Accusing Israel of Perpetrating a ‘Holocaust’ Is the Worst Sin of All

As Israel’s effort to uproot the Hamas terror organization from Gaza stretches into its seventh month, the battle for the moral high ground and international support rages online and in the media.

Hamas’ plan to portray Israel as an indiscriminate aggressor seems to be working, with a willing assist from international media outlets and politicians in the US and around the world. Despite Israel’s willingness to negotiate while Hamas — and despite almost unparalleled efforts to protect Palestinians during the war — Israel is still facing a daunting amount of pressure and condemnation.

Yet Israel remains undeterred. While the US government waffles in its public support of our ally, everyone in Israel knows what needs to happen next. An operation in Rafah must take place, in order to get rid of the genocidal threat that Hamas presents, and to rescue the hostages that include American citizens.

Israel will inevitably face a horrible backlash, but it is a burden Israel will carry because it is the right thing to do, and because Israel must survive — despite what all the morally twisted people have to say about it.

But there is one charge that cuts Israel and world Jewry more than any other: the claim that Israel is committing a “genocide” and “a Holocaust” of the Palestinians.

These days, when we can viscerally experience war on our phones, reasonable people witnessing what is happening because of Hamas’ homicidal use of human shields and civilian infrastructure are deeply affected by the graphic images they see on their screens, and express their outrage by throwing around terms and historical comparisons that are belied by the evidence.

The “genocide” and Holocaust comparisons have been made by many public figures and online commentators, including Joe Rogan, who called Israel’s war in Gaza a small scale Holocaust, and more pernicious actors like the antisemitic “UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967,” Francesca Albanese, who issued a report titled “Anatomy of a Genocide,” concluding that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide has been met.

There has been one Holocaust in history, and that is the one that Germany perpetrated on the Jewish people just 79 years ago. There have been many genocides and massacres in history. When compared to actual historical equivalents, Israel’s current operation against Hamas is self-evidently not a genocidal campaign, but a tragically necessary defensive war.

Many don’t understand this because they refuse to see the facts, they lack a basic grasp of history and context, and because of the peaceful bubble our society has been blessed to live in for the past seven decades.

The people accusing Israel of “genocide” don’t understand that governments who perpetrate genocides systematically work to wipe out civilian populations, like Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. They make people “disappear” like Stalin’s Russia and Xi’s China in regards to the Uyghurs. Regimes committing genocide aim solely to murder innocent civilians, and terrorize them with indiscriminate attacks.

Quite clearly, Israel has done none of that. In fact, Israel’s incredible civilian to terrorist target ratio has set a new standard for urban warfare. Furthermore, Israel’s legal system ensures those Palestinians convicted of terror related offenses are protected in prison, and even benefit from prison services. And for a country supposedly seeking to erase a people, Israel has been surprisingly diligent in its efforts to inform the population where it is attacking, how to avoid harm, and offering routes to protected areas.

Those smearing Israel with these horrific charges are misinformed and falling for propaganda, or are purposefully spreading misinformation. When asked for proof that Israel is committing genocide, Albanese ignorantly retorted that no evil government ever writes down their strategy, so she doesn’t have proof to offer. (Although Nazi Germany did just that).

Hijacking the Jewish people’s tragic history and misappropriating it for those who dream of perpetrating yet another genocide against Jewish people is deeply offensive. It is a way for those that seek to tar Israel to redirect blame from the perpetrators of the October 7 horrors onto the victims — simply because they are Jewish.

Universalizing the Holocaust is a deliberate attempt to delegitimize the Jewish experience, and too many are falling for it and spreading it further. By doing so, these individuals not only insult the memory of the actual victims of genocide by tying them in with bloodthirsty terrorists, but cheapen and strip a powerful word and historical events of meaning and significance.

In this battle of good versus evil, it’s incumbent on us to inform ourselves of the difference between facts and propaganda before commenting about a conflict thousands of miles away that is felt deeply by those here at home.

Yonatan Hambourger is a rabbi with Chabad of Rural Georgia. Tzali Reicher is a rabbi and writer currently living in Florida.