Claims of genocide don't bear scrutiny

RECENTLY I've seen plenty of people happily accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza on social media and on this opinion page.

- Sebastian Johns, by email

Very often they claim to only be caring people concerned about innocents being killed in the conflict and often holding the Israelis solely responsible for the suffering. So these people are outraged that the world's only Jewish state is daring to take military action against an evil terrorist organisation that murdered 1,200 people and took 250 hostages on October 7th.

Conveniently I've not heard many complaints against the 500,000 people Saudi Arabia has killed in Yemen or that half of Yemen's children are malnourished or the hundreds of thousands killed by Assad in the Syrian Civil War or against the Chinese carrying out a genocide against the Uighur's.

There have been allegations of genocide, apartheid and violations of international law hurled against Israel. I was initially going to cover all those but that would make this letter too long, so I'll just focus on the accusation of genocide for this one and maybe come back to the others later.