Mick Hartley

John Spencer – I’m a War Scholar. There Is No Genocide in Gaza.

In his New York Times op-ed titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It,” Omer Bartov accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. As a professor of genocide studies, he should know better. Genocide is not defined by a few comments taken out of context, by estimates of casualties or destruction, or by how war looks in headlines or on social media. It is defined by specific intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or in part. That is a high legal bar. Bartov did not meet it. He did not even try.

I am not a lawyer or a political activist. I am a war expert. I have led soldiers in combat. I have trained military units in urban warfare for decades and studied and taught military history, strategy, and the laws of war for years. Since October 7, I have been to Gaza four times embedded with the Israel Defense Forces. I have interviewed the Prime Minister of Israel, the Defense Minister, the IDF Chief of Staff, Southern Command leadership, and dozens of commanders and soldiers on the front lines. I have reviewed their orders, watched their targeting process, and seen soldiers take real risks to avoid harming civilians. Nothing I have seen or studied resembles genocide or genocidal intent….

Israel has taken extraordinary steps to limit civilian harm. It warns before attacks using text messages, phone calls, leaflets, and broadcasts. It opens safe corridors and pauses operations so civilians can leave combat areas. It tracks civilian presence down to the building level. I have seen missions delayed or canceled because children were nearby. I have seen Israeli troops come under fire and still be ordered not to shoot back because civilians might be harmed.

Israel has delivered more humanitarian aid to Gaza than any military in history has provided to an enemy population during wartime. More than 94,000 trucks carrying over 1.8 million tons of aid have entered the territory. Israel has supported hospitals, repaired water pipelines, increased access to clean water, and enabled over 36,000 patients to leave Gaza for treatment abroad….

Bartov cites death tolls from Hamas health authorities without question. He says 58,000 have been killed, including 17,000 children. But these numbers come from a terrorist organization. They mix civilians and fighters and count anyone under 18 as a child, even though Hamas uses teenagers and younger children as combatants. The figures are not independently verified and have been shown to contain false details, including names, ages, and sex. Civilian deaths are tragic, but in Gaza, they are also part of Hamas’s strategy.

No military operation is judged solely by body counts or destruction figures. If we used Bartov’s logic, every major war would be called genocide. Two million civilians died in the Korean War, an average of 54,000 per month. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars killed hundreds of thousands. The fight against ISIS leveled multiple cities and killed tens of thousands. None of those wars were considered genocidal. Gaza is not either. War is evaluated based on the actions of commanders, the goals set by leaders, and how well the military follows the laws of war, not by statistics taken out of context….

This is not a campaign of extermination. It is a war against Hamas, a terrorist army embedded in civilian areas by design.

But different rules apply when Israel's involved.