South Africa's blood libel against Israel: Israel fighting Hamas terrorists is not "genocide"

South Africa's blood libel against Israel: Israel fighting Hamas terrorists is not "genocide"

By Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin

See: "War is not new to Israel" (Oct 16, 2023); "Jewish wisdom during war" (Oct 23, 2023); "Abraham's principles in war and peace" (Oct 31, 2023); "Facts and truths amid the fog of war" (Nov 13, 2023); "Samson in war and peace" (Nov 26, 2023), "The indestructible Jews in peace and war" (Dec 5, 2023), "Jewish victory depends on Jewish unity" (Dec 14, 2023), "Dear World, Part One" (Dec 25, 2023), "Dear World, Part Two" (Jan 1, 2024), "Dear World, Part Three" (Jan 8, 2024).

The General Assembly of the United Nations has been the traditional forum where nations that hate Israel attack it in droves. Now those attacks have been transferred to another branch of the United Nations at the International Court of Justice in The Hague where South Africa has filed a specious case of "genocide" against Israel concerning the Hamas-supporting Arabs of the Gaza Strip that is in fact, truth and reality unrelated to real events beginning with the October 7, 2023 war launched by the Hamas terrorist organization out of the Gaza Strip against a surprised Israel relatively at peace with its neighbors.

It should not be a great surprise that Hamas hates Israel and Israelis and wishes to attack and destroy them. Proof of this is the 1988 Hamas charter: "The original Charter identified Hamas as the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine and described its members to be god-fearing Muslims raising the banner of Jihad (armed struggle) in 'the face of the oppressors.' The charter defines the struggle to be against the Jews and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in all of former Mandatory Palestine, and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel...Unlike the 1988 Charter, the 2017 charter accepted a Palestinian state within the borders that existed before 1967 and maintained Hamas's refusal to recognize the State of Israel, which it terms the 'Zionist entity'. The 2017 charter refers to an Israeli state within the pre-1967 borders as a transitional state while also advocating for the 'liberation of all of Palestine'." (Wikipedia) The 2017 Hamas charter is really not much better: "It advocated for a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, describing this as a 'formula of national consensus'. It also referred to Israel as an 'illegal entity' and retained the organization's commitment to armed struggle. While the 1988 Hamas Charter had been widely criticized for its antisemitism, the 2017 document stated that Hamas' fight was not with Jews as such because of their religion but with the Zionist project. However, Hamas fell short of repudiating the original, 1988 charter, saying it was a document of its time and the new document represented Hamas's position for now." (Wikipedia)

One thing is very obvious, both the 1988 and the 2017 Hamas charters make it clear that Hamas seeks the total elimination of the Jewish state of Israel. Even more than that the charters are clear and unmistakable proof of Hamas's own intentions to commit genocide against the Jews of Israel in order to acheive their totalitarian radical Islamofascist goals. Israel in this situation is the victim of a malicious lie and a spurious blood libel by being accused of what in fact and in actuality Hamas and its Islamic allies such as Hezbollah, the Houthis and their patron the Islamic regime in Iran want to do to the Jews of Israel whom they irrationally hate with an extraordinary passion befitting the antisemites that they really are. 

Hamas, and its patrons such as Iran and South Africa and the other terror-supporting nations signing on to the false charges lodged against Israel in the International Court of Justice, as in all the other United Nations bodies, are wolves in sheeps clothing portraying the Arabs of the Gaza Strip as innocent "victims" when they are in fact the instigators of this war and are in cahoots with each other in their intentions and actions to destroy the Jewish state of Israel. Therefore Israel has every right legally, politically, internationally, diplomatically, judicially, militarily, ethically and morally to defend itself and fight back with all its strength and military power against both its warring enemies on the battlefields but also against the bald faced liars and venomous Jew-haters and accusers at the World Court who smear it with false and egregious accusations of things it has never done, is not doing, and will never do. Shame on them!

They obviously mean what they say, and they definitely say what they mean. In consequence thereof, the vicious surprise Blitzkrieg-like pogrom that Hamas unleashed from the Gaza Strip killed over 1,200 Israelis, wounded over 5,000, many seriously, and more than 240 were taken as hostages by Hamas from Israel and dragged into its underground labyrinth of terror tunnels. Israel did not seek this war and Hamas knew it and that is why for years they faked peaceful coexistence (see: Hudna) with the Jewish state as they plotted their surprise bloodthirsty attacks that they launched with fanatical hatred of Israel and its people and with equally deadly results.

At the start of the war that began on October 7, 2023 more than 1,200 Israelis were murdered by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists using various means: Shooting Israeli men, women and children in cold blood. Physically torturing and mentally abusing Israeli men, women and children. Raping and sexually assaulting Israeli women and girls. Burning and destroying Israelis and Israeli people and property and reducing them to ashes reminiscent of the horrors of Jewish bodies burnt in the Nazi crematoria. Even pets were killed by the marauding Arab gangs from the Gaza Strip that included not just front-line expert militarily trained and armed terrorists, but in their wake came waves of supporting groups of Arabs who took part in the orgy of death, destruction and mayhem that came in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attack on the Jewish religious holy day of Simchat Torah, the traditional "rejoicing with the Torah" celebrated by Jews. 

Included in the over 1.200 Israelis murdered on October 7, 2023 and in the days that followed the penetration by Hamas of Israeli territory, were hundreds of Israeli soldiers and dozens of Israeli policemen who were either taken by complete surprise and ambushed or tried to fight back and defend Israel from the invading Hamas and Islamic Jihad killers. Both the Israeli army and its police force were responding to murderers and savages intent on destroying as many lives and and as much of Israel as they could possibly get away with. The entire "Gaza Envelope'' meaning all Israeli villages, towns, kibbutzim and farms surrounding the Gaza Strip have had to be evacuated displacing tens of thousands of Israelis.

Israel as a nation had and has every right to respond, to get rid of the attackers and to restore order. This was to be a war against terrorism that is also a huge policing action to get rid of murderers, criminals and terrorists who killed over 1,200 Israelis, wounding and maiming over 5,000 more Israelis, and to find ways to gain the release of the over 240 Israeli hostages taken captive. Under these bitter circumstances Israel launched a counter-terrorism war to capture and kill and ultimately destroy the designated terrorist organizations Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all terrorists inside of the Gaza Strip. A huge problem in getting this done is that the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were embedded with the civilian population making it a frustrating job to get at the terrorists themselves.

Israel's right to respond to the terrorist attacks against it on October 7, 2023 is equal to the United States right to respond to the Arab Al Qaeda Islamofascist terrorist attacks against it on September 11, 2001. After that the United States subsequently went to war against certain Arab and Islamic countries and counter-attacked the supporters and sponsors and bases of the terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria eventually resulting in the American military conquest of the terrorist state of Iraq and the ouster of its government and the capture and hanging of its terrorist leader Saddam Hussein. No one in their right mind would have called America's response to Arab terrorism then as "genocide" even though lots of Arab civilains were killed in the course of the Iraq War! The rationale for the Iraq War started when "the George W. Bush administration began actively pressing for military intervention in Iraq in late 2001" (Wikipedia) that means right after the 9/11 2001 attacks were carried out by the Arab terrorists against America.

Israel's right to respond to the attacks against it are also in line with the response of the Soviet Union when it was attacked by the Fascist terrorist state of Nazi Germany on June 22, 1941 and then in turn the Soviet Union waged total war against Nazi Germany until the Nazis and Nazi Germany was utterly crushed and defeated. Millions of German civilians died and tens of millions were displaced by the Soviet Union's relentless warfare against the Nazi enemy. Subsequently hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war were sent to do hard labor in Siberia and most never returned alive. No normal person would have dared to accused the Soviet Union of committing "genocide" against Nazi Germany. Not to mention that under the regime of dictator Joseph Stalin tens of millions of innocent Russian civilians were starved, shot and tortured to death in the name of building a new Communist "Utopia", yet no one has ever accused Stalin and the USSR of genocide against its own citizens. Assessing the excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin: "some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher [with] official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953), around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag, some 390,000 deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s, with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories...The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes included with the victims of the Stalin era." (Wikipedia), yet Stalin and his henchmen were never tried for mass murder and the real genocide of their own fellow country men and women.

Israel's justification for fighting this war is no less than the justification of the United States fighting Japan after the Japanese attack against the United States at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that led to a full scale world war that eventually resulted in the United States dropping two atom bombs on Japan that killed and exposed to nuclear radiation hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in the wake of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No sane person would argue that the United Sates was guilty of "genocide" when it conducted and then sought to end the war that Japan had started by attacking America in 1941. America also joined in the mass bombing of German cities during the Second World War after the Nazi German declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941. Even though Germany did not attack the territory of the United States yet nevertheless the United States felt it was justified in bombing German cities and killing untold numbers of German civilians until Germany surrendered in 1945. No one would have been mad enough to accuse the United States duriung and after the Second World War of "genocide" against Germany for responding to a German  declatraion of war against America.

From 2006 until 2023 Hamas built hundreds of miles of reinforced and sophisticated attack tunnels under the Gaza Strip in preparation and for use in at least twenty wars that resulted between Hamas and Israel until the worst war of 2023 broke out. Hamas has had one goal: The complete destruction of Israel and turning Israel into an radical Islamic Arab Palestinian state with the probable intention of somehow getting rid of all of Israel's Jews who they view as undesirable and hated "Zionist occupiers and colonialists". Hamas and other Arab terrorist groups received lots of financial aid from the outside world meant for the betterment of the lives of ordinary civilian Arab Palestinians. Instead, vast sums of money, estimated in the billions of dollars, were funnelled to build up the attack tunnels, buy weapons of all sorts from small guns and explosives to huge rockets and missiles, and that also flowed into the pockets and bank accounts of the Hamas leadership that lives in luxury outside of the Gaza Strip.

The civilian population of the Gaza Strip are not innocent bystanders to this war. The vast majority of them voted for Hamas to represent them and they were more than happy to have Hamas in their midst, cheering them on and following them passionately with pride. The Arab civilian population of the Gaza Strip stood idly by as Hamas relentlessly prepared for war against Israel and as often happened when Hamas fired rockets and missiles at Israel they cheered them on and did not protest or stop the bombardments of Israel by Hamas. Hamas drew tens of thousands of recruits to its armed wings from the Arab civilian population of Gaza Strip civilians who were more than eager to join them and encourage their sons to become Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists. 

Now that these civilians have been displaced by a war that their beloved Hamas launched in cold blood they must surely understand that they committed a huge blunder by backing the murderous Hamas terrorists instead of seeking peace all the years and that they should have turned their backs on Hamas instead of rejoicing and joining with the killers of Israelis. Had they faced a force other than the Jewish Israelis, these woe-begotten and misbegotten ungrateful civilians would surely have become fair game as avid supporters of the rabid Hamas terrorists had they been fighting against Adolf Hitler's or Joseph Stalin's or Mao Tse Tung's merciless forces who would have indeed killed them all out, unlike the Israelis who ask them to move to safe zones to shelter from the fighting and allow in convoys of relief trucks to prevent starvation..

Iranian support for Hamas can be blamed for instigating the latest war. Iran contributed financial, strategic and military assistance to Hamas helping to train its terrorist army and even more malicious than that, the Iranians instigated and hyped up the blood pressure and anger of Hamas and its supporters egging them on with warmongering rhetoric and with megalomaniacal delusions of grandeur as if Hamas was to view itself as some sort of "superpower" in its fight against Israel, and the West. Iran uses proxies such as Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen to wage wars at various levels and intensities against the Jewish state also viewing attacking Israel as an attack on the United States that supports Israel and against the West in general.

It's a very cynical and Machiavellian game that Iran and its proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis play against Israel and Western nations. Hamas and Hezbollah attack and shoot rockets, mortars and missiles into Israel not distinguishing between military or civilian targets, while the Houthis like to attack civilian ships who wish them no harm. Hamas uses Arab civilians in the Gaza Strip as human shields above ground and interweave their tunnels, its shafts and exit and entry points with civilian non-military institutions such as schools, hospitals, mosques, relief organizations, private homes,

Regardless of Hamas's interweaving of human shields with its underground network of attack tunnels all interconnected with civilians' homes, hospitals, schools, mosques, Israel moved in to the Gaza Strip to not just fight Hamas but remove it permanently from the Gaza Strip so that they would no longer be a credible military threat to Israel ever again. The Israel Defense Forces issued detailed warnings to the Gazan civilian population to move out of areas that were marked as Hamas targets, bases and strongholds that Israel rightly intended to bomb and destroy.

At no point did Israel deliberately target civilians in Gaza. If some civilians were killed it was purely unintentional and by mistake in the heat of battle and the fog of war. In war there is always collateral damage and it is unavoidable that innocents will be in the wrong place at the wrong time and unfortunately suffer unnecessary deaths. Due to the smallness and confined spaces of the areas of the Gaza Strip most of its approximately two million Arab civilians have become displaced and have to rely on foreign aid to survive. The blame lies with Hamas and Islamic Jihad for starting this war. Whether one looks at Israel's response as a military counter-attack to an uncalled for terrorist provocation, or if it can also be viewed as one big massive anti-terrorist policing operation to remove blood-thirsty gunmen who are killers and murderers that unfortunately involves going after them in their subterranean tunnels or ferreting them out from civilian areas they take refuge in, it is unavoidable and tragic that there will be civilian casualties caught in the heavy crossfire.

God forbid, at no point and at no time has Israel committed any form of "genocide" of the Arabs in the Gaza Strip. Yes, most have become displaced from their homes, that is because their homes were part of the designated battlefields between the Hamas terrorists and the Israeli army. And yes, sometimes Israel has had to bomb structures it knew of as terrorist bases where the cowardly killers and murderers took cover. This is not a case of Israel indiscriminately killing Arab civilians in the Gaza Strip. This is not a case whereby in the times of Nazi Germany the Nazis set up execution squads known as Einsatzgruppen that shot millions of Jewish civilians to death during the Holocaust at the the time of the Second World War. 

Israel's army of Jewish soldiers is well aware of what genocide means because the Jewish People suffered a real genocide at the hands of the Nazis. There were no international aid organizations and shipments and international organizations and courts to relieve the suffering and hunger of Jewish refugees as they were shipped off to death camps and concentration camps during the Holocaust by the Nazis and their cohorts. The Israel Defense Forces would never and could not stoop to such inhuman behavior and they never have in their history as a fighting force since 1948.

Rather than focusing on Israel, those nations who are sincerely concerned about real genocide should be looking at what are already genuine situations of genocide by such nations as the Peoples Republic of China's disgraceful genocide of the Uyghurs: "The Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang that is often characterized as genocide. Beginning in 2014, the Chinese government...incarcerated more than an estimated one million Turkic Muslims without any legal process in internment camps...It is the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II...Government policies have included forced labor, suppression of Uyghur religious practices, political indoctrination, forced sterilization, forced contraception, and forced abortion...since 2017, some sixteen thousand mosques have been razed or damaged, and hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools...birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar fell by more than 60%. These actions have been described as the forced assimilation of Xinjiang, or as an ethnocide or cultural genocide, or as genocide. Those accusing China of genocide point to intentional acts committed by the Chinese government that they say run afoul of Article II of the Genocide Convention, which prohibits 'acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part,' a 'racial or religious group' including 'causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group' and 'measures intended to prevent births within the group'." (Wikipedia).

Israel is not Communist China, and it is certainly not the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany, God forbid, and it does not abuse Arabs like that. On the contrary Israel has absorbed more than two million of its own Arab citizens of Israel granting them equal rights and opportunities like all Israelis. The Arabs of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have continued with their own histories, while the Arabs of the Gaza Strip were granted full self-rule after the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza and in turn willingly chose the terrorist Hamas organization in 2006 as its leaders and the Arabs of the West Bank have received some territory and been represented by the Palestine Liberation Organization as part of the 1993/5 Oslo Accords. 

Given that the Arabs of the Gaza Strip and many of the ones on the West Bank as well have abused their positions by voting for and advocating for a terrorist regime embodied by Hamas and Islamic Jihad and engaging in at least twenty wars with Israel from 2006 to 2023 culminating in the heinous October 7, 2023 war launched by Hamas to kill Israelis and destroy Israel, with the West Bank Arabs following suit by showing their full agreement and support for Hamas and celebrating its ongoing attacks against Israel and even giving support to and allowing Hamas to be active in the West Bank itself, it would be more than reasonable to say that they have lost all their bargaining chips and rights and that they need to move to a frictionless place where they will not be bothered by Israelis or Jews.

That is why there will never be a so-called "two state solution" simply because Hamas and its supporters among the majority of Arabs of the Gaza Strip want all of Jewish Israel that they regard as "occupied territories" to become part of a future radical Islamic Arab Palestine, something that Israel has not, cannot and will not allow to happen for very obvious reasons of its own survival. Since Israel is the stronger party in the ongoing conflicts it can and should enforce the rules of this geopolitical game and that is that the Arabs of the Gaza Strip and the West bank and even the unhappy Arabs within Israel's borders should relocate or be relocated to fellow fraternal Arab Muslim countries who should, could and would have mercy and compassion on their suffering Palestinian Arab brethren by welcoming them and taking them in and absorbing the Arabs of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and even from Israel, into their own Islamic and Arab nations societies wherein the Islamic Arab Palestinians should be happy and feel very comfortable in and very much at home.

Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College–Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach – Kiruv Rechokim. He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy.

Contact Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin at  izakrudomin@gmail.com