The issue with defining genocide

Like a number of “anti-colonialists,” William Dalrymple lives in colonial splendor on the outskirts of Delhi. The writer often opens the doors of his estate to slavering architectural magazines. A few years ago, one described his pool, pool house, vast family rooms, animals, cockatoo “and the usual entourage of servants that attends any successful man in India’s capital city.”

Either the Israelis weren’t committing genocide, or they tried to commit genocide but are bad at it. Which is it?

I only mention Dalrymple because he is one of a large number of people who have lost their senses by going rampaging online about the alleged genocide in Gaza. He recently tweeted at a young Jewish woman who said she was afraid to travel into London during the Palestinian protests: “Forget 30,000 dead in Gaza, tens of thousands more in prison without charge, five MILLION in stateless serfdom, forget seventy-five years of torture, rape, dispossession, humiliation and occupation, IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU.” It is one thing when a street rabble loses their minds. But when people who had minds start to lose them, that is another thing altogether.

I find it curious. By every measure, what is happening in Gaza is not genocide. More than that — it’s not even regionally remarkable.

Hamas’s own figures — not to be relied upon — suggest that around 28,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October. Most of the international media likes to claim these people are all innocent civilians. In fact, many of the dead will have been killed by the quarter or so Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets that fall short and land inside Gaza.

Then there are the more than 9,000 Hamas terrorists who have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces. As Lord Roberts of Belgravia recently pointed out, that means there is fewer than a two to one ratio of civilians to terrorists killed: “An astonishingly low ratio for modern urban warfare where the terrorists routinely use civilians as human shields.” Most western armies would dream of such a low civilian casualty count. But because Israel is involved (“Jews are news”) the libelous hyperbole is everywhere.

For almost twenty years since Israel withdrew from Gaza, we have heard the same allegations. Israel has been accused of committing genocide in Gaza during exchanges with Hamas in 2009, 2012 and 2014. As a claim it is demonstrably, obviously false. When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the population of the Strip was around 1.3 million. Today it is more than two million, with a male life expectancy higher than in parts of Scotland. During the same period, the Palestinian population in the West Bank grew by a million. Either the Israelis weren’t committing genocide, or they tried to commit genocide but are uniquely bad at it. Which is it? Well, when it comes to Israel it seems people don’t have to choose. Everything and anything can be true at once.

Here is a figure I’ve never seen anyone raise. It’s an ugly little bit of math, but stay with me. If you wish, you might add together all the people killed in every conflict involving Israel since its foundation.

In 1948, after the UN announced the state, all of Israel’s Arab neighbors invaded to try to wipe it out. They failed. But the upper estimate of the casualties on all sides came to some 20,000 people. The upper estimates of the wars of 1967 and 1973, when Israel’s neighbors once again attempted to annihilate it, are very similar (some 20,000 and 15,000 respectively). Subsequent wars in Lebanon and Gaza add several thousands more to that figure. It means that up to the present war, some 60,000 people had died on every side in all wars involving Israel.

Over the past decade of civil war in Syria, Bashar al-Assad has managed to kill more than ten times that number. Although precise figures are hard to come by, Assad is reckoned to have murdered some 600,000 Arab Muslims in his country. Meaning that every six to twelve months he manages to kill the same number as died in every war involving Israel ever.

There are lots of reasons you might give to explain this: that people don’t care when Muslims kill Muslims; that people don’t care when Arabs kill Arabs; that they only care if Israel is involved. Allow me to give another example that is suggestive.

No one knows how many people have been killed in the war in Yemen in recent years. From 2015-2021 the UN estimated perhaps 377,000 — ten times the highest estimate of the recent death toll in Gaza. The only time I’ve heard people scream on the streets about Yemen has been after the Houthis started attacking American and British ships in the Red Sea and the deadbeat idiots on the streets started chanting: “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around.” Because like all leftists and Islamists there is no terrorist group these people can’t get a pash on, so long as that terrorist group is against us.

I often wonder why this obsession arises when the war involves Israel. Why don’t people trawl along our streets and scream by their thousands about Syria, Yemen, China’s Uighurs or a hundred other terrible things? There are only two possible conclusions.

The first is a journalistic one. Ever since Marie Colvin was killed it became plain that western journalists were a target in Syria. Not eager to be the target, most journalists hotfooted it out of the country. Some who didn’t fell into the hands of ISIS. Israel-Gaza wars by contrast do not have the same dynamic and on a technical level the media can applaud itself for reporting from a warzone where they are not the target.

But I suspect it is a moral explanation which explains the situation so many people find themselves in. They simply enjoy being able to accuse the world’s only Jewish state of “genocide” and “Nazi-like behavior.” They enjoy the opportunity to wound Jews as deeply as possible. Many find it satisfies the intense fury they feel when Israel is winning.

Like being fanned on your veranda while lambasting the evils of empire, it is a paradox, to be sure. But it is also a perversity. And it doesn’t come from nowhere.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.