The lie that won't die
Genocide - the buzzword of 2024.
For the love of truth and reason, for God, Allah, Father, Brahman Lord, HaShem and the Holy Spirit’s sake, stop with the erroneous use of the word ‘genocide!’ I swear if I see one more performative moron with a sign, or a social media post backed by the colours of the poor watermelon with the words ‘stop the genocide’, I am going to scream! Nothing says ‘I have no idea what I am talking about’ more than some idiot claiming that Israel are committing a genocide in Gaza. Never mind that there are actual genocides past and present that these dimwits have zero clue about. Never mind that they can’t name the 'river’ or the ‘sea’ that they chant and scream to nobody in particular. Never mind that we have queers supporting regimes that slaughter queers, or women that support regimes that are full to the brim with the most violent and misogynistic excuses for humans on the planet. But all of that hypocrisy aside, I want to focus on the scurrilous accusation that Israel is committing a genocide.
To state the rather obvious, countries, armies or groups of people that are trying to commit a genocide do not allow thousands of tons of humanitarian aid to be funnelled to their enemy. Nor do they pause military operations to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children of the enemy. Genocidal regimes do not warn the enemy with millions of texts, leaflets and drones ahead of ground offensives.
Genocide is defined not simply by numbers, but with intent. On numbers alone, the citizen casualty rate, considering the the extreme difficulty of both the geography of the region and the Hamas immoral tactics, is surprisingly low. Although it is impossible to access verified numbers, the Hamas Health Ministry have number of casualties at around 45,000. The IDF, who take much more care and precision when publishing their data estimate around 17,000 Palestinian militants have been killed. Even going by Hamas number, that leaves a death count of around 28,000 non-combatants.
Useful idiots cosplaying as Geopolitical experts and Urban Warfare correspondents who clearly have no understanding of the realities of war will sticky-tape emotionally charged images of injured children to home made signs with graphic red painted hand prints and tell you that every civilian casualty is a genocide. But of course they would be wrong.
Every loss of civilian life is no-doubt tragic, but I was taught as a kid not to start something I wasn’t willing to finish. You know, consequences and all that. But Kindergarten common sense aside, the combatant-civilian death ratio in Gaza is about 1:1.5 and less than 1:21. In other words, for every combatant killed, around 1.5 civilians are killed. Not only do these stats unequivocally shoot down any notion of genocide (that’s obvious), the world should realistically be applauding the IDF’s precision-strike capabilities under extreme conditions. To reinforce the impressiveness of theses stats, according to the UN, civilians usually make up around 90 percent of casualties in war. That’s a 1:9 ratio (one combatant for every nine civilians).
So why has genocide become the choice buzzword of the great unwashed? The answer to that question would require a psychology degree that I don’t have. What I have come to realise though, is there are commonalties that can be attributed to the groups or individuals beating us to a slow and painful death through repetition of the genocide chant, that boils down to an inability to see, hear or learn anything outside of their own echo chamber. The old adage of if you don’t understand something, do some research—seems to be a completely foreign concept to the genocide gang. Historical accuracy, fact checking, nuance, verification, legitimate sources and analysis of data are not mentioned in the TikTok ‘how to’ guide.
Where as once upon a time, facts mattered, today it seems that likes, hits and views are king in the war of information. Deny a fact enough times, the witless majority will believe you. Hand paint enough placards in watermelon colours with the word GENOCIDE (especially in capitals), you will convince your malleable audience that its true. So what do those of us that care about truth and reason do? We speak out. We push back. We counter nonsense with reason, lies with facts. We utilise the tools at our disposal whether it is with words on a page, donating to a cause or conversations with friends. If you are lucky enough, like I am, to live in a country that protects free speech then you have a voice—use it.
https://www.newsweek.com/more-accurate-accounting-war-gaza-opinion-1880784. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1359189/full
Unfortunately, Rashida Tlaib is running for reelection. She should have been censured for her little act, but at least she was mocked for her public self-identification as a supporter of genocide of Jews.
Great article. Another reason for the use of the word, Genocide, is the Islamic appropriation of anything Jewish that may have painted us as victims. The word, Genocide, was first coined because of the Holocaust. A "genocide" of the Jews. They appropriate the word for themselves so the word can no longer be applied to the Holocaust. There's a muslim author on Substack who claims she is part of the "diaspora." (She is actually part of the colonization.) We will probably start hearing more about the Arab "diaspora."