The bald-faced lie that Israel committed genocide in Gaza is quickly becoming the 21st-century equivalent of the centuries-old blood libel against the Jewish people.
It has crept into mainstream global discourse, and unless massive efforts are made to debunk the false claims once and for all, when the history of the two-year Israel-Hamas War is taught in the decades to come, the focus will not be on the October 7 massacre and the cruel and inhumane treatment of hundreds of Israeli hostages. It will highlight the “genocide” that Israel committed against the Gazans.
The latest example – and one of the most vilifying – of genocide being bandied about matter-of-factly occurred late last week, when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) alleged at the Munich Security Conference that US aid to Israel had enabled genocide.
When asked by Haaretz reporter Hagar Shezaf if she thought “the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 elections should reevaluate military aid to Israel,” AOC, a touted Democratic candidate for the 2028 presidential election, responded with the mantra she’s spouted since the October 7 massacre: that Israel was indiscriminately killing Palestinians in Gaza.
“I think that personally, that the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense,” she said. “I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza, and I think that we have thousands of women and children dead that don’t, that was completely avoidable.”
Besides the dark irony of AOC’s attack on the Jewish state being stated in the birthplace of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi movement that carried out the Holocaust – the worst genocide in human history – her statement reveals how deeply the “genocide” lie has permeated into the mainstream diplomatic discourse.
Thankfully, the issue is coming to the forefront, thanks to an online campaign initiated by a group of respected Jewish thinkers, teachers, and writers not generally associated with the Right’s allegiance to the notion that Israel can do no wrong. Among the Israeli signatories are Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, journalist and teacher Yossi Klein Halevi, and Rabbi Micha Odenheimer of Tevel b’Tzedek, an Israeli nonprofit.
They plainly but eloquently stated the obvious, which has been either ignored or disputed.
They wrote: “The unprecedented combat conditions of the war – hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, thousands of booby-trapped homes – the conflating of combatants with ‘journalists’ and ‘human rights workers,’ the ratio of civilian-to-terrorist casualties, considered low for asymmetrical urban warfare, the absence of mass starvation despite repeated claims of imminent catastrophe, the warnings given to civilians before attack: All these factors were erased in the eagerness to indict Israel for genocide.
“A crucial difference between war as tragedy and war as genocide is intent. In this war, only one side intended to commit genocide, and that is Hamas.
“To accuse Israel of genocide, the massacre of October 7 has been systematically downplayed, while Israeli actions have been distorted and amplified. Israel went to war on October 8, not out of vengeance, as its detractors claim, but to break the Iranian-led siege of terror enclaves on its borders, and to restore its deterrence, without which it cannot survive in the long term in the Middle East. Thousands of rockets and missiles were fired at Israel in the weeks following the massacre, while Hamas starved and tortured 250 Israelis, some of whom were murdered in captivity.”
On October 8, as Israel was still fighting terrorists within its border communities and hadn’t yet begun burying its dead, anti-Zionists began raising the cry of “genocide,” they wrote.
Genocide accusations used as pretext for excluding, attacking, and murdering Jews worldwide
The accusation of genocide, as uttered by AOC and hundreds of other public influential figures, has become a pretext for excluding, attacking, and even murdering Jews around the world. They clearly stated, adding that its purpose is to delegitimize Jewish self-determination and to turn the only Jewish state into the world’s arch criminal and pariah.
Urging both Jews and non-Jews to treat the accusation of genocide with revulsion – as the latest in a long history of lies about the Jewish people – the petitioners state at the end of their letter: “‘A lie has no legs,’ notes the ancient Hebrew proverb. We will not allow this lie to stand.”
It’s time for all of us to join these calls for reason and make our voices heard to denounce the claims of genocide whenever they are raised and by whoever raises them.