Pro-Israel Supporters: Denying Israel’s attempted Genocide

By David Starr

The genocide denial from Israel’s supporters has been prevalent even before the October 2023 Hamas attack in Israel. It actually goes back to 1948, when the British empire helped to establish Israel.

Nowadays, the genocide deniers still don’t learn from history and its connection to the present time.

They are still out there, apologists for Israel no matter what it does. It’s somewhat like a mental illness. They fanatically hold on to the myth that Israel is innocent of committing war crimes against its neighbors.

And they desperately hold to the idea that Israel is immune from criticism because of its myths of religious supremacy. The Israeli right-wing and its supporters appear hellbent on establishing a “Greater Israel.” But that is also something that hasn’t existed…and won’t.

There are unfortunately many examples of genocide deniers and apologists for Israel. But they further discredit themselves and in turn Isreal as many have condemned their denial. 

Here are some of the examples:

Mehdi Hassan, host of Zeteo, had a lively back-and-forth with a genocide denier, an Israeli spokesman (it figures).

Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, responded with facts against the claim by Dr. Phil that nothing was more tragic than the Hamas attack in 2023.

Mick Lynch, former general secretary of Britain’s National Union of Rail, Maritime & Transport Workers (RMT) also responded with facts against genocide denier Melanie Phillips on Novara Media.

 And there’s more:

In Common Dreams, Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction.org, takes issue with comments by Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, who was interviewed by the New York Times, when Schumer said, “The one [accusation] that bothers me most is genocide. Genocide is described as a country or some group tries to wipe out a whole race of people. So, if Israel was not provoked and just invaded Gaza at shot at random Palestinians, that would be genocide. That’s not what happened.”

In his article, Solomon disagrees: “Schumer is wrong.” He then cites the international Genocide Convention, which “defines genocide as ‘acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, or religious group.’”

Regarding Republicans, Solomon writes, “It’s almost impossible to find a Republican in Congress willing to criticize the pivotal U.S. backing for Israel’s methodical killing of civilians. It’s much easier to find Republicans who sound bloodthirsty.”

As for Democrats, “a growing number–still way too few–have expressed opposition. But in reality, precious few Democratic legislators really pushed to impede weapons shipments” while the 2024 elections were going on.

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) reported that the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) wasn’t exactly fair in its coverage of Israel and its war crimes. Gregory Shupak, an academic and author, writes, “As more and more scholars, and one rights group after another, confirm Israel is carrying out a genocide Gaza, it’s becoming ever more obvious that those who deny the genocide are the intellectual and moral equivalents who deny other genocides, such as ones inflicted on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, or the Holocaust, or the Armenian genocide.”

Shupak then focuses on the WSJ, which “persists in running genocide denial.” He gives examples of what tactics that a genocide denier like the WSJ uses:

• “Hand-waving: brushing off the cataclysmic damage Israel and the US have done to Palestinians as merely the unavoidable byproducts of war;

• “Victim-blaming: saying that Palestinian resistance groups such as Hamas are to blame for the suffering in Gaza;

• “Inverting perpetrator and victim: presenting Palestinians, and not Israelis, as genocidal, with Israelis, rather than Palestinians, cast as targets;

• “Repudiation: flatly rejecting well-documented facts while offering little or no counter-evidence.”

In conclusion, Shupak writes, “despite all the lies from outlets like the Journal, millions of people around the world have made Palestine solidarity activism a regular part of their lives.”

An organization that is consistent is the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions movement. Its National Committee writes a statement condemning Human Rights Watch (HRW) for blocking a report about Israel denying Palestinians right of return as a “crime against humanity.”

“The BDS movement condemns HRW’s latest expression of anti-Palestinian racism and reminds the world that the right of return for refugees everywhere is an inalienable right. Indigenous Palestinians will never give up that right–a core principle of the BDS Call of 2005. 

“Two Human Rights Watch staff members have resigned after the organization’s leadership blocked the publication of a report accusing Israel of crimes against humanity over the denial of Palestinians refugees’ right of return.

“A former HRW Executive Director defended the organization’s decision, asserting that the report’s conclusion was, in legal terms, novel and unsupported. However, HRW in 2023 issued a report that called the UK’s denial of the right of return of the people of Chagos island a ‘crime against humanity.’”

The BDS statement goes on to detail an example of HRW’s past denials. An “infamous report on the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on October 17, 2023, concluded, without any evidence, that a Palestinian-fired rocket was responsible for the killings, despite concrete evidence to the contrary presented by prominent media and human rights organizations.”

Perhaps HRW was pressured into not reporting fairly on the war crimes of Israel by the powers-that-be in the West, as well as Israeli sources. Still, given the severity of the carnage in Gaza–and in other neighboring areas–HRW should have had the courage to bring out inconvenient truths.

That also goes for other genocide deniers. But the odds are they won’t recover from their delusions of grandeur about Israel and its myths of religious supremacy.