Israeli “Genocide”
Genocide—Definition: “The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.”
One aspect of the myriad problems plaguing the Middle East is the ease with which commentators accuse the Israelis of carrying out policies of “genocide” against the Palestinians or, more recently, the Lebanese. For example, earlier this week, Mohamed Ashab wrote in the Arab-language paper (English edition) Dar Al-Hayat, that American diplomatic maneuvers had assured that “Israel has been given one more week in its war of genocide” against the Lebanese people. In 2003 the Muslim Council of Britain refused to participate in a “Holocaust Memorial National Day” remembrance in Great Britain because of the failure to acknowledge the genocide being carried out against the Palestinian people.
I’m sorry, but this is pure bullshit. Even if you work with the broader UN definition of genocide—“acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”—the charge doesn’t pass the proverbial “duck” test. The current population of Lebanon is about 3.8 million. The number of dead Lebanese after three weeks of “Israeli genocide” is nearing 1,000, or at most about 300 per week. Does anyone truly think that if the Israeli government actually wished to carry out a genocidal campaign against the Lebanese that the best the IDF could do would be to kill 300 civilians a week? And how about some perspective? During the Lebanese civil war of the ‘70s and ‘80s nearly 150,000 Lebanese died. In fact, more Arabs died during the Lebanese civil war than have been killed by the Israelis in all the wars since 1948.
What of the situation among the Palestinians with regard to Israeli “genocide”? The number of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza must have markedly declined following the June 1967 war and the start of the Israeli occupation and campaign of “genocide,” right? Well, not exactly. The number of Palestinians living in Gaza has increased from c. 450,000 to 1.3 million, and in the West Bank from c. 900,000 to 2.3 million. In other words, the Palestinian population has increased by nearly 300 percent since 1967. If the population of the United States (c. 194 million in 1967) had undergone a comparable “genocide,” instead of having just under 300 million people in our country today we would have a population of over 530 million.
Now, if someone wants to term Israeli policy as harsh, cruel, or vicious, while I would not agree, such a position would be arguable. But to throw out statements about Israeli genocide is . . . asinine.
Here’s an example of the reality of “genocide.” In 1939 the Jewish population of Europe was just under 10 million. In 1945, six years later, it was just over 4 million.
When you hear or see someone accusing the Israelis of “genocide,” that person is insulting your intelligence. If someone wants to lecture me about genocide committed against Jews, Armenians, or the native peoples of the Americas, I’ll listen. But I have no ear for tales of Israeli “genocide” committed against their Arab neighbors.
