H. Scott Prosterman Informed Comment
Holocaust denial is a horrible dynamic of the far-far right, which seeks to justify National Socialist (Nazi) philosophy, and deny that millions were killed because of who they are. It is an unconscionable “school of thought,” popular among people who didn’t get much out of school. Now an ugly parallel dynamic has arisen in the form of Gaza genocide denial. Both are signs of poisoned minds and cowardly denial. Much of Jewish history has been characterized by persecution, pogroms and ultimately the Holocaust. Now, many mainstream Jewish spiritual and community leaders are trying to argue, “Israel can’t be guilty of genocide, because that’s what happened to us.”
Let’s begin with a controversial value judgement: Though Israel has been important to Jewish identity, since its creation, Israel no longer represents the Jewish people as a whole. As Israel has become more subsumed by the Israeli MAGA movement, aka the Likud Party; millions of Jews worldwide have divorced their religious practice of Judaism from Zionism. Under the leadership of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Zionism has devolved 180 degrees away from its original secular, agrarian origins, which had NO pretense of Biblical prophecy. Now, these Judeo-MAGA tendencies are alienating millions of Jews away from Israel and Zionism, with genocide in Gaza and pogroms in the West Bank.
The recent commemoration of Tisha B’av, on which a number of disasters that befell the Jewish people are mourned, sparked an avalanche of arguments by right wing Zionists that Gaza is NOT genocide. I feel like pointing out how Israel’s actions since October 7 2023 are, in fact genocide is like arguing that the Holocaust DID happen, or that Trump lost the 2020 Election. U.S. and Israeli Jews are packaging some tortured syllogisms to argue that Likud government actions since October 7, 2023 are righteous and justified. Many rabbis are selling those fictions to their congregations, and spreading this toxic myth. These days echo chambers persist throughout social media, across the full political spectrum. So we have to begin with what IS genocide:
According to Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention: “Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
This definition does not require that all or even most members of a group be killed, only that the killing be pursued with the specific goal of making the group’s continued identity difficult to perpetuate. Destroying maternity clinics and inflicting malnutrition and infectious disease from poor sanitation on toddlers would count. The Cambodian genocide killed 25 percent of the population. A July 2024 correspondence piece published in The Lancet estimated that the eventual combined direct and indirect death toll of the conflict in Gaza might exceed 186,000 persons. The projection applied a conservative ratio of four indirect deaths (caused by things like malnutrition, lack of medication, disease, and the collapse of sanitation and healthcare infrastructure) for every one direct death caused by military violence. If this projected toll is eventually reached, nearly 10 percent of Palestinians in Gaza will have been murdered by Netanyahu and co., 83% to 86% of them noncombatants.
Genocide doesn’t have a time frame, as Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu suggested when he said, “If we had wanted to commit genocide, it would have taken exactly one afternoon.” Whether it occurs in one afternoon or over two years doesn’t change the facts on the ground. Bibi added that it’s not genocide because Israel didn’t halt ALL humanitarian aid. But creating a famine is certainly one element of genocide, and at least 10,000 Gazans have died from malnutrition since 2023, according to the World Peace Foundation. Claims that Israel “is making efforts to avoid killing civilians whom Hamas puts in harm’s way,” are delusional. Netanyahu said, “If we had wanted starvation, if that had been our policy, 2 million Gazans wouldn’t be living today after 20 months.” He also argued — implausibly given what we know of his policies — that the shortages of food and life-sustaining supplies are a result of trying to keep Hamas from looting.
Another set of “talking points” issued by the Jewish Community Alliance (JCA) of Southern Maine argues, “Using genocide as a political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East. It erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and casts the local Jewish community in a poor light. In reality, Israel has made a huge, visible effort to make life impossible for Palestinians in Gaza, and checked all the boxes for genocide. It’s true that genocide may be “the single gravest accusation that can be leveled against any nation.” If Israel is not guilty, then what IS genocide?
The Maine JCA argues, “Whether intended or not, the false charge of genocide against Israel is being used to justify—and even celebrate—the disturbing rise in violent terrorist attacks against Jewish communities worldwide.” “Celebrate the rise in violent attacks against Jews?” That is a wrongful and inflammatory characterization, and manufactured paranoia! Engaging in this hyperbole illustrates the weakness and vapidness of the argument.
They continue: “We believe this early weaponization of the word “genocide” was an attempt not to bring peace to the region, but to inflict the deepest wound upon the Jewish community by trivializing and appropriating our historical genocide, the Holocaust, in order to draw an equal sign between Jews and Nazis.” Recognizing Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza does not “trivialize the Holocaust.” Rather, it illustrates the ultimate hypocrisy of Israel doing to another people what was done to them during WW II – one of the saddest and brutal ironies of history. The Likud Party coalition in power since late 2022, NOT the Jews as a people or as a religious group, has earned an “equal sign” with the Nazis! Pointing out Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza does NOT diminish the dramatic meaning of this word, nor is it misapplied. In this case, the word is not being “repurposed,” but properly applied to a different time and circumstances.
Genocide denialists have created a cottage industry of political fictions, including a five-point summary published by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), NONE of which is true:
1.) “’Genocide’ refers to the physical destruction of an entire group in whole or in part that has been targeted on the basis of its identity. This is not Israel’s objective in Gaza.” They argue they are not trying to extinguish the entire Palestinian population in Gaza, only Hamas. But if Israel kills tens of thousands of innocent civilians in reckless disregard for noncombatant lives, it’s still genocide.
2.) Because Israel is still responding to October 7, it can’t be considered genocide. Nothing substantiates this leap of logic.
3.) “Israel’s actions reflect its desire to spare Palestinian civilians from harm, not to deliberately harm them.” This is downright Orwellian.
4.) Hamas’ actions are designed to cause harm to Palestinian civilians and blame Israel.” While it’s true that the Hamas leadership in Cairo and Doha gave orders without regard to the consequences of retaliation, the civilian harm inflicted by Israel is vastly disproportionate, which checks another box for genocide.
5.) “The facts of genocide don’t add up,” is based on their phony value judgment that the 2024 Amnesty International report is “unsubstituted.” To all other observers the Amnesty report is unimpeachable and thoroughly documented.
Photo by Leonardo Basso on Unsplash
The Maine JCA also says, “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a “Holocaust inversion” against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.” “Holocaust inversion?” Comparing Likud’s genocidal behavior to Nazis is not “Holocaust distortion,” nor is it “hate speech,” or “inversion of morality,” as the World Jewish Congress (WCJ) tries to argue. Sadly, it is a valid accusation and comparison considering Likud’s policy “to destroy schools, universities, museums, everything – hospitals, of course, water plants, energy plants. In that way, to make it uninhabitable for the population.” That characterization came from Prof. Omer Bartov, a Holocaust and genocide scholar at Brown University. He points to “a policy aimed at uprooting and removing the entire population of Gaza.”
Among the fictions used to deny the reality of genocide in Gaza include: “Israel has had the military capacity to annihilate Gaza from the outset. It has not done so. This is not what extermination looks like.” In reality, Israeli military terror made no distinction between civilian and military targets in Gaza, rather, casting a wide net of drone, missile, artillery and other attacks to wipe out entire inhabited city blocks. If 75,000 people dead and over 90% of all buildings and infrastructure in ruins are not genocide, what does mass extermination look like?
H. Scott Prosterman is a writer and communications consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area, and holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan
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