The Psychology of Thinking Israel is Committing Genocide

Do you think Israel is currently committing genocide in the Middle East? I don’t, but I can see from social media activity that many people do. If you’re one of them, then I’d encourage you to consider why it is you think that. In a moment, I’ll explain why I don’t believe Israel is committing genocide, but before I do, I think there are principally four reasons why someone might be under the misapprehension that Israel is committing genocide - and they range from very bad to bad. I’ll list them hierarchically, from very bad to bad. 

1)    Malicious intent: The individual is blatantly anti-Israel (maybe in some cases hatefully anti-Semitic), and will accuse Israel of genocide reflexively, regardless of facts or definitions, as a way of demonising the state. 

2)    Ideological thrall: The individual holds a rigid, extreme leftist ideological worldview - often aligned with radical activist frameworks – and prejudice against Israel serves their own tribal bias, political agenda, virtue signalling and attention-seeking – all feeding into their overly-simplistic narrative of oppressed vs. oppressor. 

3)    Susceptibility to manipulation: The individual lacks the knowledge and awareness of context that would disavow them of the notion that Israel is committing genocide, and is ripe for manipulation. 

4)    Open to disinformation: The individual has been swayed by the biased reporting and bad actors in society to believe Israel is committing genocide. They have become understandably emotionally overwhelmed by images of suffering and death, and are mistaking visceral outrage for informed judgment. 

Each individual who believes that Israel is committing genocide will fall into one, some, or all of those categories. For example, Greta Thunberg probably falls into categories 1, 2 and 3 – or just 2 and 3 if you’re feeling generous (she is probably too ideologically entrenched to be in 4), so does Roger Waters. Jeremy Corbyn, George Galloway, Owen Jones, and countless other politicians and media figures fall into category 2 (often 2 and 3). Category 3 is bursting at the seams with celebrities and lesser known bourgeois leftist dilettantes in artisanal sunglasses, and so is category 4, where you’ll also find a wide range of people, from gentle, well-meaning Methodist septuagenarians, to teenage keyboard warriors who aren’t yet old enough to shave, to some dear personal friends who I love and respect immensely.  

The commonality in categories 1-3 (but especially categories 1-2), is not just misinformation, but a profound psychological need; to employ simplistic black vs. white logic, to feel morally superior, to divest oneself of internal personal criticism and responsibility, and to belong to a self-congratulatory cause bigger than oneself. If you’re weak in ways that the world needs you to be strong, then this kind of in-group ideology is very seductive. And a surefire way to tell that this is the case is to see how easy it is to predict the other things people in that ideology believe. In a game of collectivist mime troupe bingo, the squares would be filled with similarly predictable dogmas - climate hysteria, ‘eat the rich’ socialism, woke platitudes, no-platforming, performative solidarity rituals - all delivered with the same sanctimonious tone. The commonality in category 4 is primarily the need to locate moral clarity in a morally and socially complex world, and to resolve emotional discomfort with simple, righteous certainty. To be fair, the latter is, in many cases, a humble fault, but in reaching for moral simplicity, many end up embracing a fiction that feels emotionally satisfying, but collapses under the weight of evidence and reason.

Designer Outrage
One more point on the psychology, then we’ll move on to the proposition in question. Here's a provocative but truthful statement. If you’re in categories 1 and 2 (and sometimes 3) and accuse Israel of genocide, but stay silent on Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and other regional actors who openly call for Israel's destruction, then you're not standing for justice - you're showing everyone that you're, at best, guilty of being manipulated by perversely partisan media sources, and at worst, just an anti-Israel hypocrite, not to be taken in the least bit seriously. In fact, in the latter case, your selectivity is bordering on an anti-semitic weaponisation of language to legitimise your narrow, unbalanced tribalism.

And if you're in the former group, didn't you ever stop to wonder why the people who like to claim 'genocide' for Israel are completely silent on their enemies who actually do wish genocide on Israel? Surely you must have been just a little bit curious about the motives behind this blatant inconsistency? I'm not even commenting at this stage about whether it's fair to accuse Israel of 'genocide'. At this point, I'm merely pointing out the absurd hypocrisy that plagues our society - that even if you do think Israel is behaving awfully, staying completely silent on even more awful behaviour in surrounding regions is preposterous, making you look weak and incompetent. Unless the selective silence is because manipulative sources have convinced you that these Islamic perpetrators of murder, rape, violence, suppression of freedom and human rights abuses are not so bad after all - but that is just as preposterous, and makes you look just as weak and incompetent.

It's the same sort of incongruity we've seen with contemporary feminism for years – feminists such as the woeful Ash Sarkar, Kate Smurthwaite, Grace Blakeley, etc - they'll willingly stand in a safe capital city, holding a megaphone, screaming about "patriarchy" and "toxic masculinity", angry that some people are upset about the rights of the foetus, or that more CEOs are men than women, but they'll never raise an eyebrow about Islam's toxic effects on women, with grooming gangs, repression of rights, sexual inequality, hijabs, honour killings, forced marriages and the oppressive nature of Sharia law towards the female sex. I call this Designer Outrage.

Israel Is Not Committing Genocide
I’ve pointed out the hypocrisy of those claiming Israel is committing genocide, while remaining silent on even worse regional actors surrounding them. For those attempting a more balanced view, but still holding the view that Israel is committing genocide, let's consider that claim a bit further. I share some of the public criticisms of much of Israel's conduct towards the Palestinians, but I also believe that throwing around the word 'genocide' to describe Israel's actions isn't just factually wrong - it's a lazy distortion of what the term means. Genocide refers to the intentional extermination of a people. Misusing the language of atrocity trivialises actual genocides - like the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, or the Armenian genocide. It's not just bad history; it's offensive to actual victims of genocide whose families were actually targeted for eradication (in actual fact, as the Jews were in the Holocaust, and like they still are now by murderous ideologues in surrounding Islamic nations).

Too many people are cunning, slippery, or merely sloppy in their use of the word 'genocide' - because genocide means actions committed with the specific intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The intent element is crucial, and it's disingenuous to ignore it. Israel's actions, while far from perfect, are undertaken against the continued regional threat of perpetrators who wish to wipe them off the map - fanatical enemies whose tactics are to use Palestinian civilians (and hospitals, for example) as fodder for their murderous aims. What's ironic is that Hamas - who wish to exterminate the Jews, and openly say so - are the ones with genocidal desires, but the same people are silent about this.

While it's appropriate to scrutinise Israel's conduct, failure to recognise the existential threats it faces is failure to engage in the subject appropriately. Hamas explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, as do the leaders in Iran. The October 7th massacre was not only a military operation; it involved targeted killing of civilians, torture, and rape - acts of terrorism driven by genocidal rhetoric. Hamas embeds itself among civilians, uses hospitals and schools for weapons storage, and prevents civilians from evacuating - both to shield fighters and to use civilian casualties as propaganda. This squalid tactic complicates Israel's military response and raises the civilian toll in a tragic environment.

It's hard to deny that some of Israel's responses have been heavy-handed, maybe even excessive, and even, in isolated incidents a shocking mirror image of those who want to destroy them. But if you're going to measure excess, you should at least understand what that means in this context. Try imagining what it's like attempting to govern a country continually under existential threat from some of the most wicked and morally devoid Islamic fundamentalist groups on the planet - a country that continually lives in self-defense against an adversary that openly calls for its destruction, and will use any tactic necessary to achieve its aims. It's difficult to imagine a country not acting excessively under those conditions - these are extreme acts of self-preservation, where Gazans are also many of the most innocent victims of this complex, harrowing situation.

So, I'd really encourage you to not use the word 'genocide' when describing Israel’s predicament - especially as they are a people who have themselves experienced one of the worst genocides in human history, and certainly the most systematically executed, and still carry the scars today. Words like "genocide" carry historical trauma and legal implications - and misusing language dilutes meaning and compromises the full truth and can blind us to the real moral and legal complexities at hand. Criticising Israel's military actions is one thing - but calling it ‘genocide’ undermines credibility, and perversely distracts from both the complexity of the situation, and the real goals of groups like Hamas and Iran, who do actually commit egregious violations of international law that are much more like genocide than what Israel is doing.