A month ago, I wrote about the top eight Gaza War hoaxes. The granddaddy of them all is the Israel is committing a genocide hoax—because all libels are pointing to this indictment.
It’s nonsense of course—there is no credible evidence of massacres or intent to slaughter as required by the Genocide Convention, only minimal, for urban warfare, collateral damage. The genocide case against Israel brought before ICC fell apart. Yet unfortunately until Israel wins the war on the ground and takes itself out of the headlines, blood libels will be flooding the media.
The latest one is the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) vote to declare that Israel is guilty of the willful annihilation of the Gaza population. The NGO’s statement was immediately transformed into headlines on Al Jazeera and ideologically aligned western outlets, including BBC, BBC UK, Reuters, Deutsche Welle, The Guardian, ABC Australia, PBS, Newsweek, Time and the Washington Post among others.
That world leading experts declaring genocide in Gaza was too perfect of a headline for the media zeitgeist to miss. And of course, the declaration was a hatchet job.
Sarah E. Brown, a longstanding member of IAGS and the director of the American Jewish Committee in San Diego, wrote for The Forward about her efforts to stop the resolution. She explained that IAGS did no original studies, relying instead on highly biased antizionist sources like Amnesty International which rewrote its definition of genocide in order to implicate Israel. She explained that the resolution hardly represents consensus of its members and who voted for it is unknown:
I fought this resolution and lost. Out of an estimated 500 members, 108 voted to pass this resolution (per IAGS, for a resolution to pass, it requires a 2/3 majority from a quorum of at least 20% plus one of all paid-up IAGS members). I tried to advocate for transparency, but the leadership refused to disclose who authored this resolution. I was promised a forum for scholarly debate and discussion, but no town hall was held.
These estimated 500 members are themselves peculiar. A small Twitter/X account @scorpi0n_ discovered that that at the time of Simchat Torah Massacre just 144 individuals were affiliated with the group, so most of its growth came after the attack on the Jewish state. The Honest Reporting author Salo Aizenberg noted that IAGS encouraged activists to join and that 80 members are from Iraq. Considering the prevalence of hardcore antisemitism in the Arab and Muslim world, is it possible that the IAGS passed the anti-Israel resolution on the strength of the Iraqi hate vote?
Moreover, while the global media told its audiences that the resolution was written by experts who belong to an organization of scholars, in IAGS’s hands these words are as meaningless as apartheid and genocide in the mouth of an antizionist. As it turns out, IAGS is not selective at all—anyone can buy IAGS membership for thirty bucks.
On September 2, Aizenberg joined the organization himself, with the full intent of participating and expressing regret that he connected too late to vote on the Gaza genocide agenda. Next, American lawyer Elliot Malin and the writer Leslie Kajomovitz followed his example. Finally, the Israeli writer Eitan Fischberger announced:
Time for a career shift.
I am officially a Genocide Scholar.
Humbled to join the ranks of my esteemed colleagues, @Aizenberg55, @ElliotMalin, and @kikas6652.
Now to update my Twitter bio.
Fischberger added the screenshot of his AIGS bio, inspiring other budding “scholars” to buy the $30 memberships. Among its newly minted experts were Emperor Palatine, Obi wan Cannoli and Adolf Hitler who boasted of knowing “a thing or two about genocide”.
By Wednesday, IAGS caught up with the troll, turned off its application page and deactivated all new members. They deleted their X account and issued a statement confirming every accusation leveled at them by Zionist activists, complaining about not feeling safe and boasting of attracting community scholars. For no avail Fischberger asked for a refund.
Any organization can claim to be an expert on genocide and recruit enough members committed to the destruction of Israel to say that the Jewish state is guilty of it. A functional media would weed out such imposters. Unfortunately, our media is uninterested in vetting its headlines—or even retracting the items proven to be untrue. In the current climate, news consumers should be advised to assume that everything they hear about Israel is an op until proven otherwise. That includes New York Times front page stories like the fake famine picture they published in July.
As for genocide, it really did happen during the Gaza War. What transpired in southern Israel on October 7, 2023 was genocide. It was unusual in a way that the perpetrators accused the Jewish state of that of which they are guilty themselves. Avraham Russel Shalev of Kohelet Policy Forum recently wrote a paper concluding that:
Hamas’ October 7 attack constitutes genocide under international law. This conclusion rests on three interconnected pillars. First, the physical acts committed—the systematic killing of over 1,200 Israelis, accompanied by torture, sexual violence, and mutilations—satisfy the actus reus requirement of the Genocide Convention. Second, Hamas’ specific intent to destroy Israeli Jews is evident through multiple channels: its foundational ideology of eliminationist antisemitism, its decades-long systematic policy of incitement, its detailed operational planning for mass killing, and explicit statements by its leadership before and during the attack.What distinguishes this case, however, is the third element: the immediate deployment of reverse genocide accusation against the victims.
This is what the media defenders of Gaza call “every accusation is a confession,” only they direct their venom against the Jews. The Jewish case is persuasive. Will the media ever give it a minute of their attention?
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