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Combating the Lie of Israeli ‘Genocide’ and ‘Ethnic Cleansing’
Ione Belarra, a far left minister in the Spanish government, has accused Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. Photo: Reuters/David Canales
No single element of “pro-Palestine” propaganda has gained as much traction as the charge that Israel is carrying out a genocide against Palestinians. The accusation predates October 7, but it has become a staple at anti-Israel demonstrations everywhere; protesters are also pronouncing the Biden administration complicit in genocide for supporting Israel. In November, a group of Palestinians even sued the Biden administration for genocide.
Not content with fabricating and perpetuating the charge that Israel is an apartheid state, South Africa’s ANC Party ramped up its hostilities against the Jewish state on December 29, 2023, when it filed charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On January 26, 2024, the ICJ refused to throw out the case.
Considering Germany’s history, its objection that “This accusation has no basis whatsoever” should hold special significance to the ICJ.
Berlin’s statement that it “firmly and expressly rejects the accusation of genocide that has now been made against Israel,” also acknowledged South Africa’s “political instrumentalization” of the term.
There is no shortage of academics who bolster these claims. A professor of genocide studies named Raz Segal argues that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute “a textbook case of genocide.” A “historian of genocide” named Omer Bartov warns that while the Netanyahu government hasn’t yet committed genocide, it has shown “genocidal intent, which can easily tip into genocidal action.”
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, argued recently that Israelis “see Palestine as the Promised Land, which belongs to them, but this does not mean that they can destroy the Palestinian people.” She also claims that “in the name of self-defense Israel is seeking to justify what would amount to ethnic cleansing.”
The problem for South Africa, the UN, and many academics is that neither the genocide accusation, nor its brother, the ethnic cleansing accusation, stand up to scrutiny.
The word “genocide” was coined by Rafael Lemkin in 1944, when he combined the Greek word geno (race or tribe) with the Latin suffix -cide (from caedere, kill), to denote Nazi Germany’s systematic attempt to kill all Jews and thereby destroy an entire people.
In 1948, the UN approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, defining Lemkin’s neologism as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” In addition to mass murder, other indicators of genocide and ethnic cleansing are “measures intended to prevent births” such as forced sterilization, and “transferring children.”
Accusing Israel of genocide is part of a strategy called Holocaust inversion, whereby Israeli counter-terrorism measures directed against Palestinian terrorist organizations are compared to the crimes committed by Nazi Germany.
Thankfully, most people see through the hyperbole and distortion. Biden’s National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, called South Africa’s case against Israel “meritless, counterproductive, and without any basis in fact whatsoever.”
The ICJ case even united 210 members of the US Congress to “vigorously denounce South Africa’s deeply hostile stance towards Israel and thoroughly reject its charge of genocide.”
No data supports the charge of “ethnic cleansing” or “genocide” against Israel. On the contrary, the Palestinian population has grown steadily since 1948, sometimes remarkably so. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) itself acknowledges that the “Palestinian population has increased 8-fold since the [1948] Nakba.”
This is not what a genocide looks like.
In 2016, the United Nations warned that “rapid growth in the Palestinian population” that it had documented would soon create a “crisis in unemployment” and “a strained infrastructure.”
In 2022, the Arab News reported that “the high growth rate among Palestinians” will “cause concern for Israel.”
This is not how ethnic cleansing works.
Non-Jewish citizens of Israel are treated exactly the same as Jewish citizens by the government, and no one is trying to prevent them from having babies. Arab Muslim citizens of Israel work the same jobs as Jewish citizens. Many volunteer to serve in the IDF, though they are not required to do so. There are Arab Muslim members of the Knesset and the Supreme Court.
The irony of the absurd claim is that Hamas (along with most of the Palestinian “resistance”) harbors verifiably genocidal intent towards Jews.
The Hamas charter states clearly that “Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently noted that Israel’s enemies “continue to openly call for the annihilation of Israel and the mass murder of Jews.”
Israel’s enemies have long openly called for the annihilation of the Jewish state and the mass murder of Jews.
The so-called “founder of the Palestinian national movement,” Haj Amin al-Hussaini, invited Hitler to expand his “final solution” to the Middle East. As the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1937, he commanded all his “Muslim brothers” in a Proclamation to the Islamic World: “Do not rest until your land is free of the Jews.”
On October 11, 1947, less than six weeks before the UN Partition vote on Israel, the first-ever Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, threatened “a war of extermination and momentous massacre” should there be a Jewish state established “in Palestine.”
Pasha, whose real name was Abdul Rahman Azzam, also gave a hint of the long strategy to come: “The Arab is superior to the Jew in that he accepts defeat with a smile: Should the Jews defeat us in the first battle, we will defeat them in the second or the third battle … or the final one… whereas one defeat will shatter the Jew’s morale!”
When given the opportunity, the enemies of Israel have followed through with their threats. Amos Oz, who lived through the 1948 War of Independence, wrote in his memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness (2003), that during the war, “Arabs implemented a more complete ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the territories they conquered than the Jews did … The settlements were obliterated, and the synagogues and cemeteries were razed to the ground.”
Even the Palestinian leadership doesn’t believe its own propaganda. Consider the case of Saeb Erekat, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and senior PLO negotiator, who himself charged Israel with genocide. When Erekat was gravely ill in October 2020, he chose to be treated in an Israeli hospital. Would he have done so if he truly believed Israel was guilty of genocide against his people? I doubt it.
Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) Senior Fellow A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Ginsberg-Milstein fellow. A version of this article was originally published by IPT.
The post Combating the Lie of Israeli ‘Genocide’ and ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Says He Expects Gaza War to Reach ‘Conclusive Ending’ in 2-3 Weeks
US President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in ceremony of Special Envoy Steve Witkoff in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, May 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
US President Donald Trump said on Monday he expects the ongoing war in Gaza to reach a “conclusive” end within the next two to three weeks, even as ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas remain unresolved.
Speaking alongside South Korean President Lee Jae Myung at the White House, Trump told reporters he believed a resolution was close. “I think within the next two to three weeks, you’re going to have a pretty good, conclusive ending,” he said.
Trump also urged Americans not to forget the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust that started the war in Gaza.
“It has to end, but people can’t forget Oct. 7,” Trump said.
Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating rampant sexual violence during their onslaught, which led Israel to wage a military campaign aimed at freeing those who were abducted and dismantling Hamas’s rule in neighboring Gaza.
The comments came as Israel continued to deliberate over a ceasefire proposal agreed to by Hamas last week. Though Israel has not given an official answer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjmain Netanyahu said he commenced negotiations to secure an end to the war and a return of the remaining hostages.
The proposal, brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar, calls for a 60-day truce during which Hamas would free 10 living hostages along with the deceased bodies of 18 others. In return, Israel would release significantly more Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, and partially pull back its forces in Gaza.
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Cornell University Takes Cleaver to Budget Amid Trump Crackdown
Illustrative: Cornell’s anti-Israel divestment protests on May 25, 2024. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.
Cornell University is taking a cleaver to its budget amid what it described as a “contraction” in government funding caused by the Trump administration’s impounding $1 billion previously awarded to it via research grants and federal contracts as punishment for its alleged nonresponse to campus antisemitism.
“Urgent action is necessary, both to reduce costs immediately and to correct our course over time — achieving an institutional structure that enables us to balance our budgets over the long term,” Cornell president Michael Kotlikoff wrote in a letter to the campus community. “Our work toward this goal will progress in several phases, beginning with immediate budget reductions already underway for the current fiscal year across our Ithaca, Cornell AgriTech, Weill Cornell Medicine, and Cornell Tech campuses.”
He continued, “Hiring on all campuses remains restricted indefinitely, with rare exceptions from campus-based position control committees.”
Cornell announced the cuts even as it inches closer toward a reported $100 million settlement with the federal government to restore the confiscated funds. It has already resorted to borrowing, having placed over $1 billion in bonds on the market since April — according to Bloomberg — and refused to publicly discuss the decision.
Cornell University has seen a series of disturbing antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre perpetrated by Hamas across southern Israel.
Three weeks after the atrocities which ravaged Israeli communities, now-former student Patrick Dai threatened to commit heinous crimes against members of the school’s Jewish community, including mass murder and rape. He was later sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.
Cornell students also occupied an administrative building and held a “mock trial” in which they convicted then-school president Martha Pollack of complicity in “apartheid” and “genocide against Palestinian civilians.” Meanwhile, history professor Russell Rickford called Hamas’s barbarity on Oct. 7 “exhilarating” and “energizing” at a pro-Palestinian rally held on campus.
Cornell University and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) sparred all of last academic year, with SJP pushing the limits of what constitutes appropriate conduct on campus. In September, school officials suspended over a dozen SJP affiliated students who disrupted a career fair, an action which saw them “physically” breach the area by “[pushing] police out of the way.” In February, the university amnestied some of the protesters, granting them “alternate resolutions” which terminated their suspensions, according to The Cornell Daily Sun.
In January, anti-Zionist agitators at Cornell kicked off the spring semester with an act of vandalism which attacked Israel as an “occupier” and practitioner of “apartheid.” The students drew a blistering response from Kotlikoff, who said that “acts of violence, extended occupations of buildings, or destruction of property (including graffiti), will not be tolerated and will be subject to immediate public safety response,” but the university has declined to say how it will deal with the matter since identifying at least one of the culprits in February.
Other elite colleges may soon face the same hard choices as Cornell.
Just last week, the US Department of Education began investigating Haverford College over alleged violations of civil rights laws stemming from inadequate responses to antisemitism.
“Like many other institutions of higher education, Haverford College is alleged to have ignored antisemitic harassment on its campus, contravening federal civil rights laws and its own anti-discrimination policies,” acting civil rights secretary Craig Trainor said in a statement. “The Trump administration will not allow Jewish life to be pushed into the shadows because college leaders are too craven to respond appropriately to unlawful antisemitic incidents on campus.”
Earlier this month, a coalition of leading Jewish civil rights groups called on the higher education establishment to prioritize fighting campus antisemitism during the upcoming academic year, citing an unrelenting wave of anti-Jewish hate that has swept the US in recent years.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jewish Federations of North America, Hillel International, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations issued a joint statement, putting forth a policy framework that they say will quell antisemitism if applied sincerely and consistently. It included “enhanced communication and policy enforcement,” “dedicated administration oversight,” and “faculty accountability” — an issue of rising importance given the number of faculty accused of inciting discrimination.
“These recommendations aren’t just suggestions; they’re essential steps universities need to take to ensure Jewish students can learn without fear,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Jewish students are being forced to hide who they are, and that’s unacceptable — we need more administrators to step up.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, colleges campus across the US erupted with effusions of antisemitic activity following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, an uprising which included calling for the destruction of Israel, cheering Hamas’s sexual assaulting of women as an instrument of war, and dozens of incidents of assault and harassment targeting Jewish students, faculty, and activists.
At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud” at Bruin Plaza, which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic. At Columbia University, Jews were gang-assaulted, a student proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself, and administrative officials, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting. At Harvard University, an October 2023 anti-Israel demonstration degenerated into chaos when Ibrahim Bharmal, former editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo encircled a Jewish student with a mob that screamed “Shame! Shame! Shame!” at him while he desperately attempted to free himself from the mass of bodies.
More recently, Eden Deckerhoff — a female student at Florida State University — allegedly assaulted a Jewish male classmate at the Leach Student Recreation Center after noticing his wearing apparel issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
“F—k Israel, Free Palestine. Put it [the video] on Barstool FSU. I really don’t give a f—k,” the woman said before shoving the man, according to video taken by the victim. “You’re an ignorant son of a b—h.” Deckerhoff has since been charged with misdemeanor battery.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Trump Admin Reviewing Visa Applications of ‘Terrorist Sympathizers’ Set to Appear at Pro-Palestinian Conference
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The US State Department is actively reviewing the records of foreign speakers at the upcoming People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit for potential ties to terrorism, The Algemeiner has learned.
A spokesperson for the State Department told The Algemeiner that officials have “noted” the conference, which is set to take place from Aug 29-31, and will also watch out for visa applications for invited international speakers, citing a preponderance of “terrorist sympathizers” on the program’s lineup.
“Given the public invite lists seems to include a number of terrorist sympathizers, we are going through and ensuring all international speakers slated to attend the conference are being placed on a ‘look out’ status for visa applications, so we are alerted if a request is submitted and can ensure they are appropriately processed,” the spokesperson said.
“In every case, we will take the time necessary to ensure an applicant does not pose a risk to the safety and security of the United States and that he or she has credibly established his or her eligibility for the visa sought, including that the applicant intends to engage in activities consistent with the terms of admission,” the spokesperson added.
The People’s Conference for Palestine will feature dozens of anti-Zionist activists, academics, artists, and political organizers, including US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
Tlaib’s appearance at last year’s iteration of the conference sparked intense backlash, with critics pointing out the event’s connections to Wisam Rafeedie and Salah Salah, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization.
The conference is convened by a coalition that includes the Palestinian Youth Movement, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, among others. Several of these groups have maintained ties with PFLP, openly supported boycott efforts against Israel, and called for an arms embargo in the wake of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. The programming highlights sessions on “Documenting Genocide” and “Breaking the Siege,” rhetoric that critics argue mischaracterizes Israel’s actions as it seeks to defend itself against terrorist attacks following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Detroit gathering is expected to attract thousands of attendees, with dozens of speakers and activists scheduled to participate. Among the roster are well-known anti-Israel figures such as Linda Sarsour, Miko Peled, and Chris Smalls.
The planned presence of several alleged “foreign terror sympathizers” has sparked outrage among observers.
Abed Abubaker, a self-described “reporter” from Gaza, is expected to make a physical appearance at the Detroit conference later this month. Abubaker has repeatedly praised the Hamas terrorist group as “resistance fighters” on social media and won a “journalist of the year” award from Iran’s state-controlled media outlet PressTV. In a January 2025 social media post, he showered praise on long-time Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, saying that the terrorist’s “love of resistance and land is seen very clearly.” In a March 2025 post, Abubaker argued that international supporters of the Palestinian cause should “attack your governments.” He also defended Hamas’s murdering of dissidents, saying that the victims were “collaborating” with Israel.
Since returning to the White House earlier this year, the Trump administration has launched a major overhaul of the US visa system, part of what officials have described as an effort to root out individuals sympathetic to terrorism or those espousing antisemitic views. The sweeping measures include expanded social media vetting for new applicants, continuous monitoring of the 55 million current visa holders, and the revocation of thousands of student visas.
The Trump administration’s sweeping visa crackdown has ensnared high-profile foreign academics and students, fueling outrage among pro-Palestinian activists. Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese professor at Brown University, was deported after officials flagged content on her phone as sympathetic to Hezbollah, a US-designated terrorist group. Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and green-card holder, was arrested and assigned criminal charges for alleged ties to Hamas before he was released. At Tufts University, Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk was detained after co-authoring an opinion piece on Gaza.