Genocide Poppycock: The Targets of Genocide Get Accused of Committing One

The attempt to massacre Israelis that played out on a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv last week was both extraordinary and more of the same. The Omani co-pilot stabbed the pilot and tried to seize control of the plane, telling investigators that he intended to crash it at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport. A devotee of radical Islam, he hoped to kill not only the 174 passengers on board, mostly Israelis, but Israelis on the ground.

A heroic Indian pilot, near death, managed to open the cockpit. An Israeli passenger -- a plumber -- somehow stopped the plane's precipitous plunge. Another Israeli passenger -- a dentist -- saved the pilot's life. Still other Israeli passengers -- off-duty pilots -- landed the plane in Saudi Arabia, of all places, where the Israelis were treated before continuing home.

There are miracles in this story, but there are also some familiar aspects. Another mass killing of Israelis attempted. A big yawn among the Israel-haters, increasingly cult-like in their fevered obsession, who never seem particularly concerned about successful massacres of Israelis, much less unsuccessful ones.

It's been three years since Oct. 7, 2023. At 6:30 that Saturday morning, Israelis dancing joyously at the Nova music festival or sleeping peacefully in their beds were still alive. Ordinary Gazans who, unbeknownst to them, had been sentenced by Hamas to death, destruction and displacement by what Hamas not only knew but intended would follow were alive, safe and living in homes.

All of that changed, suddenly and sickeningly, not because of an Israeli decision or an Israeli action. It changed because of the decision made by Hamas, a genocidal enterprise whose very raison d'etre is genocide, to invade Israel for the purpose of attempting genocide, carried out by some 6,000 killers, who proceeded to slaughter, dismember and rape as many Jews as they could, as far into Israel as they could. They killed more than 1,200, the equivalent, as former President Biden put it, of "fifteen 9/11s." They maimed several thousand. They kidnapped 250, shoving the terrified and mutilated victims into underground tunnels where they were chained, tortured and, in some cases, executed.

Hamas celebrated.

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas' political chief, called it "a great victory and a clear conquest on the Gaza front."

Khalil al-Hayya, another Hamas official, called the slaughter "only the first stage" in annihilating Israel.

Ghazi Hamad, another one, vowed Hamas would "repeat Oct. 7 again and again."

While Israeli medics were still collecting body fragments to try to identify the remains of Israelis burned or pulverized beyond recognition, the condemnation of Israel -- yes, Israel -- commenced, including the accusation that Israel was guilty of "genocide." "We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence," proclaimed 34 Harvard University organizations -- on Oct. 7, that very day.

Talk about hitting the ground running.

Within days, self-identified human rights organizations, United Nations "experts" and the reliably untethered anti-Israel lobby were accusing Israel of genocide, a word so inapposite -- even with all the tragic deaths of innocents that a response aimed at stopping Hamas inevitably caused -- as to be breathtaking. And yet the casual deployment of the word has become not merely de rigueur but mandatory in widening circles.

Call it what you will: it ain't genocide -- a legal term that, to one's knowledge, has never been applied to repelling a genocidal attack, and which requires a specific intent to destroy, physically or biologically, an ethnic group.

The civilian deaths in Gaza have been dreadful, precisely as Hamas intended, the proximate result of Hamas' decisions. Think about it: as many as 500,000 German civilians died in World War II by Allied bombing alone, as did hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. Were Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Harry Truman guilty of genocide? The Israeli Defense Forces' evacuations of Gazans in the middle of urban warfare were not of its design; the warnings, the massive food aid and the mass vaccinations -- is any of this, let alone all of it, consistent with a "genocide?"

The demands that those seeking to protect their careers cry "genocide" ("You want gigs? Better say 'genocide'") have become withering. The pressure to cave to them is intense.

But there is something despicable about accusing those targeted for genocide of genocide. Those who think there is something to be said for intellectual honesty shouldn't do it.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States Attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.