Were Dore Gold to appear on American television today, he would not only be expected to defend Israel against charges of committing war crimes, but also against the charge that it is committing genocide—notwithstanding the lack of evidence and, indeed, the extensive evidence to the contrary.

Norman J.W. Goda explores the history of this accusation, which goes back to the very first days of the Jewish state. Indeed, writes Goda, there have been repeated attempts to redefine genocide so that it would include whatever specific actions Israel was being accused of at any given moment. The real turning point came during the war with Lebanon in the early 1980s:

Virtually all UN member states condemned the invasion and the shelling of Beirut, and virtually all called for a halt in the fighting and Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories. The specific genocide accusations flowed specifically from delegations from the Communist world, from the Arab states, and from the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, all of which had adopted a dim view of Israel since 1967 as a racist and colonial state. These states had already in 1975 voted for General Assembly Resolution 3379 condemning Zionism as “a form of racism and racial discrimination.” Now they jumped aboard the genocide accusation.

It should be noted that the genocide accusation was a form of warfare undertaken out of embarrassing inability to aid the PLO militarily.

But the statements were also laced with anti-Semitic tropes. . . . Mohammed Abulhassan of Kuwait decried “[Menachem] Begin and his bloodthirsty agents.” Jasim Yousif Jamal of Qatar claimed that Israeli soldiers were motivated by “their thirst for Arab blood, be it the blood of a child, a woman, or an old person,” as they were “seeking the so-called security of the ‘chosen people,’ as they so arrogantly state.”

Such libels have since been bolstered by the works of countless well-credentialed academics, who then cite one another to create a perception of credibility. But perhaps most telling are the comments of the South African jurist John Dugard, who now is helping to bring charges of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

After October 7, John Dugard, despite the carnage in southern Israel and in Gaza, was a happy man. “It’s a relief,” he told an interviewer in June 2024, “to say what it is: Israel is committing genocide.”

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.