Six months ago, the genocidal terrorist group Hamas executed a highly immoral and unjustified large terrorist attack on Israelis. Israel retaliated by attacking Gaza, which quickly turned into a highly immoral and unjustified genocide on the people in Gaza. Yet, many people, and especially people on the right side of the political spectrum and Jews, are supportive of Israel and are very reluctant to call the war in Gaza a genocide. That pro-Israel position and genocide denialism is irrational (inconsistent) and unethical. The fundamental problem is nationalism. In this conflict, the nationalism of the Zionists is the real source of the conflict. To obtain peace in the Middle-East, we need ‘Truth and Reconciliation‘ (as in South-Africa), whereby all atrocities by all parties are acknowledged. Just like we should not deny that the Hamas attack on October 7th was genocidal and terrorist, we should not deny that Israel’s attack on Gaza is genocidal.
An imaginary scenario to understand the root problem of the conflict
Many believe that Hamas started the current Gaza war, in the sense that Hamas is the culprit. This is clearly not true. Looking at history with an impartial eye, it is very clear what are the major events that caused the Israel-Palestine conflict. Israel started the conflict in 1948, and in every violent eruption since the start, Israel reacted disproportionately with violence.
Imagine that nationalist Muslim immigrants in Europe unilaterally declared that a region in Europe, say Flanders in Belgium, is from now on their state, an Islamic state, after having executed terrorist attacks in Flanders for decades. Especially for right-winged people who are afraid of Muslims, it should be obvious how local people in and around Flanders would react. The Flemish people would fight those nationalist Muslim immigrants. Probably Germany, the Netherlands and France would go to war against the new occupier. Then imagine that those Muslim nationalists strike back and commit ethnic cleansing in Flanders. They destroy 500 Flemish villages, kill hundreds of Flemish people in mass executions, expel a million of Flemish people, drive more than a million Flemish people together in a small area in the west coast of Flanders. They end up winning the war and really occupying Flanders. It is full colonization: they take all natural resources, destroy the farmlands of Flemish farmers, build walls in Flanders to separate the Flemish people from the nationalist immigrants.
You can easily understand that the surviving Flemish people will become very angry against Muslims. Their hatred towards Muslims becomes so extreme, that many of those Flemish people join terrorist organizations that fight against the Islamic state in Flanders. If 7 decades later a Flemish genocidal terrorist group, active in the west coast of Flanders, executes a terrorist attack on the people in the Islamic state, after which the Islamic state starts a war in the Flemish west coast, who would be the real culprit of this war in the west coast? It would be unethical to say that it is that Flemish terrorist group. Even saying that the conflict, with its long history, is so complex that it is impossible to say who started it, shows a lack of moral vision.
Of course, such a worry that nationalist Muslim immigrants occupy a region in Europe and turn it into an Islamic state, is unfounded: it is extremely unlikely that Muslim immigrants actually manage to do that, and only a tiny minority of Muslims have such nationalist colonialist ambitions. Yet, especially people on the far right side of the political spectrum in Europe do have such a worry. That concern is a major reason why those right-winged people want to close borders and stop immigration. They distrust and hate Muslims. As Israel fights Muslims in Gaza, the far right now takes the side of Israel. Even if most antisemites are also on the far right.
The support of the (far) right for Israel is extremely ironic: Israel is the only example in recent history where a group of religious nationalist immigrants actually did unilaterally declare a region to be a religious state for their own people. Zionists are Jewish nationalists. After the first world war, many Zionists migrated to Palestine. Some Zionists joined terrorist organizations. In fact, the founder of prime minister Netanyahu’s Likud party, Menachem Begin, was once the leader of the terrorist group Irgun. Then, in 1948, those Zionist immigrants unilaterally declared a part of Palestine to be the state of Israel, against the will of the local people. That caused a war, in which Israel committed ethnic cleansing (the Nakba) and occupied an even larger territory. Israel destroyed 500 villages, killed more than 15000 Palestinians and forced nearly a million people to flee. Twenty years later, Israel started another war by attacking Egypt, committed ethnic cleansing again (the Naksa), and conquered an even larger territory. In all subsequent wars and conflicts large and small, where Palestinians or neighboring countries attacked Israel, Israel reacted disproportionately by killing more people than the number of Israelis killed by Israel’s attackers.
The state of Israel has no right to exist, because of unwanted arbitrariness
The fact that Zionists unilaterally declared a large part of Palestine to be the state of Israel, for the Jewish people, and that the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948 was rejected by many local people, means that the state of Israel has no right to exist. Imagine you want to found a new state or country. You cannot simply declare a piece of land to be your state. Only if no-one has a problem with you founding a state on that land, you may do so. The same goes for everyone, without arbitrary exceptions. Hence, it also goes for Jewish people. For a Declaration of Independence to be valid, it has to be accepted unanimously by all affected people. That goes for all Declaration of Independence, without arbitrary exceptions. Hence, it goes for the Israeli Declaration as well.
So the state of Israel has no right to exist, because the Israeli Declaration of Independence was not unanimously approval by all affected people. But if Arabs are allowed to live in Palestine, then so are Jews. In fact, everyone is allowed to live in Palestine, without arbitrary exceptions. This not only goes for Palestine. Everyone is allowed to live in every region, without arbitrary exceptions of regions. So Jews are allowed to live in Antwerp, New York, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and every other city, town or municipality. No arbitrary exceptions for Jews. No arbitrary exceptions for anyone. Hence, national borders should be open, migration should be free, and all Jews are allowed to migrate to Palestine and live there. But what migrants are never allowed to do, is declaring an arbitrary region (usually conveniently chosen to be the region where they migrated to) to be a state for an arbitrary group of people (usually, conveniently chosen to be the group of which they consider themselves as members), as long as at least someone objects. The problem is: this is exactly what the Zionist immigrants did in Palestine, and it is not allowed, because it involves unwanted arbitrariness.
Unwanted arbitrariness is the one and only real and fundamental immorality, according to a rational ethicist. What is the real reason why antisemitism is wrong? Because discrimination of Jews involves unwanted arbitrariness. Despising and excluding Jews is arbitrary, because Jews are one arbitrary group of people amongst all possible groups that can equally be despised and excluded, and at least someone (e.g. a Jew) does not want such disdain and exclusion. Why is denying a particular genocide (like the Holocaust) wrong? Because denying that one genocide and not another is arbitrary, and at least someone (e.g. a survivor of that denied genocide) does not want such denialism.
What Zionists did, involved unwanted arbitrariness. First, why did their state have to be in the Middle-East, in Palestine?
- Because the Jewish people originated in that region? That may be, but that means the Jewish people also originated in the Middle-East, so why not take the whole Middle-East to be the Jewish state? Taking Palestine instead of the whole Middle East or the whole world, is arbitrary. And many other people also originated in Palestine, so why are they not allowed to declare Palestine as their state, for their own people? And if Belgians are humans and humans originally came from Africa, that doesn’t legitimize the colonization of the Congo by Belgians. Note furthermore that according to the holy book of the Jews (the Hebrew Bible), Palestine is not even the original place of the Jews. Abraham came from Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). So this argument doesn’t make any sense.
- Because Palestine had a low population of local people, and hence low resistance? Clearly false: there happened to be enough people in Palestine who did not want a Jewish state there and were willing to make it very unsafe for the Jews there. Why didn’t the Zionists choose Nevada instead? That is also a desert like Israel, Las Vegas shows that one could make that desert fertile, flourishing and rich, the outcasted Mormons in neighboring state Utah showed that discriminated religious groups can live safely for decades in that region, and in 1948 Nevada had a 200 times lower population density than Palestine. Nevada would have been an ideal place for the Jewish state, much better than Palestine. But the Zionists really absolutely wanted Palestine.
- Because Jews are safer in the state of Israel? No, Jews are much safer in Antwerp or New York than in Israel, and these cities are not even Jewish states. Before 1948, Zionists already knew there were local people in Palestine who would cause trouble to Jews, especially when Jews would claim that land as theirs.
- Because in their Holy Book (the Hebrew Bible), Yahweh said that the land of Palestine belonged to the Jews? Sure, but the Hebrew Bible is just one of all the holy books in the world, and Yahweh is just one of the possible Gods. If this “my God says so in this book” argument is a valid argument, then everyone is allowed to pick or write an arbitrary holy book in which an arbitrary god assigns an arbitrary piece of land to that person. That is a very convenient justification for taking land. But is clearly has unwanted consequences. It is self-defeating, because Palestinians would be allowed to take Israel and declare it to be their state.
- Because Palestinians are Muslims and Muslims already have many Islamic states whereas Jews did not have a single Jewish state? No, even if Muslims didn’t have Islamic states, Jewish Zionists were still not allowed to conquer and colonize land and declare it to be a Jewish state. Plus: many Palestinians were non-Muslim Arabs (such as Christians,…).
- Because Jews were so much discriminated throughout history, that to compensate their damage, they acquired the right to arbitrarily pick a piece of land and declare it a Jewish state for the Jewish people? No, no matter how much harm one incurred, never does one acquire such a right. Being stolen a million dollar does not give one the right to steal a dollar from someone else. Victims of a crime are not allowed to become perpetrators of a crime. Survivors of a genocide should not commit ethnic cleansing.
So there are no valid reasons why a piece of Palestine belongs to Jews and should be the religious state of Israel. The choice for Palestine involved arbitrariness. And at least someone did not want the consequences of that arbitrary choice of the Zionists. So Israel is founded on unwanted arbitrariness, which is inherently immoral.
Israel’s defense is disproportionate
Defenders of Israel invoke the argument that Israelis have the right to defend themselves against terrorists and go after the terrorists that harmed them. If the terrorists are hiding in Gaza and keeping Israeli hostages there, then Israel has the right to invade and attack Gaza, to kill the terrorists and free the hostages.
This right to self-defense is partly true in the case of Israel. Although the state of Israel has no moral right to exist as a Jewish state, and hence no right to defend itself, everyone, including the Jewish people, has a right to live in the region of Palestine. And everyone who lives in that region in the Middle-East, including Jewish people, has a right to defend themselves against terrorists.
Everyone has the right to self-defense, but no-one has the right to use disproportionately large amounts of violence in self-defense. And that is the problem with Israel: it always reacted disproportionately in all previous conflicts, and now it reacts disproportionately again. Within a few weeks, the number of Palestinian victims (that were not Hamas militants) killed by Israel was already more than ten times higher than the number of Israeli victims killed by Hamas on and since October 7th.
There is an easy test to see whether this ratio is disproportionate, by asking the question: what if all those victims were Israeli Jews? What if all people in Gaza, except for the Hamas militants, were Israeli Jews, being kept hostage by Hamas? Then clearly Israel would not react as carelessly and brutally as it does now, causing so many victims. Consider a thought experiment, where the Hamas terrorists were hiding in and operating from tunnels under Tel Aviv. They committed a terrorist attack in a neighborhood around Tel Aviv, killing more than 1000 people. Would Israel terrorize the citizens of Tel Aviv, by roof knocking them (the ineffective and often dangerous dropping of small bombs on homes as prior warnings of an imminent large-scale bombing attack)? Would it call for the mass evacuation of the Tel Aviv citizens, not guaranteeing they can safely return home later (just like Israel for decades doesn’t allow Palestinian refugees to return), and then bomb Tel Aviv to pieces so the Tel Aviv refugees cannot return home at all? Would it say that all citizens who remain in Tel Aviv and do not flee would be considered as being complicit with Hamas? Would it block the import of humanitarian aid, food and water into Tel Aviv? Would it destroy hospitals and then block the import of essential medical equipment, such that many babies in Tel Aviv die? Would it force all the people in Tel Aviv to flee to a very small overcrowded place in the south of Tel Aviv, where they cannot escape and where food is scarce? Would it then bomb that crowded place of refugees? No, that is not how Israel would fight terrorists in that case. It is clearly not the morally acceptable way to fight terrorism. Yet, when it comes to Gaza, Israel did just those things.
The disproportionate retaliation by Israel is a bit comparable to disproportionately harmful measures to contain a pandemic. Suppose we had no vaccines against covid, would it then be ok to kill people in infected areas, such that infected people die and hence are no longer available to spread the disease? Or if a vaccine was developed that is ten times as deadly as the disease itself, would it be wise to vaccinate everyone to fight the pandemic? Clearly not. One would not do everything it takes to eliminate a pandemic virus. Similarly, one should not do everything it takes to eliminate a terrorist group. If no safe, effective and ethical options are available, one should accept the pandemic in the sense that one should not take the drastic measures that do more harm than good. Similarly, if no safe, effective and ethical options are available to stop all terrorism, one should accept the terrorism in the sense that one should not take the drastic measures that do more harm than good. You may defend yourself against an aggressor, but not at all costs.
There is sufficient evidence of genocide committed by Israel
So now we see Israel committing genocide. The four pieces of the evidence below are sufficient to call this a genocide.
First, within a few months, Israel already killed more than 100(!) times as many children as the genocidal Hamas. Israel already killed more than 1% of the Gaza population.
Second, Israel forced more than a million Gazans to flee to the south of Gaza where they cannot escape, Israel knew they cannot escape there, and then Israel started bombing the south of Gaza. Israel did not allow those Gazans to escape to safety, because Israel is not willing to receive the millions of Gaza refugees. The Gaza people would be safer in Israel then in Gaza, yet, Israel does not allow Gazans to flee into Israel. In fact, there are millions of Palestinian refugees in neighboring countries, and after decades Israel is still not willing to allow the return of those refugees. Many people in Gaza are refugees who fled from the ethnic cleansings by Israel in 1948 and 1967. Those Gazan refugees have a right to return to their hometowns in Israel. Israel does not allow that, even when it is attacking their refugee homes in Gaza. Hence, Israel went twice after many Palestinians. Bomb them here, then bomb them there again.
Third, Israel is blocking food, water, electricity, medical equipment and humanitarian aid into Gaza, after having destroyed health infrastructure in Gaza. Israel even killed humanitarian aid workers in Gaza (almost 200 by now) who tried to help Palestinians.
Fourth, and strikingly, the leader of Israel (Netanyahu) said to its soldiers to remember what Amalek did, referring to the people (the Amalekites) who according to the holy book of Israel (the Hebrew Bible) were victims of a 100% complete genocide committed by Israel’s first leader (King Saul). King Saul commanded to kill every one of the Amalekites, after which his soldiers effectively killed everyone (except the king of the Amalekites, who eventually died as well). Since that genocide, the Amalekite people no longer exists. Note that the Amalekites were a people, like the Palestinians are a people (with families, women and children), whereas Hamas is not a people but a militant group. So Amalek cannot refer to Hamas.
Note that genocide is the inevitable outcome of the strategy chosen by Israel. Israel wants to eliminate anti-Semitic terrorism at all costs, by bombing places in Palestine. Since its origin in 1948, Israel made Palestinians so angry, that if all Hamas terrorists would be killed, there will be many surviving Palestinians left who are so extremely angry that they will join new terrorist groups. Every Palestinian becomes a potential terrorist, if Israel keeps on making Palestinians so angry. And that means Israel has to kill all Palestinians if it wants to eliminate all terrorism risks. Making Palestinians more and more angry against Israel is not an effective way to decrease terrorism threats.
Genocide denialism is immoral
Many people are still denying that Israel is committing genocide. This genocide denialism is like Holocaust denialism: it is immoral. We should not deny (or trivialize) the Holocaust, not deny (or trivialize) the terrorist attack by Hamas, not deny (or trivialize) the Nakba ethnic cleansing by Israel and not deny (or trivialize) the genocide in Gaza by Israel. We should be consistent in not denying or trivializing any genocide, terrorist attack or ethnic cleansing. No arbitrary exceptions. People who are against Holocaust denialism should not deny the genocide committed by Israel. People who are against the Hamas terrorism attacks should not deny the terrorist attacks by Zionist paramilitary terrorism organizations like Irgun (Etzel) in the 1930s and 40s, whose members later had powerful political positions in the state of Israel. We should be consistent, not arbitrary, in our condemnation of genocide and terrorism.
Some defenders of Israel argue that Palestinians are not even a people, and hence genocide (killing a people) is impossible (like killing a rock is impossible). This is pure denialism: there are clearly people who call themselves Palestinians and consider themselves members of the Palestinian people. That people even has a flag.
Many people say that Hamas is genocidal, as it wants to eradicate Palestine from Jews, “from the river [Jordan] to the [Mediterranean] sea”. That is true: such explicit intention makes Hamas genocidal and hence immoral. But we should not forget that Israel, although not having said the words “from the river to the sea”, did actually ethnically cleanse Palestine from Palestinians, all the way from the river to the sea. They did so in 1948, the Nakba. They didn’t have to say it, because they simply did it. Since 1948, Israel never accepted a Palestinian state (not in the West Bank, not in Gaza, not anywhere else between the river and the sea) and never allowed the return of the millions of refugees to their homelands between the river and the sea. In this case, the Gaza genocide denialist defenders of Israel are too naïve, thinking that if one does not very explicitly call for a genocide, it cannot be called a genocide. Netanyahu’s implicit call for genocide by referring to Amalek, is of no or minor concern to those defenders of Israel.
Some genocide denialists claim that the number of Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of the world increased over the past decades. With the fact that Israel is militarily capable of effectively committing genocide (for example it has nuclear weapons which it can drop on Gaza to kill everyone), the rising population of Palestinians can only indicate that Israel does not have the intention to commit genocide. No intentions means no genocide. But the population of Gazans did decrease in the past few months, due to the massive killings by Israel (the growth rate in Gaza is 2,4% per year, whereas Israel killed 1,5% of the population in 6 months, which corresponds with a population decline of 3% per year, larger than the growth rate). The long term growth of the Palestinian population cannot be used to deny the past ethnic cleansings by Israel. Otherwise the growth of the Jewish population (there are now more Jews in the world than in the year 1900, before the Holocaust) could be used to deny the Holocaust.
Israel cannot explicitly call for genocide, because then it would lose its international military and economic support. Hamas, in contrast, can explicitly call for genocide, because then it gains military and economic support (from Iran) and it has no international relations to lose. So this is the most straightforward explanation why Israel is not whereas Hamas is explicitly calling for genocide. But for Israel, the Hamas attacks offered a good excuse to commit genocide without having to explicitly call for genocide. Now it can commit a lot of atrocities, violate humanitarian laws, violate rights, all in the name of eliminating terrorists and freeing hostages. It can kill more than 1% of a people, 10.000 children, and gets away with it.
How can you commit murder and get away with it? First you make your target person very angry, for example by bullying that person, preventing him from going to work, saying that he is not allowed to live there, claiming all his property to be yours, telling everyone that he is a violent person, trespassing on his property, insulting him,… Eventually that person gets so angry that he’ll resort to physical violence towards you. Now you can show everyone the evidence that he is indeed a violent person, so you get support from others. They grant you the right to defend yourself against his aggressive attacks. Then you let the violence escalate: every time he hits you, you hit him harder. Finally, when he punches you in the stomach once again, after you recovered from your wounds you go after him and kill him. You can say that this was proportionate self-defense and necessary to stop him from punching you in the stomach. When people criticize you for acting disproportionately, you can say that you were bullied at school and that those critics just hate people like you who were bullied. The analogy with Israel committing genocide and getting away with it, should be clear. The bullied are not allowed to become bullies. The victims of genocidal discrimination such as antisemitism, are not allowed to commit genocide.
Antizionism is not antisemitism
Zionism is a nationalist ideology. Nationalism involves unwanted arbitrariness (discrimination). Hence, Zionism is an immoral ideology. And now we see how much violence and suffering Zionism brought us.
Now, Zionists are Jews, Israel is a Jewish state and many Jews support Israel. That means the genocide deniers and Israel defenders can easily accuse antizionists who criticize Israel as being antisemites. This accusation is also immoral: accusing someone who doesn’t discriminate Jews for discriminating Jews, is wrong. And the accusation is based on a mechanism that underlies discrimination, which makes it even more wrong.
Antizionism doesn’t discriminate Jews. Non-Jewish antizionist people don’t claim to have the right to found their own state. Just like they don’t have that right, they believe that Jews don’t have that right either. The same goes for the right to commit ethnic cleansing, the right to commit genocide and the right to use disproportionate amounts of violence in self-defense. Antizionists believe that antizionists and non-Jews do not have those rights and that Jews do not have those rights either. So those antizionists treat non-jews and jews the same: none of them can do what Zionists did in Israel. Hence, antizionists do not discriminate against Jews: they treat Jews just the same as non-Jews. Antizionists are not taking away rights from Jews, because Jews didn’t have those rights in the first place. No-one had those rights to colonize and to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing, according to antizionists.
The accusation of antisemitism is based on a dangerous mechanism that often underlies discrimination: generalizations from individuals to groups. If some members of a group cause a problem, all members of the group are targeted and hated. This reasoning results in group discrimination. For example, believing that if some Jews (like Netanyahu) are the culprit (of genocide), then all Jews should be hated, easily ends up in antisemitism. And if some other Jews support Netanyahu and the state of Israel, this antisemitism gets worse. Now people can start hating and attacking Jews in New York who had nothing to do with Israel, simply because they belong to a group (the Jewish people) of which many other members support colonization, ethnic cleansing and genocide. By conflating antizionism with antisemitism, the defenders of Israel indicate that group generalizations are permissible. It insinuates that all Jews are Zionist, which is untrue. There are in fact many Jews (such as the Jewish Voice for Peace) who do criticize Israel and are against the war in Gaza. They separate Jewish identity from support for Israel. As long as such Jews exist, antizionism cannot be antisemitism.
Note that in above, I spoke about “religious nationalist immigrants” (i.e. Zionists) as being the culprit of the conflict in the Middle-East. What is the problem with those people? Not that they are immigrants, neither that they are religious (Jewish), but that they are nationalists.
One state for all is the only morally defensible solution
As nationalism is the real culprit underlying this decade long conflict, it is clear that the solution should be antinationalist. That basically means that all of Israel and Palestine should be considered as one state for all peoples. Call that state the Levant.
How to get there? First, an unconditional cease fire of course. Second, undermining the support of Palestinians for terrorist groups like Hamas. What Israel does now, is fueling terrorism: Israel is making Palestinians more and more angry towards Israel. That is not a sustainable solution for peace. Taking this road, safety for Jews in Israel can only be achieved by an almost complete genocide, killing almost all Palestinians. As long as there are Palestinians alive who are made very angry, Jews will not be really safe in Israel.
Israel can decrease the support of Palestinians for genocidal terrorist groups like Hamas, by letting those Palestinians choose the side of Israel. Israel could in an official peace declaration say to those Palestinians: “From now on you become full Israeli citizens, with equal rights as Jews. We will consider you as members of our people, the Jewish-Palestinian people. We are one people. We will treat you as you were Jews, like if you had a specific Jewish religion with its own traditions and customs that we will respect. All the refugees can return to their homes. If your house is taken by Israeli’s, the owners will pay you the price you ask. If your house has been destroyed, the government of Israel will pay you the price you ask. We will give you sufficient compensation fees for the next decades, for all the damages that we incurred on you. We will also subsidize housing for you, just like we do with Jewish colonists on the West Bank. Our goal is for you to become as prosperous as Jews in Israel. The borders between Gaza, the West Bank and Israel are now open. You can report yourself at the municipality where you want to live. Israel will no longer be called a Jewish state. Israel will from now on be called Levant. The West Bank will be part of Levant, but everyone, including all Muslims, are just like Jews allowed to colonize it. Settlers, including Jewish settlers, who use violence, will be imprisoned. The imprisoned Palestinian children in Israeli jails will all be released. For the Gazans who want to stay in Gaza: Gaza will become a separate state, with open borders with Levant. Levant will finance the complete restoration of Gaza, with tax money from Jewish settlers.”