Accusing Israel of genocide is an inversion of the truth designed to leave it defenceless
On October 7, Hamas and its associates slipped into Israel, massacred more than 1,200 people and kidnapped about 240 more. As they did so, they shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is Great!”) and called down curses on “Jews” (they did not use the word “Israelis”) and “dogs” as they shot them and dishonoured their bodies.
Most victims were unarmed. Some were tiny children, or very old. Many were teenagers. Rape and other sexual indignities were committed against women.
I generally dislike the use of the word “innocent” in media reports of terrorist attacks on civilians: it implies that soldiers killed in such incidents are guilty. But perhaps the word is worth using in this case. Hamas’s victims were innocent, not only in having committed no wrong, but in the looser sense – innocent of politics, extremism and of the utter wickedness that lurks in some human hearts. Many were kibbutz residents or a young music festival crowd. Their innocence was part of what their murderers wanted to destroy, like wolves on the fold.
Hamas’s greatest joy came because the great majority were Jewish. That was the victims’ only “guilt”. That was why Hamas exterminated (or kidnapped for future bargaining and torment) everyone they could find.
For a few days, the world seemed to understand this. There was no limit to what such killers would do, so people acknowledged that Israel must fight back. It was self-defence, or death.
But only for a very few days. On October 9, for example, the UN Human Rights Council met, and – before Israel had counterattacked – held a moment of silence for “the loss of innocent lives in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere”. “Elsewhere” was the only word that hinted at what had actually happened two days earlier. The suppression of the truth had already begun.
It was a quick move from truth-suppression to truth-inversion. As soon as Israel went after Hamas in Gaza, international bodies, pressure groups, hostile powers and much of the media assailed the “disproportionate” response. Within a fortnight, the Muslim Council of Britain was urging its followers to write to their MP to stop the Gaza “genocide”. On Thursday, South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague began, presenting as legal fact the idea that Israel is committing genocide.
The South African delegation includes Jeremy Corbyn, who, famously, was “present but not involved” for a wreath-laying ceremony which included tributes to the terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. He seems to be playing a similarly decorative political role on this occasion. One of the luminaries in the South African legal team is John Dugard, a former Cambridge law professor who once chaired the UNHCR’s special commission on human rights in the Palestinian territories. He is a leading advocate of the idea that Israel is an “apartheid state”.
Listening to the BBC radio news report of South Africa’s case on Thursday, I heard its diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, begin his analysis thus: “The last three months have been shocking enough, but hearing it all summed up by South Africa’s lawyers is devastating. How, many wonder, can this not be a story of genocide?” Many will indeed wonder that if they rely on the BBC for information. Adams’s frail sandcastle of “many wonder” is no defence against his own propagandist tide.
“Genocide” arose as a concept in international law because Hitler killed Jews. There is sadistic bad taste in using the term against the state created to prevent the repetition of such a policy. What does it say about our Holocaust education that this sly libel can be believed?
A recent press release from the Islamic Human Rights Commission describes Israel’s actions in Gaza as “textbook genocide”. What textbook? You can consult the rule itself. The Genocide Convention of 1948 identifies genocide as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, religious or racial group, as such”. Israel’s sole battle aim is to destroy Hamas in Gaza. If the ICJ decides to regard Hamas as a group such as the Convention describes, then genocide will have become a human right, with its victims rebadged as its perpetrators.
The ICJ is a body in which states may arraign other states. In the immediate post-war world, the framers of the Genocide Convention probably did not foresee the problem of non-state actors – such as Hamas, IS and Hezbollah – who, unlike Israel, sign no convention but fight wars and grab territory, as has been the case in Gaza for many years. Such actors are beyond the reach of international law. States ill-intentioned towards Israel are hoping to achieve by politicised lawfare what a group such as Hamas attempts by unrestrained warfare. South Africa is thus the ally of Hamas.
The ICJ will take years to decide if genocide has been committed, but if it demands interim “provisional measures”, such as a ceasefire, because it suspects genocide, it could help make Israel a pariah nation if it refuses and an endangered one if it agrees.
Imagine such law being applied to Britain during the Second World War. There were powerful arguments against our bombing of German cities, which was far bloodier than anything Israel has done to Gaza. But it would have been a travesty if some non-combatant authority had told us, who were fighting a dictatorship animated by race hatred, that we were committing genocide.
If you look at the current composition of the 15-judge court, you will find plenty of judges from jurisdictions – China, Russia, Uganda, Lebanon, Somalia – where the separation between law and politics barely exists and whose undemocratic politics is anti-Israel. Israel, by contrast, operates in a law-based democracy. Aharon Barak, the judge representing his country at the Hague, is perhaps the leading jurisprudential adversary of its prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu.
Last month, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) compiled a 45-minute film of the October 7 massacres, not for general release. I was invited to a showing in Parliament. I refused, thinking it would be almost voyeuristic to watch such horrors. But as truth-inversion became so extreme that even some quite moderate people were denying atrocities, I changed my mind, and went to a later showing this week.
The film has no commentary. It simply reproduces, with factual captions, visual (and some audio) recordings from the day. This includes GoPro film from Hamas fighters, dashcam, mobile phone and social-media footage from the same, and a couple of intercepted phone conversations; dashcam and mobile footage from survivors and first responders; CCTV film which catches the murderous intruders, and their terrified victims failing to escape. The atrocities are explicit, but the faces of the victims are pixillated to spare the bereaved families. In some cases, pixillation is unnecessary, the faces being so mutilated by burning, beating or shooting as to be unrecognisable.
The most chilling scenes, even worse than the whooping celebrations of blood, are those in which the gunmen search to kill, stalking the little houses, shooting at torso height through a row of portaloos in which festival-goers are hiding, unearthing with head torches an entire family hiding under a table and then murdering them.
This was the worst day in the history of the state of Israel. When the victorious powers permitted Israel’s creation in 1948 (the same year as the Genocide Convention), they could not guarantee eternal protection for the Jews, but they did at least give them a fighting chance. Now many want to make their fight illegal. The grim reality is – no fighting, no chance.
