A curious thing happened last week in Israel. More than 100 military officers from 20 countries attended an international conference hosted by the Israel Defense Forces. Among them were representatives from countries that had falsely accused the Jewish state of committing war crimes, deliberate starvation or even genocide in Gaza during the war with Hamas that followed the Palestinian terrorist attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
While there, they visited the sites of the Oct. 7 massacres and attended briefings about the challenges presented by urban warfare as well as discussions of how the IDF used AI, drones, artillery and medical services for the wounded.
Some nations, like the United Kingdom, whose left-wing government continues in its vitriolic demonization of the Jewish state and has passively accepted the growing mainstreaming of antisemitism in British society, boycotted the event. But others who were just as vociferous in backing up the claims that what Israel had done in Gaza was uniquely awful, such as France and Canada, showed up alongside representatives from friendlier countries like the United States, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
They were accompanied by officers from Germany, Finland, India, Greece, Cyprus, Poland, Austria, Estonia, Japan, Morocco, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. Many have either joined in the international community’s Israel-bashing, recognized “Palestine” as an independent, albeit still non-existent, country or chose not to stand with Israel during the past two years as it fought for its life against genocidal Islamist terrorists.
They don’t really believe the lies
That Israel has much to teach the world about the use of high-tech and intelligence in warfare, added to its expertise in avoiding civilian casualties and how to deal with emergencies, is nothing new. The Israelis have been sharing their knowledge in these and other topics with other nations for decades. So, in that sense, the military conference wasn’t all that newsworthy.
But it matters because it shows that many of those countries that tacitly or openly endorsed the blood libels against Israel during the course of the war that, at least temporarily, concluded with the ceasefire-hostage release deal brokered by the United States in October, don’t really believe the accusations. If they did, they wouldn’t have been there or subsequently, members of their delegations would have spoken about alleged links between Israeli military tactics and the claims of mass murder.
Except they didn’t. Because those claims don’t exist.
As military experts, like British Col. Richard Kemp and U.S. urban warfare researcher John Spencer have pointed out, the evidence for “genocide,” famine or indiscriminate killings of civilians doesn’t exist because none of it happened. Israel’s army is, in fact, the most moral in the world, with a record in combat with respect to civilian casualties that is superior to that of any other nation.
Israel fought a war in Gaza against a tenacious enemy that had attacked across the border between the Jewish state and the Hamas state (in all but name), committing the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas deliberately used civilians as human shields and built its fortifications in and around as well as under schools, hospitals and dwellings where ordinary Palestinian Arabs lived. Yet the IDF still fought under rules of engagement that were not only highly restrictive and humane, but also stand in stark contrast to the orgy of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction that the Palestinians engaged in when they attacked Jewish communities in southern Israel.
As happens in war, a great many Gazans died during the subsequent fighting, others were wounded, and everyone in the area suffered in one way or another. Claims of Palestinian civilian casualties were vastly exaggerated by Hamas propagandists, but despite claims to the contrary, the ratio between civilian and Hamas combatant deaths in Gaza (which Israel-bashers never mention) was roughly one to one. That’s an unprecedentedly low number in the history of urban warfare. And it’s far lower than the number of civilians killed in Iraq by U.S. and allied forces during that Mideast war earlier this century or by Allied armies during World War II.
We can point out that the claims of famine and starvation so prevalent during the past summer simply evaporated once the fighting stopped—and not because of any increase in the supply of food in Gaza. Rather, it’s because, thanks to the ceasefire, Hamas is back in firm control of much of the area, and there is no longer any propaganda value in making false claims about how people are faring under its rule.
The ‘genocide’ narrative
Nevertheless, the narrative about “genocide” and famine continues to be repeated by media outlets like The New York Times, commentators like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who did so live on television during his meeting last week with President Donald Trump.
To his discredit, the president did not contradict Mamdani. But he’s not alone in letting lies like that go unanswered. Much like the false claims that democratic Israel is an “apartheid” state are routinely mouthed by the ignorant, so, too, the lies about genocide have simply become part of the language of contemporary discourse, despite being disconnected from the facts. The lies about Israel blend into Mamdani’s left-wing version of antisemitism. They do the same for Carlson’s right-wing narratives about Zionism being an enemy of Western civilization. That shows that he has gone beyond platforming radical antisemites like the neo-Nazi “groyper” Nick Fuentes to mimicking their hatred.
In the face of the calumnies spewed by officeholders like Mamdani and populist hate-mongers like Carlson, it often seems like the facts don’t matter.
Inconvenient information that debunks the lies about genocide doesn’t matter to ideologies like the myths about race, intersectionality and settler-colonialism in which Jews and Israelis are falsely depicted as “white” oppressors, no matter what they do, and Palestinians are always considered oppressed victims. These toxic ideas are the guiding principles of Mamdani’s public career in much the same way that Carlson’s and Fuentes’s blend of religious-based hate has led them to their obsessive hatred for Israel and the Jews.
Facts and truth are of no use in debating products of the bizarre red-green alliance of Marxism and Islamism that produced Mamdani. The same is true for his right-wing counterparts in spewing hate.
No one is going to persuade Mamdani or Carlson that their information—if indeed their beliefs are actually based on anything other than their ideological obsessions—about Israel is incorrect. Nor will we do so for those chanting for Jewish genocide (“From the river to the sea”) and terrorism against Jews everywhere (“Globalize the intifada”), all the while calling the intended victims of these atrocities “Nazis.” Citing objective facts about the war or the reality of life in democratic Israel or a Palestinian society dominated by Islamist doctrines that are little different from a death cult will simply fall on deaf ears.
Not everyone is listening to the hate-mongers
But something that many friends of Israel can sometimes forget amid the deluge of antisemitic invective hurled at them and their cause is that most Americans aren’t listening to either Mamdani or Carlson, or agreeing with those who refuse to be judgmental about their hate. The vast majority of people in the United States remain distrustful of political extremists and are, when presented with facts, persuadable.
The false charges that are hurled at Israel hurt, especially when, thanks to a biased media, they migrate from the fever swamps of the far left and right to mainstream public discourse. When magnified by the algorithms of social-media platforms like TikTok, they can metastasize into a growing chorus of hate echoed by a generation that relies on such untrustworthy sources for their information about the world. And that is another reason why those outlets, like JNS, that do tell the truth about the conflict, are more important than ever.
Yet as we saw with last week’s conference in Israel, the vast distance between left-wing or right-wing antisemitic canards rooted in Hamas propaganda and the truth is sometimes very easy to discern.
As infuriating as it can be to have to witness the way blood libels about “genocide” have become commonplace, those falsehoods aren’t strong enough to demolish the reality of Israel. The nation is not perfect, nor are all of its people. But the Jewish state survived the horrors of Oct. 7 and then went on to defeat its Iranian, Hezbollah and Hamas foes, and did so while still preserving its standards and humanity. Those of us who care about it and the truth know who is lying and who is not. We should be equally certain that the Israel Mamdani and Carlson and their various followers wish to destroy will still be standing long after its opponents have passed from the scene.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
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