Monthly Archives: May 2024

Talking Points for College Students Concerning Palestinian Protests

31 Friday May 2024

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I was invited this May to speak with my synagogue’s graduating high school seniors about how best they might respond to anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators on college campuses when they appear on their college campuses for the first time beginning in August when classes commence.

I emphasized a few points up-front, that the October 7 Hamas massacre and hostage taking is the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust and that the death and destruction in Gaza of thousands of Palestinian civilians is a humanitarian nightmare. I said as well that Hamas must be held to account for bringing this war upon Israel and the Palestinian people and for deliberately using Palestinians as human shields resulting in the death and injury of tens of thousands of innocent human beings. Though Israel in this war of self-defense bears responsibility for harm done to Palestinian civilians too, Hamas is by far the most responsible party in this disastrous war.

We talked about many things together in our two-sessions and three hours of conversation including the harm Israel’s continuing Occupation of the West Bank and of East Jerusalem has had on the Palestinians and upon the soul of the Jewish people and Jewish State. I noted that most protesting students against Israel, however, despite their legitimate humanitarian concerns for innocent Palestinian civilians, do not understand the history and politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and more generally the century-long Israeli-Arab conflict, have little knowledge of the nature and character of Hamas as an absolutist terrorist Islamic organization intent on the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of all Jews. Most students do not understand Israeli democracy and politics, the nature of the current extremist Israeli government as opposed to the more moderate attitudes of the Israeli population as a whole, nor do they understand how  the American intersectional movement’s presumptions about victimization have little application to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I urged the students, when they get to their college or university, to do two things: First, find a Jewish community on campus in which they can feel safe and supported in their pro-Israel liberal values and concerns; and second, to take courses on Middle East politics and history with professors who are fair, balanced, moral, critical thinkers, and who present the varying positions and perspectives of Zionism, Israel and Palestine without prejudice.

I presented the following talking points to the students and we discussed each one in depth. The subject of each bullet point is in response to a faulty accusation against Zionism, Israel and the Jewish people. Just as the medieval rabbinic sage Rashi (11th century France) wrote commentaries on the Tanakh and Talmud in response to a koshi (difficulty) in the text, so too are the following responses to difficulties in the debate concerning Israel and the Palestinian people.

  • As a liberal Jew, liberal Zionist, and supporter of the State of Israel, one can be both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian, meaning that one can support two states for two peoples even as both peoples claim the same land as its national home. A 2-state solution will require compromise by Israel and the Palestinians that includes establishing clear borders, sharing Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel and the capital city of Palestine, security guarantees for both states, a demilitarized State of Palestine, shared water, economic and cultural relations. Hamas is not capable of compromise and neither are the extreme right-wing messianists in the Israeli ruling government coalition and settler community in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and so they should not be at the table when negotiations take place. True peace will require that Israelis and Palestinians not demonize the other as illegitimate in their respective educational systems. Two states for two peoples is necessary as a matter of justice for the Palestinian people who deserve, like the Jewish people, to have a nation-state of their own, and for Israel’s self-interest to remain democratic and Jewish.
  • In 1900, there were 80,000 Jews living in the Land and 600,000 Arabs. By 1939, there were 450,000 Jews and 1.05 million Arabs living in Palestine. Jews had flocked to Palestine as European antisemitism intensified. Many thousands of Arabs came from surrounding Arab lands seeking work that became available because of Zionist building projects. Those Arabs who emigrated are called “Palestinian” if they only lived in Palestine for at least 2 years (according to the PLO’s designation). Many have no historic connection to Palestine beyond the past 80 or 90 years.Jews have lived in the Land of Israel continuously since antiquity and the Land was never devoid of Jews since the time of the Biblical Judges (circa 1200 B.C.E.).
  • Zionism is defined generally as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and is, at its heart, the Jewish people’s social justice movement (see below). Zionism began in the late 19th century as part of a European movement in many countries to establish nation states. Zionism was a response to the “problem of the Jews” (i.e. antisemitism) and the “problem of Judaism” (i.e. that Jewish and Hebraic culture would save the Jewish people from disaffection and assimilation). The Zionist movement is highly diverse today from secular to ultra-Orthodox. Zionism presumes that Judaism is far more than a religion; that it is a civilization inclusive of a long history, a Homeland, languages (Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Aramaic), law (Torah, Talmud, Codes, Responsa literature, etc.), ethics, a sacred literature, faith, theologies, rites, rituals, holidays, customs, culture, and the arts.
  • The State of Israel is the modern political expression of Jewish nationalism and is NOT a colonial power, nor is it a foreign element in the Middle East, nor an oppressive racist state inside the Green Line (the armistice line after the 1948 War). The majority of Israelis come from the Arab world, North Africa, Ethiopia, Latin America, Asia, and are people of color. Therefore, it is not a “racist” nation, though there are plenty of racists in Israel. Israel is also not an Apartheid State as was South Africa because every Israeli Arab citizen has equal rights with every Jewish Israeli citizen. Palestinian Israelis, however, living inside the Green Line are treated as 2nd class citizens with respect to services given by the state and, in many cases, there is discrimination. However, unlike Apartheid, in Israel there are no separation laws. Arab Israelis are lawyers, physicians and health care workers, business people, and Members of the Israeli Knesset. There is also an Arab-Israeli citizen on Israel’s High Court. Those Arabs living in the West Bank and in Jerusalem, however, are not Israeli citizens and live under an often harsh military administration. Those Palestinians do not enjoy the same rights as Israeli Jews and Arabs.
  • Judaism is both a universal and a particular tradition, and Zionism serves not only the rights and security of the Jewish people but is the social justice movement for the Jewish people. The ancient Biblical Prophets of Israel, though expressing universal humanitarian values, were speaking specifically to the Jewish people in the Land of Israel. Tikun Olam (translated as “the repair of the world,” originally a mystic concept, is understood today as “social justice”) has universal humanitarian application, but it was never divorced from the peoplehood of Israel (Am Yisrael). The Jewish State has become an arena in which, for the first time in 2000 years, the Jewish people has been able to test our tradition’s ethics and moral principles in the context of our attaining sovereignty and power. Those Jews who focus only on Judaism’s ethical tradition, however, while ripping it from the peoplehood of Israel have done a gross disservice to the nature of Judaism itself.
  • In 1948, 600,000 Jews were expelled and/or fled from antisemitism in Arab Lands after rioting against them was provoked upon the establishment of the State of Israel. The same numbers of Palestinian Arabs fled or were driven from Palestine-Israel after the 1948 and 1967 wars. The former settled in the new State of Israel and the latter settled into refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and the Gaza Strip. However, thousands of Palestinians remained in their villages and cities inside the new State of Israel and were not forced to flee. Both groups of Jews and Palestinian Arabs also left the region and settled abroad. Whereas Palestinian leadership is demanding on behalf of Palestinian refugees the rightful return to their homes and villages that they vacated in the midst of an aggressive  war prosecuted against Israel by the surrounding Arab states (the purpose of which was to destroy the Jewish state of Israel), Jewish refugees from Arab lands have never made a comparable demand upon those Arab nations from which they fled nor do they wish to return to their homes in those Arab nations.
  • The expression “From the River to the Sea – Palestine will be free!” (Referring to the Jordan River on the east to the Mediterranean Sea on the west) is essentially an anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic declaration because it denies to the Jewish people what every other people in the world are entitled to claim for themselves – the right of self-definition, self-determination and a nation state of their own in their ancestral Homeland.
  • Some Jews are anti-Zionists but are not necessarily self-hating Jews or antisemites. These include extreme orthodox Jews who believe that a Jewish state can only come with the coming of the Messiah, and anti-nationalists, such as those affiliated with The Jewish Voice for Peace. We may not understand them or agree with their perspective, but their positions do not necessarily mean that they are self-hating Jews or antisemitic, though many harbor positions and attitudes that may indeed bleed into antisemitism.
  • Hamas is an extremist, intolerant, anti-liberal, misogynist, anti-LGBTQ, Islamic, autocratic, and theocratic Palestinian terror organization that, before October 7, fired tens of thousands of missiles into undisputed Israeli territory indiscriminately from Gaza since it took over the Strip in 2007 in a violent coup de etat against the Palestinian Authority (PA). Hamas’ first order of business in 2007 was to march leaders of the competitive PA to the highest buildings and throw them to their deaths. They execute Palestinians frequently who speak against the Hamas regime, deny the rights of LGBTQ individuals, and according to their extremist interpretation of Sharia law, punish girls and women with beatings if they express individuality and resist the patriarchal order. They subject girls to clitoral mutilation and women are required to wear the Burqa or Nijab or Hijab as a sign of submission to male dominance and power. Before October 7, Hamas had the approval of less than 30 percent of Palestinian Gazans. No election has been held since 2005. Hamas must be distinguished from the Palestinians as a whole. Many protestors of this war do not distinguish between Hamas and the Palestinian people thereby indicating their lack of understanding of the Palestinians and the historic nature and character of the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Hamas conflicts.
  • The Biden Administration has been the most supportive American presidential administration of any in Israel’s history. President Biden has a life-long deep affinity for the people and State of Israel and has a vision of a united regional pro-western coalition that includes Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Emirates, and a reconstituted Palestinian Authority against the Islamic extremist Iran and its Muslim proxies (e.g. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, among others). Biden has called for a pathway to a 2-state solution, and Saudi Arabia has agreed to make peace with Israel if Israel accepts an eventual 2-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To those who criticize Biden as not being pro-Israel enough or as anti-Arab fail to understand the nuances of this conflict, the nature of Hamas and Islamic extremism, and the international stakes for America and western civilization.
  • The current Israeli government is the most extreme, right-wing, supranational, supremacist, and racist government in Israeli history. It is against a 2-state solution and believes that Palestinian-Israeli citizens should not enjoy equal rights with Israeli Jewish citizens. There is still a strong minority of Israeli opinion, however, that recognizes that only in a 2-state solution can Israeli democracy and the Jewish character of the only Jewish state in the world be sustained over the long term. To be pro-Israel and anti-Israeli government is therefore legitimate, especially in a democracy.
  • Diaspora Jews have the right to share our opinions with Israeli leaders based on the premise that we are one people and one greater Jewish family living in the Jewish State and Jewish Diaspora with strong links of affection and identity. Though Diaspora Jews are not citizens of the State of Israel, do not pay taxes, and do not send their children to the Israeli army, what Israel does affects Diaspora Jewish pride and security nevertheless, and we therefore have a right to share our ideas with Israel’s leaders. That is different than our demanding that Israel follow policies we believe it should follow. For the first time during the pre-October 7 protest demonstrations against the anti-democratic judicial overhaul by the current Israeli government, opposition leaders called upon Diaspora Jews to support them and be part of the conversation concerning what Israel’s democracy required.
  • There is a strong minority of extremist and violent West Bank Jewish settlers whose goal is to force Palestinians to leave the West Bank so that Jews can expand the borders of the Jewish State to include all the land between the river and the sea as part of the State of Israel de jure. These extremists are a destabilizing force within Israel.

In the past few weeks, I posted several blogs that help to clarify the difficult issues facing Israel and world Jewry since October 7. See www.rabbijohnrosove.blog. I discuss there anti-Zionism, anti-Israel sentiment, and antisemitism on college campuses, the charge of genocide against Israel, and why Israel is worthy of our love and support in light of this war and all that Israel has contributed to the Jewish people and humanity as a whole.

My Memoir is now published and available from the publisher

22 Wednesday May 2024

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My book From the West to the East – A Memoir of a Liberal American Rabbi is now available from my publisher – West of West Center Books – https://westofwestcenter.com/product/from-the-west-to-the-east/

I hope you will acquire a copy for yourselves, your high school to adult age children and grandchildren, friends and colleagues who might gain insight and inspiration in reading it.

The following is advanced praise for the book:

“From the West to the East is a beautifully written and thoughtful guide to the challenges facing American Jewry, shared by one of America’s most influential rabbis. From the demographic changes in the Jewish community and its relationship to Israel, to the existential threats and profound moral dilemmas confronting Israel amidst a tide of rising antisemitism, Rabbi Rosove’s words are sure to inspire — and provoke — as any account of this period should and must.” – Congressman Adam Schiff, author of Midnight in Washington – How We Almost Lost our Democracy and Still Could

“In this moving memoir, Rabbi John Rosove models how a liberal Jew can be a passionate lover of Israel while remaining uncompromisingly faithful to the prophetic tradition… Now, at a critical crossroads for the community, he offers an indispensable guide to help American Jews navigate through a time of crisis.” – Yossi Klein Halevi, author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem

“In his powerful and revealing memoir, Rabbi John Rosove persuasively confronts some of the most challenging moral issues of our time, including Israel-Palestine, civil rights and liberties, immigration, and more. From the West to the East is not just a memoir. It’s a book full of lessons to help us navigate a world that often seems unrecognizable.” – Zev Yaroslavsky, former member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, author of Zev’s Los Angeles

“From the West to the East invites us to experience an immersive slideshow—one that is personal, vivid and compelling—the engaging journey of a committed liberal American Zionist leader over the last 50 years. Through reflections and wonderful stories, Rabbi Rosove deftly captures the complexities, beauty and challenges of navigating. This is not a preachy tome; it is lovingly told from his California home. With wisdom gleaned from experience, Rosove’s memoir illuminates how the interplay of activist courage and faith have been builders of American liberal Zionism. It shares what principled determination can yield and hence, a measure of hope to draw upon now, in these most wrenching times.” – Robin M. Kramer, former chief of staff for both Los Angeles Mayors Richard Riordan and Antonio Villaraigosa, and past president of the board of trustees of Temple Israel of Hollywood

“At a time when lots of us are sick with despair, Rabbi John Rosove offers a cure. A life of activism – from his arrest as an anti-war protestor, to lobbying to free Soviet Jews, to fighting for peace between Israelis and Palestinians – Like Abraham Joshua Heschel a generation before him, Rabbi Rosove shows that at the heart, and power, of Judaism are decency, kindness, empathy, and Menschlichkeit. His is the voice, and this is the beautiful book we need in these troubled times.” – Professor Noah Efron, Chair of Graduate Program in Science, Technology & Society at Bar Ilan University, Israel, writer and host of “The Promised Podcast”

“From the West to the East is a beautifully written, intensely personal and deeply profound book. John takes us through the long arc of his consequential and impactful career, and with the benefit of hindsight, brings ideas, emotions and history alive. His love for Judaism, America and Israel shine through on every page. A rabbi’s rabbi, this memoir is a must read for rabbis and all who are interested in the contemporary Jewish experience.” – Rabbi Ammi Hirsch, Senior Rabbi, Stephen S. Wise Free Synagogue, Manhattan, NY, host of “In These Times Podcast”

“John Rosove’s fine sense of humor, his excellent storytelling skills, his willingness to address the most confounding disputes head on make this memoir an affecting and engaging read. Rosove has had a lifelong love affair with Israel, at once clear-eyed and affectionate, avoiding the Pollyannaish sentimentality and extreme judgmentalism that so often obfuscate our Israel discourse. His memoir is an act of witness and testimony, an insider’s up-to-the-minute account of the dilemmas that have tried the souls of liberal American Jewry as Israel’s government has grown increasingly illiberal. This book is a call to arms for the vision of Reform Judaism and of Zionism and it is a delight to read.” – Don Futterman – author of Adam Unrehearsed, co-host of The Promised Podcast, Israel Director of The Moriah Fund

“Rabbi John Rosove’s Memoir is a ‘Guide for the Perplexed’ in our era. John embodies the deep connection between Zionism and liberalism and he refuses to compromise his moral standards at a time when discerning truth is becoming ever more difficult.” – Rabbi Galit Cohen-Kedem, Founding rabbi of Kehilat Kodesh v’Chol in Holon, Israel

“Rabbi Rosove vividly portrays his life as a man with two functioning hearts in a poignant reflection of his deep connection to both the land of the free and the home of the brave, as well as to Jerusalem. Both hearts pulsate with a powerful Jewish conscience that sees, hears, motivates for action and inspires reflection and understanding. This book recounts the personal odyssey of a unique rabbi unafraid to wrestle with man and God in his quest for Tikun Olam.” – Anat Hoffman, Founder and Chair of Women of the Wall, former Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center

“I describe Rabbi John Rosove this way: Piv v’libo shavim (His mouth speaks what his heart feels), which is the sense one gets when reading From the West to the East. I was swept along on his life journey and experiences, sharing in his dilemmas with all its complexities—all lovingly expressed through his tears of joy and sorrow.” – Yaron Shavit, Deputy Chairman of the Executive of The Jewish Agency for Israel, President of the 38th Zionist Congress

Despite an increasingly divided Israel at war, the State of Israel is still worth celebrating

16 Thursday May 2024

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Introductory Note: I spoke earlier this week on Israeli Independence Day in Washington, D.C. to members of the Adas Israel Congregation. I was invited by the synagogue’s rabbis, on the occasion of the publication of my Memoirs, to reflect about how Israel and Zionism have changed since my childhood and where I believe we liberal Zionists and lovers of Israel are today, especially since October 7. I will announce here in the coming days when my Memoirs become available through Amazon and/or the publisher.

The following is what I said to the Adas Israel Congregation, a large Conservative Synagogue in the nation’s capital:

Today is the 221st day of the war against Hamas. Many Israelis are saying יש יום העצמאות אבל כולנו עוד בסוכות – “This is Israel Independence day, but we’re all still in Sukkot.” It will remain so until, I suspect, the surviving hostages in Gaza are all home – May that day come as soon as possible.

So much has changed since October 7 in the Jewish world as our people are pondering the meaning of this painful inflection point in Israeli history. I think that at the very least, what’s required of us all is to revisit what it means for us to be part of the larger Jewish family that encompasses both Israelis and Diaspora Jews.

Despite the many questions we likely carry in the midst of this longest war in Israeli history, I believe that celebrating this day of Yom Haatzmaut is still a necessity for our people, for the story of the Jewish people and the founding of the State of Israel are unique in world history. I say this despite the fact that Israel is increasingly divided between what Haaretz’s columnist Alon Pinkus describes as a

“…high-tech, secular, outward-looking, imperfect but liberal state – and the Kingdom of Judea, a Jewish-supremacist, ultra-nationalist theocracy with messianic, antidemocratic tendencies that encourage isolation. Never in the proud 76 years of Israel’s sovereign existence has there been a sadder, more somber, depressing and acrimonious Independence Day than this year. On a day that usually highlights and extols Israel’s major achievements, the country will instead be solemnly introspective, despondent, angry and devastated by the catastrophe of October 7, 2023.”

So much has changed about Israel since I was young growing up in the 1950s. I was raised to understand Zionism and Israel in romantic idealistic terms and that our people, long-persecuted, had transformed the narrative of Jewish Diaspora identity from that of being a powerless and victimized religious community into a free, independent, strong and empowered people by virtue of returning to our national home and establishing for the first time in 2000 years a Jewish and democratic state.

I spent my first year of rabbinic studies in Jerusalem beginning in the summer of 1973, only a few months before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. In the months following that transformative event, the atmosphere in Israel dramatically changed, not unlike what has occurred this past year since October 7. A dark pall of gloom and grief settled over the country. Gone were the ebullient years following the ‘67 war. Gone was a sense of can-do optimism. Gone was the feeling that the ’67 lightning Israeli victory against Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan would deter future Arab attempts to destroy the Jewish state. The ‘73 war shook the nation and transformed Israelis’ self-image from that of David battling Goliath to a far more vulnerable country. Israelis were reminded that antisemites still wished the Jewish people harm. Nothing had so shaken Israel since 1948 as the Yom Kippur War, until October 7.

In my lifetime, Israelis and the Jewish world have not been as stunned, convulsed with fear, grief and outrage as by the Hamas attack that reminded us of our Jewish vulnerability and of Israel being situated in a dangerous neighborhood.

For decades leading up to October 7, in addition to the internal changes described so accurately by Alon Pinkus, I believe that both Israelis and Zionists abroad didn’t take seriously enough that the international ground was being prepared by Israel’s enemies over many decades to transform our Zionist narrative as one of longing to be new kinds of Jews – strong, independent and resilient in our ancient Homeland – into the image of a foreign colonial transplant thrust into the heart of the Arab Muslim world, an usurper of Palestinian land and homes, an oppressor over the oppressed, an occupier and victimizer of the indigenous Palestinian people.

Accentuating this change internationally of the image of Israel as a racist oppressor state is the rise of the intersectional movement in America. Intersectionalism is defined as “the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, and intersect in the experiences of marginalized people and groups” thereby forming alliances by oppressed groups against oppressors. Intersectionalism eventually conflated the blacks under Apartheid in South Africa with Palestinian Arabs living under Israeli occupation. Israel is now hated as the despised “other” by too many vulnerable far-left black and brown progressives who actually have nothing personally to do with the Middle East, who have little knowledge of the history of and nature of the Zionist movement or the State of Israel and its multiple contributions to the world, its democratic and pluralistic character. Those anti-Israel far-left people of color do not know, I suspect, that the majority of Israel’s population are non-white former immigrants from the Arab world, North Africa, Ethiopia, Latin America, and Asia. Nor do they understand the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the multiple times Israel was prepared to exchange land for peace in a two states for two peoples resolution of that long conflict.

Since October 7, I’ve worried about a great many things, the most prominent being the security of the State of Israel, the well-being of the Israeli hostages and their families, and the shattered families of those murdered on that day, two of whom, young sisters ages 25 and 20, who grew up in my synagogue’s elementary school and lost their lives at the Nova concert.

I worry also about the lives of every Israeli soldier in Gaza today, the more than 750 families of soldiers who lost their lives fighting in this war, and the masses of innocent civilian Palestinian families who’ve lost their loved ones and homes and are in dire need of more adequate humanitarian assistance.

I’ve worried whether Israel would step over the line and fight this war according to international standards of war. I’ve wondered, for example, about the justification of Israel’s use of massive numbers of 2000-pound “dumb-bombs” intended to take out Hamas commanders and destroy Hamas tunnels, military command posts and arms stockpiles, but have killed thousands of innocent Palestinians. And I’ve worried about Israel’s use of artificial intelligence to bomb Hamas sites without due consideration for the number of civilian casualties that each strike would cause.

I know, even with these worries, that when Israel began attacking Hamas targets it dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets over Palestinian neighborhoods, sent hundreds of thousands of text messages and hundreds of thousands of robocalls to warn Palestinian civilians to leave certain buildings and areas before Israel attacked them as Hamas targets. I know that Israel opened up safe passage highways for Palestinian civilians to escape before Israel bombed its targets. I am well aware that Hamas embedded everywhere in and under Gaza’s homes, apartment buildings, schools, community centers, mosques, and hospitals and that it blocked the escape of so many Palestinian civilians, callously and cruelly fired upon its own fleeing people with the aim of deliberately increasing the death toll in its international delegitimization effort against Israel.

It’s remarkable to me that so much of the world so quickly has forgotten what started this war, Hamas’ murder of 1200 Israelis and the taking of 250 hostages, the gang rape of dozens upon dozens of young Israeli women and the wanton killing of seniors, babies and children.

It’s been my position since about the 100th day of the war that Israel should have done everything possible to get the full return of the hostages even if it meant ending the war. A majority of Israelis now put the lives of the remaining hostages as Israel’s first priority, even over destroying Hamas’ remaining military capability. Israel could have claimed victory then with the understanding that Hamas’ ability to govern and rule over Gaza was already dramatically diminished. Had Israel planned for the “day after” the fighting, worked with the United States to create a coalition of western-aligned Arab nations including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, the Emirates, and the Palestinian Authority to take charge of Gaza then (and now) and begin to rebuild it, the disaster caused in this war might have been more limited. I know, however, that Hamas is uncompromising and brutal towards its own people, and that it has wanted to continue the war to increase the numbers of Palestinian dead civilians in its delegitimization effort against Israel. But, a coalition of nations might have had a positive effect then. The world might well have been more sympathetic to Israel in its effort to help create a new Gaza without Hamas than it does now. The formation of a coalition governing power would not have left Gaza so vulnerable to Hamas resurrecting itself in Northern Gaza, as it so clearly now is doing.

There are those in Israel who justify continuing this war saying that “the only time we’ll have security is when we keep the sword on our enemy’s neck,” enter Rafiach and finish off Hamas once and for all, though most Israeli and American military and intelligence experts believe that Hamas cannot be completely destroyed. But other voices warn that “when we act like every other people, we become like them.”

Yesterday was Yom HaZikaron (May 13), the day Israel mourns the 25,000 fallen soldiers and victims of terror who have died since 1860. Today, on Yom Haatzmaut (May 14), we celebrate our people’s sovereignty and independence. Despite this traumatic year of war; despite the rule of the most right-wing extremist and racist government in the history of the state; despite the growing gap within Israeli society; despite the dramatic rise in antisemitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Israel sentiment around America and the world, Israel’s 76th anniversary is still an occasion to celebrate the Jewish state as the greatest accomplishment of the Jewish people in the last 2000 years.

It’s a remarkable accomplishment that the Zionist movement facilitated the immigration of millions of Jewish refugees and that the State of Israel absorbed them as citizens.

It’s remarkable that ancient Hebrew has been resurrected into a modern language that flows naturally through the lips of little children and is the language of celebrated poets, songwriters and literary figures.

It’s remarkable that Israel remains a democracy (inside the Green Line – the 1949 disengagement lines) despite multiple wars and ongoing terrorism.

It’s remarkable that Israel has become a world class leader in agriculture, biotech, medicine, communication, cyber, climate, water desalinization, higher education, archaeology, and the arts, and is second only to the United States in the number of new patents every year.

It’s remarkable that there are 15,000 active NGOs in Israel, most not politically aligned, that promote universal moral values, human rights, democracy, religious pluralism, the environment, and a shared society between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arab citizens. Though racism and hostility between Arab and Jew exists, and far too often violence breaks out with deadly results (especially in the West Bank), if we visit any Israeli hospital in the country, we’ll see Arabs and Jews receiving compassionate care and treatment together on the same wards delivered by both Arab and Jewish physicians and nurses.

Thirty years ago there was a taboo against homosexuality in the Jewish state. Now, 250,000 people march in Tel Aviv’s annual Gay Pride Parade and there are estimated to be 750,000 LGBTQ individuals in Israel, many coming from the orthodox and Arab-Israeli sectors, though both communities shun homosexuality. The modern State of Israel accepts and welcomes them.

Israel faces many existential challenges from within that impact Israelis negatively and us Diaspora Jews too whose identity, pride and security as Jews and Zionists depend upon the vitality of Israeli democracy and its aspirations for peace with the Palestinian people and Israel’s surrounding neighbors.

I hope that when the dust of this war settles, the hostages are home, new leadership takes over Israel and the Palestinian Authority, a new Gaza begins to emerge from the rubble of war, and the antisemitism and anti-Zionism subside, that our young liberal and progressive Jews in particular, and many of us older American Jews as well who may feel alienated from Israel because of this war and on account of the divisions within Israeli society will be able to lift our collective eyes from the barrage of dark news, tragedy and conflict and be able to see that Isaiah’s vision for the Jewish people to be an אור לגוים – a light to the nations – still is manifesting itself in Israel.

May those days come soon and may there be peace in Jerusalem. Amen!

How BDS is Part of the Problem

09 Thursday May 2024

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I have been asked by parents of university and college students since the protest movement began several weeks ago about the nature of the Boycott, Divestiture and Sanctions movement (BDS) given the parents’ confusion about what it stands for and what it intends in the long term. Many of their college-age children find BDS appealing and their parents are worried. They asked me not only about BDS but what I recommended they should say to their children. On this matter, I believe that the relationship between parents and their children ought to be their first priority. If it means that parents simply listen and support their kids’ passion and their anger and grief over the tragic loss of life and injury in Gaza (and October 7 in southern Israeli villages), then I recommend that they simply listen and hold their thoughts to themselves.

As a college student myself during the Vietnam era, my mother never argued with me if she disagreed because she understood how passionately I was against American involvement in Vietnam and about my fear of being drafted and sent to fight there. She supported me and often I never knew what she really thought about the issue, though I knew generally that she was against the war too. In time, I came to appreciate the way she handled this difficult interaction between us and I love her for it to this day long after she died.

However, here in this blog I want to clarify what BDS is and what it is not. If parents choose to share this with their college age children, fine – but they should do so only if they think their kids will receive it well and parents won’t alienate their children. Young people change and evolve through the years, as do their parents, and as the dust settles from this awful war, the hostages are returned to their families, the killing stops, massive humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, and the healing begins, perhaps more content-based conversations within families can take place, as it should.

What is BDS and why am I categorically opposed to it?

There is, arguably, only one good thing about BDS, and that is that it purports to be a non-violent pro-Palestinian movement. Beyond that strategy of non-violence, however, it is anti-Israel and I believe antisemitic. To understand why, knowing the historical context in which BDS emerged is necessary.

BDS was founded in 2005 by Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian-American, who recognized after the failure of the Oslo Accords, subsequent Palestinian suicide bombings and the murderous 2nd Palestinian Intifada (2000-2005), western sensibilities were deeply offended and he recognized that there was a void in the struggle for Palestinian statehood that needed to be filled with a non-violent alternative to war and terrorism.

BDS is modeled after the anti-Apartheid movement and conflates the Palestinian plight to that of South African blacks. BDS’s positions call for a withdrawal from the occupied territories, the removal of the Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, the right of return of Palestinians to their homes, divestiture of international companies from doing business with Israel, boycotts of Israeli manufactured goods, and the cessation of formal relationships between American and Israeli colleges and universities.

Those strategic goals need to be unpacked, but first, more historical context is necessary.

In 1947, the United Nations proposed in the British Mandate over Palestine a partition plan for two states, one Jewish and one Arab, as a solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict. The Zionist movement accepted the proposal and the Arabs rejected it. The violence between Jews, Arabs and the British had intensified to such an extent that Great Britain, the Mandatory power that had taken control of Palestine from the Ottomans after the close of World War I, decided to withdraw entirely from the region and leave it to be fought over between the Jews and the Arabs.

On May 14, 1948, Britain left Mandatory Palestine. David Ben Gurion, the leader of the Zionist Executive and World Zionist Organization (the pre-statehood national institutions of governance over Jewish affairs in Palestine and linkage to the international Zionist movement) declared Jewish statehood. The following day, eight Arab countries’ armies attacked the infant Jewish state with the intention to destroy it and “push the Jews into the sea.” When the fighting ended in 1949, an armistice agreement was signed and the new State of Israel’s borders were expanded far beyond the UN Partition plan of 1947. Jordan took control of East Jerusalem, the Old City and the West Bank of the Jordan River. Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and the Sinai desert. Syria controlled the Golan Heights. Israel took control of the heavily Jewish population centers along the coast and in the Galilee, the Negev desert, and West Jerusalem. The young State of Israel then went about establishing a Jewish and democratic state that included the remaining Arabs as citizens (though treated as 2nd class citizens), absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust and the Arab world who fled antisemitic persecution in their host countries after the establishment of Israel and left behind virtually all their property.

The Arab world did not accept the legitimacy of the Jewish state nor peace. Rather, it regarded Israel as a colonial foreign element and an oppressor of indigent Palestinian Arabs. The Arab world remained committed to the destruction of Israel. Six hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs fled into neighboring Arab countries and settled in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the Gaza Strip as well as in countries around the world. The same number of Jews were forced to flee their home Arab countries. Most came to Israel as new immigrants and were absorbed and granted citizenship.

In 1967, the surrounding Arab nations tried again in war to destroy Israel but failed in six days of fighting. At the end of the battles, Israel’s borders had expanded dramatically to include East Jerusalem, the Old City, the West Bank of the Jordan River, the Golan Heights, a strip in southern Lebanon, and the Sinai Peninsula.

Between 1967 and 1973, Arab Fedayeen from the Gaza Strip, where many Palestinians had fled after the 1948 and 1967 wars, attacked Israeli southern kibbutzim, towns and villages in what is called the “War of Attrition.”

In 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur attempting “to drive the Jews into the sea,” but after 20 days of fighting, Israel was successful in battle again and expanded its borders further to include a strip of land on the western side of the Suez Canal and a parcel of land in Syria. In a separation agreement negotiated by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Israel withdrew from Egypt and from Syria to the post 1967 borders.

Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat decided following the 1973 war that enough was enough, and with the United States as his ally, he led Egypt to forge a peace agreement with the State of Israel in 1978. Israel returned the entire Sinai Peninsula with its oil fields and Israel military bases to Egypt in a land for a “cold” peace agreement that has held ever since. Peace followed in 1994 between Jordan and Israel. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), led by Chairman Yasser Arafat, agreed to enter into peace negotiations with Israel that began the Oslo Peace Process in 1993, but the march towards an agreement was up-ended when a right-wing orthodox Jew assassinated PM Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Following Rabin’s death, Hamas and other extremist Muslim Palestinian groups took advantage of Israel’s vulnerability and sent suicide bombers from the West Bank and Gaza into Israeli villages, towns and cities to murder hundreds of Israeli civilians.

US President Bill Clinton attempted to revive the Oslo peace process at Camp David in 2000, but Arafat insisted that Palestinians had the “individual right of return” to their former houses and villages and he refused to sign an agreement claiming that the deal was weighted against the Palestinians. This, despite Israeli PM Ehud Barak (the most decorated soldier in Israeli history at the time) offered the most generous terms any Israeli Prime Minister and government in Israeli history had ever offered the Palestinians before. With the failure of this effort, the 2nd Intifada (“uprising”) began and continued until 2005.

Two more serious efforts to arrive at a two-state solution were made in 2007 between Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas in 37 secret negotiating sessions, and again in 2014 led by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Each effort was unsuccessful, the second of which did not succeed because PM Benjamin Netanyahu was against two states for two peoples and consistently torpedoed all progress to an agreement.

In 2004, as a consequence of Palestinian violence against Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and Hamas suicide bombers exploding themselves and murdering hundreds of Israeli civilians in Israeli cities, Israeli PM Ariel Sharon unilaterally withdrew all Israel troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip leaving the Strip entirely under Palestinian Authority control, to be taken violently in 2007 by the Islamic extremist organization Hamas in a military coup de etat against the Palestinian Authority. All PA leaders were executed by Hamas.

With the overwhelming support of Israeli citizens, PM Sharon ordered the construction of a security fence built roughly along the 1949 armistice lines with the sole purpose of preventing suicide bombers from entering into Israel and murdering Israelis. The fence has been largely successful in that not one suicide bomber successfully infiltrated Israel from the West Bank or Gaza Strip since the construction of the fence, until October 7th.

That’s an overview of the background necessary to contextualize the demands and purpose of BDS.

BDS is part of an international delegitimization campaign against Israel that has replaced the Arab wars meant to destroy the Jewish state. BDS’s call for the end of the occupation is not just intended for those lands taken by Israel in war after 1967, but after the 1948 War as well. BDS considers all the land from the “river to the sea” to be “occupied” by Israel – that is, the entire State of Israel.

The “right of return” is not intended only to the future Palestinian State. BDS intends the right of return to be to all of Palestine including the State of Israel. That demand is impractical because so many of the Palestinian homes and villages no longer exist and the Palestinians who once lived in those homes and villages are no longer alive to reclaim them. The Oslo Accords, the Clinton parameters, the Olmert-Abbas and John Kerry negotiations all recognized the right of the Palestinians to return to the future State of Palestine, not to Israel with perhaps a limited number of Palestinians permitted to live in Israel in the interest of family reunion.

BDS frames the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a colonizer-colonized, oppressor-oppressed, and a racial conflict between foreign white European Zionists and Middle Eastern Palestinian Arabs. It denies the national rights of the Jewish people to a state anywhere “between the river and the sea.” Though BDS calls Zionism a white European colonial movement, there is massive literary and archaeological evidence that proves the existence of Jews in the Land of the Bible consistently from antiquity. The majority of Jewish Israelis today come not only from Arab lands, but from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Though there is racism in elements of Israel’s population, including in the current Israeli government amongst the right-wing super-nationalist supremacist settler movement, Israel is not a racist nation as was the former Apartheid South Africa. Nor is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict really about race at all. It’s about territory and national rights. In the case of Hamas, it’s also about Iranian centered Islamic extremism against Israel and western liberal civilization. The tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that two peoples claim the same territory as their national home.

Since 1967, Israel consistently has been willing to compromise land for peace, except during the years of PM Netanyahu’s leadership. Yair Lapid, the current leader of the opposition party in the Israeli government, stated publicly that he supports a two-state solution as do many former top intelligence and military leaders and currently a sizable minority of the Israeli population that recognizes that the only just solution to the conflict is the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state next to Israel.

BDS does NOT support two-states for two-peoples. It wants one state from the river to the sea, and equal rights for Palestinian Arabs, which spells the end of the Zionist project.

There are many internal challenges facing Israel including how effectively to deal with the growing separatist ultra-Orthodox community, the unfair 2nd class treatment of Palestinian-Israeli citizens, the often harsh military occupation of the West Bank and mistreatment of Palestinian Arabs living there, the growing settler enterprise in the West Bank among whom are many violent Jewish settlers, and the lack of a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel is not a perfect democracy just as the United States is not a perfect democracy. Each nation’s Declaration of Independence is an aspiration document towards which each society has struggled over the decades to concretize those just aspirations into policies and law.

BDS’s intent is to end the Jewish State of Israel demographically. Its goals are unrealistic and its characterization of Israel as a foreign colonial element in the heart of the Islamic Middle East is wrong on the merits. It has become popular amongst the far progressive left intersectional movement in the United States that brings together vulnerable groups of people into a coalition fighting on behalf of each other’s rights (e.g. feminists, peoples of color, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals, and the poor, etc.). It projects those groups’ antipathy to racism, classism, sexism, and colonialism falsely onto Israel and aligns itself with the Palestinians against the Israelis based upon those false parameters as applied to Israel.

BDS is part of the problem and as it grows beyond its 200 estimated chapters in the United States, it becomes more of a problem for anyone hoping for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. College and university students who unwittingly support BDS without understanding what BDS really stands for and what is its significance as part of the international delegitimization movement against Israel are aligning themselves not only with the anti-Israel movement but with antisemitism too which denies the right of the Jewish people to a state of our own in our historic Homeland.  

“There is No Warrant to Israel ‘Genocide’ Claim”

01 Wednesday May 2024

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A Jerusalem Post Op-Ed written by the ethicist Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn (April 27) persuasively dispels the slanderous charge of “genocide” against the State of Israel in its war against Hamas (see Op-Ed below). Dr. Korn notes that Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959), a Polish Jewish lawyer who coined the term “genocide” and who campaigned for the establishment of the UN Genocide Convention in 1951, described “genocide” as a particularly heinous crime distinguishable from all other war crimes. Lemkin defined genocide as “the intent to destroy a human group as such, directed at individuals only because they belong to that group.” Encyclopedia Britannica is more specific and defines “genocide” as “the deliberate systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race.” 

The key requirement in determining whether genocide has been committed is a nation at war’s “deliberate intent” to murder a group of people in whole or in part. Consequently, the charge of “genocide” leveled in The Hague by South Africa against the State of Israel and presently under consideration in The Hague does not apply because the war Israel is waging is against Hamas and is NOT against the Palestinian people, though they are the ones who are suffering.

Hamas is a terrorist military organization that seeks the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of all Israelis and Jews. That Israel was called to answer the charge of genocide and that this unique charge has been repeated so cavalierly by many contemporary American college protesters, Palestinian resistance groups and the media does not make it so. That’s not to say that the death of any civilian is a tragedy. It is, and in this just war thrust upon Israel after Hamas’ brutal attack against thousands of innocent Israeli civilians on October 7, the resulting death of innocent Palestinians is an awful tragedy.

No nation, however, would stand by and not respond militarily to Hamas’ attack. Hamas leadership has been clear about its intent in this war; to draw Israel out to attack Gaza and cause as much civilian death and injury as possible, and then to disseminate the images of destruction and death day after day, week after week and month after month in its de-legitimization campaign against the State of Israel. Hamas’ military and political leadership promised to continue attacking Israel as it did on October 7 over and over again.  

To the charge of genocide, from the beginning of this war, it needs to be recognized that Israel sent hundreds of thousands of text messages, robocalls, and leaflets throughout Gaza to warn Palestinian civilians to leave specific targets that Israeli intelligence concluded were sites occupied by Hamas commanders and fighters, military strong-holds, missile sites, and weapons depots. Hamas had embedded itself everywhere above ground in homes, apartment buildings, community centers, schools, mosques, and hospitals, and below ground in its 400 miles of tunnels. Many thousands of Palestinians, however, did not leave those targets for a variety of reasons. Some understandably did not want to leave their homes. Others were threatened by Hamas if they tried to leave and were shot at if they did. Hamas wanted Palestinians to become the victims of Israeli bombing. The visuals of the destruction are mind-numbing and terrifying, and that is exactly what Hamas wanted the world to see. One Hamas commander said in an interview that Hamas would be happy if even 100,000 Palestinian civilians die in this war.

Yes, Israel likely has made mistakes, and some targeting may have crossed red lines resulting in the death of innocent civilians. I have questioned the massive use of 2000-pound “dumb bombs” that have destroyed entire apartment buildings with the intent to take out Hamas commanders and deeply embedded tunnels beneath the buildings because of the resulting civilian deaths. Though it is ghoulish to talk about the numbers of casualties, Dr. Korn does so by comparison in his Op-Ed below. Israel’s record, even using Hamas statistics, is far better in its civilian-Hamas death ratio than in any war in the 20th and 21st centuries by any other nation in the world. No one really knows, by the way, how many civilians have been killed and injured because Hamas’ figures are all part of its de-legitimization campaign against Israel. Israel estimates that between 13,000 and 14,000 Hamas fighters have been killed.

Those protesting Israel’s war against Hamas on college campuses who proclaim “We are Hamas” and “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea” are wittingly or unwittingly calling for the destruction of Israel. They may know what they are saying, and if so, their morality is to be condemned as genocidal by definition. If they don’t know what they are saying, or what these slogans really mean, or if they deny and/or refuse to acknowledge what Hamas did to Israeli civilians on October 7, or if they refuse to acknowledge Hamas’ history of reactionary and repressive policies towards its own people (Hamas’ first act after its violent coup de ’etat against the Palestinian Authority in 2007 in Gaza was to march PA leaders to the top floors of the highest buildings and throw them to their deaths), or they don’t realize that Hamas executes LGBTQ individuals and women who resist Hamas’ authority, they ought to study the real history of the Middle East conflict and ask themselves who is really on the right side of history in this war.

I understand well as a Jew, a Zionist and a humanitarian the moral position of those who are against all wars. I struggled during the Vietnam War about whether I was a pacifist or not because I was so against America’s involvement in that war and was of draft age. I decided that since I would have fought against the Nazis in World War II and on the side of Israel in the 1967 and 1973 wars, I was not a pacifist, though throughout my adult life I have been a peace activist especially between Israel and the Palestinian people. I respect those who on principle are opposed to all wars, and I especially respect the peace-makers. When this war ends, I hope that Israel and the Palestinians will find a pathway to resolve their conflict for the sake of both peoples’ security, independence and dignity. Hamas and its extremist Islamic allies (e.g. Iran, Hezbollah, etc.), however, are not legitimate partners to peace as they are maximalist and uncompromising terror organizations with the clearly articulated intent to destroy the State of Israel, to murder every Israeli and every Jew on its way to establishing an extremist Muslim caliphate over all of Palestine “from the river to the sea.”

It is one thing for college and university students to want this war to end, who yearn for the killing to stop, for the hostages to be returned to their families, and to want justice for the Palestinian people and a Palestinian state on part of historic Palestine – I want all of that too – but it is another thing to side with Hamas and Islamic extremists who want the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews and then in ignorance or with hubris charge Israel with genocide.

Though I believe in the right of students to peacefully demonstrate on college and university campuses on behalf of moral and just issues as an expression of their American First Amendment rights, I believe that there is a tremendous lack of understanding and knowledge about Hamas and the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict amongst many of those currently demonstrating against this war.

I have written since the 100th day that Israel should sue for peace and get back all its hostages as soon as possible, to stop the fighting to avoid more death, injury and destruction to Gazan civilian life and to the lives of young Israeli soldiers, and to pour massive amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Thankfully, due to President Biden’s strong pressure on PM Netanyahu, approximately 350 trucks filled with food, water, and medical supplies are now coming into Gaza daily over newly opened crossings from Israel into Gaza and the US humanitarian pier is about to be completed and operating.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and many Israeli army and intelligence leaders have said that Israel’s continuing the war to root out Hamas in Rafah is NOT worth the cost in human life, and that Israel should stop the fighting now, declare victory and sue for peace and the return of the hostages. Those are all positions worthy of college and university students.

I hope that reasonable students will pause from the demonstrations and study seriously the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from both sides, step away from those demonstrators who call for the destruction of the State of Israel, and refuse to be ensnared by their maximalist anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric that charges Israel with the slander of genocide. (See my last blog “Confronting Antisemitism on College Campuses” in which I described what antisemitism is and isn’t, and what it means to be anti-Zionist and anti-Israel).

Here is Dr. Korn’s Op-Ed

“Since October 7, ‘genocide’ has rolled effortlessly off our tongues. To Israelis, Hamas’s murder, rape, and kidnapping of more than 1,400 people prove that Hamas is committed to its goals of making Palestine Judenrein through violent jihad and exterminating Jews. 

To many on campus, social media, and in the partisan halls of the United Nations, Israel’s response to Hamas’s orgy of death is self-evident genocide. This rhetoric is awash in certainty, even though factual analyses yield little evidence of actual genocide.

Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” after reflecting on the mass slaughter of civilians in World War II. He understood genocide as a particularly heinous crime distinguishable from other war crimes, defining it as “the intent to destroy a human group as such, directed at individuals only because they belong to that group.” 

Encyclopedia Britannica currently defines genocide as “the deliberate systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race.” 

In 1951, the crime of genocide gained legal force when the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was ratified by more than 130 countries.

What constitutes genocide?

Mass killing by itself does not constitute genocide, and World Wars I and II demonstrate the distinction. The Carnegie Institute estimates the number of World War I war-related deaths at 16-17 million, yet only the Ottoman murders of Armenians (1-1.5 million), Assyrians (750,000), and ethnic Greeks (348,000) were genocidal. World War II was far more lethal. 

Estimates run from 70 to 85 million people killed, but deaths from systematic group extermination comprised but a small fraction of these: Jews (5.9 million), ethnic Slavs (2-2.5 million), Roma (250,000), Freemasons (80,000-200,000), disabled persons (250,000-300,000), and homosexuals (10,000-15,000). Thus, only 16% of World War I and 10-13% of World War II deaths were the result of genocide.

Many point to the large number of deaths in Gaza as proof of Israeli genocide. As of April 6, the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health claimed that 33,137 Gazans had been killed in the war, while Israel maintains that more than 13,000 of those deaths were Hamas combatants. If we accept these unconfirmed figures, approximately 20,000 Gazan civilians have died.

To determine whether these deaths constitute genocide, compare the Gaza war to other modern wars:

The percentages of Gazans killed (1.52%) and civilians killed out of the total population (0.92%) are all dramatically lower than their corresponding categories in other major wars. During World War I, 3.8% of all Russians died, while 8.57% of its civilians were killed. In World War II, 6.1% of German citizens died and 1.13% of German civilians were killed, while 10.5% of all Russians and 4.1% of Russian civilians were killed. In the Korean War, 12-15% of North Koreans were killed, while 10.2% of North Korean civilians died.

None of those campaigns were categorized as genocide since they reflect only the lethal nature of these wars. If those vastly more lethal campaigns were not genocide, it is difficult to see how the Israeli campaign in Gaza, with its immensely lower percentages of population and civilians killed, could qualify as genocide.

We can also analyze how 1.52% of Gazans killed compares to the corresponding percentages of the actual genocides against the Armenians in World War I (80%), the Jews (67%) and Roma (25-33%) in World War II, and the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 (85%).

The percentage of Gazans killed relative to the group population is at least 15 times lower than the percentages of the populations killed in the above genocides. The discrepancy is even greater if we consider all Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, over which Israel has substantial military control. In that case, the percentage of Palestinian people killed (0.66%) is more than 39 times lower than the percentages killed in any of the genocides. Again, the results of the Israeli campaign bear no statistical similarities to actual genocides.

Another important indicator of genocide is the ratio of civilian casualties to enemy combatant deaths. If the intent is the destruction of a group, qua group, then civilians will represent a high casualty ratio relative to combatants. Conversely, a low ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths augurs for general lethality, not genocide.

In the non-genocidal campaigns of World War II, the civilian-to-combatant death ratio was approximately 2:1; in the Korean War, it was 3:1; in the Persian Gulf War, it was 9:1; and in the Iraq War, it was 2:1. In the present Gaza war, it is 20,000/13,000 or 1.54:1.The low 1.54:1 Gaza ratio is notable because the war is being fought in dense urban areas where civilians have little protection, while Hamas fighters are protected in underground tunnels.

Moreover, Hamas has positioned its military assets in and under schools, hospitals, and residential buildings. 

The Gaza fighting is comparable to the 2016-2017 international campaign against ISIS in Mosul, which was also fought in dense urban areas. The Mosul civilian-to-combatant death ratio was 9:1, as is the UN’s estimated ratio for urban warfare, so the civilian-to-combatant death ratio in Gaza is approximately six times lower than that of standard urban warfare.

In sum, the Gaza deaths resemble the pattern of general warfare and are manifestly dissimilar to instances of actual genocide. There is no statistical warrant to justify the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

No person who values life can remain insensitive to the immense tragedy in Gaza. William Tecumseh Sherman was correct: War is hell. However, lethal war by itself is not genocide. Unfortunately, fact-based analyses will not stop many from uncritically insisting that genocide is occurring in Gaza. 

Emotional recoil easily overcomes careful thinking. More pointedly, there is great political value for some in describing Israel’s actions as genocide: it condemns Israel of the most heinous of crimes, thereby strengthening the radical argument to dismantle the Jewish state.

THERE ARE also moral and historical consequences to this error. As the false claim goes viral, genocide becomes conflated with the general hellishness of war and loses its unique descriptive and prescriptive meaning. 

If the war in Gaza constitutes genocide, then so do World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and all conflicts with horrific lethality.

This logic’s trajectory denies legitimacy to any middle ground between peace and genocide, rejecting any moral position between pacifism and all-out conflict unbridled by moral rules. 

The Nazi extermination campaigns against Jews, Roma, ethnic Slavs, and homosexuals, qua peoples, become no worse than any bloody war.

Should this occur, genocide as a distinctive concept of extreme evil will have died, as will our conviction to prevent its recurrence. “Never Again” will become “Again” in history, perhaps in our lifetime.”

Dr. Eugene Korn is an ethicist living in Jerusalem.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-798738