Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza

IDF drops warning leaflets on Gaza

“How do you know that Jews were not killing Christian children and using their blood to make Passover matzoh?” So asked a student in a Jewish History course after hearing about the many Christian libels against Jewish people in the Middle Ages. He argued that where there is smoke, there must be fire. My reply was that where there is smoke, there may very well be an arsonist. This blood libel was so inane that it did not deserve a rebuttal. Similarly, the charge that Israel is committing genocide in its war with Hamas is so absurd, it should not require a response. Nevertheless, so many in the media and in Non-Governmental Organizations repeat this mantra so frequently, that many presume its truth without ever engaging the facts. As a result, it becomes necessary to address this modern day blood libel.

Even before addressing the charge that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, note that it was common for this accusation to be made against Israel even before Hamas began this war on October 7, 2023 by attacking Israel and brutally murdering 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, and taking another 251 hostage. The charge of genocide was made even though Israel had completely disengaged from Gaza in 2005. In 1948, at the birth of Israel, there were some 200,000-250,000 Palestinians in Gaza. By 2023, there were more than 2,000,000 Palestinians in Gaza, hardly evidence of a genocide. In fact, as genocide goes, Sam Harris notes, this would be “the most inept genocide in history.” Remarkably, within one week after the 10/7 attack by Hamas, before Israel even began operations against Hamas, protesters began chanting about an Israeli genocide in Gaza. This demonstrates that the charge of genocide is merely propaganda not factual. Nevertheless, since this war began, the accusation of genocide has become commonplace and needs to be addressed.

First, Israel had no intention to commit genocide. Genocide is defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as killing and other specified acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” There has been no intent on the part of the Israeli government or the Israel Defense Forces to attack the civilian population of Gaza. Israel’s desire to prevent Palestinian civilian death is evident in that Israel has established safe zones to which civilians are given maps so they can flee to safety. Israel drops leaflets and calls Palestinian mobile phones, detailing where and when the Israeli military will strike, in order to encourage civilians to move to safe areas. The Israeli intention to keep civilians safe creates a grave disadvantage for the Israel Defense Forces because the Hamas terrorists are thereby also  made aware of the time and location of coming attacks, enabling them to flee. Clearly, if Israel wanted to commit genocide, its air force could level Gaza without providing warnings or safe zones. But the Israel Defense Forces will put their own army at risk to preserve the civilian population, despite the hostility of the Gazans.

Another false contention is that Israel is deliberately starving Gaza and thereby showing an intent to commit genocide. Since the outbreak of the war until the time of this writing, Israel has provided 1,817,907 tons of food aid in 93,715 trucks and 10,450 pallets of food to Gazan civilians. Sadly, Hamas has stolen most of this aid and then sold it at exorbitant prices to Palestinian civilians, thereby funding their terrorist army. If there is hunger in Gaza, it is the fault of Hamas, not Israel (https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/main/).

Second, the casualty numbers put out by Hamas cannot be trusted. Hamas, a brutal terrorist group, has no commitment to reporting the truth, only to smear Israel with the charge of genocide. At this point in time, some 600+ days since Hamas started this war, the Gaza Health Ministry,  the mouthpiece for Hamas, is claiming 54,000 dead. However, this number does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths. Since Israel estimates that more than 20,000 Hamas combatants have been killed, it reduces the number of civilian casualties significantly. Moreover, Hamas periodically announces that it cannot verify some 1/3 of the numbers that they claim, making the total number of casualties is even less. Recently, it was revealed that Hamas has included 8,000 who died by natural causes among their dead, indicating even fewer civilian casualties (https://www.euronews.com/2025/04/03/hamas-run-health-ministry-quietly-removes-thousands-from-gaza-death-toll-researchers-find; https://www.instagram.com/p/DIEuV8nvg-p/). Professors Lewi Stone,  professor of Mathematical Epidemiology at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia and Gregory Rose, honorary professor of law at the University of Wollongong, Australia published a paper in May of 2025, analyzing the data put forward by the Hamas run health ministry and characterized it as disinformation (https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-fatality-figures-for-gaza-war-are-clear-disinformation-according-to-new-study/).  

Nevertheless, a sad fact of war is that there will always be civilian casualties. This is especially true in a dense urban environment such as in the Gaza Strip. However, Israel’s mitigation strategies have kept the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths extremely low. According to John Spencer, chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza, based on the Hamas figures, would be about a 1 to 1.5 or 1.6 ratio. But, he concludes that since Hamas regularly exaggerates the number of civilian casualties, “the combatant to civilian death ratio is more likely 1 to 1 which would be historically low for high intensity urban warfare” (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/johnwspencer2018_israel-has-done-more-to-prevent-civilian-activity-7192388569791930368-8RRL/; https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286).           

Third, Hamas is responsible for every civilian death in Gaza. How can this be? To begin, Hamas started this war by invading Israel, murdering 1,200 people (mostly Israelis), brutally mutilating, raping and murdering their victims while recording themselves as they attacked. Hamas also took 251 hostages from Israel, starved, sexually abused, and murdered some, even infants and toddlers, in captivity. Hamas embeds among the civilian population, in homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques. They built the “Gaza Metro,” some 350-450 miles of underground tunnels, to protect their own terrorists, while leaving the civilian population at risk. In fact, Yahyah Sinwar, leader of Hamas in Gaza, claimed Palestinian civilian deaths were a “necessary sacrifice” in the propaganda war with Israel (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/12/hamas-death-toll-gaza-sinwar-messages/). Hamas and its partners in war frequently shoot at their own civilians to keep them from getting to safety or receiving aid and then blame Israel for their deaths. Sometimes Hamas and its associates launch rockets at Israel that fall on their own citizens, again blaming Israel, as was the case with the Al Ahli hospital. There Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched a rocket which fell in the parking lot of the hospital. The health ministry immediately declared that Israel had bombed the hospital and the news media instantly relayed the story without verification. By the time the truth was known, very few took note of the corrections in the media.

Holocaust Inversion

So what drives this false charge of genocide against Israel? Simply put, it is antisemitism, the hatred of the Jewish people. It is the desire to deny the Jewish people the right of self-determination in their own land and self-defense against those who would commit genocide against them. Haters claim that the Jewish people, victims of history’s worst genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, are now guilty of genocide themselves. This common antisemitic tactic is called Holocaust inversion. It is a hate filled method of delegitimizing the Jewish state and demonizing the Jewish people. Observing Holocaust inversion does not make the blood libel of genocide disappear–it just illuminates and clarifies the reason for it.