To visit Poland is to walk among ghosts. The thriving Jewish civilization that once filled its towns and marketplaces was almost completely erased. Three million Jews were targeted for extermination — a number too vast to grasp by walking through silent cemeteries. The absence alone cannot speak the full horror.
To stand where synagogues were razed, where schools once taught Torah and arithmetic, where playgrounds once rang with Yiddish laughter, is to feel the emptiness press against your chest. It forces the imagination to repopulate the void — to summon the Jewish ghosts who linger, waiting for conscience to remember them.
It is easier to look at the living. Many Poles today are the grandchildren of those who watched as their Jewish neighbors were rounded up — and sometimes finished the work themselves when survivors returned seeking their homes. They became stand-ins for the killers of yesteryear, heirs to silence, envy, and complicity.
Now another people walks amid ruins. In Gaza, millions return to their shattered neighborhoods under a ceasefire, and we are told they have survived a “genocide” at the hands of Jews. Yet the number of Palestinian Arabs has grown, not diminished — a population larger than before the war they themselves began. They tread among the skeletons of broken buildings built atop their army’s tunnels, while ghosts — Israeli civilians burned alive in their kibbutzim and those taken hostage and murdered in Gaza — cry out from the ashes.
I ponder the ghosts of genocide: the murdered and the murderers; the societies that spawned the slaughter; the peaceful towns that became infernos.
Infrastructure shelters ghosts. Societies are haunted by the ones they create, both killer and killed. The unseen dead can no longer showcase their dancing on the one hand, or lust to murder, on the other.
There are scarcely any Jews left in Poland; their ghosts appear only to those who seek them. In Gaza, the ghosts are not gone. They walk the streets, armed and unrepentant — not spirits of victims, but kinsmen of murderers, now turning on one another.
Poland’s haunting is one of silence — an absence so total it chills the air. The ghosts there do not cry out; they wait to be remembered. Gaza’s haunting is the opposite: a cacophony of rage that refuses reflection. Its ghosts are not silent but screaming — not victims unburied, but hatreds unrepented.
Poland’s soil holds the murdered; Gaza’s streets still host the spirit of the murderers. One ghost asks to be mourned; the other demands to be judged.
The haunting does not end with time. It lingers wherever truth is buried, and it deepens each time the living deny the past that shaped them.
Only when a people can face its ghosts — naming both the murdered and the murderers — can it begin to live freely again.
The late comedian George Carlin had a famous routine about “the seven words you can’t say on television.” It was funny because everyone knew the words, and everyone knew the absurdity of pretending they didn’t exist. Then came cable television — HBO, Showtime, and the rest — and suddenly those words were everywhere. What once felt taboo became common, even boring.
So it is with the language used against Israel.
In 1991, after intense U.S. diplomatic pressure, the United Nations revoked its infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution. For a moment, it seemed like the libel had been buried. There was hope that the relentless delegitimization campaign against Israel would fade, that the language of hate would finally be retired.
But in 2001, just days before the jihadist terror attacks of September 11, the Durban Conference in South Africa blew the doors wide open again. A coalition of NGOs issued a statement accusing Israel of no fewer than five of the gravest crimes known to humanity:
Apartheid
Genocide
Ethnic cleansing
Racism
Crimes against humanity
This wasn’t fringe rhetoric. It was delivered under the UN umbrella, with global media present. Durban made it “respectable” to say the unsayable — and to say it loudly.
Since then, those accusations have seeped into mainstream discourse. Palestinian “human rights” groups echo the smears repeatedly. They are repeated on college campuses, in international tribunals, in op-eds from major newspapers, and by activists on social media. What was once a shocking smear has become routine — as casual as an f-bomb on late-night cable TV.
Graffiti that Israel is committing “Genocide” in Venice, August 2025
Durban didn’t just make it acceptable to slander Israel — it made it obligatory for the “serious” activist class. To not accuse Israel of apartheid or genocide – and now especially after Israel’s defensive war against Gaza – is to risk being called naive, a sellout, or worse. The same way edgy comics feel compelled to swear to prove they’re authentic, self-styled “human rights defenders” now compete over who can level the most outrageous accusation against the Jewish state.
The world has gone from debating Israel’s policies to cheering on its demonization. The libels have become cultural wallpaper — so constant that people stop noticing they’re lies. Durban didn’t merely open the floodgates. It built a sewer main, hooked it up to the global conversation, and has been pumping raw hate through it ever since — with the United Nations playing plumber, making sure the pipes never run dry.
The medieval accusation of Jews poisoning wells has been updated: now the “poison” is alleged genocide, apartheid, and crimes against humanity — and once again, the world is drinking it without question.
Many pro-Israel people are outraged by Amnesty International calling Israel’s current actions in Gaza a “genocide,” by highlighting that Israel never wanted the war and would end it immediately if the hostages were released and Hamas surrenders. As there is no “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” as the term is defined in the Genocide Convention, the basic premise falls flat on its face before even getting to the physical nature of the battlefield and fatalities.
But that is exactly the point that anti-Israel people are making in their own narrative. Whether Israel’s current war is defensive or not is irrelevant. Whether the number of civilians-to-militants killed is the lowest ratio of any urban combat is dismissed.
Israeli police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023(AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
The anti-Israel crowd ties colonization to ethnic cleansing to apartheid to genocide. It is one big ball of “European White Supremacy” and “settler imperialism” that has been internalized as gospel by the anti-Israel mob.
Consider that in 2016, sixty different groups in the Black Lives Matter movement penned a manifesto labeling Israel as “an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people,” and that America’s aid to Israel made it complicit “in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.”
Even when there was no war, and the Israeli Arab AND West Bank Arab AND Gazan Arab all had populations which skyrocketed decade after decade – dwarfing the growth of Israeli Jews and of Arab populations of surrounding countries – the BLM movement ignored any physical requirement of a “genocide” and rallied around perceived intent.
Whether the Jewish State is the most liberal country for a thousand miles in any direction was considered misdirection. Pointing out basic pluralistic truths was considered PinkWashing or GreenWashing or a rainbow of other colors meant to serve as red herrings to the core issue.
The anti-Israel community considers the creation of Israel an original sin that can never be righted until it is destroyed. To give Palestinian Arabs dignity requires a genocide of Israeli Jews, and their supporters.
The “axis of resistance” of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and its global supporters is against the Jewish State, which it considers a foreign “cancer” inside the purely Arab Middle East. Today’s war is the same as 1948, to annihilate the Jewish entity in their midst.
A growing number of pro-Palestinian activists are echoing the Hamas narrative, even as the military capabilities of the terrorist Palestinian party dwindle. They have internalized a lie which offers Israel no escape other than dissolution.
The “genocide” claims and cases against Israel now have a veneer of credibility as “human rights” groups accuse the country amidst a difficult defensive war. In truth, they are tools to arm the second wave – of judicial and economic attacks – to destroy the Jewish State, as the axis’ military offensives end in defeat.
Pundits throw around a phrase that one cannot use a military or force to destroy an ideology.
That’s true. But irrelevant.
Hate and evil movements will never disappear from mankind as long as there are more than three people in the world.
There are still Nazis alive today but they don’t control a government, an army or a territory. As such, the grotesque ideology directly impacts few people.
The evil of ISIL was sharply curtailed when their developing “caliphate” was defeated. It was accomplished by several countries coming together to lay waste to their military, not by sitting down and trying to placate their “grievances.”
That’s the goal with Hamas, the evil government that rules the Gaza Strip. Together with various other jihadi militant groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas spends their efforts instilling antisemitism into their schools and building a military infrastructure to destroy Israel. That control must be ended.
There is one way to stop genocide in the near-term: destroy Hamas’s ability to do battle and hold territory.
To reduce the probability of another war in the region in the longer-term, the United Nations and Saudi Arabia must clearly state that there is no right of return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants into Israel. None.
Shortly thereafter, UNRWA should be deconstructed whereby the facilities administered by UNRWA in the West Bank and Gaza are transferred to the Palestinian Authority, those in Jordan are handed to the government of Jordan, and those in Lebanon and Syria are transferred to the global refugee agency, UNHCR.
To stop genocide, the world should work with Israel to move civilians out of harm’s way, and empower the Israeli military to dismantle Hamas’s ability to fight and govern again.
South Africa put forward the charge of ‘genocidal conduct‘ against Israel for its actions in Gaza since October 8, 2023. The reported figure of over 23,000 deaths, over one percent of the population of Gaza, is claimed to show a deliberate intent to wipe out all Arabs in the region. The use of heavy 2,000-pound bombs in civilians neighborhoods is alleged to show a complete disregard for non-combatants as well as a disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force.
Lawyers prosecuting Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) quoted members of the Israeli parliament after the October 7 attack in which they said they wanted to flatten Gaza, encourage a ‘voluntary emigration’ of Arabs from the region, and treat them like the biblical ‘Amalek’, a people for which Jews are commanded to wipe out completely. Counsel argued that comments from leaders shows the government’s official policy for the annihilation of the region’s Arabs.
The United Nations’ International Criminal Court has disallowed Israel from bringing any evidence of the Gazans’ October 7 massacre and brutalization of Israelis, mostly civilians. It contends that even if Hamas committed crimes against humanity, Israel must still adhere to basic rules of war.
The Case Against ‘Genocide’
Genocide involves the deliberate mass killing of an ethnic group or particular nation with the goal of annihilation or ethnically cleansing them.
It is bizarre to bring the charge against Israel based on the situation before even considering the prosecution of the war.
Israel’s attack on Gaza was both reactive and defensive. It had a ceasefire agreement with Hamas which rules Gaza, which Hamas broke with its invasion and sadistic slaughter.
Hamas leaders have pledged to commit the October 7 massacre “again and again.” Israel is compelled to not only bring the estimated 3,000 Gazan perpetrators of the October 7 massacre to justice, as well as the leaders who commanded and supported the operation, but to prevent the atrocities from happening again.
Hamas continues to fire at Israel. Hamas and various factions of this Gaza army continue to fire rockets and wage war against Israel. This is not a situation of a military aggressively hunting civilians but an active battlefield.
Hamas fires from civilian neighborhoods. The battlefield is the neighborhoods of Gaza from which Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other factions of the Gazan army shoot rockets and attack Israel.
Civilian infrastructure is part of the Gazan war effort. The Gazan army and infrastructure is embedded in civilian homes, hospitals, mosques and schools. Arms are stored and tunnel-openings begin in these locations, and are therefore part-and-parcel of the Gazan war effort.
The core Gazan army infrastructure is beneath civilian neighborhoods. The Gazan army runs the majority of its operations below ground, underneath civilian neighborhoods.
The Gazan army doesn’t wear uniforms. Many Palestinian fighters do not wear uniforms to clearly distinguish themselves from civilians, blurring the battlefield between military and civilians.
Israel unilaterally left Gaza completely in 2005. Israel does not covet the land and wanted the region to be a peaceful neighbor where Arabs would have complete self-determination. Instead, Gaza became a terrorist-ruled strip which has waged repeated wars against Israel targeting civilians.
Israel is attempting to save hundreds of hostages. Hamas and other Gazans took 240 hostages, mostly civilians into Gaza, many of whom are children, elderly and infirm. Saving them requires quick action.
Those are just the basic facts which set the scene for which Israel has to prosecute a difficult war. Even with such impossible backdrop, Israel has attempted to avoid the loss of civilian lives.
Millions of text messages sent to Palestinian Arab civilians to get out of harm’s way
Leaflets dropped over neighborhoods to make sure civilians got the message to leave active battlefields.
‘Safe zones’ and escape corridors created for civilians to flee hot spots.
Israel telegraphed its intentions of where it was prosecuting the battle – starting in northern Gaza – to allow civilians to leave, putting its own Israeli soldiers at risk.
The world begged Israel to not launch a ground invasion of Gaza and so relied on air power to start the retaliation against known military targets. It is those aerial assaults that the world now criticizes.
While the world may appreciate the need to dismantle Hamas and the impossible task facing Israel of fighting an enemy which is deeply embedded with civilians, it doesn’t really care. It has no proposals or gameplans to prosecute the war any better, other than demand Israel do so.
A view of the rubble of buildings hit by an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, October 10, 2023. (Fatima Shbair/AP)
In regard to Israeli leaders’ commentary that Gazans are like Amalek, a metaphor is not a call to action. Amalek was called out because they attacked the weakest Jews as they left Egypt, just as Hamas and its horde brutally butchered women, children and elderly in 2023. Other Israeli comments that all Gazans are culpable have been made by Palestinian advocates, such as James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute who told the United Nations on June 27, 2023 that there is “tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture,” as the majority of the people prefer violence.
Most importantly, Israel has said it will end the campaign immediately if Hamas surrenders and returns all of the hostages.
Israel is now going house-to-house to rescue its captives and destroy Hamas’s army and infrastructure amid a population which supports Hamas and terrorism. Hamas has 58% of the seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament from democratic elections held in 2006. The majority of Gazans support killing Jewish civilians in Israel and supported the October 7 massacre. They are family and friends of Hamas fighters, their teachers and students, donors and recipients of Hamas aid. When Israelis go through the Gazan neighborhoods in this tight battlefield, the civilians which surround them are the soft layer of the Hamas military which Hamas exploits, not uninvolved spectators.
It is likely that any other army would have killed five times as many Gazans as Israel at this point of the war. It is impossible to know because this war is like no other.
As to the charge of genocide, Palestinian Arabs are not confined to Gaza. Over half the population lives in the West Bank and Israel has not launched a massive campaign there, as Hamas doesn’t have a strong presence and there are no Israeli hostages in that region. On a macro level, 23,000 Gazans out of 1.8 billion Muslims is a 0.001% figure. By way of comparison, 63% of Europe’s Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and about 39% of global Jewry, an actual premeditated deliberate genocide of unarmed civilians.
There are therefore only two considerations to possibly judge Israel: the terrible loss of children’s lives, and the massive destruction of Gazan infrastructure.
Children are innocent by definition. They have no say in the war and not responsible for the terrible actions of adults. Close to 50% of Gazans are under the age of 18, so one would imagine indiscriminate bombing would cause close to 50% of the 23,000 dead to be children, or around 11,500 people. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the number of children killed is about 8,000, or 30% less than expected. While a tragic figure, it defends Israel’s prosecution of the war as being targeted against military targets.
There is no question there is widespread destruction of Gazan infrastructure. Neighborhoods have been leveled all around the Strip. That is a function that those neighborhoods are, and are above, the battlefield. It is actually surprising that a relatively low number of deaths have occurred with so many bombs dropped on the small territory, suggesting a targeted military campaign.
Hamas is sworn to the destruction of Israel and has ruled Gaza unilaterally since 2007 enabling it to embed itself throughout the region. Despite the hostile neighbor next door, Israel has limited its activities against the strip to a blockade to limit the flow of weapons, and to respond when attacked. It has never targeted the region or its residents for annihilation.
It is a tragedy for Palestinian Arabs, for Israel, and the world that so many children in Gaza have died. But the fault remains with the Arab rulers who teach their children death and martyrdom, while they attack Israel from those children’s homes. Israel is trying to minimize those casualties in an impossible battle, and the figures show that it is doing so.
The smoldering rubble of the Gazan battlefield is shocking but there is no genocide of buildings. However, the overall architecture of Gaza’s war mentality and machinery has been enabled by the United Nations, the entity which now sits as judge of Israel’s actions. It is a morbid farce, and must be confronted and rooted out for there to be a prayer of coexistence.
Genocide is defined in the dictionary as “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.” Nazi Germany had that aim in the 1930s and 1940s and succeeded in killing one-third of the Jewish population. Jews have still not replaced the loss 75 years later.
Today, the group that best captures the heinous intent of deliberately killing Jews is the popular political-terrorist group Hamas.
Hamas’s 1988 foundational charter is a fountain of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and calls to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State. Some lowlights include:
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” (Opening)
“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” (Preamble)
“raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.” (Article 3)
“raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine” (Article 6)
“Moslems fight the Jews(killing the Jews)… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” (Article 7)
“Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land” (Article 12)
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time” (Article 13)
“In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.” (Article 15)
Zionist “organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated.” (Article 17)
The toxicity rambles on from there.
Palestinian Arabs voted Hamas to 58% of parliament with this charter, in its first democratic election for parliament in 2006. It has thus far been the only parliamentary election.
Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, and Egypt and Israel subsequently put a blockade around the terrorist enclave lest it gain deadly weapons to pursue its genocidal goals. Despite the blockade, the group managed to launch numerous attacks and wars against Israel with low-level weaponry.
Palestinian Arabs continue to support this genocidal group, with a majority supporting their leader to be the next president according to Palestinian polls. That should not be surprising as most Gazans support terrorism, specifically killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel.
June 2023 PCPSR poll Question 70 “Concerning armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel, I….”, with 70% of Gazans supporting terrorism
The United Nations has a definition for genocide which states:
“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, 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.”
Elements of the crime
The 1988 Hamas Charter showed clear intent to cause a genocide of Jews, and the group’s broad-based support amongst Palestinian Arabs demonstrate a “deformity” in Palestinian culture, as leading Arab American James Zogby said at the United Nations in June 2023.
The actions of October 7, 2023, certify the intent with barbarism.
Not only did Hamas kill over 1,400 people in an unprovoked attack, it butchered people causing severe mental harm and long-term trauma to the entire Jewish State. It made the idea of living anywhere near Gaza virtually impossible. In taking over 240 hostages into Gaza – including young children who may never see their families again – the evil intent is beyond manifest.
Israel is engaged in a just war against this genocidal group. While limiting civilian casualties, it MUST defeat Hamas and ensure it cannot attack Israel again. An aggressive self defense must be broadly supported.
Defense against genocidal maniacs must extend to Jews in the diaspora as well. Countries with large Jewish populations including the United States, France, Canada, United Kingdom and Argentina have over 7 million Jews amongst them. Those countries have seen a large spike in antisemitic incidents on college campuses, in the streets and in governments. Security must be enhanced as Hamas’s Willing Executioners invert perpetrator and victim and spew antisemitic inanity to incite the mob.
The most terrifying evidence of the global depravity was watching America’s Ivy League professors cheering the October 7 pogrom calling it “exhilarating” and “awesome” because they believed that the genocide of Jews had finally moved passed a Palestinian promise to an actual reality.
The world witnessed an antisemitic genocidal group butchering Jews in Israel, and now watches Hamas supporters come for global Jewry as part of the “global intifada”, bizarrely protected under the banner of free speech.
There are no people as persecuted as the Jews. Subject to pogroms, ethnic cleansing, blood libels and genocides throughout history and around the world, they have been the victims of the powerful and of the weak.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman represents New York State’s 16th Congressional District which covers lower Westchester County, just north of New York City. It is estimated to be over 20% Jewish and has one of the largest Jewish populations in the United States.
From his powerful podium, Bowman deliberately insults Jewish history and incites hatred for the Jewish State.
“There’s so much we’re dealing with within our own borders that it’s often difficult for Americans to turn our attention to the problems of people overseas, but it’s hard at this moment not to be struck by the extent of suffering around the world. Whether it’s the infringement of human and civil rights of Palestinians living in Sheikh Jarrah, the violence against those praying in the Al-Aqsa mosque during the holy month of Ramadan in East Jerusalem, police violence against Colombians, a military coup in Myanmar, an ignored genocide in Ethiopia, or the ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs in China, my heart is breaking for people around the world experiencing oppression and hurt.”
Bowman started with events in Israel – twice. He only referenced the perceived wrongs against Arabs, not the violent Arab attacks against Jews exercising their basic human rights to pray with dignity at their holiest location.
He then compared those relatively minor events to vicious global activities.
In Colombia, police attacked and killed peaceful demonstrators protesting income inequality
In Myanmar, the military essentially took over the entire government and arrested public officials
In China, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs were imprisoned and shipped to “re-education camps”
How are any of these horrible actions against hundreds of thousands of peaceful civilians remotely close to Israel protecting Jews who want to visit the Temple Mount? Bowman deliberately abused language to stir up anger and violence against the Jewish State. Which is exactly what happened over the next days, with Jews around the world being attacked.
Further, to use words like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” against the Jewish State, when Jews just suffered a true genocide in Europe, and ethnic cleansing in Israel at the hands of the Jordanian and Egyptian army who expelled all of the Jews from Judea and Samaria and the eastern part of Jerusalem, is to spit in the faces of actual victims.
Jamaal Bowman standing in the center of the alt-left “Squad”, with Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar on the left, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush and Ayanna Pressley to the right
Jamaal Bowman helped inflame violence against Jews around the world with malicious smears against Israel. He is unfit to serve in congress.
Blinken never mentioned Israel in his speech, yet it was featured prominently on the US embassy in Israel’s website, including a link to the video and the full text. One could not find a link to the speech on the websites of embassies to other countries (also not mentioned in the speech), except for Italy.
One must assume that the US government opted to post a speech about the genocide of the Rohingya on Israel’s website because the Holocaust was about the annihilation of Jews, and Israel is the only Jewish State. It is unclear why Italy was also selected.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at US Holocaust Memorial Museum, March 21, 2022
In his remarks, Blinken mentioned the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya from regions of Burma but has never discussed the Jordanians ethnically cleansing the Jews from Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem in 1948-9.
Blinken talked about the Burmese military’s so-called “Clean and Beautiful Nation” activities which led to atrocities, but neglected to mention the popular Palestinian political-terrorist group Hamas’s 1988 charter (article 3) which urges everyone to “raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their [Jews] uncleanliness, vileness and evil.“
Blinken also discussed “Burma’s 1982 citizenship law, which effectively excluded Rohingya from citizenship and denied them full political rights, echoing the 1935 Nuremberg Laws that stripped Jews of their German citizenship,” but has thus far refused to similarly call out the 1954 Jordanian citizenship law which specifically excluded Jews.
Blinken noted the Burmese “dehumanizing hate speech,” in which “Rohingya were compared to fleas, to thorns, to an invasive species,” but hasn’t called out Palestinian Authority officials who call Israel “the greatest cancer,” and the leader of Iran who similarly called Israel “a cancerous tumor.“
Blinken knows the warning signs and said “Understanding the contours of this [genocidal] path is a core part of the Holocaust Museum’s mission. It’s crucial to all of us who are committed to living up to the maxim of “Never again.” By learning to spot the signs of the worst atrocities, we’re empowered to prevent them.“
The current United States government clearly understands that the Holocaust relates to Jews and the importance of the subject to the Jewish State. So one must wonder why it deliberately ignores the genocidal behavior of Israel’s Arab and Muslim neighbors.
Regrettably, it may be because the current administration is adopting the Palestinian Arabs’ false narrative that Israel was created because of the Holocaust, blinding US officials to the deeply-instilled anti-Semitism in many parts of Arab society.
Summary: The new leaderships at the UN and US have joined to take a forceful approach to anti-Israel rhetoric, in a sharp break from the prior regimes. Alas, the New York Times still does little to report on it and educate its remaining readership.
“Apartheid”
On March 14, 2017, a United Nations commission issued a report that called Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs equivalent to “apartheid.” It’s findings came as a result of a study
“whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.”
The new Trump administration’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, pounced on the report and pressured the new UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to have it withdrawn. Not only did he have the report removed from the UN website, one of the authors of the report resigned.
US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley
This is in sharp contrast to the reactions of the prior regimes of US President Barack Obama and UNSG Ban Ki Moon who applied no such pressure to even worse false accusations.
“Genocide”
One of the authors of the March 2017 UN report, Richard Falk, is a notorious anti-Semite. In December 2013, he said that Israel’s “criminal intention [toward Palestinians] is genocidal.” Canada quickly called on the UN to fire Falk. The US and UN distanced themselves from Falk’s comments but would take no aggressive action for his removal.
The tolerance for anti-Semitism from the Obama and Ban regimes was neither new nor surprising. It was pervasive.
While the UN condemned the use of the term “Muslim extremists,” it freely called out “Jewish extremists“
Ban Ki Moon never commented on acting President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas statements that Israel carried out “ethnic cleansing” against Arabs, but condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s use of the term for the Palestinian Authority’s treatment of Jews
Obama was reluctant to use US pressure on the world body. He believed that everybody was entitled to a point of view and that he would rather sit at a table and listen to the anti-Semitism than take aggressive action to stop it.
Consequently, people like Mahmoud Abbas felt no compunction in taking the podium at the UN General Assembly to make absurd comments that Israel was carrying out a “genocide.”
Under-Reporting Anti-Semitism
The New York Times wrote about the latest brouhaha at the UN in an article “Tempest at U.N. Over Report Saying Israel Practices Apartheid.” In a story without any depth, the article noted that one of the authors of the UN report had been accused of being anti-Israel.
“One of the authors of the report was Richard Falk, an American law professor and former United Nations human rights investigator whom critics regard as an anti-Israel extremist. He has been refused entry to Israel for what Israeli leaders have described as his hostile point of view.”
This was the first mention of Falk in the NYT for almost a decade. As detailed in FirstOneThrough’s article “The New York Times and Richard Falk,” the paper never discussed this “human rights investigator” who touted conspiracy theories about the attacks on 9/11, and that the US deserved the Boston Marathon bombing because of its foreign policy. It also never mentioned Falk’s outrageous claim that Israel carries out a genocide against Arabs.
Further, the paper has never opted to give a basic education to its readers:
that the number of Arabs in Israel and the territories has grown faster than anywhere else in the Middle East;
In 1991, New York City Mayor David Dinkins let anti-Semitic riots run rampant in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. His successor, Rudy Giuliani, opted to take a tough stand on crime and was able to transform New York City into the safe city that people recognize today.
The civilized world can only hope to see a similar outcome in the transition from Obama/Power to Trump/Haley and from Ban to Guterres: that the mayhem and hatred that has been tolerated for way too long will be aggressively combatted.
The International Criminal Court defines itself as “an independent, permanent court that tries persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ICC is based on a treaty, joined by 122 countries.”
The ICC uses the following definition for genocide: “According to the Rome Statute, “genocide” means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group:
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.”
Regarding “Crimes Against Humanity” the ICC uses the following categories:
murder;
extermination;
enslavement;
deportation or forcible transfer of population;
imprisonment;
torture;
rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
persecution against an identifiable group on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender grounds;
enforced disappearance of persons;
the crime of apartheid;
other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious bodily or mental injury.
Lastly, for “war crimes”, the ICC states that it “include grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict and in conflicts “not of an international character” listed in the Rome Statute, when they are committed as part of a plan or policy or on a large scale. These prohibited acts include:
murder;
mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
taking of hostages;
intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population;
intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historical monuments or hospitals;
pillaging;
rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy or any other form of sexual violence;
conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 years into armed forces or groups or using them to participate actively in hostilities.”
Many of these definitions cover the actions of many countries in modern times. The ICC has taken on a handful of cases thus far including in: Uganda; Congo; Sudan; Central African Republic and Kenya. Crimes committed by Syria, Boko Haram, the Taliban, Iran and Islamic State have not been prosecuted at this time.
Palestinians at the ICC
Genocide: As the Palestinian Authority takes moves to join the ICC, it will place itself in the crosshairs of many of the actions of the court. Within the definition of genocide, the Hamas charter and its leadership call for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel clearly put in in violation.
Crimes Against Humanity: Within the definition of crimes against humanity, Hamas murders and kidnaps Israelis. The kidnapped people do not get proper treatment (such as visitation) according to the Geneva Convention. Hamas tortures people suspected of collaborating with Israel and cause mental injury to Palestinians by public executions and torture and dragging bodies through the streets. Acting Palestinian Authority president Abbas actively practices apartheid: he has called for a Jew-free state; Palestinian law bans the sale of any land to Jews (punishable by death); the universities prohibit Jews from stepping foot on campuses. Abbas and Hamas both cause mental injury towards Jews continuously: naming squares and tournaments after murderers of Jewish civilians; airing television programs which call for the murder of all Jews.
War Crimes: Regarding war crimes, Hamas openly attacks civilians and civilian targets. It enlists children to fight Israel and takes hostages.
Israel at the ICC
Genocide: Regarding genocide, the population growth of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank exceed almost every country in the world. The regions have the highest birth rates and lowest death rates. The blockade around Gaza has been deemed legal by the United Nations. No case could be advanced against Israel for such charges.
Crimes Against Humanity: Israel does imprison Arabs in its territories and its practice could come under scrutiny. However, the arrests are likely not viewed as widespread and are often done while investigating crimes. Trying to apply the charge of apartheid would be a stretch as Israel’s practice of using military law for the West Bank which has different criteria for those residents with Israeli citizenship and those that do not. Israel’s treatment of non-Jewish citizens would likely further counter any argument that Israel’s actions in the territories are based on ethnicity.
War Crimes: The Palestinians will likely try to get the most leverage out of the charge of war crimes. It will use the latest Operation Protective Edge over the summer of 2014 to try to blame Israel for intentionally attacking the civilian population and mosques and schools. While Israel may concede that some of their firepower was intentional, it will argue that the targets were legitimate as they were sources of fire. The debate about proportionality of the use of Israel’s firepower and resulting collateral damage versus the firepower aimed at Israeli civilians may be too nuanced for the court to take on.
Palestinian attempts to use the ICC to pursue actions against Israel related to settlement activity in the West Bank would be a stretch. Firstly, it does not fit neatly into the categories which are the focus areas for the ICC. Secondly, international laws like the Geneva Convention and Hague Regulation do not actually consider Jews living in the West Bank to be illegal (see the First One Through article below). Further, “grave violations of the Geneva Conventions” would be a stretch as only one clause (Article 49) deals with treatment of occupied territory, and 95% of that article deals with the treatment of the local population, while only 5% addresses new residents moving into the land.
The international calls that the settlements are illegal are posted by various United Nations and governmental bodies and do not constitute international law from which the ICC would rule. If it were, the ICC could consider the “Zionism is racism” edict by the UN and convict Israel for crimes on that basis. (Note that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan called Zionism a “crime against humanity” in September 2013. World opinion on the topic is angry and absurd, but it should not have any bearing on legality).
The Palestinians clearly are much more vulnerable to charges of the ICC. Does Palestinian Authority acting –President Mahmoud Abbas feel that Hamas would bear the brunt of any fallout which would just strengthen his personal position and that of Fatah? Does he think that because his term for president expired six years ago, he can claim no responsibility for Palestinian war crimes?
First One Through 