Gerry Chidiac's confidence that Hamas will be prosecuted for its crimes is unwarranted.
Irrefutable evidence of Hamas' deliberate commission of war crimes has been available for years, long before October 7. Hamas has explicitly stated its desire to kill all Jews, which constitutes genocide. Hamas deliberately attacks civilians, uses human shields, and takes hostages, all grave crimes in international law. In spite of this, the Hamas leadership has gone scot free.
The accusation that Israel is engaged in genocide is absurd. Statements of people who do not represent Israel or are taken out of context prove nothing. The government of Israel has plainly stated that its goal is to eliminate Hamas, not Gazans or Palestinians, and its actions are consistent with this.
10,000 deaths represent 0.5 percent of the population of Gaza, nothing like genocide. Many of those deaths are those of Hamas terrorists. We have no reliable figures as to how many are of non-combatants since the figures come from Hamas, whose past claims have repeatedly been shown to be false, and which has admitted that it falsely classifies dead terrorists as non-combatants.
Many non-combatant deaths are due directly to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, roughly 20% of whose rockets fall short and land in Gaza. The other non-combatant deaths are also due to Hamas since, as they admit, they situate rocket launchers, ammunition dumps, and command centres in civilian areas. These non-combatant deaths are the fault of Hamas, not Israel.
Israel's conduct plainly shows its effort to avoid non-combatant deaths. Israel gave advance warning and urged civilians to evacuate southward. As it always has, Israel has in many cases warned civilians that it is going to attack a building by telephone calls and text messages and by "roof-knocking". Israel carefully selects military targets and avoids civilian targets.
Unlike Hamas, Israel does not deliberately attack civilian targets. Israel could have destroyed Hamas without Israeli casualties by carpet-bombing Gaza. By sending in ground forces, Israel sacrificed dozens of its own soldiers in order to save thousands of Gazan lives.
The accusation of genocide is a long-standing canard of Israel haters. Not only is this belied by Israel's documented care in minimizing civilian casualties, but in every area, Green-Line Israel, Gaza, Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, the Arab population has increased rapidly and continuously since 1948. Given Israel's military power, this would not be the case if Israel wanted to kill Arabs.
The reality is that Israel is doing its best to destroy a genocidal fascist organization while minimizing civilian casualties, using only the force necessary. There is no moral or legal equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
Bill Poser
Prince George
