The greatest tragedy of war is civilians being killed. The people who have nothing to do with the conflict suffering because of other people’s hatred or disagreement. It’s what pulls on the heartstrings of the world. Sadly, as long as there is still war, casualties of war are unavoidable.

As someone who has studied and written a good bit on the topic of genocide, it really bothers me to see people flippantly throw that word around. Genocide is the DELIBERATE and systematic killing of a specific group of people. Historically, the vast number of those killed in genocide are innocent civilians.

Today people claim that innocent civilians who are accidentally killed during war are victims of genocide. This is false and is mainly used as an emotional appeal in propaganda (tactics that have been used for over a century).

Since 2001, over 432 thousand innocents have been killed as casualties of war. This means they were not military combatants or involved in any military operations. In WWII alone, it is estimated that there were roughly 50 million civilian casualties not including the 6 million victims of the Holocaust (who were targets of Genocide).

As of right now in the Israel/Hamas war, approximately 16 thousand innocent Palestinian civilians have been killed. That is a tragedy. But it’s important to be accurate when describing things.

Those civilians in Gaza are casualties of war, not casualties of genocide. In order for them to be victims of genocide, Israel would have to have specifically targeted them. However, innocent civilians were not the targets of the attacks. Their deaths are the tragic result of a war, but not genocide.

Sadly the soldiers of Hamas are known to use the very people they claim they want to protect as shields to hide behind. Hamas killing Palestinians is nothing new and has been going on for decades. Former Hamas leaders have even left the group because of this and publicly call them out for it. It is disgusting. But their tactics of strategically hiding within and behind civilians are what have cause so many civilians to be killed during this awful war.

I have a friend who is friends with an Israeli who was drafted into the IDF and I have heard the voice memos that he has sent my friend during his off time. He has been the boots on the ground in Gaza and has described how bad it is there. One interesting thing he mentioned is that the IDF soldiers were given strict orders by the Israeli government to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza at all cost. If Israel were really trying kill all Palestinians as many people claim, they definitely wouldn’t be giving those orders to their soldiers. Other Israelis I’ve heard speak on this matter have said that if it the genocide of all Palestinians were Israel’s goal, then that would have been accomplished long ago because Israel has the ability and weapons to do that very quickly.

Further proof of is in the fact that over the past several decades, Israel has offered huge chunks of their land to the Palestinian people to try to make peace with them. However, the ruling government of the Palestinian people whether it be Hamas or the PLO have rejected all offers of land to coexist within Israel. They essentially said that if they can’t have all of it from the river to the sea free of Jews, then they don’t want any part of it.

Ask yourself this:

If a country hated and wanted to commit genocide against another people group, would they seriously offer that people group land and tell their soldiers to avoid civilian casualties of those people at all costs? That doesn’t add up.

However, if it DOES comes out that Israel is in fact systematically targeting the innocent civilians and killing them on purpose or is trying to eradicate all Palestinian people, then obviously that changes things. That would then be looked at as genocide or war crimes or whatever definition best fits. But as of right now, all that is known is that tragically, 16 thousand innocent non-combatant men, women, and children have died as a result of this horrific war. Even though it does not qualify as a genocide, it doesn’t make it any less of a tragedy.