Genocide in Gaza? Gimme a Break

The word, "genocide" is being thrown around very loosely by the supporters of Hamas these days against Israel. In Los Angeles in the past month, I have seen many of these Hamas supporters at rallies at the Federal Building involving pro-Israel and pro-Hamas supporters. The latter are part of what is called, "Stop Genocide in Gaza".

What genocide are they talking about?

Genocide is when someone makes an effort to eradicate an entire people. The Holocaust comes to mind. In that case, the Nazis succeeded in killing approximately two-thirds of all the Jews in Europe. In the case of the Palestinians, who in reality are Arabs and part of a regional community of some 300 million people that neither Israel or anyone else could ever dream of eradicating, their population has exploded in the past 50 or so years. In the case of Gaza, the population in 1950 (when it was under Egypt) was approximately 120,000. Today, it is about 1.9 million. Where is the genocide? Where are the camps like Auschwitz? Where are the ovens? Where are the mass graves?

Where you see the claim of genocide is every time Israel responds to Palestinian terrorism by going to war with Hamas or Hezbollah and since both forces make it their practice to fight from behind their civilians, there is collateral damage. This latest round of fighting is a case in point. Israel went to unprecedented lengths to avoid civilian casualties by actually notifying residents and occupants of buildings that were targeted, something no other army has ever done. Did the US or Great Britain do that in World War II when we were destroying German and Japanese cities and killings literally hundreds of thousands of civilians? No, we did not. Furthermore, nobody has ever suggested that we were trying to commit genocide against the Germans or Japanese. We were simply trying to win a war for our very survival.

One reason so many Gazans were killed (if you believe their numbers, which I believe exaggerated the civilian count) was because Hamas actually tried to prevent people from leaving buildings after they were warned by Israel. A German film crew captured such scenes on videotape. They were posted here on this blog.

Given Israel's military superiority, if she wanted to eradicate the Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank, she could do so. Yet they have chosen not to do so. Unlike her  enemies, Israel is simply not that kind of a nation

If you want to see a true genocide, imagine what would happen if Israel were ever defeated by her enemies. What do you think would happen to those people? Hamas actually has in their charter a reference to killing every last Jew when it quotes the Islamic hadith about the Day of Judgement when "the Jew will hide behind the rocks and trees and the rocks and trees will call out to the Muslim, 'O Muslim. There is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.'"

Yet, the well-oiled Palestinian propaganda machine has managed to convince millions of people around the world that Israel is committing genocide. It is an absurd charge.