“You forget can't forget October 7th…That was genocide at the highest level…” in response to a question regarding Israel committing genocide in Gaza…” --President Donald Trump, Forbes Breaking News, Sept. 20, 2025.
It is as if we are caught up in a surreal time warp that whisks the onlooker back to the early 1930s when the Jew was the perpetual culprit and the ubiquitous villain, responsible for all and any misfortune that befell humanity--from the iniquities of capitalism to the scourges of communism...
Global call to antisemitism
Today, the latest call to antisemitic arms centers on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, where Israel is being branded for committing genocide in its quest to eliminate the Nazi-like Islamo fascist terror organization Hamas and its affiliates.
Consequently, across the academic world, many Jewish students, collectively identified as an extension of Israel, have reportedly being harassed, excluded, or targeted with slurs, and their personal safety severely compromised. Likewise, Jewish faculty and administrative staff have been subjected to similar abuse and harassment. Moreover, protests against Israeli policy frequently find expression in antisemitic rhetoric—for example, invoking derogatory anti-Jewish tropes and stereotypes.
In the USA, this grievous behavior manifested itself in a myriad of hallowed institutions across the entire country, including prestigious campuses such as Harvard, UCLA, Stanford, Cornell, and Pennsylvania.
But why the latest manifestation of Jew-hatred is particularly outrageous and infuriating is not only because it is maliciously misleading, but because it is a total inversion of the truth.
The antithesis of “genocide”
Indeed, ever since its inception, Israel's behavior has been the very antithesis of genocidal. Not only have its groundbreaking achievements in science and technology served to enhance and save human lives across the globe (rather than to degrade and destroy them), but it has a long and proud tradition of dispatching humanitarian aid to disaster areas hit by earthquakes, floods, famine, and other life-threatening calamities. (For a brief synopsis of Israel's humanitarian efforts in recent decades—see here).
Moreover, when engaging in warfare, typically imposed on it by its adversaries' aggression, the IDF has exercised significantly more care in avoiding and/or reducing civilian casualties than any other military- even to the extent of putting its own soldiers at risk. Indeed, West Point urban warfare expert, John Spencer, determined that “Israel has taken more measures to avoid needless civilian harm than virtually any other nation that's fought an urban war”. Sadly, however, it seems that even such unequivocal expert opinion cannot put paid to blatantly fabricated accusations of Israeli “genocide”.
The missing element of “intent”
Further analysis of past legal proceedings regarding charges of “genocide” will underscore how ludicrous the endeavor to ascribe such crime to Israel is. According to a recent NYT piece, “the only case in the court’s [the ICJ] 79-year existence in which its judges have determined that genocide definitively occurred”, was in its decision regarding the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Indeed, in numerous other cases of mass killing—from Darfur, via Biafra, to the Yazidis, the ICJ refrained from designating the actions as “genocide”.
Moreover, whatever the legal niceties, they cannot be allowed to mask the absurdity of the attempt to bring charges of “genocide” against Israel.
Significantly, central to establishing the charge of genocide is the matter of intent, which is crucial for making the case. Indeed, “genocidal intent” is the specific mental element (mens rea) required to classify an act as “genocide” under international law, particularly as stipulated in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, which comprises the generally accepted definition of “genocide”. Perpetrators must be shown to have had the specific intent (dolus specialis) to destroy a particular national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part. Indeed, “genocidal intent” necessitates a deliberate aim to eliminate the targeted group rather than to merely displace or harm its members.
Debunking “genocide”: Netanyahu at UN
In his recent address to the UN General Assembly, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu made short shrift of the accusations of genocide and starvation against his country. Compellingly, he demonstrated why it is impossible to equate genocide—and certainly genocidal intent -with Israeli actions on the ground—such as pleading with civilians to flee the fighting zones and facilitating far-reaching humanitarian supplies, including copious supplies of food. Caustically, he asked: “Would a country committing genocide plead with the civilian population it is supposedly targeting to get out of harm’s way?”
As to the charges of forced starvation, he scoffed: “Israel is accused of deliberately starving the people of Gaza, when Israel is deliberately feeding the people of Gaza. Since the beginning of the war, Israel has let into Gaza more than 2,000,000 tons of food and aid… one ton of aid for every man, woman and child in Gaza; Nearly 3,000 calories per person, per day. Some starvation policy!”
A hijacked legacy?
But perhaps the most grotesque illustration of abuse of the term “genocide” relates to the man credited with coining the term itself, Raphael Lemkin, and an institute, which, allegedly, has hijacked his name for the purposes of propagating anti-Israel slander—in contradiction to the strong pro-Zionist views held by Lemkin himself—a multiple nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
The situation has become so grave that recently, members of the Lemkin family and the European Jewish Association (EJA) engaged a firm of lawyers to petition Pennsylvania officials, including Governor Josh Shapiro, to review allegations of misappropriation of the late jurist’s name by the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention (LIGP) The Institute presents itself as a genocide-prevention think-tank, publishing frequent papers accusing Israel of genocide, which are seized upon anti-Israeli figures such as UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. (For some anti-Israel LIGP works-see here.)
Lemkin’s relatives and the EJA argue that the organization never sought permission to use Raphael Lemkin’s name and that the choice creates the false impression that its positions reflect his legacy.
Indeed, Lemkin’s work—including coining the term “genocide”—focused on the archetypal instance of genocide—the Holocaust—while the Nazi genocide and the events in Gaza could not be more different.
Truth turned on its head
On the one hand, the Nazis slaughtered their own unarmed citizens (and those of neighbors), who had no a-priori intention of destroying the German state, merely because of their ethno-religious identity. On the other hand, Israel, after decades of intermittent attacks from Gaza by Hamas and its affiliates, was subjected to an unprovoked assault in which 1200-1400 of its citizens were murdered and mutilated, and which was widely supported by a clear majority of Palestinian Arab society both in Gaza and Judea-Samaria.
Netanyahu tersely summed up the almost obscene absurdity of the recriminations against Israel: “The truth has been turned on its head. Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization whose charter calls for the murder of all Jews on the planet, this genocidal organization is given a pass”.
So true. So sad.