Calling Israel-Gaza war a 'genocide' reduces 'humanity's gravest crime to a political insult', Chief Rabbi says
SOURCE:Daily Mail
The Chief Rabbi said Israel did 'not seek nor start' the war which was triggered in response to the Hamas-led terrorist attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Calling the Israel-Gaza war a 'genocide' reduces 'humanity's gravest crime to a political insult', the Chief Rabbi says.
In a hard hitting attack, Sir Ephraim Mirvis said accusing Israel of committing genocide, a term which had 'a meaning that must remain protected at all costs', went against 'the very idea of human rights itself'.
He said using the word 'whatever the motivation' means 'this gravest of crimes is invoked casually, without due regard for the weight of the word itself' and it trivialises the concept.
The Chief Rabbi said Israel did 'not seek nor start' the war which was triggered in response to the Hamas-led terrorist attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which around 1200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.
He said the country only wanted its hostages back and to see Hamas disarmed while in contrast Hamas sought the total destruction of Israel.
He said: 'If Hamas lays down its arms there will be no fighting and no suffering. If Israel were to lay down its arms there would be no Israel.'
He also lashed out at the many deceitful 'so-called 'human rights' organisations' who he said 'appear to revel in misappropriating the term genocide, because it has proven such an effective rallying call for them'.
'They do so by expanding its definition to include actions in which it is known that military activity could cause some harm, even if not necessarily undertaken with the intent to cause that harm. This is a truly troubling moral deceit,' he said.
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said that calling the Israel-Gaza war a 'genocide' reduces 'humanity's gravest crime to a political insult'
'It should be obvious that there can be no such thing as a genocide, in which the victims could end the violence at any moment by releasing the hostages they have taken and laying down their arms.'
While he said 'no decent person could fail to be moved' by 'the tragic suffering of Palestinians [which] abounds' or wish to see its end', he defined 'genocide' as the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, and said that the word intent was 'crucial', commenting:
'It differentiates the tragic, often devastating consequences of war from one of humanity's most monstrous crimes.
'It is why Britain and her allies are not accused of genocide for our strategic bombing of Nazi Germany, despite the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who were killed. Intent is the moral and legal hinge.
'The clearest evidence that Israel did not intend to destroy the people of Gaza is that it did not in fact do so.'
Many will see his comments as a sharp broadside against the Archbishop of York's assertion last November that Israel had committed 'genocidal acts' in Palestine.
In the strongest attack on Israel from any senior Church of England figure since the conflict began, the Most Reverend Stephen Cottrell equated the situation in the occupied West Bank to 'apartheid' and ethnic cleansing'.
The Chief Rabbi described his comments at the time as an 'irresponsible approach', adding that 'reaching for the incendiary and morally inverted accusation of 'genocidal acts' will serve only to foster yet more enmity and division'.
Palestinian Hamas militants handing over hostages kidnapped during the October 7 attack on Israel in 2023. The Chief Rabbi said Israel did 'not seek nor start' the war
A rabbi speaking during a menorah lighting ceremony on the second night of Hanukkah at Heaton Park synagogue, the site of the deadly terror attack in October last year where two people were killed on Yom Kippur
Since then the Jewish community has faced a string of attacks at home and overseas on Jewish holy days including the Manchester synagogue attack in October, when two people were killed on Yom Kippur.
Last month, 15 people were shot dead and dozens injured during the Bondi Beach terror attack in Sydney on Jewish people celebrating the festival of Hanukkah.
And warning criticism of Israel had now become a 'race to linguistic escalation' which 'has consequences', the Chief Rabbi, writing for tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph, said:
'Today it takes almost no thought to repeat the accusation that Israel has committed 'genocide'.
'Some repeat it from a place of singular hostility toward the world's only Jewish state, others from an earnest desire to hasten an end to an unquestionably horrific conflict in which many innocent people have suffered.
'In an age when hyperbole dominates our discourse and outrage is rewarded with clicks, campaigners reach instinctively for the most extreme language available.
'Faced with images on social media of immense, tragic suffering in Gaza, journalists, academics and celebrities understandably feel compelled to speak out.
'Yet the race to linguistic escalation has consequences. The ubiquity of a term is often wrongly understood as evidence of its veracity. And some terms have a meaning that must remain protected at all costs. 'Genocide' is one of them.'
Police and forensics at the scene of the Manchester synagogue attack. The Jewish community has faced a string of attacks at home and overseas on Jewish holy days
He said you would not find 'evidence of systematic massacres, mass executions, or the targeted killing of civilians as a matter of policy' in Gaza, adding: 'Every war contains tragic mistakes and incidents which demand serious investigation.
'But genocide leaves unmistakable signatures: mass graves, footage of sanctioned point-blank executions, documented orders to target the innocent. Gaza shows none of these.'
And he hit out at 'academics, activists, faith leaders and public figures' for declaring 'with unshakeable certainty, that genocide has occurred'.
'They do something far more destructive than merely repeat a falsehood,' he warned.
'They trivialise the very concept they claim to defend. What language is left for the Rohingya, expelled en masse, systematically raped and slaughtered? For the Uyghurs, subjected to mass internment, forced sterilisation and cultural erasure?
'For the ethnically targeted killing and mass rape in West Darfur? To invoke the term 'genocide' as an accusation against Israel is to strip it of its true meaning, reducing humanity's gravest crime to a political insult.'
He said 'this kind of rhetorical inflation' was not 'new' comparing it to using terms like 'fascist' and 'communist' as 'mere epithets'.
'Offensive speech is now labelled 'violence'. Sharp criticism is branded 'treason'. Political frustration becomes a 'coup'. Eventually the words themselves collapse under the weight of their misuse,' he said.
An image of a menorah projected onto Sydney Harbour Bridge during New Year's Eve celebrations last year. Last month, 15 people were shot dead and dozens injured during the Bondi Beach terror attack in Sydney on Jewish people celebrating the festival of Hanukkah
Instead, he said 'the suffering of innocent people demands empathy, accountability and a genuine commitment to preventing future conflict' and 'to level the charge of genocide against Israel is to commit a moral inversion whose casualties include not only Israelis and Palestinians, but the very idea of human rights itself'.
Last September, then foreign secretary David Lammy concluded that Israel had not committed genocide in Gaza in a letter to Sarah Champion, the chair of the international development select committee.
'As per the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide occurs only where there is specific 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,' the letter read. It added: 'The [British] Government has not concluded that Israel is acting with that intent.'
But an independent UN commission later concluded the opposite.
According to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israel's military campaign.
The Chief Rabbi, who recently travelled to Australia to meet the bereaved and survivors of the Bondi terror attack, welcomed assurances by the Met and Greater Manchester Police that protesters inciting hatred would in future face arrest.
Both forces have been criticised for their light touch response to multiple and regular pro-Palestinian marches since the conflict began.
He hailed the decision as 'an important step towards challenging the hateful rhetoric' on Britain's streets.