Let's talk about the war of words over Gaza

Whether or not you or I believe genocide is going on isn't the point; people are suffering, and we should hear their voices

As Israel continues to prosecute its war on Gaza, which has likely claimed well over 50,000 Palestinian lives and some 700 Israeli lives since the day after the Oct. 7 massacre, charges of genocide (see the definition below)* continue to pile up. Just this week, Amnesty International described the U.S. veto of the UN Security Council vote calling for the end of the war as “shameful and inhumane amid Israel’s ongoing genocide.” The term has become yet another front in the war of words between pro-Palestinians and pro-Israelis around the world.

Indeed, Israel has faced such charges almost as long as the war has lasted. Early use of the term concerned alarm over “genocidal statements” by Israeli politicians, like the announcement of a full siege of the enclave and the declaration of a “Gaza Nakba” and public appeals to “protect the Palestinian people against genocide.” However, by September 2024, the UN Special Committee on Israeli practices affecting the Palestinian people concluded that “that the policies and practices of Israel during the reporting period are consistent with the characteristics of genocide.”

I personally find this emotionally charged debate, which usually lacks nuance, counterproductive. However, I find myself compelled to raise it not only so that I may contribute my own views and perspectives how to approach this debate, which feels unavoidable, but also to share important perspectives from the lesser heard voices that I find to be undervalued and underappreciated.

Let me start with my perspective, which was greatly impacted by the book East West Street. The books explains how the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term and campaigned for the Genocide Convention. It is a legalistic term referring to the intentional destruction of a group. It is a very high legal bar, so high that the tribunal at Nuremberg prosecuted Nazi war criminals for crimes against humanity rather than genocide. Hersch Lauterpacht suggested use of the term “crimes against humanity” when he was part of the team building the case against the Nazi suspects at Nuremberg to refer to atrocities against individual civilians. As the author, Philippe Sands, described it, “No longer would a state be free to treat its people as it wished.” Genocide conventions at the international level since World War II have been limited to very clear-cut cases like Rwanda, Srebrenica, Cambodia and the Yazidis, where groups of people were literally rounded up and executed.

In Israel’s case, it can still claim the civilian deaths as resulting from its attacks on a well-armed group of militants, hiding among the local population. From my understanding, most of the killing involves airstrikes that nominally target Hamas members, although it certainly looks indiscriminate to me. Meanwhile, Israel has directed civilians to safe zones that aren’t always safe and has allowed in humanitarian aid deemed insufficient. For all the justified criticism, no convicted party to genocide has ever done anything close to these acts to mitigate civilian casualties. Thus, I am more comfortable saying that individuals have likely committed war crimes and crimes against humanity rather than alleging genocide. An example would be the reports of torture going on at the Sde Teiman detention facility and arbitrary killings inside Gaza. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert penned an opinion piece last week that largely reflects my views on the situation.

Ultimately, as much as I oppose the killing, I find using the term “genocide” distracts us from the core of the matter. Doing so shifts the conversation away from focusing on the harm Israel is causing to a semantic debate that allows both sides to dig into their positions without having to consider alternate paths. The pro-Israel side dismisses anyone alleging genocide as an antisemite, then uses the “fact” that no genocide is happening to normalize the violence. It then justifies the destruction as stemming from Israel having “no choice” and to blame Hamas for civilian deaths. Meanwhile, the pro-Palestinian side delegitimizes Israelis as “monsters” – which absolves Hamas of its responsibility for perpetuating the violence. I would rather stop debating whether the killing constitutes genocide and focus on the idea that too many civilians are dying, full stop.

A perspective I hadn’t considered

And yet… a Palestinian colleague gave me a perspective I hadn’t considered. He told me the other week that he is in touch every day with people in Gaza, and what they are experiencing *feels* like genocide. And that’s why it’s important for them to cry out to the world about their lived experiences. They are less concerned with whether or not it is strategically constructive to use the term because they want the world to know what they feel. And I couldn’t argue with that. For over 600 days, with the exceptions of two brief cease-fires, Israel has been relentlessly attacking Gaza, killing Palestinian civilians in unprecedented numbers, reinforcing their genocide narrative.

Cognitive dissonance setting in

Most Jews, however, have looked at the attacks by Hamas and its allies, albeit less so over time, and have remained convinced the war is necessary. Many Jews also believe the story that the Israeli military is the most moral army in the world. But the military’s actions of the past 20 months have increasingly caused cognitive dissonance as it has drifted further and further away from the declared value of “purity of arms” – which is part of the official “IDF Spirit”. Some who faithfully defended Israel have reached the point where they can no longer support what Israel is doing, such as Tangle publisher Isaac Saul, because the war looks more like a bid for permanent control and ethnic cleansing than an existential necessity.

That value of purity of arms was rooted in another defensive ethos, restraint, known in Hebrew as Havlaga. Labor Zionist leader Berl Katznelson once declared, “Havlagah means, our weapon will be pure. We learn the weapon, we carry the weapon, we resist those who come to attack us, but we do not want our weapon to be stained with the blood of innocents.” Commitment to this value is the reason why Zionist leaders condemned the King David Hotel bombing in 1946 and the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948. It’s the reason that Israel restricted reprisals against civilian targets after the horrifying Qibya massacre of 69 Palestinian villagers in Jordan in 1953.

These days, the Israeli military seems to be lacking both restraint and the purity of arms ethic. In 1953, killing 69 people in one day was deemed to much. Since October 7, Israel has averaged killing 89 Palestinians a day, every single day, with no sign of abating.

So, rather than debate whether or not Israel is committing genocide, I believe it would serve us better if we pay attention to those who are suffering, who are experiencing hell on earth every single day, without getting distracted by words like genocide. A good start is this week’s episode of This American Life, in which Chana Joffe-Walt spoke to Gazans both inside and outside the embattled enclave. Particularly poignant is her short update about Banias, a 9-year-old girl in Gaza she interviewed in a previous episode. Then there is an essay by Abdallah Aljazza, who writes for “We Are Not Numbers” and was part of the Gaza Sky Geeks high-tech project before the war – with the caveat to ignore the title, as he never includes the word “genocide” in his essay.

If you’re feeling cognitive dissonance, try to lean into it rather than to resolve it quickly, which is what our brains prefer to do. You don’t have to adopt the narrative of those you see as your rival, but you will find the nuances that may help you free yourself of your own biases.

A girl walking inside Gaza last August. Photo: Jaber Jehad Badwan

* In the present Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.