Hervé Benhamou

You scream genocide at Israel. Let me tell you something about genocide. For 2,000 years people have tried to wipe out the Jews. As a project. Had the Holocaust never happened, there would be between 26 and 32 million Jews in the world today. That is not my guess. Those are the numbers from Sergio DellaPergola, the world’s leading demographer on the subject. Today there are fewer than 16 million. Fewer than in 1939. Go further back. In the first century, Jews made up 2 to 3 percent of all humanity. Had that share simply held, there would be between 150 and 250 million Jews today. Possibly more. There are 15 million. That is what genocide looks like. Not a people growing. A people still missing hundreds of millions after 2,000 years, because no one ever stopped trying to erase it. The Jews are likely the people in world history subjected to the most sustained and repeated attempts at annihilation, over the longest span of time, and one of the only peoples whose total population still carries the scar today.” And here they come: “But we can say the same about the Palestinians.” No. And here is why. Genocide means annihilation. A people growing fewer. A curve that points down and keeps pointing down. Look at the Jews again: under 16 million. Fewer than in 1939. Hundreds of millions missing. That is an annihilation curve. Now look at the Palestinians. According to the Palestinian statistics bureau itself, not Israel, they have grown from 1.37 million in 1948 to over 14 million today. A tenfold increase. In Gaza alone: from 240,000 in 1950 to over 2 million. That is not my claim. It is their own number. A people undergoing genocide does not multiply tenfold. That is the simple, unforgiving difference. There is a war. People die in war. It is terrible. But war with casualties is not the same as the systematic annihilation of an entire people across generations. So when you scream genocide at the one country the Jews have left: you have no idea what the word means. The numbers do. . . And let me get ahead their claim and take it apart, piece by piece. “But in law, genocide does not require the population to fall. Only the intent to destroy a group.” Correct. And thank you. Because you have just moved from numbers you cannot win to intent you cannot prove. The UN Convention requires something very specific: a special intent to destroy a people as a people. Not civilian casualties in a war. Not indifference to suffering while fighting Hamas. The precise will to annihilate the group. That is the highest burden of proof in international law, and it is high on purpose, so the word is not worn down to mean “a war I oppose.” And what do the courts say? The International Court of Justice has not found Israel guilty of genocide. Not in 2024. Not today. The case is still in written pleadings in 2026, years from a decision. The provisional measures from 2024 rested on a “plausible risk,” and the Court itself said plainly that this is not a finding that genocide is taking place. They are unlikely to be convicted - not because self-defense rules out genocide, but because the intent to destroy a people cannot be proven when the actions have a military purpose, in this case defending itself against Hamas, and because no court has ever set that bar low. And now remember who is behind the accusation. It was South Africa that filed the case, in December 2023, accusing Israel of breaching the 1948 Genocide Convention through its war in Gaza after the Hamas massacre of October 7. Genocide. The largest word international law has. Brought against the one Jewish country in the world, less than three months after Hamas murdered 1,200 people in a single day. And who is bringing it? A country whose ruling party has stood close to the PLO for decades, which holds close ties to both Iran and Hamas, and which made this case part of its own self-image. CONTINUES👇🏽