Another day, another genocide libel against the State of Israel.
Last week, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese submitted a report stating there were "reasonable grounds" to determine that Israel has committed several acts of "genocide" in its war in Gaza. This was hardly a surprise, as Albanese has done everything in her power to ensure that Hamas is allowed to commit genocide against the Jewish people, from claiming that the massacre of October 7 was not antisemitic in nature to declaring that Israel does not have the right to defend itself against Hamas in the aftermath of the massacre.
At the same time that Albanese was presenting her usual drivel, popular podcaster Joe Rogan made far bigger headlines when he echoed the genocide claim against Israel.
In a conversation with Kurt Metzger on March 26, Rogan said that an Al Jazeera video showing an alleged Israeli drone strike that seemingly killed four seemingly unarmed men in Khan Yunis was evidence of genocide.
“And you’re saying that from the perspective of someone who literally went through the Holocaust – or your people, your tribe – went through the f***ing Holocaust, and now you’re willing to do it?”
He did not bring any further evidence to support his accusations, He did not even cite casualty figures, even the falsified ones.
Rogan has a history of flirting with antisemitism. In February, he came under fire for defending well-known Congressional antisemite Ilhan Omar’s use of the antisemitic canard that America only supports Israel because of the influence of Jewish money.
“You know, the idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. That’s like saying Italians aren’t into pizza. It’s f—ing stupid. It’s f—ing stupid,” he outrageously said.
This time, Rogan was defending another antisemite, Candace Owens, who herself defended the antisemitic statements of Kanye West and has spread pro-Hamas propaganda following Hamas’s attempt to commit genocide against the Jewish people. Owens’ growing list of antisemitism scandals led to her leaving Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire conservative news outlet as well as the Freedom Center’s decision to cut ties with her.
Joe Rogan does not appear to know what genocide is. Even if the footage he cited really showed the IDF bombing civilians, and given the source, Al Jazeera, and the mountain of lies not only that pro-Hamas Qatari mouthpiece but the mainstream media and UN officials have told about Israel, he should have been far more credulous of it if he had an ounce of intellectual honesty. He would realize that it would not be anything close to evidence of genocide.
To invoke the Holocaust with regard to an incident in which just four people were killed even if the accusations were true would be almost comical if the consequences were not so severe.
According to a study published in 2019 by Tel Aviv University Professor Lewi Stone in Scientific Advances, “Quantifying the Holocaust: Hyperintense kill rates during the Nazi genocide,” during Operation Reinhard in 1942, the Nazis exterminated nearly 1.5 million Jews in a timeframe of just 100 days, at a rate of about 15,000 murders a day.
This was 1.5 million innocent civilians murdered in just over three months for no other reason than they were Jewish. 500,000 people were wiped from the face of the Earth each month from August through October 1942. Virtually 100 percent were noncombatants. According to Professor Stone, the only reason this unparalleled rate of slaughter ended when it did is because “there were hardly any Jews remaining in the area to kill.”
In Joe Rogan’s fantasy world, this is the same as an Israeli drone killing four people in Gaza.
According to the untrustworthy figures published by Hamas, about 32,000 people have been killed in Gaza so far, about six months into the war, or twice as long as Operation Reinhard lasted before the Nazis ran out of Jews to kill. It took the Nazis just two days to murder as many Jews, and unlike the Holocaust, what is going on in Gaza is an actual war against an enemy with an army numbering in the tens of thousands, and about half or more of the casualties are combatants.
The Nazis exterminated as many Jews as it was physically possible for them to do. If it had been possible for them to kill one million in a single day, they would have done so, if it had been possible for them to kill six million in a single day, they would have done so. And if it had been possible for them to eradicate every last Jew on the planet in a single day, they would have done so.
That is nothing like the IDF, which is doing everything it can do avoid causing civilian casualties and to only kill members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations. The IDF could kill orders of magnitude more people in Gaza if it wanted to, but it does not want to.
But the genocide bill is like Hamas. October 7 was an act of genocide not merely for the grisly death toll, but because it was an act of mass murder committed with the explicit objective of reducing the population of an ethnic group as close to zero as possible. “Only” 1,200 people were murdered because after being initially caught by surprise, the Israelis fought back. Had they been able, the butchers of October 7 would gladly have killed 12,000, 120,000, or 1.2 million Jews.
Hamas would like nothing more than to break the Nazis’ record for most people exterminated in the shortest amount of time and to finish what Hitler started.
Hamas has been open about this. Their founding charter calls for the extermination of the Jewish people, and their spokespeople have stated that their objective is to repeat October 7 over and over again until Israel is destroyed and all its inhabitants are dead.
The entire purpose of the genocide accusation against Israel is to provide cover for Hamas to be able to commit its own genocide and to leave the Jewish people without any protection against the modern-day Hitlers.
Rogan himself seems to know this, as he said during that very podcast that “supporting Hamas is insane.” But he doesn’t seem to think Israel should actually defeat Hamas or prevent future October 7s and is willing to believe any accusation and blow up any incident he thinks happened in Gaza as the Holocaust on a “smaller scale” without evidence.
There is a world of difference between a legitimate war of self-defense Israel did not start and which it is waging against another armed force and the deliberate extermination of millions of people, who were not combatants and not armed, just because they were Jewish.
Joe Rogan is entitled to be upset by the video he saw. But by joining the ‘genocide’ chorus he has taken the side of antisemites like Francesca Albanese and all those who cheer Hamas’s efforts to embark on a second, even more successful and complete Holocaust.
As a podcaster with millions of listeners, his comparatively weak criticisms of the actually genocidal Hamas will be ignored, while his ignorant diatribes against Israel have made the world even more dangerous for Jews and given justification for all who saw October 7 as reason to declare open season on Jews.
Gary Willig is a member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.