The interim ruling of the UN International Court of Justice on Friday, coming a day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, shames the memory of those who fought against genocide and of the 6 million Jews on whose ashes the Genocide Convention was built.
The ruling entertains the notion that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. That assertion is not only absurd, but malicious — and purposely so.
The Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”
Any moral person knows this is not what is happening in Gaza.
Lest we forget: Israel didn’t ask for this war, nor did Israel start it.
Hamas did, when thousands of its terrorists crossed into Israel and slaughtered, raped, tortured and kidnapped anyone they could get their hands on, regardless of age or sex.
Ironically, there is a genocidal party to this conflict. But it’s not Israel. It’s Hamas.
Hamas’ 1988 founding covenant, approvingly quotes the hadith: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
Hamas is clear in its intentions to destroy Israel. It has no interest in a two-state solution, even if it means the creation of a fully regnized Palestinian state.
What Hamas wants is the destruction of Israel, the annihilation of its people and the murder of Jews worldwide.
What restrains Hamas from doing so is not a lack of desire, but a lack of capability.
Oct. 7 was a taste of what the group would do, day after day, if it could.
Israel, on the other hand, is waging a defensive war for its very existence. No Israeli government would tolerate Hamas on Israel’s borders after Oct. 7, the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust.
Israel has no designs on Gaza. It left the territory in 2005 for the Palestinians to govern themselves.
Hamas took over the Strip and converted it into a massive military base, using civilians as human shields and stealing humanitarian aid to build vast terror tunnel networks.
And then it launched this war.
Just as in any war, it’s impossible for Israel to fight Hamas without civilians dying. But that is not genocide.
It is, however, a war crime — on Hamas’ part.
Israel warns civilians before attacking, tells them exactly where to go, advises safe routes and often provides protection (from Hamas!) to get there,
If Israel wanted to commit genocide in Gaza, it would indiscriminately bomb the Strip into oblivion.
No warnings would be issued.
Israel would not send its troops into harm’s way.
The civilian-to-terrorist death toll wouldn’t be an estimated 2-1. It would be astronomically higher.
Proponents of the “genocide” accusation stack lie on top of lie, because their entire case is a monstrous blood libel.
It is why they deliberately take Israeli leaders’ words out of context to demonize them for things never said.
These same people also argue that Israel has been committing genocide against the Palestinians since 1967, if not earlier, yet the Palestinian population has increased five times since then.
That is not how genocide works.
The ICJ’s ruling strips the right of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, many of whom are descendants of Holocaust victims and survivors, from exercising their right to prevent another genocide against them.
Indeed, it sets a precedent that will deny the right of defense of all democracies fighting terrorists who embed themselves among civilian populations.
It’s effectively a green light for terrorist organizations around the world.
We have seen that words have one meaning for the world, and an entirely different meaning for Israel; “genocide” is one of them.
These lies about Israel are manifesting in Oct. 7 denial, which we are seeing metastasize in real time, similar to Holocaust denial over the past eight decades.
People deny Hamas’ atrocities. They deny that Israeli women were raped. Some say that Israel committed the atrocities as a “pretext” for “genocide.”
The lies about Israel, exacerbated by the ICJ, and the advent of a new form of denial of antisemitic barbarities are a threat to Jews everywhere.
They highlight exactly why Saturday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day is so important.
Sacha Roytman is CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
