Rebuttal of Anti-Israel Claims
There has been a great deal said about the Israel-Gaza conflict, and its relationship to MIT. I have trouble understanding how people who have devoted so much time and effort to getting their message out about Israel and Gaza — writing columns, living in tents for weeks, and risking suspension and arrest — won’t take a moment to engage in a discussion when that message meets a serious rebuttal.
I have addressed many of the arguments made by Austin Cole, Richard Solomon, MIT Jews for Ceasefire, MIT Alumni for Palestine, Concerned Jewish Alumni, Isaac Gendler, James Risbey, Ali Ishtiaque, and Michel DeGraf. I have done so in two guest columns and multiple comments on their columns at thetech.com. Not a single one of those people or groups responded in any substantive way to valid and respectful questions.
I am submitting this guest column to consolidate a few of my rebuttals and request that those who made the original arguments engage and defend them. I will respond to comments at thetech.com.
First I will address the claim that research done at MIT on behalf of the Israeli Ministry of Defense is somehow enabling the violence in Gaza. As mentioned in my guest column from May 30, all available evidence is that the research is primarily used for defensive purposes, one specific purpose being finding and disabling rockets fired at Israel from Gaza and Lebanon. This evidence is in direct opposition to the claims made by SAGE. Nobody has refuted my facts or reasoning. And nobody, including The Tech, has questioned SAGE about it. It is ostensibly one of the pillars of the protesters’ motivation, but toppling it does not seem to have any effect on the protesters.
Second, Israel is regularly accused of genocide. I understand that when tens of thousands of civilians are killed, we struggle to comprehend. As I have said before, it is a horrible tragedy, and we search for words to describe it. The impulse is to use the worst word we can think of, which is genocide. But when we take a step back and look at the facts, that word does not apply.
The accusers provide no clear definition. The legal definition is “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Let’s look at the particulars.
A large number of civilian deaths in itself does not constitute genocide. Germany bombed civilian London for years, but that was never considered an act of genocide. Similarly for Allied bombing in Germany and Japan, and later bombing in North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, etc.
To be a genocide, or even a war crime, deaths of civilians must be either unrelated to any military objective or disproportional to the value of the objective. The clear military objective in Gaza is the elimination of the threat to Israel posed by Hamas. It is undisputed that Hamas has built military facilities under and among schools, hospitals, and residential areas, which increases civilian deaths. As far as I know, Hamas fighters do not wear uniforms in combat, which is a war crime, and leads to additional civilian deaths. Hamas leadership has admitted that the more Gazans that die, the better it is for their cause. So in this situation, high civilian casualties is not evidence of genocide. It is evidence that Hamas is creating an environment for high civilian casualties.
Palestinians are not being targeted by Israel in any area of the world other than where there is active conflict with Israel. To the best of my knowledge, there are not any threats by Israel to the millions of Palestinians in Jordan, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United States, etc. There are over a million Palestinian citizens of Israel, some of whom are members of the Knesset, leaders of major businesses, and members of the military. Those people are identical nationally, racially, ethnically and religiously with the alleged victims of genocide, but are not even remotely at risk of destruction.
Israel is taking steps that contradict an intent to destroy a nation. Israel recently stopped military operations to allow polio vaccinations. I don’t think anyone is denying that hundreds of truckloads of food are being allowed in every day. According to some sources (pre-peer review preprint), Israel is allowing more than sufficient food into Gaza . That is not something done while committing genocide.
But clearly there are Gazans who are starving, and are not getting sufficient aid. Evidence shows that Hamas and criminal gangs are not letting aid get to Gazan civilians. This link details stolen fuel and medical supplies. And recently Egypt closed the border to Gaza, preventing aid from getting in as well.
I have yet to see any evidence that Israel is killing Palestinians purely for the purpose of killing Palestinians. Any isolated incidents can be attributed to human error and the fog of war. But unless you insist that Israel kill zero civilians when trying to prevent another horrific attack, the only rational way to evaluate their performance is to compare it to other countries. In fact, Israel takes much more care than virtually any other country in protecting enemy civilians. The civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio is roughly 2:1 in Gaza, if not lower. That is a horrible tragedy. But in other conflicts, the ratio is 2.5:1 or even 9:1. A 2:1 ratio is not what you would expect during a genocide. This article by John Spencer, a world expert on urban warfare at West Point, explains in more detail.
The population of Gaza is growing, and has been since 1948. The population of Gaza in 1950 was about 245,000 after an influx from the 1948 war. In 2005, it was 1.3 million, an increase of 430%. In 2024 it was 2.14 million, an increase of 750% from 1950. The 2024 birth rate was 26.8 births/1000 people (38th highest in the world), or roughly 57,000 people born in a year. Even if every one of the 40,000 deaths reported by Hamas since October 7 were civilians and their deaths caused by Israel (a more likely number is 15,000-20,000*) the growth rate is such that the overall civilian population is still increasing. To the best of my knowledge, no civilian population in history has increased during a genocide.
I think I have demonstrated that while the situation in Gaza is horrific, it does not deserve the use of the word “genocide”. Using that word against Israel leaves us with no words to describe true genocide. Those guilty of true genocide are glad to see that happen.
I plan to submit a subsequent guest column to address the accusations that Israel is a colonizer and apartheid.
Please leave comments at thetech.com and I will respond.
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*The 40,000 number comes from the Ministry of Health, which is under the Hamas government. It includes roughly 10% deaths reported on Google forms which are unverified, and also 30% from “reliable media” which is unverified. There is no data on which media are considered reliable.
The numbers do not distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters. Israel estimated about 12,000 combatants were killed by February. Call it 15,000 by now. Nor do the numbers distinguish between natural deaths, deaths due to accident, deaths caused by Israeli actions, or deaths due to Hamas actions. For example, based on 2021 numbers, 15% of rockets fired from Gaza land in Gaza. I won’t try to estimate the casualties from that.
The death rate in 2022 was 2.9/1000 people (6th lowest in the world), which means in a year without Israel invading, 6,000 people died.
So even including all the unverified deaths, just excluding normal causes and combatants means 19,000 civilian deaths. Excluding unverified deaths, it could be as low as 4,000. I called it 15,000-20,000.