NP View: No truth behind claim that Israel is committing genocide (msn.com)
School is supposed to be a place where children go to learn life skills and facts about the world around them. But as reported in
Thursday’s National Post , a disturbing number of school principals and faculty have been spreading blatant mistruths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the biggest lie of all: that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
On Nov. 12, a high school principal in Brampton, Ont., landed
in hot water for claiming there was an “Israel-led genocide in Palestine.” But it turns out this was just the tip of the iceberg.
A former teacher at another Brampton school told the Post that her principal’s Twitter feed, which was displayed on a screen in the school’s foyer, has been accusing Israel of committing genocide for the past year. And after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, the principal publicly called for people to “stand collectively against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
The “genocide” accusation has also been levelled by a group of
Democrat s in the U.S.,
numerous United Nations
officials , climate activist
Greta Thunberg , a
host of
academics , along with many others. And it has become a staple of pro-Palestinian rallies. The only problem is that it has no basis in fact.
The UN
defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” including systematic killing, imposing conditions designed to “bring about (the group’s) physical destruction” and “imposing measures intended to prevent births.”
Commonly recognized genocides are readily apparent when looking at population estimates. There were over
16.7-million Jews globally in 1939, but by the end of the Holocaust in 1945, that number had dropped to 11 million. Likewise,
Rwanda was home to 7.9-million people in 1993, but by 1995, fewer than 5.7 million remained.
The Palestinian territories, by comparison, have witnessed a population boom since they fell under Israeli control in the
Six-Day War .
According
to the UN , in 1967, there were 1.1-million Palestinians living in the territories. The
latest Palestinian census , conducted by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in 2017, showed a combined population in Gaza and the West Bank of nearly 4.8 million, excluding Jewish settlements. Today, that number has risen to over 5.3 million, according to UN data.
Clearly, there has been no systematic elimination of the Palestinian people. Nor has there been any attempt to control birth rates: in the
West Bank , women have an average of 3.54 children; in
Gaza , 3.38. This is a higher
fertility rate than in Israel (2.94) and more than twice as high as Canada (1.57).
Even if the anti-Israel crowd was referring to “cultural genocide,” there would be no evidence to support it.
The population of the West Bank, including the Israeli settlements, is estimated to be 80-85 per cent Muslim; in Gaza, Islam is practised by around 99 per cent of the population. And schools in both territories are well known for indoctrinating children with anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda. This is hardly a population being forcibly assimilated. Israel doesn’t even control the territories.
There’s no question that the Hamas fighters who streamed into Israel on Oct. 7 intended to kill or capture as many Israeli civilians as they could. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF), in contrast, have
taken active steps to minimize civilian casualties.
At the start of the war, Israel warned civilians to evacuate northern Gaza. It dropped leaflets, placed phone calls and sent text messages ahead of air strikes and ground offensives. It opened humanitarian corridors so Gazans could move south in safety, and initiated daily four-hour humanitarian pauses so people could gather supplies or travel to safer areas.
Again, these are not the types of actions Israel would take if it were attempting a genocide. That doesn’t mean the death toll hasn’t been high, though.
Gaza’s Hamas-run
health ministry claims that 16,000 Palestinians have died since the start of the war, which is almost certainly inflated and doesn’t distinguish between civilian and terrorist deaths. Nevertheless, IDF officials have privately
told reporters that around 5,000 Hamas fighters have been killed in action and that the civilian casualty ratio is around 2:1 (two civilians killed for each combatant), which would mean that around 10,000 civilians have lost their lives.
This is undoubtedly higher than anyone would like, but the ratio is similar to
many other wars — including the Korean and Vietnam wars — and far lower than the Chechen wars and NATO’s offensive in Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, Israeli officials have expressed hope that the civilian casualty ratio “will be much lower” during the current phase of the conflict.
To ensure that happens, the IDF
created a map that splits Gaza into over 600 small zones, and is using traditional surveillance systems combined with cell phone data and artificial intelligence to track population movements in real time and inform civilians about the precise areas that are about to be hit, and where they can go to be safe.
Rather than committing genocide, Israel is implementing novel and innovative solutions to protect innocent lives. Hamas, on the other hand, has been
firing rockets out of zones Israel has designated as safe — inviting the IDF to retaliate so Hamas can claim more civilian casualties.
The false accusation of “genocide” against Jews isn’t a matter of misunderstanding, of course. Accusing the people who suffered the most systematized genocide ever recorded of committing the same crimes they suffered from is not only meant to wound them, but to erase their history. It erodes the magnitude of true genocide, specifically the Holocaust, which was the ultimate justification for world support for the creation of Israel.
It’s one thing for the antisemites who attend pro-Palestinian rallies to lie about what’s happening in Gaza. It’s quite another when those tasked with educating future generations of Canadians are perpetuating lies that have no basis in fact and are clearly intended to incite hatred against Israelis and their Jewish neighbours here in Canada.
National Post