The accusations that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza are unfounded. |
Anti-Israel protesters gather for a pro-Palestinian demonstration, in Rome, June 7, 2025. (AP Photo credit Alessandra Tarantino)
Just in the last month, there have been roughly 10 to 25 major protests against Israel in the United States in which protesters used the word “genocide”. This is nothing new; it has been going on for years.
What is new is that the anti-Israel position has caused a major shift in the support for Israel in the United States Senate. In April, 2026, 80% of the Democratic Senators opposed legislation authorizing certain weapons and bulldozers to be sold to Israel. The opposition failed to stop the sale.
In leading the opposition to the sale, Bernie Sanders accused Israel of “genocide”. That made me think again about what “genocide” means. Unfortunately, the term means different things to different people.
A little history clarifies this discrepancy. In the fall of 1947, local Arabs began a siege of Jerusalem, a siege which was not broken until the spring of 1948. The siege of Jerusalem was terrible for the people who lived in Jerusalem, many of whom lost huge amounts of weight because there was not enough food. See “Letters from Jerusalem 1947-48” (2015) by Zipporah Porath, an American Jew who lived in Jerusalem through that siege and sent letters home to her family describing that siege.
Sieges were nothing new in 1947. The Greeks besieged the Trojans in the 12th or 13th century BCE. Joan of Arc besieged the people of Orleans in the 15th century. As late as World War II, the Germans besieged St. Petersburg. Over one million civilians died as a result of that siege, mostly from starvation. In all of those sieges, civilians became victims. It did not matter. A siege was a siege and, at the time, considered an acceptable........