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Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-862259
Accusations of Israeli Genocide Are Untenable
(Jerusalem Post) Prof. Hillel Frisch - Brown University professor Omer Bartov made headlines last week for accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. The real question is whether Israel can deal with a genocidal movement such as Hamas, so embedded in Gaza's civilian population, in any other way than the path it has taken during almost two years of war. Whether Hamas is genocidal, seeking the physical destruction of seven million Jewish Israelis, is beyond dispute. Hamas documented their own war crimes using body cameras as they slaughtered, burned, and raped their victims. The Americans and the British knew that in the war with Nazi Germany, German civilians would be killed in the tens of thousands. Should Roosevelt and Eisenhower be accused of committing genocide against the German people? Should the genocide charge be leveled at Harry Truman, who made the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or were these decisions ultimately justified in ushering in the end to these evil powers and shortening a devastating war? Bartov would do better to marshal his knowledge to propose how Israel should conduct a justifiable war against the forces of evil in a manner that would reduce civilian collateral damage in a densely urban area like Gaza, in which the enemy is ensconced in hundreds of kilometers of concrete and steel-reinforced tunnels, built from materials that Hamas siphoned off from international aid. The writer is professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University and a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.