One of the central features of current anti-Semitic propaganda against the state of Israel is the slogan “Free Palestine!” One can find this graffiti around the world as apologists for Hamas define the military fight against the October 7 attacks on Israel as a ‘genocide against Palestinians.’ Despite this propaganda, the reality is that Palestinians, or more accurately Arabs, are more free within the state of Israel than any other location they inhabit. Moreover, the only current Jewish residents in the Gaza Strip are being raped, murdered, or kept as hostages within that sovereignty of Hamas. Even the recent expressed culpability of the Israeli Defense Force for the unintended killing of a humanitarian food group exposes the rhetorical reality that the sovereign leaders of Gaza are genocidaires bent upon erasing Jewish inhabitants ‘from the river to the sea.’ Those ambitions were amplified by Iran’s recent massive attack on the Jewish state as an extension of its daily shouted aspirations to deliver “Death to Israel!”

Many Jacobin reactionaries that plead for Hamas, are unaware of how vast and politically free Palestinians living in Israel are. More than two million Palestinian Arabs live in Israel -- more than 20% of the population. Presently, there are more than 600 Palestinians who freely serve in the Israeli Defense Force. Like orthodox Jewish community members, Palestinians are not required to serve in the IDF. Palestinians and Arabs can vote in the elections of Israel and also serve in the parliamentary body. Masab Yousef, son of West Bank Hamas leader Sheik Hassan Yousef, converted from Islam to Christianity and joined to help Israel’s government to counteract the dangerous genocidal ambitions of Palestinian supremacists such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad Front. After the October 7 attacks, he explained the political ambitions of his father: “Since its establishment, Hamas has one goal in mind, which is annihilating the State of Israel. It’s not a secret that Hamas wants to destroy the State of Israel. They cannot accept Israel or accept Israel’s right to exist.” Hamas and groups like it within Gaza torture and kill dissident members of Gaza. When groups like Hamas and Hezb’allah kill innocent civilians like the NGO delivering food in Gaza, there is no sense of remorse or reconsideration. In a wide variety of terrorist attacks led by these groups, the killing of civilians is rhetorically viewed as delightful and indicative of the ideal political accomplishment advocated on a regular basis.

The political cruelty of Hamas creates conditions where Palestinians live 10 years longer within the state of Israel than they do in Gaza. There are many Palestinians/Arabs who live in Israel and appreciate the obvious morality and ethics of Israeli sovereignty compared to West Bank or Gaza versions of Arab sovereignty. No similar or comparable point can be made about Jewish Israelis living in Gaza. Anyone known to be Jewish in Gaza is in grave danger. This is why, when sovereignty was transferred to Palestinian control in 2006 and 2007, Israeli citizens were removed by force. The United Nations cooperates with an educational environment promoting genocide toward Jews in the region. The UNRWA is involved in the genocidal activities led by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad front. It is this educational infrastructure that has for more than 20 years educated the population of Gaza to adopt a majoritarian view that all forms of violence against Israeli citizens are justified. To a profound extent, a similar propaganda is exerted on American college campuses pretending that the October 7 attacks were justified Palestinian actions of self-defense while the IDF responses to killing, rape, and kidnapping of women and children are not justified. The obvious rhetorical double standard is an indication of a powerful system of propaganda that must be dismantled if there is ever to be peace in regions such as Gaza and West Bank. Even Democratic Party heroes such as President Biden, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton are publicly denounced and shamed as genocidaires for failing to fall in line with this propaganda for Hamas.

The harsh complexity of genocidal rhetoric is that genocides begin with the paradoxical argument that the perpetrator is the greatest victim the world has ever known. Adolf Hitler’s rhetorical predicate for the Holocaust was written in prison -- Mein Kampf -- and is translated as “my struggle.” His own personal struggle in the aftermath of World War I is argued to be an analogy for the suffering of Germany and its unfair political circumstances of the 1920s. The Hutus rhetorically offered themselves 30 years ago as the brutalized victims of colonial preference given to the Tutsis. Their victim status curdled within an educational system dominating Rwanda, laying the rhetorical groundwork for Hutu militants to kill more than one million of their Tutsis neighbors with blunt instruments in the span of 100 days. The rhetorical reflexivity of the Israeli government that fired two military officers for killing humanitarian food workers in Gaza demonstrates the clear difference between argumentation driven logic and propaganda driven emotions that fuel the calls for Israel to refrain from self-defense.

In his important essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell wrote:

“Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits.” The rhetoric of genocide surrounding the Israel/ Hamas conflict must be clarified to arrive at a peaceful conclusion that saves the lives of Arabs and Jews in the region. We must each work to dismantle the genocidal rhetoric of Hamas and Tehran and affirm the life-giving rhetorical framework of Israel in order to end genocide and preserve human life.

Dr. Ben Voth is professor of rhetoric and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He is the author of six books regarding the power of rhetoric and argument upon global affairs including: The Rhetoric of Genocide -- Death as a Text (2014), Debate as Global Pedagogy -- Rwanda Rising (2021), and Political Campaign Communication (10th edition) with Robert Denton, Robert Friedenberg, and Judith Trent think (2024). He is editor of Argumentation and Advocacy an academic journal dedicated to the study of argumentation and public advocacy.

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