|
Trending Topics
|
No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza. The Charge Is Obscene
(New York Times) Bret Stephens - If the Israeli government's intentions and actions are truly genocidal, why hasn't it been more methodical and vastly more deadly? It could have bombed without prior notice, instead of routinely warning Gazans to evacuate areas it intended to strike. It could have bombed without putting its own soldiers, hundreds of whom have died in combat, at risk. The death count isn't higher because Israel is manifestly not committing genocide, a legally specific term defined by the UN Convention on Genocide as the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." Note the words "intent" and "as such." Genocide does not mean simply "too many civilian deaths" - a heartbreaking fact of nearly every war. It means seeking to exterminate a category of people for no other reason than that they belong to that category: the Nazis and their partners killing Jews in the Holocaust because they were Jews, or Hamas on Oct. 7 intentionally butchering families in their homes and young people at a music festival because they were Israelis. Over a million German civilians died in World War II, victims of war but not of genocide. The aim of the Allies was to defeat the Nazis, not to wipe out Germans simply for being German. I am aware of no evidence of an Israeli plan to deliberately target and kill Gazan civilians. What is unusual about Gaza is the cynical and criminal way Hamas has chosen to wage war. In Ukraine, when Russia attacks, civilians go underground while the Ukrainian military stays aboveground to fight. In Gaza, it's the reverse: Hamas hides and feeds and preserves itself in its vast warren of tunnels rather than open them to civilians for protection. These tactics are war crimes in themselves. We know how the U.S. would operate in similar circumstances. In 2016 and 2017, the U.S. aided the government of Iraq in retaking the city of Mosul, which was captured by the Islamic State three years earlier and turned into a booby-trapped, underground fortress. As the Times reported on March 28, 2017, "American airstrikes have at times leveled entire blocks - including the one in Mosul Jidideh this month that residents said left as many as 200 civilians dead." I don't recall any campus protests. Wars are awful enough, but the term "genocide" can't be promiscuously applied to any military situation we don't like.