Amnesty International, an organization with a long history of anti-Israeli activism, recently released a report accusing the Jewish state of committing genocide, with Human Rights Watch jumping on the bandwagon with its own report to be released Thursday. These baseless claims are yet another example of organizations redefining legal terms to suit their accusations against Israel.
Like its previous unfounded claims, Amnesty’s genocide accusation distorts both the facts and the law for the sake of sensational headlines. Consider the prevailing definition of “genocidal intent” in international law. In 2007, the International Court of Justice found in Bosnia v. Serbia that such intent can only be established when it is the only plausible inference to be drawn from a nation’s pattern of conduct; the court reaffirmed this standard in Croatia v. Serbia (2015). No reasonable observer could argue that Israel’s military actions—directed against Hamas, a terrorist organization explicitly dedicated to the Jewish state’s destruction—constitute genocide under this prevailing standard.
But Amnesty had pre-determined that Israel was guilty, so it simply dismissed international law. “Amnesty International considers this an overly cramped interpretation of international jurisprudence,” the report notes, “and one that would effectively preclude a finding of genocide in the context of an armed conflict.”
The real reason the ICJ’s definition precludes a finding of genocide in Israel’s armed conflict is because there is in reality no genocide. One need not look all the way back to the Holocaust to see that there can be a genocide in the context of an armed conflict. In the early 2000s, for example, the Sudanese government armed Arab militia groups to help them ethnically cleanse African groups in the Darfur region through a campaign of mass murder, rape, pillaging, displacement, and persecution, based on the victims’ race, ethnicity, and religion. Contrast this with Israel, which possesses the military capability to destroy Gaza entirely but has taken extraordinary measures to minimize harm to civilians, even as it fights an enemy that deliberately endangers its own people.
Amnesty also fails to substantively engage with the well-established doctrines of military necessity, proportionality, and deterrence, which govern legitimate actions during armed conflict. The law of war was not designed for armchair quarterbacks writing a report a year later, recounting events and critiquing decisions. It is given to commanders in the field to make good-faith judgment calls, in real time, based on available information. Unlike Amnesty, legal analysis of the international war code considers factors such as technological limitations, available staff, and situational nuances in combat.
Amnesty feebly tries to hide Israel’s obvious lack of genocidal intent by cobbling together an assortment of distorted and out-of-context statements allegedly made by Israeli politicians. For example, the report cites Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reference to the biblical commandment to eradicate Amalek as an example of Israel’s genocidal motives. But the authors disregard a previous sentence, in which Netanyahu explicitly referred to “destroying Hamas.” Israel’s official stance, repeated ad nauseum by the prime minister, the president, the defense minister, and the IDF spokesman—is that this “war is against Hamas – not the people of Gaza.”
Heated rhetoric does not constitute evidence of genocidal intent. According to United Nations jurisprudence, incitement to genocide cannot be “a mere vague or indirect suggestion.” The United States did not commit genocide when it destroyed ISIS, even though President Barack Obama spoke of the war as “eradicating a cancer.” And though Netanyahu has described the battle in Gaza as between “the children of light and the children of darkness”— a quote that Amnesty deems “dehumanizing”—the prime minister’s remarks are similar with those of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in 1941 spoke of “victory of justice and righteousness over the forces of savagery and barbarism.”
While Amnesty’s bases its genocide charge on the casualties in Gaza, only approximately half of those have been civilian. Moreover, civilian casualties are not, in themselves, evidence of genocide, and can be an unfortunate feature of urban warfare. The civilian-combatant ratio in this conflict compares favorably with that in every Western ground operation since World War II, despite Hamas’s purposeful use of the Gazan population as human shields. Indeed, leading military experts and officers have praised Israel’s conduct of hostilities as a model of caution and protection of civilian life.
As for HRW, they claim Israel is committing “genocide” by depriving Gazans of water—despite the fact that some 90 percent of the territory’s water supply comes from its own aquifer, with which Israel has not interfered. All wars cause distress to civilians. From World War II to the U.S invasion of Iraq, disruptions to health services and sanitation have led to “all cause” mortality far in excess of combat fatalities—but no reasonable person believes America committed genocide in those conflicts.
The rapid-fire release of Amnesty and HRW’s reports is yet another example of the rhetorical arms race against the Jewish state. When the “occupation” smear was inadequate to discredit Israel, NGOs in concert shifted to the “apartheid” libel. When that did not stick, they pivoted to “genocide.” These accusations are not intended to persuade, but to defame and shift the Overton Window. Casual observers may doubt the genocide claim, but mistakenly assume that a nearly 300-page report—only a third of which actually discusses Israel’s actions in Gaza, and which uses a large-font, capacious layout—has at least some merit.
The genocide accusation against Israel does not just distort facts; it abuses the language of international law and cheapens the horrors of genocide. Americans who care about the state of Israel—and the integrity of language—should reject it.
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