Posted on 12/21/2025 2:46:15 AM PST by Words Matter
I.
During a public address in October 2023, as Israel was preparing to launch its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted a verse from the Bible that would echo through countless NGO reports, and would feature prominently in South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague: “Remember what Amalek has done to you.” To those uninitiated in Biblical mythology, the phrase may not sound particularly ominous, but Israel’s critics knew better. In the Bible, the people of Amalek are the ancient foes of the Israelites, and in the book of Samuel, Yahweh commands King Saul to “smite” the Amalekites, leaving no one alive—not even women and children.
(Excerpt) Read more at maartenboudry.substack.com ...
Belgian philosopher, Maarten Boudry's essay: "They Don’t Believe It Either: The Gaza Genocide as Ideological Performance" (Oct 21, 2025), points out that accusations of "genocide" lack evidence and function as an ideological performance on the left, similar to the "stolen election" claim on the American right.Section I: Misinterpretations of Israeli Statements. In the first section, Boudry examines alleged genocidal rhetoric by Israeli officials. He debunks the claim that Netanyahu's reference to "Amalek" was a call for Palestinian annihilation, noting it comes from Deuteronomy recalling an ancient ambush and serves as a Jewish cultural motif for remembering persecution—appearing on Holocaust memorials in The Hague and Yad Vashem. Critics persist in this interpretation despite corrections.
Boudry cites other distortions: - Selective editing of Yoav Gallant's speech to omit references to eliminating Hamas - Misattributing "human animals" to Palestinians rather than Hamas - Fabricated or mistranslated threats - Omitting clarifying remarks by President Herzog affirming innocent Palestinians are not targets and expressing regret for their suffering
He notes that abhorrent statements by fringe Israeli figures lack decision-making power and do not establish intent, unlike explicit chains of command required for genocide.
Section II: Lack of Evidence on the Ground. In the second section, Boudry argues there is no evidence of genocidal intent in IDF actions. Israel's measures—such as evacuation warnings, humanitarian aid deliveries, pauses, polio vaccinations, and AI for minimizing civilian harm—are inconsistent with extermination goals. Casualties, per Hamas figures, are predominantly fighting-age males, and Israel sacrificed soldiers in ground operations to avoid indiscriminate bombing.
High civilian tolls stem from Hamas's strategy of using human shields, embedding in civilian sites, and soliciting casualties for propaganda, while building tunnels only for fighters. Boudry acknowledges Israeli errors, like aid blockades and mismanagement leading to chaos, but maintains these do not meet the UN genocide definition requiring intent to destroy a group.
He contrasts this with Allied WWII bombings, which were more brutal yet not labeled genocide, and identifies Hamas as the only party with genocidal aims in its charter.
Section III: Ideological Explanation. In the third section, Boudry attributes persistent accusations—despite fabrications, population growth contradicting genocide claims, and reactions opposing peace proposals or refugee openings—to performative ideology rather than sincere belief. Accusers twist evidence to signal allegiance within progressive circles, inverting Holocaust narratives and applying settler-colonial theory that deems Israel's existence inherently genocidal .
This has become a shibboleth, suppressing dissent in academia and institutions.
There are 2 numbers that are impossible to know with any certainty it would appear.
1) The number of people who died within the boundaries of the Gaza strip in the last 3 years.
2) The number of Indians let into the United States, with or without H-1B visas, that took all of our high paying jobs, in the last 10 years.
These are big things you are still not permitted to fully comprehend.
Thanks for posting. A very readable article. Interestingly enough it contained a graph that I just posted on another thread (before reading this piece). :-)
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4358384/posts
“...lack evidence and function as an ideological performance on the left, similar to the “stolen election” claim on the American right.”
Stolen election is a mere ideological performance????
No use in reading this, he doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about.
That being said, anything happening in Gaza is Israel's responsibility to handle the way it sees fit and American citizens care about our own problems. It's absurd for Trump to be wasting time and political capital on Gaza. We give aid to Israel and sell Israel weapons so the Israelis can fight defend themselves and fight their own wars.
if there had been any effort at a genocide of Gaza, the world would not now be afflicted by their continued Occupation of that strip.
they’d have been eliminated a year or two ago, it would have been no problem at all technically (militarily).
Instead, Jerusalem protected the enemy population and even shipped in thousands of truckloads of free food and provisions... all during hostilities.
An unprecedented “humanitarian” course of conduct, never practiced before in human history on planet earth.
Even the most generous of nations like USA never provisioned, protected, and fed the enemy during hostilities. Afterwards, okay we did it in Europe WW2 with the Marshall Plan. But NOT until after the enemy conceded the fight.
That is the article that should have been posted, not:
One snag in this Biblical interpretation is that Netanyahu was quoting from the Book of Deuteronomy, which recounts a (mythical) tale from centuries earlier. .. And since the Amalekites are being smitten elsewhere in the Bible, the obvious inference is that Netanyahu was calling for the annihilation of the Palestinians. Put two and two together, and “remember Amalek” becomes a dog whistle for genocide.
Yet seeing as even after Oct. 7, Palestinians as a strong majority supported HAMAS, which has genocidal goal of exterminating Israel and Jews (for stats) then would even killing a small % of Palestinians in the midst of war with an enemy the mingles with civilians be likened to a genocide?
LOL Kazan wrote: “Objective sources .”
Yes
Yes
Wikipedia's Israel page now unequivocally states Jewish state is 'committing genocide[sic]'. The edit was made on December 11 and has not been reversed since, despite extensive discussion between editors. The section appears at the end of the third paragraph in the top section of the page.
The accusation that Israel is committing “genocide” is not the product of legal judgment, factual consensus, or evidentiary rigor. It is the result of a coordinated political campaign—spanning activist media, captured international institutions, and manipulated information platforms—designed to delegitimize the Jewish state by weaponizing the most morally charged word in international law.
This is not accountability. It is narrative warfare.
Genocide has a precise and demanding definition under the Genocide Convention: specific intent to destroy a protected group as such. Civilian deaths, even at scale, do not constitute genocide without demonstrable intent.
To date, no international court—not the ICJ, not the ICC, not any tribunal—has ruled that Israel has committed genocide. Assertions made by activists, NGOs, UN rapporteurs, or media outlets are opinions, not verdicts. Treating allegations as findings collapses the distinction between law and propaganda.
UN commissions of inquiry, special rapporteurs, and expert panels do not determine criminal guilt. They issue political reports reflecting the ideological makeup of UN bodies that have long displayed a disproportionate fixation on Israel.
This includes figures such as UNHRC (Kothari backed by Pilay) as well as appointed “Special Rapporteur” Francesca Albanese, who has repeatedly trafficked in antisemitic tropes and openly hostile framing. Elevating such reports to the status of judicial conclusions is not legal analysis—it is category error dressed as authority.
Israel’s objective is the defeat of Hamas, a designated terrorist organization that:
Israel’s conduct—advance warnings, evacuation corridors, humanitarian pauses, and aid coordination—is incompatible with genocidal intent. These actions do not negate civilian tragedy, but they directly contradict the legal requirement for genocide.
Dense urban combat against an enemy that hides among civilians produces horrific outcomes. This is tragically true in Mosul, Raqqa, Aleppo, and Grozny—none of which were labeled genocide.
That Israel alone is branded as genocidal for conduct comparable to or less destructive than other modern conflicts exposes a double standard, not a discovery of new law.
The genocide label is applied relentlessly to Israel while:
This asymmetry signals political targeting, not principled human rights advocacy.
The narrative is sustained through citation laundering, not proof. Outlets with clear ideological or geopolitical agendas are repeatedly elevated as “reliable sources” through sheer repetition:
This is not sourcing—it is advocacy recycled as authority. Labeling such outlets “RS” does not make them reliable; it merely reveals how evidentiary standards have been replaced by political alignment.
Nowhere is this process more visible than Wikipedia. On December 11, Wikipedia’s Israel page was altered to state—as fact—that Israel is committing genocide, despite no legal ruling to that effect. Previous language correctly noted that accusations existed; that balance has been removed.
The article now links directly to a page titled “Gaza genocide”, a framing that presupposes guilt and entrenches a legally unproven claim as settled truth. Even Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has warned that the “Gaza genocide” article fails neutrality standards and requires immediate attention.
The page even cites a fake “genocide experts” group, IAGS, whose membership surged after October 7. Membership required only a $30 fee, and participants included individuals with clearly extremist views. One Gazan member, apparently influenced by anti-Jewish sentiment and admiration for Hitler among Arab Palestinians (then & now), publicly adopted the name “Adolf Hitler”. This is not expert analysis—it is performative activism and propaganda.
Concerns extend beyond observers:
Such behavior violates Wikipedia’s own rules against canvassing, meatpuppetry, and off‑platform coordination—manufacturing consensus where none exists.
The legal facts are unchanged:
Yet Wikipedia now presents genocide as settled fact. Israel is currently the only country in the world whose Wikipedia lead paragraph contains an unqualified genocide accusation. That alone exposes the motivation behind the campaign.
The charge of genocide against Israel is not a legal determination. It is rhetorical escalation—a deliberate effort to:
This is not journalism, scholarship, or human rights advocacy. It is delegitimization through narrative engineering—funded, coordinated, and enforced across institutions to normalize a lie by repetition.
When courts are bypassed, standards abandoned, and encyclopedias turned into activist battlegrounds, the goal is not truth. It is to make one word unavoidable.
That word is not a finding.
It is a weapon.
Cremastra describes himself as:
https://archive.is/jtqdn
* Social liberal
* This user believes that Trumpism is the new Fascism.
* This user thinks the current British Labour government (AKA, liberal anti conservatives and pro "palestinian" Kier Starmer) is a right-wing travesty. *
* bombing civilians in Syria genocide of over 600,000 (total);
* or 35,000 Chechen civilians,
* or genocide in Ukraine 15,000 Ukrainian civilians? (And who started the war in 2022 with 1.4 million casualties so fa?)
Not that Ukraine war is my subject on FR. But since Kazan wrote...
Here is an article from June 2025 discussing the false statistics of war victims. Well worth a read. The war over Gaza fatality numbers: A new push to prove Hamas’ count is too low
>br> A graph that was published together with the article (based on figures from Hamas!)
PS For those who would argue that the age of 13 is too low read this article from Sweden(!!!): Child assassin' aged 12 detained in Sweden after shooting wrong person in £20k
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