The bad news is, lots of Americans said Israel was committing genocide during the Gaza war. The good news is, it turns out they didn’t actually believe Israel was committing genocide.
What seems to have happened is the following. The media spent two years shouting that Israel was committing genocide and the public obliged when asked to regurgitate what had been shoved down their throats.
But genocide has a specific definition. And the Institute for Governance and Civics at Florida State University has now polled Americans using more specific questions that get us closer to what Americans mean when they say “genocide.” Spoiler: They mostly don’t mean genocide.
The IGC gave respondents five possible answers:
—Israeli policy seeks to harm civilians in Gaza;
—Israeli policy is indifferent toward civilian casualties but doesn’t intentionally target them;
—Israel tries to avoid civilian casualties but Hamas’s presence in civilian areas makes that difficult;
—None of the above;
—I’m not sure.
Of the general population, 24 percent said they believed Israel sought to intentionally harm civilians. The same percentage said Israel tries to avoid civilians but Hamas makes it difficult. Another 12 percent said Israel is indifferent, 13 percent had views not reflected in the choices, and the largest response—27 percent—said they didn’t know.
IGC also polled Floridians, who were more willing to give Israel the benefit of the doubt than the general population.
The key here is that genocide requires intent to destroy not just civilians but the specific population, and to judge something as genocidal requires one to determine that genocide is “the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question.”
This is part of why the claim that Israel committed genocide was so unserious: Definitionally, a genocide did not take place. There are plenty of other words that can be used to describe the war, but “genocide” has been indisputably ruled out unless one changes the definition of the word, as some NGOs tried to do. But again, that would also be an admission that Israel was innocent of the charge.
Israel’s civilian-to-combatant fatality rate was unprecedentedly low for urban warfare, and the intent issue becomes absurd when you remember that Israel sent its military into Gaza to rescue hostages that Hamas refused to return.
But back to the poll. Even the response that Israel intentionally harms civilians doesn’t necessarily meet the definition of genocide. So if about 8 in 10 don’t think Israel is intentionally harming civilians, it’s likely that about 9 out of 10 don’t think Israel committed genocide.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t warning signs for Israel and its supporters, even in the IGC poll. Just because respondents don’t believe Israel committed genocide doesn’t mean they approve of Israel’s actions. As one can see, the poll shows plenty of criticism of Israel’s prosecution of the war.
Moreover, in the IGC poll—as in virtually every such survey—the trend is clear: Younger Americans of either party are tougher on Israel than their elders. But there is still a wide partisan gap: The farther left one goes on the spectrum, the more likely are respondents to assume ill intent on Israel’s part.
Another notable aspect of the poll is that there is a ton of uncertainty among respondents, so presumably a fair number are persuadable in one direction or another. Uncertainty regarding Israel’s intent is incompatible with a finding of genocide.
Two lessons. One, by definition the people who accuse Israel of genocide are feigning a certainty they almost surely don’t or can’t possess, at least from afar and during the war. As a rule, beware such people, especially when they are rewarded professionally for their dishonesty.
Two, anti-Israel activists have killed the concept of genocide. They have turned it into just another descriptive term meaning one side lost the war badly. There will continue to be victims of actual genocide in the world, and they will all be harmed by the “genocide” fraud perpetrated by professional anti-Zionists.
