In an article for JUSTICE Magazine, B’nai B’rith International CEO Dan Mariaschin writes about the resurgence of anti-Semitic tropes—particularly modern blood libels falsely accusing Israel of genocide and war crimes—as a widespread political tool since the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Read the article in the No. 72 edition of JUSTICE Magazine here.

Read the PDF version here.

Among the most lamentable fallout from the war in Gaza following October 7, 2023, is the speed at which diplomats and political figures from the community of democracies turned from supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself” to the leveling of accusations that Israel is committing genocide and war crimes.

One must set the record straight: when fighting to defeat an asymmetrical enemy like Hamas, which employs human shields and stores its weapons in mosques, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings and in tunnels deep beneath Gaza as a doctrine of war, civilian casualties simply cannot be avoided. Hamas’s tactics are not a secret, nor are they a stunning new revelation for the world to absorb.

For years, over the course of a series of Gaza wars, Israeli civilian and military figures have gone to great lengths to explain the nature of Hamas’s tactics, but still take extraordinary steps in battle to avoid mass civilian casualties wherever possible. We have lost count of the video clips showing drones that track terrorists traveling on foot or in vehicles and moving in and out of populated areas. How many times have IDF spokespersons noted the text messages, emails, phone calls, the “knock on the roof” warnings, and other means of advance alerts when attacks are imminent, often placing IDF units at a disadvantage on the battlefield?

Yet, expressions of support for Israel, which flowed from a number of international capitals in the days just after the Hamas massacres, began to fade even before the IDF had sent a single soldier into Gaza. And once Israel entered Gaza, it did not take long for the tide to turn. In response to the attacks by Hamas on October 7, UN Secretary General António Guterres unleashed a cascade of opprobrium when he declared that the terrorist attack “did not happen in a vacuum.”

Once Israel’s ground operation began on October 27, 2023, international media outlets, governments, and civilians began relying on casualty figures from the “Gaza Health Ministry,” which is a governmental arm of Hamas. The artificial value of these figures has been aided by much of the international media’s coverage of the war.

Gabriel Boric, the Chilean president, was one of the first figures to charge Israel with violating international law in Gaza. During a visit with President Joe Biden at the White House, Boric said, “the right of a state to defend itself has limits, and those limits imply respecting the lives of innocent civilians, especially children, and respecting international humanitarian law.”

A few months later when back in Chile, Boric, a backer of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and an incessant critic of Israel, described Israeli operations in Gaza as a form of “barbarism.” Subsequently, Boric vetoed Israeli participation in his country’s widely attended aerospace show, recalled his ambassador to Israel, and joined South Africa in its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Brazil also joined this chorus early on. Its president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is a veteran disparager of Israel. While at a meeting of the African Union in February 2024, Lula said, “What’s happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history. Actually, it has happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”

In fact, the civilian casualty figures Lula cites go wildly beyond what the “Gaza Health Ministry” shares. Early in 2024, the Brazilian president stated that “12.3 million children died in the Gaza Strip and in Israel because of the war.”4 In fact, the entire population of Gaza, including adults and children, is estimated to be only 2.2 million people.

Boric and Lula are part of a group of populist leaders, which also includes Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, who compete for the distinction of being in the first line of Israel’s hyper-critics. Petro has called Israel’s government “genocidal” and charged its Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, with using language akin to what the Nazis said of Jews.5 Colombia formally broke relations with Israel in May 2024.

Before moving on to Europe and the United States, we pause to invoke those elements of the IHRA (international Holocaust Remembrance Alliance)6 working definition of antisemitism, as they relate to what Boric, Lula, Petro, and so many others are saying about Israel.

According to the IHRA definition, the language used by these and other international diplomatic and political leaders clearly crosses the line:

• “Denying the Jewish people their right to self- n determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
• “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
• “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.”
• “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

The IHRA working definition is not a product of international Jewish organizations that is solely used within the Jewish community or academic circles. It is an internationally accepted definition that has been adopted by 43 countries, including Colombia.

The definition’s attention to Israel, including comments on its practices and policies, is indeed logical since so much of contemporary antisemitism is veiled as criticism of Israel’s government. Fortunately, there is a definition with which to work. Unfortunately, too many critics of Israel have more nefarious motives; they intentionally engage in 21st century blood libel under the guise of “legitimate criticism.”

What Would Lemkin Say?

Even without the IHRA document, there are accepted definitions of genocide that directly undermine the charges against Israel. According to international law, genocide occurs when a state commits “one or more acts with the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, or religious group.” Human rights champion Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” in 1944, would likely ask a simple question after October 7: is there an Israeli “intent” or a conspiracy to destroy the Palestinian people as a nation? The answer should be apparent to everyone: the fact that the Palestinian population of Gaza still exists represents a definitive “no.” Israel’s disproportionate military strength, combined with its near-complete control over movement within the Strip and its extensive efforts to move the population out of harm’s way, reflect Israel’s lack of intent in destroying the Palestinian people as a nation. The IDF’s only “intent” during the war has been to defeat Hamas, which is a political and military enemy.

More to the point, why are Boric, Lula, Petro, and a legion of others so eager to castigate the victims? Hamas’s genocidal intentions were clearly on display for all to see on October 7. The fact that government leaders have successfully turned the perpetrators of genocide into victims of genocide speaks to the mob psychology that has gripped world leaders as they march in lockstep to promote the lie of genocide.

Europe

Given modern European history, Europeans should know better than to believe such lies. Some of the worst crimes against the Jewish people occurred on their soil; the thousands of survivors who reside in Europe are living testimony to Nazi barbarity and to the genocide that was carried out over a six-year period. And yet, some European leaders are engaging in a “that was then, and this is now” response to the massacres in October.

Take Caroline Gennez, Belgium’s Minister of Development Cooperation, who said, “No EU Member State disputes Israel’s right to exist, but surely that is why we should not stand idly by in the face of so much disproportionate violence against a civilian population, even if it is in retaliation to an act of terror.”

In an irreverent comment, Gennez mentioned Hamas in her statement, but only to make another point against Israel: “Hamas has murdered, kidnapped or raped 1,200 Israelis. That is a violation of international law and the laws of war. But Israel, as an occupying power, has been violating international law in the West Bank and Gaza for years…”

Gennez then, in a colossal display of chutzpah, turned her criticism to Germany for its support of Israel: “German friends, are you really going to be on the wrong side of history twice? Are we going to stand by if ethnic cleansing were to take place? … So I hope that Germans will want to look deep into their own hearts unburdened by their own historical traumas.”

Spain has been an advocate for the Palestinians for years, and statements by several of its leaders in the aftermath of October 7 were very much in line with that worldview. Yolanda Diaz, Spain’s Minister for Labor and Social Economy, ended a speech on the war in Gaza by repeating the go-to chant of the pro-Palestinian/pro Hamas camp: “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.” In her remarks, she charged Israel with “barbarism” and called on the EU to end all its agreements with Israel. Margarita Robles, Spain’s Minister of Defense, called the war in Gaza “a real genocide.” Spain would eventually join with Norway, Ireland, Slovenia and others in recognizing a Palestinian state.

Ireland has been at the forefront in Europe in support of the Palestinians. Barely a month after the October 7 attacks, then-Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar observed that Israeli action in Gaza is “something approaching revenge.” In an interview featured in Euronews, his successor, Simon Harris, called the situation in Gaza “unconscionable,” and said that Europe would be on the wrong side of history if it failed to “stop the bloodshed.” Harris went on to say that it “…should keep every single one of us awake at night, because there are children in Gaza, there are children in Rafah, who go to sleep at night not knowing if they will wake.”

Another veteran critic of Israel is Josep Borrell, a former Spanish foreign minister and the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. He has referred to the “bloodbath” in Gaza and charged Israel with employing starvation as a weapon of war and purposely “provoking famine.”

It should come as no surprise that the United Nations, which has long applied a double standard to Israel’s actions and has a culture of bias against Israel, hopped along for the ride. Several attempts to include mention of Hamas and the atrocities it carried out in UN resolutions calling for ceasefires in Gaza – both in the Security Council and in the General Assembly – have been unsuccessful. In some cases, countries that voted in favor of the (failed) amendments that included mention of Hamas, nevertheless voted for the final documents that did not mention Hamas, further insulating the victimizer from any clear condemnation or opprobrium.

It is noteworthy that after months of the international community parroting Hamas’s casualty figures and spewing modern blood libel in the form of charging Israel with intentionally starving Palestinians in Gaza, one UN agency quietly pulled back from such allegations. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revised the widely circulated, and inflated figures significantly downward.

The Famine Review Committee (FRC), an international body of nutrition and food security experts, also reversed earlier projections about famine in northern Gaza and has now said that the alleged famine does not exist.

Even the chief economist of the UN World Food Programme, Arif Husain, admitted that no real data exist on starvation deaths in Gaza. “It’s not even a matter of being available. I don’t think that they are even collected.” Save for the Jewish media, one would be hard pressed to find this admission anywhere.

For months, government spokespersons and especially those at the UN, blamed Israel for supposedly holding up humanitarian aid for Gazans, using the aid as an instrument of war. But beyond the occasional mention of Hamas “taking its cut,” it is hard to find any blame being placed on the UN or other actors tasked with delivering assistance. Indeed, one article on the subject referred only to “gangs” and “family clans” spiriting away the assistance to the black market, or being primarily involved in selling bootleg cigarettes, but nothing about how Hamas not only takes its “cut,” but just as important, uses the famine, starvation and thirst issue as an important element of its continuing efforts to demonize Israel.

The ICJ, the ICC and the Special Rapporteur

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the primary legal organ of the United Nations. In recent years, as the BDS movement grew beyond university campuses, there has been an increasing concern that the genocide claims made against Israel could make their way to the ICJ in The Hague. South Africa, and its longtime ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), has been closely aligned with the PLO for years, and is now working with both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA). South Africa has brought the current charges against Israel, alleging that “acts and omissions” by Israel “are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”18 South Africa is joined and supported by several “usual suspect” countries including Chile, Colombia, Ireland, Spain, Turkey, Egypt and Mexico.

ICJ judges are not appointed directly by national governments; they are nominated by groups of legal experts in international law and voted upon by the UN General Assembly. That said, the appointees are often expected to reflect the prevailing political winds in their home countries. The current ICJ president, Nawaf Salam, is a former permanent representative to the UN from Lebanon. There are fifteen members of the court and two ad hoc judges in the genocide case (one from each side of the case).

Israel will defend itself against the charges. Legal adviser of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tal Becker, told a group gathered at the Palace of Peace in The Hague that Israel is engaged in a “war that it did not start and did not want,” and that “In these circumstances, there can hardly be a charge more false or more malevolent than the allegation against Israel of genocide.”

In sum, the charges of genocide hurled against Israel and Jewish students by pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas demonstrators has now reached The Hague. The perverse act brought to the Court by South Africa and its fellow travelers is indeed a blood libel of immense proportions. That the case has now been joined by several European and South American members of the democratic community demonstrates a further warping of a term much used today: moral clarity.

A companion example of this absurdity is the threat by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of “crimes against humanity.” The same charge is being leveled at the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar. While the ICC is not an appendage of the United Nations, the two share a working agreement and its legal assault on Israeli leaders falls very much in sync with the UN’s formal legal organ, the ICJ.

The specific charges against Israel include “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime,” and “extermination and/or murder…including the context of deaths caused by starvation as a crime against humanity.” Something like this occurred in the not-too-distant past. Some twenty years ago a Belgian court, under the universal jurisdiction provision, attempted to try then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Gen. Amos Yaron for “war crimes” committed in Lebanon during the 1982 war against the PLO.

Here again, the absurdity and transparency of leveling such accusations at Israel and equating its leaders – who are directing a defensive war against a terrorist organization that is accountable to no one, save for its paymasters in Tehran – with the mastermind of the October 7 massacres, should be sufficient reason for serious persons to deride the entire process. In addition, of course, there are the updated findings that there was no starvation in northern Gaza that derived from Israeli policy.

Several countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Austria, and Czechia deplored the moves by the ICC to issue arrest warrants. Several other countries backed the intent of the court’s action with some expressing support in the “integrity” of the court.

Efforts to call off the ICC include proposals in the U.S. Congress to sanction judges of the court. Whether or not warrants will be served, the specter of the universal jurisdiction episode has reemerged. Leaving aside the two Israeli leaders named in the case, what will happen when IDF soldiers travel abroad? Will they be detained or arrested in Madrid, Dublin, or Oslo for having served in a “genocidal” war in Gaza? Will any Israeli who is serving in the current government face the same scenario?

Regardless of whether these warrants are ever issued, advancing unsubstantiated charges and continuing to press ahead with them after they have been debunked, rises to the IHRA definition of antisemitism and also does significant damage to Israel. The blood libels of medieval times live on, albeit with a modern-day wrapper. Another recurrent, unabashed agent of delegitimization of Israel within the UN system is the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese. Her tenure has been marked by a series of highly biased, extremist statements. In a report she submitted after October 7 entitled “Anatomy of a Genocide,” Albanese blamed Israeli government officials and the IDF with purposefully engaging in “an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against the Palestinian people.”

The Commission of Inquiry (COI)

The Commission of Inquiry (COI) was created by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2021, for the expressed purpose of permanently investigating “the Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and in Israel.” This means that it is seeking to act as a full-time censurer for Israeli human rights abuses and violations of international law.

The COI’s three-person panel, led by former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay of South Africa, is openly biased against Israel. She once famously criticized the United States for providing Israel with the Iron Dome air defense system but offering “no such protection to Gazans against (Israeli) shelling,” and has accused Israel of “apparent targeting of (Palestinian) children playing.” Another COI member, Miloon Kothari, charged the Jewish lobby with controlling social media.

It should come as no surprise that in its June 2024 report to the UNHRC, COI stated that:

Both the October attack in Israel and Israel’s subsequent military operation in Gaza must be seen in context. These events were preceded by decades of violence, unlawful occupation and Israel’s denial of the Palestinians’ right to self determination, manifested in continuous forced displacement, dispossession… and systemic discrimination and oppression of the Palestinian people.

Worse, regarding the widespread rapes and sexual violence committed by Hamas operatives on October 7, “The Commission has reviewed testimonies obtained by journalists and the Israeli police concerning rape, but has not been able to independently verify such allegations…”

“The Commission was also unable to verify reports of sexualized torture and genital mutilation… the Commission found some specific allegations to be false, inaccurate or contradictory with other evidence…” And in two short sentences, COI glossed over the issue of the use of human shields by Hamas: “The Commission is aware of reports … that the military wing of Hamas and other non-state groups in Gaza operated from within civilian areas. It continues the investigation into this issue.”

The COI has become yet another cudgel within the UN system to promote and advocate for the Palestinian narrative by being a megaphone for the repetition of untruths against Israel. As part of a UN agency that includes many of the world’s major human rights abusers, who are at the same time among Israel’s most active nemeses, the COI certainly must feel right at home at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

The American Factor

Since 1948, the United States Congress has had its share of Israel bashers and antisemites. This is not necessarily a large group, but sizable enough to merit notice. For years, some were at the fringe, but loud enough to make things difficult. Congressmen like Paul Findlay (D-OH), Pete McCloskey (R-CA), and James Traficant (D-OH) come immediately to mind. In the U.S. Senate, the powerful J. William Fulbright (D-AR) and Charles Percy (R-IL) were open critics.

Still, we have not seen anything like what has erupted in Congress in recent years, with the arrival of “the Squad” of progressives who work overtime to demonize Israel. Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib, the principal apologist for the Palestinian narrative in all its forms, and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar (of “it’s all about the Benjamins” fame and known for making a thinly veiled charge of Jewish dual loyalty) are in the top rung of politicians bent on delegitimizing Israel at every turn.

The floodgates of this kind of hatred opened on October 7. One Squad member, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), representing a heavily Jewish congressional district, expressed his unabashed support for Hamas. Bowman refused to vote for replenishing Israel’s Iron Dome system and opposed military aid to Israel. He bought into denial of Hamas atrocities as well, stating, “There was propaganda in the beginning of the siege. There’s still no evidence of beheaded babies or raped women. But they keep using that lie [for] propaganda.”

Though he later apologized for saying this, Bowman repeated accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and his alignment with Israel’s main detractors in Congress infuriated much of his Jewish constituency, culminating in his landslide loss in a primary challenge by a popular county political figure, backed by AIPAC’s United Democracy Project.

The challenge to Bowman ended with a bizarre campaign rally in the South Bronx, featuring two other progressive critics of Israel, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY). In a lengthy rant, Bowman continually railed against AIPAC, and used expletives rarely heard on any campaign trail. “I fight against genocide in Gaza,” Bowman declared, “and I fight for justice at home.”

For his part, Sanders has done his best to perpetuate the cascade of libels against Israel. Sanders was among the first to hitch a ride on the famine and starvation train. For example, he stated that “Right now, we are looking at the possibility of mass starvation and famine in Gaza.”25 He was also an early advocate for cutting military assistance to Israel when he said, even before the IDF entered Rafah, that “President Biden is right – the United States cannot continue to provide more bombs and artillery shells to support Netanyahu’s disastrous and inhumane war policies.”

As the war in Gaza wore on, the issue of conditioning military assistance attracted other members of Congress such as Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). Increasingly critical of Israel, Van Hollen has embraced the genocide war crimes tone of some colleagues further to his left: “Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food.… that is a war crime – it is a textbook war crime. That makes those who orchestrate it war criminals. So now the question is, what will the United States do?”

What to Do About these Allegations

No doubt, the explosive and expansive nature of social media and the internet have aided and abetted those political figures who traffic in the tropes, innuendo and blood libels that have produced this storm of hatred toward Israel and its supporters. Someone like Ocasio-Cortez, who has called Netanyahu a war criminal, has a social media following in the millions. Presumably most of her followers have a limited, if any, contextual knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian issue; if you repeat a lie long enough, it will over time be construed as true.

Part of that lack of context is a misunderstanding of the intrinsic connection between Zionism and the Jewish people. That said, those who are leading the “Israel is perpetrating genocide” campaign in American and European cities, know this full well. When a pro-Hamas demonstrator inside a New York City subway car demands to know which passengers are Zionists – which recently happened – one doesn’t need the IHRA definition to understand that the man was overtly antisemitic.

There are only about 15 million Jews in the world, so any attempt to respond to the hatred must, out of necessity, be assisted by friends and allies. Since October 7, many have risen to the occasion. Several members of Congress have been outspoken defenders of Israel’s defensive war in Gaza and deplore all manifestations of antisemitism that have arisen in the wake of the war.

Mainstream newspapers and broadcast media outlets have largely been hyper-critical of Israel, but there are some important journalists (mainly at the Wall Street Journal) and others, like Douglas Murray, who have been consistently friendly. Some influential military analysts, like Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.) of the Institute for the Study of War, and John Spencer, who heads the Urban Warfare Studies program at West Point, have been there from the beginning, offering insightful commentary of Israel’s prosecution of the war and of the ongoing threats to the region by Iran and its proxies. There are some Christian religious leaders who speak out regularly in defense of Israel and against the explosion of antisemitism. And there are some A-list celebrities, Jewish and non-Jewish, who in courageously speaking out on these issues have run the risk, in the woke environment in which we live, of being cancelled.

In another era, we might not have had access to the range of foreign diplomats to make our case. But today, the public diplomacy carried out by a few Jewish organizations at the United Nations, the European Parliament, the Organization of American States and at embassies in dozens of countries, allow us to speak truth to power regarding the big lies and blood libels tossed daily at Israel and the Jewish community. Does this change votes at the UN General Assembly? Not necessarily. There is no substitute, though, for going toe-to-toe with policymakers and those who carry out those policies that impact Israel and the Jewish community.

And then, there is academia. The upheavals on American college campuses, resulting in “encampments” of pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas demonstrators and the bullying, intimidation and physical harm against Jewish students, presents us with another challenge: we need to work with boards of trustees, college administrators and friendly faculty to reverse the damage done this year on campus after campus. We will need to press for more courses on the Holocaust, and on the history of Israel and Zionism – taught by faculty who are not out to make biased ideological points with their students and colleagues.

“Zionist free zones” in these places conjure up sinister analogies to the 1930s. Supporting hearings in Congress that dive deep into the funding and organizational wherewithal behind these disruptive and lawless challenges to the freedom to learn, must be supported. It cannot be tolerated that Jewish students must shun some schools because they will be made to feel insecure and the object of antisemitic intimidation.

Finally, there is “the vote.” Much has been made this year about the Arab demographic in Michigan, where, in a tight presidential race, votes in that community were seen to be essential. Over 5.5 million Jews in the United States live and vote in a number of key “battleground” and other politically vital states including Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Texas, not to mention New York, Florida and California.

What the progressive left in the United States lacks in numbers, it has made up for by casting a long shadow on the body politic. Its voices are loud, boisterous and doctrinaire. Some of its leaders are apologists for Hamas, and some, as we have seen, are deniers of its atrocities. Many want to weaken Israel by denying it the weapons to defend itself. And many, like Bowman, have no hesitation to traffic in traditional antisemitic tropes, like “AIPAC money,” which, through social media, spreads hatred at the speed of a keystroke.

All that said, sometimes our best friends are the neighbors next door, the folks in the next office, a caregiver, or the person on duty at the reception desk in your condo building. On October 7 and in the days that followed, I received several notes from non-Jewish former classmates of mine going back to the first grade, who wanted to know how I was doing, and who expressed their total support for Israel in its fight against the terrorists who brought about the atrocities whose images will forever be seared in our minds.

That brought a measure of comfort, but also the stark realization that the politicization of antisemitism presents an unprecedented challenge to the Jewish people. We need to rise to the occasion, on multiple fronts. It will require more than a measure of unity of purpose, a goal that has often eluded us. And it will mean a communal mastery of the new information technologies that have been used so devastatingly in this year of upheaval and chaos. Are we up to the task?

Daniel S. Mariaschin is CEO of B’nai B’rith International