Genocide Is Not a Vibe

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, April 09, 2024

 

“If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren told an audience at an Islamic Center of Boston event last week.

 

The “they” in this sentence refers to the International Court of Justice. But because the United States is not party to the charter that created the ICJ, and Israel does not recognize the court’s authority, “they” was not the operative word in Warren’s comments. It wasn’t even “genocide,” which has enough rhetorical force that it dominated the headlines that graced reports about her remarks. Rather, the most important and most revealing word in her statement was “believe.”

 

In the end, Warren did not have the courage of her own stated convictions. According to her office, the senator was “not sharing her views on whether genocide is occurring in Gaza.” Rather, she was merely commenting dispassionately on the ongoing fact-finding process at The Hague. That’s hard to believe.

 

For months, Warren has supported the idea of conditioning aid to Israel on terms designed to punish “a right-wing government” in Jerusalem “that’s demonstrated an appalling disregard for Palestinian lives.” Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has engineered a “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip by showing no respect for “civilian life,” she said in a highly publicized Senate speech. In that speech, she maintained that “the Israeli government must stop the bombing in Gaza” regardless of the status of Hamas — presumably because, in her view, Hamas’s survival represents the lesser of two evils. If Warren has convinced herself of that, why wouldn’t she also attribute to Israel the crimes of which Hamas is guilty?

 

We can only assume that Warren’s staff felt it was necessary to walk back her allegations of “genocide” not because those aren’t her true feelings but because the word has a legal definition and Israel’s conduct doesn’t come close to meeting it.

 

“We don’t have any evidence of genocide,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. Along with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby’s regular updates on the administration’s failure to find any evidence in support of the defamatory claims Israel’s critics insist upon, Austin’s observation represents an embarrassment for the senator. But the defense secretary’s remarks are best construed as a grudging admission.

 

In that hearing, the Pentagon chief also insisted that the Israelis must “open more land routes” for the transmission of humanitarian aid — presumably, even more than they opened just this week. “Failure to do so will create more terrorists,” he said. Once again, we’re confronted with the faith-based conviction that Israel’s response to terrorism is what begets terrorism in the first place.

 

The Palestinians have hardly been starved of foreign aid in material and financial terms. A 2021 analysis by the Associated Press observed that U.N. agencies committed $4.5 billion to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip between 2014 and 2020. Since 2012, Qatar has given Hamas $1.3 billion. Egypt committed $500 million to the Strip. The United States forks over millions of dollars in assistance to Gazans directly in addition to the $90 million it provides U.N. institutions such as UNRWA annually (despite the now undeniable evidence that the organization has supported terrorist operations against Israeli civilians). And all that is to say nothing of Israel’s support to Gaza’s civilians, including the work permits that previously allowed 10,000 Gazans to work inside Israel.

 

It wasn’t a lack of aid that created the conditions culminating in the October 7 massacre. That was the work of a millenarian death cult whose mission statement commits it to seeking the execution of as many Jews as possible until the State of Israel ceases to exist.

 

Given Hamas’s commitment to genocide of the sort that meets the word’s definitional requirements, we can understand why those who have committed themselves to false moral equivalences would like to brand Israel a genocidal actor. But “genocide” isn’t a feeling. Warren, in her eager belief that the facts in evidence will one day support her prejudices, has committed a calumny. It should not be forgotten.