Coined in 1944 by Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin, "Genocide" is defined in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Genocide Convention) as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group's conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

The term "Genocide" was originally attributed to the systematic intentional Nazi extermination of the Jews of Europe. During that "genocide," also known as the Holocaust, over 6 million Jews were murdered in the course of five years. 

Other modern day "Genocides" have included, among others, the Cambodian genocide in which, between 1975 and 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime murdered an estimated 1.5 to 3 million people; the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, in which at least 500,000 people were killed over a period of several months; the Rwanda genocide, in which from April through mid-July, 1994 at least 800,000 people were killed.

By contrast, the death of an estimated 350,000 to 500,000 German civilians in WWII was never classified as a "Genocide." Neither was the death of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, in the Iraq war that started after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. 

Now, a politicized and inherently biased commission of the United Nations Human Rights Council – an infamously anti-Israel abomination – made up of open antisemites, is accusing Israel of carrying out a "Genocide" in Gaza. They are joined by a long list of international fora, politicians, opinion leaders and cultural figures who casually refer to the situation in Gaza as a deliberate Genocide, relying in large part on the work of assigned teams by the United Nations.

Based on a cacophony of convoluted arguments, the UNHRC commission is trying to distort reality and law. This article lays down the arguments against the use of the term “Genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza, and disproves the claim used by once-trusted international institutions.

The Gaza War – a result of the Hamas massacre in Israel

On October 7, 2023, thousands of terrorists from Gaza invaded Israel. In their actions, the terrorists truly committed a "Genocide" – murdering, raping, torturing and kidnapping civilians. Their genocidal goal was clear: They murdered Jews with the specific intent required by the Genocide Convention. 

Responding to the genocidal massacre, Israel, similar to the US and its allies following the 9/11 terror attacks, launched a war on terror in Gaza. 

Unfortunately, the terrorists in Gaza had twenty years, since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, to prepare militarily and mentally for the massacre. They made the positive decision to flout the Laws of War, and intentionally placed their terror infrastructure in the heart of the urban environment, in homes, in schools, in mosques, in clinics, in kindergartens and even in hospitals. They launched tens of thousands of rockets, missiles and mortars all targeting Israel’s civilian population. Even the United Nations, often critical of Israel, has condemned Hamas’ use of civilian population in the battlefield.

While Israel built bomb shelters and developed cutting edge technology to shoot the rockets from the skies, the Gazan terrorists spent an estimated billion shekels ($325 million) digging terror tunnels under the Gaza Strip, with a cumulative distance greater than the New York subway or the London Underground – an estimated 560 - 720 km. The Gazan tunnels, clarified one senior Hamas leader, were not to provide refuge for the Gazan civilians against the Israeli bombardment, but rather to serve as protection only for the terrorists and dungeons in which to hold the hundreds of hostages they took during the massacre. 

Taking as many precautions as possible, Israel has conducted the war against the over 40,000 strong terror army with great precision. Targeted strikes, and close hand-to-hand combat. At almost every juncture, Israel forfeited the element of surprise, making hundreds of thousands of calls and dropping millions of leaflets, telling the Gazan civilians where the next attacks would be and urging them to evacuate. 

In the first year of the war alone, the Israeli air force attacked 40,300 targets, often using large munitions. The enormity of the attacks, brought one Palestinian leader to comment that “The Israeli army threw more than 100,000 tons of explosives on Gaza which equals 5 times the explosive power of each of the nuclear bombs that were thrown on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the second world war.” 

Alongside the air force, over one hundred thousand soldiers - infantry, armored corps, artillery, engineering and others - operated on the ground.

With the intensity of the fighting, and considering the alleged “genocidal intent,” of such an intense war carried out in the dense urban environment, one would naturally assume that the number civilian casualties were, at least, over 100,000 people. 

How many casualties? The UN attempts to tell

So how many people have been killed in Gaza – terrorists and civilians? The simple answer is – no one really knows. The only source of casualty figures in the Gaza Strip is the “Gaza Ministry of Health”. Much of the international criticism toward Israel relies on figures provided by this agency. The problem is, that the so-called “Gaza Ministry of Health” is run by Hamas, the genocidal terror organization that has a vested interest in exaggerating the death toll. 

The Hamas statistics may be considered null and void by definition, but are also fundamentally flawed for a number of reasons: First, they don’t distinguish the death of combatants from that of civilians; next, they include all natural deaths (15-16 people per day, prior to the start of the war); they include natural infant deaths (disregarding the fact that infant mortality in the Gaza Strip stood at 13-14 babies per thousand births); and finally, they did not distinguish civilians killed inadvertently by Israel from those killed by Hamas and the other terrorists as a result of misfired rockets or by preventing the civilians from evacuating the war zones.

In some occasions, the Hamas fatality lists included people previously claimed by the terrorists to have been killed in the 2014 war, who miraculously came back to life and had the misfortune of being killed for a second time. British military veteran Major Andrew Fox laid out in detail how that method works in his multiple visits to the Gaza Strip during the war.

In the absence of a clear picture, into the fray stepped the United Nations office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid (UNOCHA). Relying on the halo effect afforded to the UN and its organizations by the international community and press, UNOCHA adopted and parroted the Hamas casualty figures, spreading them around the world. Only the keen eyed, honest commentators – sadly few and far between – paid any attention to the small print in which UNOCHA noted that the source of “their” statistics is the Gaza Ministry of Health – i.e. Hamas – with no proper corroboration by an independent UN agency.

The UN publications were so severely compromised, that at one stage, months into the war, the UN substantially lowered the number of women killed and children allegedly killed

Thus, on May 6, 2024, UNOCHA reported that there had been 34,735 reported Palestinian casualties, of whom more than 9,500 (27.3%) were women and more than 14,500 (41.7%) were children. On May 8, just two days later, UNOCHA drastically reduced the death toll to 24,686 "identified" casualties of whom, suddenly, 4,959 were women and 7,797 were children. 

When asked about the revision, a UN spokesman replied that "In the fog of war it's difficult to come up with numbers," but failed to note that the source of their information was Hamas. 

Israel’s military-to-civilian fatality ratio in Gaza – a world-class record

Needless to say, eliminating terrorists is an integral part of the war. In legal terms, the terrorists are all part of an “Organized Armed Group” and are all legitimate targets to be killed, unless they are hors de combat.

Thus, even if one were to adopt the statistics published by Hamas, and subtract the natural deaths, infant mortality, and deaths caused by the terrorists, the death rate of combatants to civilians would be only just slightly higher than 1:1. 

This ratio is unheard of in urban warfare, where the combatant to civilian ration is often 1:6, or in some cases even 1:9. In fact the, the manner in which Israel conducted the fighting in Gaza prompted the Chair of Urban Warfare at Westpoint, Col. John Spencer, to note that Israel has set a new “Gold Standard,” that western armies would not be able to maintain.  

While Israel was actively fighting the terrorists with its right hand, it simultaneously facilitated the entry into Gaza of over 2 million tons of humanitarian aid, with its left. However, 85%-90% of the aid delivered by the UN, was “intercepted” – a code word that stipulates the aid provided by the UN was stolen by Hamas during the delivery process. In contrast, the aid delivered by the Gazan Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an enterprise led by American contractors and war veterans, has gone directly into the hands of the Gazan civilians. 

The statistics that do not matter

While cherry-picking statistics provided by Hamas and manipulating them to Israel’s detriment, the UNHRC commission ignored the less convenient statistics. 

Thus, for example, in July 2024, the UN reported that that over 50,000 babies had been “born in war-torn #Gaza.” That’s an average over the ten-month period of 5,000 babies per month. Statistics of the Palestinian Authority (only marginally more reliable than Hamas) indicate that in most years the birth rate in the Gaza Strip was between 50,000 – 56,000. More recent UN reports noted that there are “150,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza who require feeding in micronutrient supplements.” 

In other words, the alleged “Genocide” in Gaza, is so unique, that it even includes more births than deaths. That leads us to the incredible conclusion, relying on UN statistics themselves, that the Gazan “Genocide” is the only one in history in which the population actually grew.

Comparative analysis to other conflicts

The fake “Gazan Genocide” is not the only unique element of the war. In almost every war in history, civilians who sought to escape the war zone were allowed to take refuge in neighboring countries. Thus, during the Russia-Ukraine war, an estimate 5.7 million Ukrainians fled their country. And that’s without a formally-recognized “genocide” taking place, despite extremely heavy civilian casualties on the Ukrainian side. Referring to the civil war in Syria, the in March 2025, the UN Refugee Agency noted that, "Since 2011, more than 14 million people had been forced to flee their homes in search of safety. More than 7.4 million Syrians remain internally displaced in their own country where 70 percent of the population is in need of humanitarian assistance and 90 percent live below the poverty line. More than 6 million Syrian refugees live in countries neighboring Syria including Türkiye, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq or abroad."

In contrast, no country in the region is offering refuge to civilians from Gaza. Egypt, the natural destination for such a cause being Gaza’s immediate neighbor, has officially closed its gates and declared from day 1 of the war that no refugees will cross over to its territory. And yet, the international community has been remarkably silent, not pressuring Cairo and Al Sisi to meet their international obligations. Some European countries, Canada, and others offered some quotas of Gazan refugee admissions. If anyone honestly believed that Israel is committing a “Genocide,” countries would be falling over themselves to find a way to get the Gazans out. 

The UNHRC commission, the UN’s other bodies or the ICJ “kangaroo court”, while accusing Israel of Genocide, never let the facts bother them. In fact, in one of the reports of the commission,  referring to a building that allegedly served as a women's health center, they even accused Israel of committing sexual violence against a building since the IDF had targeted the top floor of the building. However, from the accompanying description of the events, there was no proof that the IDF had targeted the building as a women's center, per se, and it is more likely that the position targeted served as a terrorist sniper position.  

Lawfare – the next move

While pundits and commentators are casually accusing Israel of “Genocide,” actually proving that the deaths in Gaza were “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group” in a court of law will be impossible. 

Unless of course, the court adjudicating the matter is the International Court of Justice (ICJ). While again enjoying a halo of legitimacy, the ICJ is part of the UN. It is less of a proper court, and more a political installment, that unfortunately has been weaponizing the prestige bestowed to it to bash Israel on occasions saved for it alone, singling it out as a unique case study. Unfortunately, senseless statements by some of Prime Minister Netanyahu's domestic political rivals have contributed to this climate. While Netanyahu's opponents are certainly entitled to be critical of him, his government and their policies, on too many occasions, unfounded echoing of the biased propaganda has fueled the anti-Israel rhetoric and has tarnished the reputation of the IDF and Israel as a whole.

The truth of the matter is that any honest and informed person knows full well that Israel is not committing “Genocide.” Those whose goal is not targeting Israel at any cost, even at the cost of risking the reputation of international institutions, can see the facts. Such is the case of John Spencer, Andrew Fox, Richard Kemp, and the Trump administration. 

The “genocide” accusation, malicious and fictitious as it may be, similar to the previous accusation that Israel was “starving” the Gazans, and similar to the accusation that Israel is an “Apartheid” state, are not goals in and of themselves. Rather they are part of a concerted plan to delegitimize Israel and undermine its very existence.  

Had Israel been interested to commit a Genocide in Gaza, no evacuation notices would have been issued. More than one person would have been killed by every bomb dropped on Gaza. At least one person would have been killed by each tank shell fired. Having gathered much of the population in a relatively small area, Israel would have carpet bombed the tent cities, using cluster ammunition to increase the kill rate. Had Israel truly intended to carry out a “Genocide,” it would not have allowed any aid to go into Gaza, let alone over 2 million tons. If Israel was truly carrying out a “Genocide” in Gaza, the birth rate would not exceed the birth rate in regular years.  

As Golda Meir once noted, “When peace comes, we will perhaps, in time, be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

For Israel, the death of civilians is genuinely a tragedy. For Hamas and their UN terror-supporters the death of civilians is a strategy.  

In the film “The Princess Bride”, Sicilian bad guy Vizzini repeatedly exclaims that the progress of Westley to locate Princess Buttercup is “Inconceivable!”. After shouting “Inconceivable!” one too many times, his hired muscle, Inigo Montoya, critically declares: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Hamas propaganda aside, reality shows that Israel is arguably the worst actor ever to carry out a “Genocide.” Just look at the facts.