The term 'genocide' has been bandied about so casually, so indiscriminately, that it has almost lost its meaning.

Perhaps those who treat the term so casually are hoping that the term will increase its broad use and power to punish supposedly genocidal nations and hold their leaders accountable.

For months, Israel has been accused unfairly of committing genocide, probably generated by the hatred toward the existence of Israel and the diaspora Jews.

But its usage is not only inaccurate, but perpetuates the bigotry toward the Jewish state and damages its relationships with the rest of the world.

It’s worthwhile to not only take a look at Israel and the Jews, but to examine the accepted definition of genocide and to also look at the events of the last 20-plus years in Syria under the control of dictator Bashar al-Assad and his collaborators.

To start, you might be interested in the origins of the term 'genocide':

The word ‘genocide’ did not exist prior to World War II.

It is a specific term coined in 1942 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) and first used in print in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.

In his book, Lemkin analyzed Nazi policies of systematic persecution and mass murder during World War II. His analysis included descriptions of the destruction of European Jews, which today is referred to as the Holocaust. He formed the word 'genocide' by combining geno-, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide, from the Latin word for killing.

Lemkin defined ‘genocide’ as ‘a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.’

His definition has been widely accepted and codified by the United Nations and the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum; the latter, for the record, has used the Genocide Convention of the former. In Article II of the Convention, the following description is provided:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1.    Killing members of the group;
2.    Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3.    Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4.    Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5.    Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

In reviewing the atrocities that have occurred in Syria, Assad committed at least the first three:

For over a decade, the conflict in Syria has been replete with mass atrocities including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

The Syrian government has imprisoned and killed more than 11,000 political opponents over the course of the civil war, and has used barrel bombs and cluster munitions to attack civilians in a direct attempt to decimate civilian population centers. At least 17 confirmed incidents of mass killings have been carried out by government forces and pro-government militia since the beginning of the conflict. According to Human Rights Watch, 15,000 prisoners have died due to torture, and at least 100,000 Syrians remain ‘forcibly disappeared.’

Additionally, in August 2013, government forces fired rockets filled with sarin gas at several suburbs surrounding Damascus, killing between 300 and 1,400 people.

These data are so horrific that questioning the devastation and definition of genocide applied to Syria’s circumstances would be difficult to imagine. To date, it appears that no one, except for Bashar al-Assad, is in denial:

Assad, who fled to Moscow, had repeatedly denied that his government committed human rights violations and painted his detractors as extremists.

In contrast to the atrocities that have been committed by the Syrian government, Israel has gone out of its way to try to limit the effects of the Gazan war on the Palestinians.

It’s important to understand the distinction between Hamas participants and the Palestinian civilian population. Hamas, in fact, started the war on Oct. 7 and violated a ceasefire, and Israel has been explicit about its intent to destroy Hamas, but has taken several steps to protect the Palestinian people.

When Israel announced that it was going to attack the al Shifa Gazan hospital, they asked Palestinian doctors to accompany them in case they encountered patients, and to determine if patients needed food, medicine or water.

The hospital had been identified as a facility housing Hamas terrorists.

A comment by this New York Post op-ed’s writer, John Spencer, is worth noting:

In my long career studying and advising on urban warfare for the US military, I’ve never known an army to take such measures to attend to the enemy’s civilian population, especially while simultaneously combating the enemy in the very same buildings.

In fact, by my analysis, Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history — above and beyond what international law requires and more than the United States did in its wars in Iraq and ¬Afghanistan.

When the IDF planned to attack Hamas in urban areas, they used multiple strategies to alert the Palestinians, to try to keep them out of harm’s ways: Tens of thousands of phone calls, text messages, voice mails and flyers informed them where they could relocate in relative safety.

These actions hardly fit the definition of “genocide.”

Yet the world is determined to create its own definitions of genocide, rebuke the Israeli government with no evidence, and criticize their strategies. These observations in no way contradict the tragedy of this war and the terrible loss of life. But it would be difficult to deny, too, that this is an existential war for Israel.

The following remarks from Spencer again in the same Post piece provide an overall summary of Israel’s efforts to lead a just war:

But all available evidence shows that Israel has followed the laws of war, legal obligations, best practices in civilian harm mitigation and still found a way to reduce civilian casualties to historically low levels.

Those calling for Israel to find an alternative to inflicting civilian casualties to lower amounts (like zero) should be honest: This alternative would leave the Israeli hostages in captivity and allow Hamas to survive.

The alternative to a nation’s survival cannot be a path to extinction.

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