Mahmoud Abbas, nominal leader of 'Palestine', told the UN General Assembly that Israel was waging a "war of genocide" in Gaza. “Israel has chosen to make it a year of a new war of genocide against the Palestinian people." From Ramallah to the UN and back again, if the G-word is not flavor of the month, it must be pretty close to that pinnacle. Genocide-touting loudmouths from East to West nurse an unmovable belief in Israel the monster. Muslim warlords on the other hand never have genocide leveled at them, though hellbent on genocide for all they’re worth. Look at Syria and Iraq, at Nigeria and Sudan where the scale of slaughter is biblical and ‘Infidels’ are being wiped off the face of the earth. Next to what is going down in North Africa and the Mid-East, the latest war between Gaza and Israel was no more than a schoolyard brawl. Here is another parallel to consider: Palestinians “murdered” under Israel’s watch compared to South Africans murdered under democratic watch. From 1988 to 2014, a span of 26 years, Israel killed some 9,900 Palestinians, or 380 per year. Meanwhile in peaceful South Africa criminals murdered some 300,000 victims in just 18 years, or 16,600 per year. The disparity between the numbers is staggering enough even before adjustment for the difference between Palestinian war victims and South African crime victims. The latter would be 100% innocent, while the Palestinian toll would contain not less than one-half ”militants” killed by their own acts of suicide bombing or shooting or firing rockets or directing any of the above. For the real picture, killers don’t belong in the toll. After all, those that live by the sword shall die by the sword. Narrowing it down to civilian deaths in all Intifadas and Gaza wars, Israel killed some 200 innocent Palestinians on a yearly basis over a quarter century; too many of course, but then again too many Israeli civilians have been killed by suicidal Palestinians.
In another way, however, there are surely too few Palestinian dead. For the comfort of Mahmoud Abbas and others who cry genocide at the drop of a hat, there should be tens – no, hundreds of thousands more, if they are right and Israel is indeed a genocidal force at work. For Abbas and his ilk the toll is way too low for comfort, and the comparison with South Africa (not at war with anyone) is quite devastating. With a death toll eighty-three times lower than the toll in peaceful South Africa, the victims of Gaza and the West Bank warring against a 'killer' machine, inflict a mortal wound on Abbas and his ilk. Consider a different angle on claims of genocide. Look at the population trend of Palestinians in the territories. Their numbers grew from 1.9 m in 1990 to 4.4 m in 2012. How many countries in the world can boast a people explosion of 132% in a mere dozen years! Genocide would seem to have taken on a whole new meaning.For millennia the Jewish people were looked upon as a ‘demonic abstraction,’ in the phrase of Professor Robert Wistrich. Today that demonic abstraction is the country where Jews live. Israel is the target of choice for fanatical people, governments and movements whose vile prejudice and obsession, once inflamed by weak and hapless Jews, are now inflamed by a strong and empowered Israel. Try as they might, Jews could never escape this disturbing hatred, and probably Jews never will.