I write these words from Poland, where 90% of Poland’s Jews – 3 million out of 3.3 million – were slaughtered during World War II. That is what genocide looks like. In stark contrast, roughly 70,000 of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents were killed during Israel’s war with Hamas, amounting to approximately 3% of the population. And that figure includes enemy combatants. Yet the same word, genocide, used for the systematic, intentional murder of 90% of Poland’s Jews – and two-thirds of Europe’s Jews as a whole – is being used to describe Israel’s war with Hamas. How can this be? And where is the moral equivalence?
Recently, more than 6,000 public figures signed an open letter denouncing the Gaza genocide libel, and while the acute suffering of the people of Gaza must not be minimized, these public figures are correct: it is grossly inaccurate and even immoral to label their suffering a “genocide.”
This does not mean that the IDF always acted justly and morally or that several prominent Israeli leaders have not made inexcusable statements. Nor does debunking the genocide lie minimize the very real and acute suffering of the Gazan population. A tragic death is a tragic death.
But tragic deaths in war do not equate with a genocide.
Consider first the numbers involved.
The Holocaust killed 6 million of Europe’s 9 million Jews (67%); in Poland, 90% of Jews were murdered.
The Armenian genocide (1915–1916) killed 664,000–1.2 million of roughly 1.5 million Armenians (44–80%).
The Rwandan genocide (1994) killed 500,000–1 million people, overwhelmingly Tutsi, in just 100 days, out of roughly 1 million Tutsi in Rwanda.
Under the Khmer Rouge (1975–1979), nearly 2 million Cambodians died – roughly 25–30% of the country’s population.
Israel’s war with Hamas resulted in the deaths of approximately 70,000 people, representing 3% of the population.
How can this possibly be referred to as a “genocide”?
We are often told that the answer is “intent,” the allegation being that it was the intent of the IDF (and/or the Israeli government) to wipe out the Gazan population, just as the Nazis planned to wipe out Europe’s Jews.
This, too, is categorically false.
To the contrary, Israel took extraordinary measures to minimize civilian casualties, despite Hamas embedding itself in the civilian population and Hamas combatants wearing civilian clothing.
Just two months into the war (as of Dec. 8, 2023), the IDF had made more than 12 million prerecorded phone calls, sent out more than 15 million texts, dropped more than 4.5 million leaflets, and placed more than 45,000 individual calls, “warning civilians to evacuate areas of hostilities and individual targets.”
What other nation has ever made such efforts to spare civilian lives in the midst of a brutal war? This is the opposite of genocidal intent.
As for the charge of starvation, according to Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, more than 1 million metric tons of food entered Gaza between Oct. 7, 2023, and Jan. 17, 2025, alone. Based on the actual composition of the food entering Gaza, this represented roughly 2,600 calories per person per day.
This does not mean that all the food actually reached the people, as there were massive distribution issues. But when it comes to intent, if you’re trying to wipe out a people group, you don’t make every effort to give them time to evacuate before bombing, nor do you send them food if you’re trying to starve them.
All this is underscored by the fact that as many as 81% of the structures in Gaza were damaged or destroyed in the war, yet only 3% of the people were killed. And according to the IDF, at least 25,000 of those killed were Hamas combatants.
There is also the issue of outright propaganda, with charges of “genocide” and “starvation” circulating before the Israeli offensive had even begun.
As documented by NGO Monitor, on Oct. 9, 2023, just two days after the massacre, Al-Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights accused Israel of “employing starvation as a weapon.” On Oct. 11, Al-Haq said Israeli actions amounted to “acts of genocide.” By Oct. 15, the three groups were calling on states to protect Palestinians “against genocide” – still two weeks before the IDF’s ground invasion.
Yet there’s more.
Israel’s critics have raised the genocide charge against the Jewish state for decades, during which time the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank has grown dramatically.
In 2001, the Durban World Conference Against Racism NGO declaration called for investigation and prosecution of alleged “war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing” by Israel. In 2008–09, U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann publicly said Israel’s actions raised the issue of genocide. In 2014, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel at the U.N. of conducting a “war of genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza.
Contrast all this rhetoric with the fact that in 1967, when Israel took control of Gaza, the population was between 400,000–440,000. Immediately before Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimated 2,226,544 residents. This means that Gaza’s Palestinian population had grown by 400–450% – all while Israel was committing “genocide” against the people of Gaza!
As for the West Bank, prior to the 1967 war, the population was estimated at 850,000. By 2023, PCBS estimated the population at 3,256,906 – approximately a fourfold population, or an increase of about 280%. Where was the genocide?
Lastly, it has recently been revealed that, according to evidence released by the IDF, 170 Palestinians presented as journalists killed during the war were also operatives in Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or other terrorist organizations, while other Palestinian journalists have openly described Hamas intimidation, interference with content, threats and resulting self-censorship.
In sum: 1) the number of deaths says there was no genocide; 2) there was no intent to commit genocide (quite the contrary); 3) the charge of genocide was used as a propaganda weapon before the war even began, not to mention in previous decades; and 4) much of the reporting from within Gaza was extremely biased, if not completely propagandistic.
If the IDF committed war crimes, those must be investigated. The extremist voices within Israel must be countered. And the people of Gaza deserve compassion, with a path for a potentially better life.
But, to say it once more, there was no genocide in Gaza. Enough with this perfidious lie.
