The genocide questions

Dear readers,

Everywhere we hear the word genocide.

The word was coined in 1944 by the Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin. Its definition is laid down in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention (see the note below this column).

Here in Israel you cannot open a newspaper or watch a broadcast without hearing it as an accusation against the conduct of the IDF. In the Netherlands we see the TikTokkers, students, protesters in scarves, journalists, presenters, politicians and the ever-present 'genocide experts' who apparently learned the word on October 8.

So much collected intelligence is impressive, and I am happy to be persuaded by these experts. After all, facts speak for themselves.

Don't they?

This correspondent puts his questions to you. Please be generous with your answers:

1. Why are more than 97% of Gazans still alive after three years of war, if this is genocide? 2. Why did Israel withdraw completely from Gaza in 2005, if the project is genocide? 3. Why were thousands of Gazans with foreign or Jordanian passports allowed to leave, when they could just as well have been 'genocided' on the way? 4. Why supply Gaza with electricity and part of its water for eighteen years, if the project is genocide? 5. Why leave infrastructure and greenhouses behind in 2005 for the population to take over and feed itself? 6. Why remove more than 8,000 Israelis from their homes in Gaza in 2005 and move them across the border? 7. Why clear every Jewish grave to rebury the dead elsewhere? 8. Why did nearly 20,000 Gazans hold work permits in Israel on the eve of October 7, if the project is genocide? 9. Why wait 75 years, and only begin after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, if the project is genocide? 10. Why is Hamas — whose charter calls for killing Jews and which put that into practice on October 7 by murdering entire families — never itself accused of genocide? 11. Why warn in advance by text message and leaflets before the IDF strikes, if this is genocide? 12. Why publish evacuation maps neighbourhood by neighbourhood, if this is genocide? 13. Why send your own soldiers into densely populated neighbourhoods, where they die from snipers and booby traps, instead of destroying everything from the air, if this is genocide? 14. Why does Hamas use civilians as human shields — a tactic that only works against an army that wants to spare civilians — if this is genocide? 15. Why vaccinate hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children against polio, if this is genocide? 16. Why let tens of thousands of food trucks in and deliver food yourself, if this is genocide? 17. Why evacuate thousands of patients to hospitals abroad, if this is genocide? 18. Why accept a ceasefire in exchange for hostages, if this is genocide? 19. Why stop the war as soon as Hamas releases the hostages, if this is genocide? 20. Why spare the more than 2 million Arab Israelis (about 20% of the population), if this is genocide? 21. Why war in Gaza and not in the West Bank, where most Palestinians live, if this is genocide? 22. Why do the death tolls of the Hamas-run health ministry make no distinction between fighters and civilians, if the facts are so clear? 23. Why is there still no final ruling from the international courts, while the proceedings have been running for so long? 24. Why has the International Court of Justice never found any state guilty of committing genocide — not even Turkey — while we see countless examples and attempts? 25. Why was there talk of 'genocide' before troops had even entered Gaza, if it is an observation and not a slogan?

Note — under Article II of the UN Genocide Convention (1948), genocide means acts such as killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, or inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction, "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such". Proving that specific intent is the heart of every genocide case.