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I recently had an exchange on Facebook. Two progressive “friends” who I have organized with over the years both announced that they are antisemites. That left a small hole in my soul. Another “friend” said: Actions intent on genocide generate a negative attitude towards the country pursuing such action. My reply: The genocidal actions came from Hamas on Oct 7, 2023. There is no genocide in Gaza—it is a war. The IDF is at war with Hamas—not the Gazans.
Israel is a democracy—a flawed democracy like any other around the globe. But Hamas is a terrorist regime, and the red-green alliance—the alliance between Hamas, a brutal extremist organization, and the global progressive left—is beyond comprehension. To anyone who has critically thought through this issue, it should be obvious that Iran is using the Gazans to try to genocidally wipe Israel and its Jewish population from the map. Hamas, an Iran proxy, uses Gazans as human shields. Every Gazan killed, while Hamas embeds itself among them in hospitals, schools, residential areas, and elsewhere, is a martyr for the cause—the cause being the eradication of Israel.
The historic inversion of the word genocide, the persistent and ruthless framing of Israel as a genocidal nation—and its supporters as complicit in genocide—has worked to demonize the Jewish people, delegitimize Israel globally, and hold Israel to a double standard worldwide.
College students yell “baby killer” at anyone they think is Jewish—a tactic they learned on campus or from TikTok. Radicals attack Jews on the streets shouting “Allahu Akbar” not knowing anything about the Israel-Palestine issue. They simply hate Jews—for whatever reason. Jews have been murdered on the street solely for being Jews. And these Jew-hatred actions have become normalized.
A trendy concept these days is that attacking Jews is not a hate crime; it is resistance. Can you imagine Black people being harassed or murdered on the streets because of the civil war in Sudan? Or Chinese people being harassed or murdered because the Chinese government imprisons Uyghurs in “re-education” camps?
Recently, I was deep into an argument about the issue with a young woman I had done a lot of community work with over the years. She told me she was reaching out to bring me back into the fold of the progressive left; I chuckled silently to myself. About ten minutes into the discussion, I realized she had no idea what the date Oct 7th represented. As a member of the radical, meme-loving, Israel-hating community, neither her college education nor her social media education had offered her balanced or historic instruction on the issue.
But she is part of a community and group membership is important. It shapes thinking processes because they’re tied to a sense of self. If a college kid feels good about his social or political group, he’ll feel good about himself; he’ll have a sense of belonging. These are his friends; this is his community. They’re cool.
What my young friend did not understand was I had been studying this issue for many years and I was not going to buy into antizionism because the progressive left was pushing this line. That’s what critical thinking is for.
I support women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights, campaign finance reform, Medicare for all, action on climate change—but not antizionism. I am a Zionist; Zionists believe that the Jewish people have a right to a sovereign state, to self-determination in our indigenous homeland. Jews have continually lived in what is now Israel for 4000+ years. Jerusalem was a majority-Jewish city in 1888.
Antizionism is not simply a disagreement with the policies of the Israeli government. Antizionism is not simply a disagreement about ending the war in Gaza. Antizionism is a global anti-Jewish hate movement. Antizionism is a theory of annihilation. It means one thing: The belief that Israel does not have the right to exist as a Jewish state and, therefore, it must be annihilated.
THE HISTORIC INVERSION
It is ironic that the radical left does not acknowledge a sequence of true settler-colonial genocidal conquests—those by the armies of the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad’s armies seized large swaths of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Asia and Europe. These communities did not convert to Islam because the Prophet Muhammad knocked on their door and politely encouraged conversion. From 622 CE to 750 CE, Muslim armies fought and won continual bloody battles and then forced conversions on one village after another. At that time, in 621 CE, there were no Muslim-governed communities. There are currently 57 Muslim-majority countries; approximately 26 of these countries have officially declared Islam as their state religion or incorporate elements of Sharia Law into their core legal structure.
Previous to these conquests, on the Arabian Peninsula most communities practiced polytheism. There were also small communities of Jews, Christians, and Hanifs. Jews and Christians survive today, but not as thriving communities on the Arabian Peninsula. The Hanifs were totally destroyed. In the Persian Empire (what is now Iran) and in Central Asia, Zoroastrianism was almost completely destroyed. Manichaeism was also practiced in Persia—it has been decimated. Buddhism, which was practiced further east, was almost destroyed. In the Levant and Egypt, Christianity, alongside long-established, very old Jewish communities, as well as a few remnants of paganism, were either annihilated or dispersed. In North Africa, there was a mix of local Berber animism, some Christianity, and a few Jewish communities. Very little of those communities survive today. And those that survive in Muslim countries exist as second-class citizens.
CONCLUSION
Genocide: The word genocide was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer, who had lost many relatives in the Holocaust. It is derived from the Greek genos for tribe or race, fused with caedere, the Latin for killing.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines genocide as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.
Article II of the 1948 Geneva Convention defines genocide as specific acts committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part, including killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting calculated life conditions, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children.
At that same convention, it was explicitly noted that heavy civilian losses in war “do not as a rule constitute genocide.”
Genocide is an actual goal of Hamas. This has never been a secret. They proved it once again on Oct. 7, 2023.
Following are a few select quotes from the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS):
Article 2: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
Article 7: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.”
Article 28: “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people: ‘May the cowards never sleep.’”
Currently, there is a war in Gaza—not a genocide. Hamas invaded Israel on Oct 7, 2023. They raped, murdered, pillaged, and kidnapped. Israel attacked back—but not until Oct 27th. Nevertheless, the world was screaming genocide on Oct 8th and hasn’t stopped with this lie ever since. There were hundreds of demonstrations worldwide soon after the Hamas massacre with activists yelling genocide—the continuation of a lie that has journeyed around the world hundreds of times.
If Hamas surrendered, as any losing army would if it cared about the welfare of its civilians, and lay down its arms, the war could end. If Hamas allowed for an election—instead of murdering opposing clan members in order to maintain power—Gazans could be free from Hamas. There has not been an election in Gaza since 2006.
The world appears to think it is up to Israel to end the war, but not as an actual end with a Hamas surrender—just a ceasefire. This is untenable. It leaves Hamas in power with no election in sight; it allows Hamas to regroup so it can strike Israel again. And there will be more death and destruction on both sides.
There is no possibility for peace between Israel and Gaza while Hamas is in power. Why aren’t activists in the streets shouting “Free Gaza from Hamas?”
Antizionism has fueled the genocide lie. The social pressure and moral indignation the left has brought to bear on activists is overwhelming. There is a war in Gaza, and it must be brought to an end.
Am Yisrael Chai.
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