The Israelis certainly owe Bret Stephens.
Yesterday, the opinion columnist of the New York Times went to the pages of the American newspaper of the file to promote his latest disturbed argument, in mind: “No, Israel does not commit the genocide in Gaza”.
It does not matter that many global institutions, ranging from various United Nations bodies to Amnesty International, have determined that Israel is just committed. These are organizations that barely throw the word G light, but Stephens knows better. And he will tell us why.
In the very first paragraph of his intervention of time – which should perhaps be accompanied by a trigger warning for readers subject to aneurysms – Stephens demands with challenge: “If the intentions and actions of the Israeli government are really genocidal – why it was not so malicious that it has engaged more.”
It would seem, of course, that the almost complex conversion of the Israeli army of a large part of the Gaza band into rubber – via the bombing of houses, hospitals, schools and everything that can be bombed – would be rather “methodical”. As for the insufficient death perceived of the “actions” in the course of Israel, Stephens quotes the official count of the Palestinian death of “nearly 60,000” in less than two years, and wonders why there are “not, let’s say, hundreds of thousands of dead”.
He continues by proclaiming that “the first question to which the choir of the anti-Israeli genocide must answer is: why is the number of deaths not higher?”
Among the many questions Stephens himself need to answer, in the meantime, which is why he thinks that the slaughter of 60,000 people is not serious. In November 2024, Israel had killed at least 17,400 children in Gaza – but even it is apparently not “malicious”. In addition, according to a study published in the Lancet Medical Journal over a year ago, the actual number of death in Gaza already had to exceed 186,000. How is it for “hundreds of thousands”?
Instead of waiting for a response from the “anti-Israeli genocide chorus”, Stephens presents his, namely that “Israel obviously does not commit the genocide”. Quoting the definition of the United Nations Genocide Convention of the term as “the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such”, Stephens proceeds to the announcement that “I am not aware of any proof of an Israeli plan to target and deliberately kill the civilians of Gazan”.
Objectively speaking, it is the equivalent in terms of ridiculous to claim that there is no proof of a plan of the operators of a chicken slaughterhouse to end the life of the poultry which is deliberately there. You do not kill 17,400 children in 13 months by accident; You have not repeatedly bombed hospitals and ambulances if you are not, you know, deliberately aiming to kill civilians.
But these are not only bombs. Forced famine is also genocide. And on this note, another question that Stephens could answer is how to intentionally deprive a population of two million people in food and water which is necessary for human survival does not constitute an “intention to destroy” this group. Only yesterday yesterday, Gaza health officials reported that at least 15 Palestinians had hungry to death, including four children.
Since the end of May, more than 1,000 Palestinians have also been killed while they were trying to get food from the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). This diabolical outfit, supported by Israel and the United States, concentrates not only a large number of hungry Palestinians in one place for an easier tondance by the Israeli army, but also promotes the vision supported by the United States of Israel to force the surviving Palestinian population forcibly.
While Stephens deigns to mention the “chaotic food distribution system” in Gaza, he insists that “sudden humanitarian patterns or soldiers or strikes that have triggered the bad target or (Israeli) politicians reaching the fan sound stings are not about to add to a genocide.”
And yet, in his war against the use of the word G in the context of Gaza, Stephens refuses to recognize that Israel himself was a genocidal company from the start. The Zionists were well aware of the need to dispense with the majority of the Aboriginal population of Palestine even before the formal creation of the State of Israel on Palestinian land in 1948, a process which led to mass murder and the destruction of hundreds of villages. Some three -quarters of million people have been made refugees.
Since then, Israel has continued what is fundamentally genocidal, working to disappear the Palestinians both physically and conceptually – as illustrated on fire the famous affirmation of the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir according to which the Palestinians “did not exist”. Indeed, the existence of Israel as the state of Jewish colonial is based on the very intention of destroying, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such “.
Anyway, forget history and reality. Stephens warns us that, if the word genocide “must keep its status of unique crime, then the term cannot be applied promise to a military situation that we do not like”.
Speaking of promiscuity, the Israeli army has long been in bed with the New York Times and a host of other American corporate media, which do their best to disinfect Israeli atrocities as self -defense. But as Israel now continues to conduct a unique crime in Gaza with the support of global superpower, the genocidal journalism of Stephens is also only horrible.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.
