Recent reports that the United States and Hamas have entered direct talks for the first time show that the effort to implement President Trump’s Gaza peace plan has entered a critical new phase. Yet, despite the fragile ceasefire that has been in place for over six months, accusations that Israel is responsible for committing genocide in Gaza continue to fuel demands to isolate and boycott America’s closest ally in the Middle East.
In November Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced a resolution in Congress calling for the United States to “officially recognize that the State of Israel has committed the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Despite the ceasefire, public campaigns to exclude Israeli contestants from global cultural events have proliferated on the grounds of genocide allegations — from professional soccer to the World Baseball Classic to the annual Eurovision Song Contest.
Hamas itself recently leveraged the same allegation to resist disarmament, claiming demands for it to do so are “nothing but an overt attempt to continue the genocide against our people, something we will not accept under any circumstances.”
Despite these widespread accusations, the commitment to a Gaza peace plan by Israel should demonstrate the genocide allegation has been misleading from the start.
Determining whether genocide has been committed typically hinges on the intent of the alleged perpetrator. As the Genocide Convention establishes, specified acts must be committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
Popular claims that Israel is responsible for genocide in Gaza typically adopt the same flawed methodology. To establish the intent element, they selectively highlight rhetoric from Israeli elected officials—often taken out of context—to advance the claim that the goal of military operations is to destroy the Palestinian population, in whole or in part, rather than Hamas. The major flaw in this approach has always been that it ignores the strategic objectives of military campaign explicitly declared by the Israeli government.
Before the IDF even initiated ground operations in Gaza, for example, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced two strategic goals for the campaign: “To eliminate Hamas by destroying its military and governing abilities, and to do everything possible to bring our captives home.” Nearly two years later, Netanyahu reiterated that his government “will not conclude the war of redemption before we destroy Hamas in Gaza, return all of our hostages and ensure that the Gaza Strip will never again constitute a threat to Israel.”
Months later, during remarks at the UN General Assembly on the eve of the second anniversary of the October 7 terror attacks, Netanyahu issued a demand for Hamas to lay down its arms and free all remaining hostages. To the delegates at the General Assembly, he affirmed, “If Hamas agrees to our demands, the war could end right now.”
Those objectives, which have been consistent throughout the military campaign in Gaza, are incorporated into the comprehensive peace plan announced by President Donald Trump in September.
During a press conference at the White House the day it was released to the public, Netanyahu announced his support for the plan since it “achieves our war aims.” Specifically, Netanyahu noted the plan, if implemented, “will bring back to Israel all our hostages, dismantle Hamas' military capabilities, end its political rule, and ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.”
If Hamas fails to honor the plan, the prime minister affirmed later in his remarks that “Israel will finish the job” of destroying Hamas “by itself.”
Now that the ceasefire remains in place, public messaging from the government of Israel continues to reiterate its commitment to the plan while emphasizing its resolve to continue attacking Hamas if necessary in response to violations perpetrated by the terrorist group.
Netanyahu reaffirmed this strategic objective yet again in a statement addressing the ceasefire with Iran, insisting Israel has “created deep security zones beyond our borders, in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, where we control more than half of the Strip and are choking Hamas from every side.”
As I have previously noted, seeking to destroy a transnational terrorist group that promises to repeat the October 7 massacre is not genocide. It is war.
Even while a ceasefire remains in place in Gaza, allegations that Israel is responsible for genocide have effectively been adopted as a primary weapon in the information war seeking to encourage governments, businesses, and private citizens to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel.
Ending the enduring security threat posed by Hamas, rather than destroying the civilian population in Gaza, has been one of two strategic objectives of Israel’s military campaign from the outset. This means the “genocide” accusation has always been baseless, and the resolution currently pending in the House of Representatives is misguided.
If there was any question before, Israel’s commitment to the peace plan and conduct during the ensuing ceasefire have now removed all doubt.
Dr. Brian L. Cox is an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School, a journalism graduate student at Carleton University, and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He retired from the U.S. Army in 2018 after 22 years of military service, including seven years as a military lawyer. Follow him on X @BrianCox_RLTW
