What would a real Gaza genocide look like?
South Africa is accusing Israel of genocide even as its white farmers are hunted down with the support of politicians. Hamas protestors are making the same claim against Israel while ignoring Hamas's atrocities against Gaza's Arab population.
Are South Africa and Hamas supporters merely overlooking their own genocidal plans, or are they altogether fabricating the genocide claim against Israel?
Genocide?
BBC reports that the term genocide was coined in 1943 as a combination of "the Greek word "genos" (race or tribe) with the Latin word "cide" (to kill)." The piece goes on to quote an expert on the definition of genocide:
In his book Rwanda and Genocide in the 20th Century, the former secretary-general of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Alain Destexhe, wrote: "Genocide is distinguishable from all other crimes by the motivation behind it.
"Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group. [Emphasis added].
Numbers are not the issue
A quick and deliberate shooting of the last eight reported members of the Taron ethnic group (referred to as “East Asian pygmies”) in the Himalayan foothills of Myanmar would meet Destexhe's definition of genocide.
So would a purposeful massacre of northern Mongolia’s 300 remaining members of the Tsaatan (Dukha) community of reindeer herders.
On the other hand, the killing of hundreds of thousands of Germans by Allied forces in World War II was never considered genocide as the target of Allied bombings was the German military machine and Germans always had the option of putting an end to the bombings by surrendering.
In fact, the idea that numbers matter, and not the intent behind attacks, was rejected at the Nuremberg trials in what became known as the failed Dresden defense.
No revenge rapes
The intent behind IDF attacks in Gaza may be gleaned from statistics other than deaths. Over 100,000 Israeli soldiers have been stationed in Gaza since the ground invasion was launched on October 27th. These mostly young men are routinely passing Arab women on the streets and in buildings, while fully armed both with weapons and with knowledge of the countless, brutal rapes of Israeli women targeted and filmed by Hamas terrorists in their October 7th attack.
Yet, despite that, not one claim of rape or any form of sexual assault has been made by Gaza's female population. This reality argues strongly in favor of the claim that the IDF, from the upper echelons to the foot soldiers, is not seeking to harm the civilian population.
Warnings, evacuations
The partygoers at the Nova music festival next to the Gaza border would have loved to have been given a warning to leave the area ahead of the rapes and killings. Instead, women were hunted down. Israel did give notice though, from phone calls to civilian residents of buildings used by Hamas soon to be bombed to flyers warning of entire areas to be targeted.
Ratios
Turning to death statistics, the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths is often looked at to determine the intent of a military campaign. Israel's ratio of, at most, two civilian deaths for each Hamas member killed is extremely low for combat against an enemy completely entrenched in residential buildings, hospitals, schools, and UN shelters and using ambulances for transport. World War II, with far less urban combat, and the Iraq war, with less use of human shields, provide baselines for reference:
America’s civilian casualty ratio in World War II was approximately 2:1. That means for every combatant killed, two civilians died. In the Iraq War, it is estimated that from 2003-2023 approximately 174,000 civilians were killed vs. 39,900 combatants. This is close to 4.5:1. The Iraq War was similar in many ways to Israel’s current war against Hamas.
Yet Israel’s civilian casualty ratio in Gaza is far better than America’s in Iraq. At the most, it is around 2:1 if we accept likely inflated figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. [Emphases added].
The true ratio may even be less than 1 civilian killed for each Hamas member, even as women and children are forced at gunpoint to surround terrorists. The IDF confirmed on December 21st that it had killed at least 9,000 Hamas members when Hamas claimed that some 20,000 Gazans were killed in total.
If the 20,000 figure was inflated by even a small percentage, or if the 9,000 minimum estimate of Hamas terrorists killed is understated, an outright majority of Gazans killed may have been terrorists. That would be an amazing fact, if indeed the case when considering the extreme use of human shields in Gaza, where Hamas terrorists force children to encircle them as they travel between hospitals, schools, and other areas populated with civilians.
End game
The number of Hamas terrorists in Gaza has been estimated at 25,000 to 40,000. If Israel is in fact able to keep to a 1:1 civilian-to-combatant death ratio, it would mean that the total number of Gazans killed to eliminate all Hamas terrorists would reach 50,000 to 80,000, with half of the fatalities being terrorists.
At the Iraq war rate, though, one would expect to see 4.5 civilian casualties for each of some 25,000-40,000 Hamas casualties. That would mean up to 180,000 civilians in addition to 40,000 Hamas members, or 220,000 total Gazans killed to remove the threat of future massacres of women and children inside Israel. Even that 220,000 number would therefore represent not a genocide but a destruction of an enemy army embedded in civilian society.
Victory
Victory does not require all Hamas members to be killed though. At least 700 terrorists have surrendered, with the surrender rate increasing as Israel refines its methods for surrounding schools and other Hamas hideouts and forces terrorists to separate from women and children.
Thousands of terrorists have also been wounded to the point of no longer being able to join attacks. As of now, there may be some 30,000 wounded Hamas terrorists, according to historic ratios of killed to injured combatants:
The popular claim that war is on the decline ignores major improvements in military medicine that have recently shifted battle casualties from the "fatal" to the "nonfatal" column. The evidence for the argument that war has gone out of fashion is a decline in battle deaths over the past several centuries.
But over the same time period that battle deaths have decreased, medical care in conflict zones has improved dramatically. This is especially true for advanced democracies such as the United States. Consider that the typical ratio of those wounded to those killed in conflict has historically hovered around the 3:1 mark. With recent medical advances, however, the U.S. wounded-to-killed ratio today ranges anywhere from 10:1 to 17:1.
Hamas, having used foreign taxpayer funds for tunnels and weapons rather than medical facilities, may be expected to be stuck in the 3:1 wounded-to-kill ratio even as other nations reduce combat deaths. If so, Hamas may have already lost some 27,000 members to injuries, and together with the 9,000 killed and close to one thousand who surrendered, Israel may have already eliminated the threat of some 37,000 terrorists. That would leave just a few thousand to be captured, injured, or killed before a complete victory for Israel.
Before, during, or after that victory, Israel will be able to defend itself at the global court.
Real genocide
A true genocide of Gazans would not see warning phone calls and flyers before bombings, a policy that resulted in less than one death for each of the nearly 30,000 bombs dropped in Gaza, mostly on empty buildings. And there wouldn't be streams of tens of thousands of Gazans moving south, past heavily armed IDF check points, without being attacked.
Instead, a genocide in Gaza would see women and children being mowed down by machine gun fire (as happened in the communities and music festival attacked by Hamas) and a hundred or so residents of a building dying with each missile. And there certainly would not be a flow of food trucks entering Gaza each day, even as those Israeli child hostages who survive and are released come back 20 pounds lighter.
Finally, the number of dead civilians would far exceed the 220,000 estimate, for a campaign targeting combatants, based on the Iraq war analogy. To date, Hamas estimates total deaths at 22,000 in an unconfirmed total, including the minimum of 9,000 terrorists killed, leaving at most 13,000 civilians, many of whom were 19 year olds shooting RPGs at IDF forces but listed by Hamas as "children."
So why the false genocide claim?
Globalists in favor of a one-world socialist government have long sought to create several regional governments, like the EU, to ease the path toward world government. Israel stands in the way of a Middle East regional government, as it could never agree to open borders and freedom of entry and work to the entire Middle East population.
Accusing Israel of genocide lessens its ability to defend itself and increases the pressure on Israel to agree to an independent Hamas/PLO state, with air and sea ports, that could serve as a staging ground for an invasion by multiple regional forces and, if successful, paving the way for a Pan-Arab regional government. The Marxist leaders of South Africa and the Marxist backers of Hamas protests are then, not surprisingly, leading the charge against the Jewish state.
See our additional Middle East coverage:
- South Africa accuses Israel of genocide while its white farmers are hunted down
- Arab kings, Egypt block Iran at summit on Israel
- 'Our revolution is a phase of world revolution: it is not limited to reconquering Palestine'
- Globalists cremate care for Gaza refugees
- How one defector got it right
- 100 years of fake communist collapses
- 'Victory means total destruction, occupation, expulsion, and settlement' - Former Knesset Deputy Speaker
- Israel: Pressure builds for total victory while leaders stall - analysis
- 'Don't starve; you can release kidnapped children and surrender anytime' - former US Naval Officer
- 8 ways Bibi betrayed the Jewish nation - analysis
- State Department pressing allies to concede to Marxist revolutionaries
- Friends of Israel concerned over ruling allowing confessions extracted under torture
- US refuses to support Iranian protestors
- Israel vs Israelis
- Biden sides with socialists; pressures Israel to protect activist judges
- 6 reasons Gaza's 'innocent' citizens may not be so innocent
