Who has committed crimes of genocide, Israel or Hamas? What the facts indicate

@ElentirENG ES 5·11·2024 · 19:21 0

These days many activists are being heard claiming that Israel is committing "genocide" in Gaza. That's right?

Hundreds of jurists from 22 nations accuse Hamas of crimes of genocide against Israel
The list of governments that accuse Israel of 'genocide' and the shame of Spain

An accusation against Israel based on figures published by Hamas

It should be noted that this accusation is based exclusively on an accusation against Israel for killing many Palestinians in its offensive in Gaza. The figures used in this accusation are those published by the so-called "Gaza Ministry of Health", controlled by Hamas. There are several reasons to question the figures published by Hamas.

A terrorist organization that publishes false figures

First of all, Hamas is classified as a terrorist organization by the European Union, the Organization of American States, United Kingdom, United States and Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Argentina, Paraguay and Costa Rica. Although some have decided to give credibility to what Hamas claims, a terrorist organization is not a reliable source in any way, because in the same way that it is capable of murdering, kidnapping, raping and torturing - as it did in its October 7, 2023 attack against Israel - is also capable of lying.

On the other hand, and as Abraham Wyner, professor of Statistics and Data Science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has pointed out, Hamas is providing false death tolls in this war, figures that have not been verified by the governments and media that have decided to consider them valid.

Genocide according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

Regarding the crimes of genocide, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court states the following in its Article 6:

For the purpose of this Statute, "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:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Thus, for an act to be classified as a crime of genocide, it must have the intention to destroy a human group for national, ethnic, racial or religious reasons through the acts described in that list. In this sense, there are clear examples of genocide, such as the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda and, of course, many of massive crimes committed by communist dictatorships, with a global balance of more than 100 million deaths.

Israel has never expressed any intention to exterminate the Palestinians

Despite what activists who accuse that country of "genocide" claim, Israel has never expressed any intention to exterminate the Palestinian people. In fact, Israel voluntarily withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, including dismantling all 21 Israeli civilian settlements there. Since 2005 there are no Jewish inhabitants in Gaza, while in Israel there is 21.1% of the population that is Arab, mostly Muslim, and that enjoys equal rights with the rest of the population.

Hamas has openly called for the annihilation of Jews and Israel

On the contrary, Hamas' founding charter of 1988, which is a radically anti-Semitic text, calls to kill all Jews. Over the years, that terrorist organization has done repeated calls to annihilate the Jews and Israel. Thus, while Israel is a democratic state that integrates people of different religions with the same rights and has never expressed any intention to exterminate the Palestinians, Hamas has made its genocidal intention very clear and insistently.

The Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, 2023 is part of this genocidal desire, but it is not the only fact that indicates it. Hamas has been launching thousands of rockets against Israel for years, weapons that seek to indiscriminately kill Israeli civilians. According to data published by the Israel Defense Forces, between October 7, 2023 and April 2, 2024, 9,100 rockets were launched from Gaza against Israel.

Hamas accuses Israel of deaths caused by that terrorist organization

Furthermore, Hamas rockets are weapons that have no precision and have often fallen on Palestinian territories, killing inhabitants of those territories. In March 2024, Israel seized documents in which Hamas gave orders to hide these deaths of Palestinians due to its rockets, and even names of people killed by that cause have been located and that Hamas included in its lists of alleged victims of Israel. Hamas did the same with the Palestinian victims of rockets fired by the Islamic Jihad terrorists. To give us an idea, 11% of rockets launched from Gaza against Israel since October 7 fell in Gaza itself.

Israel's efforts to minimize civilian casualties in this war

On the other hand, the Israel Defense Forces have made 100,000 evacuation telephone calls to the civilian population of Gaza, have dropped approximately 9.3 million evacuation leaflets, have sent approximately 15.5 million text messages calling for evacuation and some 17 million voice recordings indicating evacuation routes to Gaza civilians to avoid casualties among them.

Throughout history, no other country has made such an effort to avoid civilian casualties during a war, an effort that often puts Israeli soldiers themselves at risk, as such warnings allow Hamas terrorists to know in advance Israel's military movements.

Hamas blocked the evacuation of civilians to use them as human shields

On the contrary, Hamas has blocked all evacuation of civilians in Gaza, in an attempt to use them as human shields, which is a crime of war typified in the Geneva Conventions. It is striking to note that the same activists who accuse Israel of "genocide" never say anything about these crimes by Hamas against the population of Gaza itself.

Accusation of 'genocide' should be leveled against Hamas, not Israel

Under these circumstances, to classify as Israel's "genocide" the civilian casualties caused by a war started by Hamas, casualties aggravated by Hamas' war crimes against the Gaza population itself, is a very clear way to cover up Hamas to criminalize the country attacked by that terrorist organization, a country -Israel- that on October 7, 2023 suffered something that the entire world has been able to see with numerous and horrendous graphic evidence: the largest massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

In fact, a few days later, Hundreds of jurists from 22 nations accused Hamas of committing crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Those who now cry out against Israel did not speak out against these crimes and in many cases they did not even condemn them, which reveals the true purpose of their accusations against Israel.

An attempt by Holocaust deniers to rewrite World War II?

Finally, accusing Israel of "genocide" for its offensive in Gaza, made with attempts to minimize civilian casualties that have not occurred in any other country throughout history, it would also be a way of rewriting World War II in favor of Nazi Germany. As I already pointed out here in December, W. van Mourik, in his work Bilanz des Krieges (Ed. Lekturama, Rotterdam, 1978), noted that Germany suffered 3.64 million civilian casualties in World War II, while the United Kingdom suffered 60,000, France 98,000 and Belgium 50,000. Many of these German civilian casualties were caused by Allied bombings, which were carried out without any prior warning.

Thus, those who accuse Israel of "genocide" would be giving rise to making the same accusation against the allies for those German civilian casualties in a war that was provoked by Germany and in which, as now, The Jewish people were victims of crimes of genocide. At this point, we must remember that Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem and Palestinian nationalist leader, was allied with Nazi Germany during World War II in order to help it exterminate the Jews. Like many activists in the Arab world, Hamas promotes denialism of the Holocaust. Thus, these false accusations against Israel have more than just the intention of covering up Hamas' crimes: they are an attempt at historical revisionism against the Jewish people.

---

Photo: Veronaa.