I don’t know if Israel is committing genocide or not, but it sure does look like. As the saying goes, ‘If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck maybe it’s a duck.  That’s sort of how I feel about it.

Most knowledgeable people say Israel has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza. At least 17,000 of those are children. Those are not Gaza fighters. 33,000 children have been injured. Many of those are now amputees. Scarred foe life.

What can possibly justify that? Israeli’s keep attacking hospitals, schools, residential complexes. They always say they are targeting Hamas.  But they make it clear, to attack one member of Hamas it doesn’t matter how many civilians or children are attacked too.  Is that good enough. That is reckless behavior.  Behavior of bullies. We are big and powerful and we can do it. We don’t care who gets hurt. That’s their attitude.

Then there is starvation which is rising precipitously. That is a direct result of Israeli policies. 50% of all children in Gaza are now suffering from severe malnutrition. And Canada and its western allies keep supporting Israel against Hamas even though it already has a massive superiority in weaponry.

Genocide scholar Omer Bartov claims Israelis are guilty of genocide, even though few specific statements have been made by Israeli leaders confirming a genocidal intent. First, he points out, most regimes that carry out genocide do not publicize it. Political leaders rarely make genocidal intent clear in their statements. If you look for such evidence you will never find genocide.

As Bartov said, “they don’t say we are carrying out genocide.”^[1] Even Adolf Hitler made few such statements, he pointed out.  Leaders are almost always more circumspect than that. It is very rare that intent can be seen. It is inferred from facts on the ground. As Bartov explained, even in the case of Hitler that intent was clearly inferred from such facts even though he made few statements making it clear. There is no written order where he said, “Let’s carry out genocide.”

Is intent also clear in the case of Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders? Israeli supporters say the claims are ridiculous. Are they? In the case of the Israeli Minister of Defense saying they are “human animals” or “we won’t give them water.”  Or we won’t give them electricity. Such statements are incitement to his soldiers to carry out an act of genocide. The Israeli’s mobilized 300,000 reservists and sent them to Gaza and they heard what he had said. They knew what they were being called to do by their leaders. The Minster was saying to his soldiers these are not human beings, and we should not treat them like human beings.

For a long time Omer Bartov the genocide scholar there was insufficient evidence of genocide.  He has changed his mind on account of the accumulating evidence that is genocide.

Bartov also pointed out how Netanyahu recently said Israel wanted to get rid of Palestinians from Gaza and they were looking for other countries to take them in, “that is an international crime.”

Hamas should also release the hostages. There is not justification for their actions. It also might be genocidal. They just don’t have the claws that Israel has.

Genocide or not, the actions of Israel are horrendous. We shouldn’t be supporting that.