Why Israel is Innocent of the Accusation of Genocide in Gaza And where the moral responsibility for Palestinian suffering really lies. by Jason D. Hill
https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-israel-is-innocent-of-the-accusation-of-genocide-in-gaza/
Talk of Israel’s crime of genocide in the war against Hamas in Gaza is ubiquitous. It is treated as an axiom; to question the tenability of Israeli genocide is to act as if one is questioning an invariable law of nature. South Africa has even brought charges of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice. College protests and global public outrage at the deaths of Palestinian civilians—with the irrelevant special citation of women and children—are fueled by a misconception about the nature of genocide itself, a crime of which the Jewish state is innocent.
(I say the deaths of women and children are irrelevant in the citation of the alleged genocide because it is a surreptitious way of imputing greater moral value to the lives of women and children than to men. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. The death of a man in war regardless of his age is just as tragic as the death of a child. All human lives regardless of sex have intrinsic moral value.)
The word genocide was first coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, to describe the systematic extermination policies of Nazi Germany during World War II. Genocide has been defined as acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. It involves preventing births within the group, and forcibly transferring children to another group.
As an historical fact, it is worth noting that in the years following the re-establishment of Israel in 1948, the Arab population of what many refer to as historic Palestine more than quintupled from 1.3 million to about 7.5 million. The Palestinian population in Judea and Samaria has continued to rise from 3.6 million in 2006, to 5.4 million in 2023. One has to point out that when there are far higher death tolls in the Middle East, say, in 2011 where up to 600,000 people have been killed in Syria’s civil war—a number which many writers state is ten times higher than have died in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948—such war outcomes are never labeled as genocides.
There are some important points to be made here. Israel has never had a genocidal policy towards its Arab populations which have grown exponentially in Israel and in Judea and Samaria (also part of Israel). It cannot be accused of genocide in its current war against Hamas in Gaza for several reasons. There is no intent to annihilate the Palestinians in Gaza. The responsibility for the war lies with Hamas, which invaded Israel on October 7, 2023. No rational war can be fought when an attacked nation is asked to be morally responsible for the civilians of the aggressor region or country. Hamas bears full responsibility for any death toll of its citizens on two fronts.
First, it categorically started the war and so, therefore, there can be so such thing as consideration for the rights of that region in any respect. It initiated force and has, therefore, stepped outside the principle of rights. Second, it strategically places its military personnel and materiel in the civilian domains of hospitals, mosques, schools and the homes of citizens. To demand of Israel that it engage in a ceasefire because Hamas has not made a distinction within its own region between authorized combatants and civilians means that it becomes tactically necessary to bomb any area in which the enemies might be—even if they embed themselves within civilian domains.
There is no other way for Israel to fight the war. The tactic of embedding a region’s war machinery within civilian domains is evil; however, it is not the moral responsibility of Israel, which was attacked, to take on this responsibility by adopting what we may call the Neo-Pacifist Principle. In adopting the Neo–Pacifist Principle, Israel would be expected to pursue two suicidal policies.
First, to succumb to the exploitation of its goodness by agreeing to care more for the welfare of Palestinian-Gazans than it does for its own citizens and for its own sovereignty, autonomy, and right to state preservation. In point of fact, given Israel’s military restraint in the face of constant rocket shelling from Hamas ever since it unilaterally handed over Gaza to Hamas in 2005, we may say that Israel does care more for the women and children of Gaza than does Hamas. If it does enact this altruistic principle then morally, tactically and from an overall military standpoint, it can only end up fighting a demoralizing war in which it doubts its moral right to self-defense. It is impossible for Israel to adhere to the first clause of the jus in bello portion of the Just War Theory (Discrimination) which establishes norms governing the use of force in wartime. It prohibits, absolutely, killing or allowing innocents to be killed in war. It states that military force must be applied only against political leadership and military forces of the state. Every effort must be made to discriminate between combatants and noncombatants, soldiers and civilians, and to minimize civilian casualties. Direct attacks against civilian targets, such as neighborhoods, hospitals and schools are morally impermissible according to this section of the Just War Theory. Indiscriminate mass destruction of cities is similarly impermissible. But Hamas has turned its schools and hospitals and neighborhoods into war zones, making it impossible for Israel to logically adhere to any of the Theory’s tenets. We can already see that it is Hamas that has preemptively violated the Discrimination portion of the Jus in bello clause.
Second, Israel is placed in the untenable position of adhering to the Proportionality clause in the second clause of jus in bello of the Just War Theory. That clause states that the destruction inflicted by military forces in war must be proportional to the goals they are seeking to realize. An indiscriminate war of attrition that seeks to eliminate the enemy society altogether is not morally justified. The goal should be to use the minimum level of violence to achieve the limited aims of a war.
What does proportionality mean in the face of a terrorist leadership unit that has pledged, as the goal of its movement and the purpose of its existence, the total elimination of Jewry and the destruction of Israel? The breadth and scope of Hamas’ goal, its massive radicalization of its citizenry against Israel, all render the proportionality clause in this war inapplicable, untenable and, simply put—old-fashioned. An entire essay on the inapplicability of the Just War Theory written centuries ago for a different kind of warfare, shall be forthcoming. Its origins are traced to the writings of St. Augustine in the 4th and 5th centuries, during which time the philosopher developed ideas about the morality of war.
Israel’s moral purpose in winning the war is to vanquish Hamas—and further: given the Charter of Hamas which aims (again) to eliminate Jewry from the region and the world, to destroy Israel and, further, to establish a Global Caliphate, Israel must inflict generational damage as part of its winning strategy. This means it has to ensure that subsequent generations are rendered impotent in ever waging a destructive and annihilative war against Israel. There can be no mercy in this part of the execution of the war.
Hamas was duly elected by an electorate that placed it in power. In January 2006 when the terrorist organization was elevated to power, the victory was hailed as an achievement in the democratic process in the Middle East. There is, then, no clear distinction between Hamas and the people who elected its leaders to power. Even those who are innocent and dislike Hamas must bear the inconveniences of a democracy. In a war initiated by a government elected by a people, death is one of several prices it pays for the sins of its leadership.
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