence of the war that Hamas started on October 7th, the magnitude of casualties does not define “Genocide.” According to the UN Genocide Convention, genocide is

acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

The key word in that definition is “intent”.

Can you point to any Israeli statement or policy that expresses an intent to eradicate the Palestinian people as a group?

Anti-Zionist:

Well, look at the number of casualties and the disproportionate response by the Israeli government. That proves genocide.

Pro-Zionist:

So you believe casualties in a war, especially a war triggered by a terror attack involving mass murder and sexual violence against civilians, are proof of genocide — even when the attacking party, Hamas, hides behind civilians, uses hospitals as shields, and has openly called for the destruction of Israel?

Let’s look at the facts:

• Israel has repeatedly warned civilians to evacuate combat zones via leaflets, phone calls, and text messages.

• Israel provides humanitarian aid, allows fuel and medicine into Gaza, and even treats Palestinians in Israeli hospitals.

• The Palestinian population has grown fivefold since 1948. Since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, the population has continued to rise – in fact the population of Gaza has risen since October 7th.

• Genocides — like those in Rwanda, the Holocaust, or Darfur — involve mass graves, systematic extermination, and an explicit ideology of racial destruction. None of that is true in this case.

If Israel wanted to commit genocide, do you really think Gaza would still have millions of people living there after multiple wars? Would the population of Gaza have grown since the start of the war? And how can you explain the fact that the Arab-Israeli population has grown from 150,000 in 1948 to over 2 million today which comprise over 21% of the population?

This isn’t genocide. It’s a defensive war against a genocidal terrorist regime — Hamas — that openly states it wants to annihilate Jews.

And now we know that Hamas itself has admitted to inflating casualty numbers to manipulate world opinion.

Let’s also not forget: Hamas could end this war tomorrow.

They could release the hostages. They could disarm and surrender.

They choose not to. Why? Because Hamas’s goal isn’t peace — it’s martyrdom, optics, and the total destruction of Israel.

Genocide means mass extermination with intent.

What’s happening here is a defensive war against a genocidal terrorist regime that uses its own people as human shields while targeting Israeli civilians.

Anti-Zionist rhetoric depends on these kinds of simplistic cause-effect assumptions, often stripped of any historical depth or strategic nuance. They don’t analyze the causal roots of Palestinian corruption, Arab rejectionism, or jihadist theology — because doing so would make Israel’s actions look like what they are: reactive, not aggressive.

Anti-Zionists rely upon the conflation of causation and correlation. Correlation: Palestinians die during conflicts. False Causation: Israel wants to kill civilians. Reality: Civilians die because Hamas embeds itself in civilian areas, and wars happen because of terrorism — not because Israel seeks their destruction. So Hamas is the CAUSE of the civilian casualties.

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BEYOND THE TALKING POINTS:

After each Q&A, I intend to try to provide additional context and background on each subject to help inform the reader.

Genocide.

The genocide convention contains nineteen articles. Of these, the first nine are of a substantive character, and the remaining ten are procedural in nature. The Preamble is of a general and historical nature.

Article I carries into the Convention the concept, unanimously affirmed by the General Assembly in its 1946 resolution, that genocide is a crime under international law. In this article the Parties undertake to prevent and to punish the crime.

Article II specifies that any of the following five acts, if accompanied by the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, constitutes the crime of genocide:

1. Killing members of the group;

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and

5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

As published by James E Webb, the then Secretary of State of the United States on June 9, 1949 in discussing the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,¹ adopted unanimously by the General Assembly of the United Nations in Paris on December 9, 1948, with the recommendation that it be submitted to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification. The United States officially signed the Convention on December 11, 1948. In his submission, Webb wrote:

This article, then, requires that there should be a specific intent to destroy a racial, religious, national or ethnical group as such in whole or in part. With respect to this article the United States representative on the Legal Committee said:

I am not aware that anyone contends that the crime of genocide and the crime of homocide are one and the same thing. If an individual is murdered by another individual, or indeed by a government official of a State, a crime of homicide has been committed and a civilized community will punish it as such. Such an act of homocide would not in itself be an international crime. To repeat the opening language of the Resolution of the General Assembly of December 1946, ‘genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups’. This remains the principle on which we are proceeding.

While the US signed the treaty in 1949, due to political resistance in the Senate—especially concerns about national sovereignty and possible domestic implications—the U.S. delayed ratification for decades. One of the Convention's strongest advocates, Senator William Proxmire from Wisconsin, delivered over 3,000 speeches advocating the Convention in Congress from 1968–1986. The U.S. Senate finally ratified the Genocide Convention on February 19, 1986 voting 83–11 to grant advice and consent, with a series of eight provisos (2 reservations, 3 understandings, and 1 declaration) intended to limit its domestic legal consequences.

It’s important to understand those provisos as they highlight the importance of the strictness of the definition. Here are the reservations and understandings, the U.S. Senate attached to its advice and consent for ratifying the Genocide Convention (Treaty Doc. 81–15) on February 19, 1986 :

Reservations

1. Article IX – ICJ jurisdiction by specific consent

   That with reference to Article IX of the Convention, before any dispute to which the United States is a party may be submitted to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice under this article, the specific consent of the United States is required in each case.

2. U.S. Constitutional limits

   That nothing in the Convention requires or authorizes legislation or other action by the United States of America prohibited by the Constitution of the United States as interpreted by the United States.

Understandings

1. Specific intent clarification (Article II)

   That the term ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such’ appearing in Article II means the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such by the acts specified in Article II.

2. Armed conflict & intent

   That acts in the course of armed conflicts committed without the specific intent required by Article II are not sufficient to constitute genocide as defined by this Convention. [Emphasis added]

3. International penal tribunal participation (Article VI)

   That with regard to the reference to an international penal tribunal in Article VI of the Convention, the United States declares that it reserves the right to effect its participation in any such tribunal only by a treaty entered into specifically for that purpose with the advice and consent of the Senate.

Taken together, these provisions ensured that while the Senate granted consent, the U.S. maintained control over Court jurisdiction, safeguarded constitutional boundaries, and clarified key legal interpretations (e.g., intent and tribunal participation).

Take note of the second “Understanding”. It reinforces the UN Convention meanwhile, our enemies continue to attempt to redefine the word “Genocide” falsely equating deaths in a war with genocide all the while ignoring actual genocides (e.g., Rwanda, Yazidis, Holocaust). This strategy allows Israel to be demonized as Nazi-like, stripping it of the moral right to self-defense. They conflate Israel’s military operations—even when targeting terrorists and providing humanitarian warnings/aid— with “genocide.” They falsely use civilian casualties in asymmetric warfare are treated as proof of intent to exterminate.

The Cause of Palestinian Suffering. Causation vs. Correlation.

As this is our first Blood Libel, I want to take the time to say that I know that there are many people who are heartbroken over the suffering of the Palestinian people. I feel their pain.

To be clear, I published www.bloodlibels.com in the hopes that I can find a way to engage with everyone regardless of political leanings - left leaning progressives and right-wing MAGA advocates - peaceniks and warriors alike. I know that this will fall on deaf ears of the truly jew hating antisemite - but there are many among us that are not antisemitic but find themselves in a moral quandary… unable to see the evils of radical Islam - unable to differentiate between causation and correlation in the century long conflict over the jewish homeland.

Those that can’t seem to grapple with the harsh reality that while it is true that there is a correlation between the suffering of the Palestinian people and the actions of the state of Israel, Israel is not the cause of their suffering!

The cause is the fact that the de-facto “elected” leaders governing Palestinian people are not seeking their liberation, they are seeking the elimination of the state of Israel and the expulsion of all jews from the “river to the sea”. They seem to harbor a naive belief that the Palestinian people would live a peaceful coexistence with the jews in Israel.

But too many on the political left “enable” Palestinian bad behavior. They excuse a century of terror and rejection of peace. They refuse to empathize with the life of a citizen of Israel, surrounded by genocidal enemies that have been trying to annihilate the state of Israel. They ignore the psychological effects of tens of thousands of rockets raining down on Israel for decades. Of the 1st and 2nd Intifada. Of suicide bombings. The mere fact that anyone in Israel still trusts in a two-state solution or that they have anyone in the Palestinian leadership that is interested in peaceful coexistence is beyond my comprehension. Moreover, they refuse to acknowledge what has happened in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait when Arab nations tried to live in peace with their “Palestinian” brothers in the past, only to end up with chaos and civil wars due to Palestinian terrorist organizations.¹

As we embark on this journey together, I want to share an amazing article and podcast that I feel do an amazing job of framing the situation in very human terms but with credible historical context.

The article is entitled “Ecstasy and Amnesia in the Gaza Strip. Three catastrophes, all marked by euphoria at the start and denial at the end, have shaped the Palestinian predicament. Has the fourth arrived, and is the same dynamic playing out?” by Shany Mor. Shany is a lecturer in political thought at Reichman University and a frequent writer on politics, foreign policy, and Israel.

In his article he surmises that:

… the Palestinian predicament is the direct or indirect outcome of three Arab-Israeli wars, each about a generation apart. These are the wars that started in 1947, 1967, and 2000. Each war was a complex event with vast, unforeseen, and contested consequences for a host of actors, but the consequences for the Palestinian people were uniquely catastrophic: the first brought displacement, the second brought occupation, the third brought fragmentation. 

These three wars are so different from each other—in their duration, in the belligerents involved, in the global context surrounding and shaping them—that it’s hard at first to think of them as a set, as a group deserving some kind of collective analytical treatment to the exclusion of other major events. But it is actually the extreme differences among them that serves to highlight the unique features they share—the unique features, that is, that are the source of the Palestinian predicament.

It's one of the best and most nuanced discussions I've read about the conflict.  It's worth noting that Shany predicted in February of 2023 that another conflict would erupt that would impact this conflict that began as a civil war more than 100 years ago. It was entitled: “The next Intifada is about to begin. Israel's luck will soon run out”

I also want to share this podcast where Daniel Gordis interviews Shany.  

It's well worth listening to.   I will share two excerpts here. The first is Shany's discussion of what makes the Palestinian predicament different than other "Liberation" movements in history and in discussing why he's frustrated that there is no minority that criticizes the failed military operations of the Arab world against Israel and the decision to reject peace.  He says that he thinks:

".... this goes to the heart of what the Palestinian cause is. We want to believe that the Palestinian cause is a cause of national liberation. And we know what causes of national liberation look like, and we know the dilemmas that they face, and we know how they usually deal with them. A national liberation movement, often at the moment of truth, has to give up on bits of territory it would really want, symbolic sites that it cares about, a version of history that means a lot to it....  New states, depending on how they emerged in a global system, often have huge limitations on their security and foreign policy, particularly if they were on the losing side of a global conflict. And they have to deal with publics who often have very big and unrealistic demands. In all cases, whether we're talking about Armenians or Greeks or Bulgarians or Algerians or Poles or Lithuanians or Tunisians or even Israelis for that matter, or Irish... in all cases when push comes to shove, sometimes through a great deal of violence, sometimes through internal civil violence, they ultimately prefer liberation, even on unsatisfactory terms, rather than rejecting it outright. That is a normal disposition when your cause is about liberation.  When your cause is the elimination of another people rather than the liberation of yourself, then any such compromise isn't worth it because you haven't actually achieved anything.  And the fundamental ethos of the Palestinian cause in its moderate and radical version, in its secular and its religious version, in its Marxist and hyper nationalist version, in all of its various manifestations the fundamental commitment, the fundamental intellectual and theological commitment of this cause is that the establishment of a sovereign Jewish presence in this region is a cosmic crime that must be undone. Must be prevented or undone. And that makes compromise impossible."

The second, is Shany's discussion of the Abraham Accords and the narrative around why the Arab world wanted to normalize with Israel.

"As an aside, when those normalization agreements first started being signed in 2020 with Bahrain and the UAE. So, you encountered this critical voice in the Arab world, which was still a tiny minority, this sort of critical, moderate voice that was essentially saying something to the effect of we, the Arabs, are tired of bearing the burden of the Palestinians pointless and losing war against Israel. And I'm paraphrasing, but that was basically the argument. And it wasn't a very big popular view, it was of a distinctly small minority. And something about that view really annoyed me because I think it's very ahistorical. I do not think it is the case that the Arabs have been forced to pay a price for the Palestinians' pointless struggle against Israel. If there's a more accurate and historical way of saying it, it would actually be that the Palestinians have been forced to pay a huge price for the Arabs enormous cosmic, pointless struggle against Israel, not the other way around."

Enjoy Shany's perspective.  It does provide an interesting perspective on the 100+ year history of this conflict.

The Morality of the War in Gaza

As we explore these issues, I find that sometimes we can find interesting commentary online.

In one of the clearest moral explanations of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, author and thinker Coleman Hughes challenges the simplistic genocide narrative in his 2024 interview with Joe Rogan. When Rogan argues:

"I'm saying that when you're killing 30,000 innocent civilians in response to something that killed 1,200 innocent civilians and you're continuing to bomb an area into oblivion which is what it looks like when you're looking at Gaza there's many people that have made the argument that that is at least the steps of genocide or a form of genocide that you're you're destroying thousands and thousands of people's homes and and killing them

Coleman responds with complete moral clarity:

What’s unique about this war, unlike every other war that I could think of, is you have an army in Hamas that has perfected the art of embedding itself and meshing itself with civilians so that you cannot hit them without hitting the people around them. Other armies have done this, but none have perfected it to the extent that Hamas has. No army that I know of in military history has had 15 years to build 300 miles of tunnel underneath a city that they don’t use to shelter the civilians, but they use to shelter themselves so that they can operate right under a kindergarten, right under a mosque. So this is a challenge no army has faced. And so that’s what makes this war different. And yes, I agree with all of the absolute tragedy and suffering of the Palestinian people. But what creates that is the way Hamas fights. And either we can say one of two things. We can either say, well, Israel doesn’t have a clean shot, and so they have to let Hamas get away with it because it’s too much to bear. But then we are essentially creating a situation where terrorists have found the perfect solution — which is that you can cross the border, go house to house slaughtering your enemies, and then hide behind your own people, and they can do nothing about it. It’s a perfect strategy. Can we live in a world where we allow that to be an acceptable strategy? I don’t think so.And it’s very ugly to watch. It’s heartbreaking. And I completely understand why people don’t think the way I think when they see the videos — I completely get it. But I don’t think we can actually live in a world where that’s allowed to be a strategy.

If you want to watch the entire video here is a link (jump to 1:46:10 and listen through 2:13:00), in the meantime, here is a clip.

Coleman Hughes doesn’t deny the horror of war. He affirms it — while insisting we be honest about cause and effect. Israel’s war may be controversial, but it is not genocidal. It is a tragic and morally complex defensive war — against a terror group that uses civilians as pawns in a propaganda campaign.

We will discuss this more in “Blood Libel #10 | The IDF Commits War Crimes”

Footnotes:

1. There are real historical episodes that support the core idea that Palestinian militant groups have contributed to internal instability in several Arab countries:

1. Jordan (1970 – Black September):

   • The PLO effectively created a “state within a state” in Jordan, challenging King Hussein’s authority.

   • This culminated in a brutal civil war, with thousands killed, and the eventual expulsion of the PLO to Lebanon.

   • This is a well-documented case of Palestinian armed groups destabilizing a host country.

2. Lebanon (1970s–1980s):

   • After being expelled from Jordan, the PLO established strongholds in southern Lebanon.

   • Their presence was a key factor in sparking the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) and later invited Israeli invasion (1982).

   • Armed Palestinian factions contributed significantly to the breakdown of state control and communal conflict.

3. Kuwait (Post-Gulf War 1991):

   • The PLO’s leadership, particularly Yasser Arafat, openly supported Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

   • After the war, Kuwait expelled most of its Palestinian population, accusing them of disloyalty and collaboration with Iraq.

4. Egypt (especially Gaza pre-1967):

   • Egypt controlled Gaza from 1948 to 1967. During this time, it repressed Palestinian nationalism and restricted movement.

   • Egypt did not seek to integrate Gaza, and it maintained tight control over Palestinian political activity.

   • While not as dramatic as Jordan or Lebanon, tensions were still present.