There are actual genocides in many countries, including Dafur, Miramar, and Nagorno Karabach. Yet the only country that is ever accused of genocide these days is Israel in Gaza.
But that’s no genocide. Israel is not intent on killing Palestinians. Its purpose is to kill members of Hamas. And Hamas did not just attack Israel and kill 1,200 civilians and take 250 hostages on October 7. In fact, Hamas has been lobbing bombs at Israel for decades and is intent on killing Jews because they’re Jews. Before the Israelis constrained the Palestinians’ ingress and egress, Hamas promoted suicide bombings in buses, bus stops, pizza parlors, etc. Killing Jews is in the Hamas charter. That is their goal. And that’s real genocide. But no one calls Hamas out for it.
The war in Gaza is urban warfare, which always involves the death of civilians, including when the United States does it. Neither the United States nor anyone else goes to trouble of asking civilians to move out of harm’s way, which is something the Israelis do. And Hamas uses civilians as human shields, yet no one is calling out Hamas. It’s Israel that is being condemned.
If Israel’s purpose were to kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza, there wouldn’t be any civilians left, yet there are millions, and the population has grown by millions since Israel withdrew from Gaza. The number that Hamas claims for civilian deaths is less than 30,000. In all likelihood, Hamas is exaggerating, civilian deaths serve its cause. That’s why Hamas uses human shields.
Israel is accused of being an apartheid state, which is supposed to suggest it’s like what the Dutch did in South Africa. But it is nothing like the Dutch in South Africa. They also call the Israelis colonialists, but unlike the Dutch, they had no country to call their own. Also unlike the Dutch, Israel was their homeland historically. And the fact is, there are twenty Arab states governed by and for Muslim Arabs. All of the Arab states expelled their Jewish populations decades ago. Yet no one condemns them as apartheid states. There are also fifty Muslim states governed by and for Muslims, but nobody condemns them as apartheid states.
Let’s look at the United States. I don’t know a single American willing to give up his home and restore the land to the indigenous populations, or to Mexico. A friend who lives in California told me that no Mexican ever lived in her home. But that’s largely true of the Palestinians in Israel. There are some homes in Israel that were inhabited by Palestinians, but by and large, Israel is a new country with new homes and new public structures. When the Jews took over Israel, it was largely undeveloped. The Jews have created a modern country unlike what was there before. The hypocrisy of many Americans is astonishing.
Israel has a significant Arab population. There is an Arab on the Israeli Supreme Court, and there are Arabs in the Knesset. But consider what would happen if there were an Arab majority in Israel. There is no reason to believe that the Arabs wouldn’t be completely hostile to the Jewish population and expel them, as they have expelled the Jewish populations from other countries controlled by Arabs. In fact, Jews have been expelled from every country in which they have ever lived, save the United States. And Im sorry to say that with the incredible rise of antisemitism in the United States, the jury is still out on whether this could happen.
The fact is that the overwhelming majority of people now living in Israel have always lived in Israel. And the overwhelming number of Palestinians living in Gaza have never lived in Israel. The Arabs do not want a two-state solution. They want a one-state solution, which would mean that people who have never lived in Israel would drive out the people who have always lived there.
Image via Pxbarn.