{"id":251878,"date":"2026-08-16T22:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T22:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/251878\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T22:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T22:23:09","slug":"daniel-kolkey-israeli-genocide-accusations-reveal-deliberate-ignorance-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/251878\/","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Kolkey: Israeli \u2018genocide\u2019 accusations reveal deliberate ignorance \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

On July 21, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called<\/a> Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a \u201cwar criminal\u201d and an \u201carchitect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people,\u201d while acknowledging he had no authority to do anything about it. But Mamdani\u2019s national prominence as a progressive leader makes his comments disturbing and worth rebutting.<\/p>\n

This assertion, irrelevant to his duties as mayor, reveals a deliberate ignorance of the facts. As demonstrated below, Mamdani\u2019s contention is reduced to a claim that Israel committed genocide by resisting a terrorist group that deliberately uses its own civilians as human shields.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

For starters, Israel\u2019s war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas\u2019 attack, including the murder of over 1,200 men, women and children, including babies, on Oct. 7, 2023.\u00a0 And Hamas made clear that these attacks would continue. On Lebanese television later that month, a Hamas politburo member, Ghazi Hamad, stated<\/a> that the October 7 attack \u201cis just the first time, and there will be a second, a third and a fourth.\u201d Israel had no choice but to respond.<\/p>\n

Second, as part of its efforts to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza, Israel\u2019s military made phone calls, dropped leaflets, and sent text messages to civilians residing in buildings in Gaza designated for attack to give them an opportunity to escape<\/a>.\u00a0 The Israeli air force would also target a building with a loud, but non-lethal, bomb to warn civilians that they were in the vicinity of a potential target so that they could avoid harm<\/a>. That does not sound like genocide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By contrast, Hamas\u2019 strategy was to put its own civilians in harm\u2019s way by building a tunnel system under cities that dared Israel to kill civilians in order to get to Hamas\u2019 warriors. Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas leader, acknowledged that Hamas\u2019 tunnels were for protecting its fighters, not Gazan civilians, stating that protecting Gazans was not Hamas\u2019 responsibility<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the Modern War Institute<\/a> at West Point, \u201c[f]or the first time in the history of tunnel warfare,\u201d Hamas \u201cbuilt a tunnel network to gain not just a military advantage, but a political advantage, as well\u201d because \u201cHamas weaved its vast tunnel networks into the society on the surface,\u201d such that \u201c[d]estroying the tunnels [was] virtually impossible without adversely impacting the population living in Gaza.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In short, Hamas deliberately used tunnels beneath populated cities, including civilian hospitals and schools, in an effort to give Israel the Hobson\u2019s choice of surrender or causing civilian deaths. Hamas even hid Israeli hostages in its tunnels.<\/p>\n

As a result, Prime Minister Netanyahu observed<\/a>, \u201cWe are using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they\u2019re using their civilians to protect their missiles.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines<\/a> \u201cgenocide\u201d to require, among other elements, the \u201cintent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.\u201d\u00a0 This requires in legal terms, \u201cdolus specialis\u201d \u2014 a specific intent to destroy a substantial part of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.<\/p>\n

But Israel\u2019s intent was to defeat an armed terrorist organization, whose express intent is to destroy the Israeli people (which qualifies as genocide).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, Hamas\u2019 charters establish this specific intent to destroy a national group, that is, genocide. Its original charter<\/a> in 1988 expressly called on \u201cIslam\u201d to \u201cobliterate\u201d Israel. Hamas\u2019s subsequent charter in 2017 asserts<\/a> that its goal is to \u201cliberate Palestine,\u201d which it states \u201cextends from the River Jordan \u2026 to the Mediterranean,\u201d which, of course, translates to the erasure of Israel.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Hamas intended to sacrifice its own Palestinian civilian population in Gaza by deliberately putting them in the line of fire, suggesting an intent to destroy a part of their own national, ethnic and religious group.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s ill-considered accusation of genocide against Netanyahu, however, illustrates a bigger problem \u2014 basing one\u2019s opinion on television images of the destruction in Gaza (which were solely caused by Hamas\u2019 strategy), rather than bothering himself with the facts.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his last book before he died, Henry Kissinger lamented that the printed page has \u201clost its former dominance\u201d and \u201cthe costs of television are substantial, privileging emotional display over self-command.\u201d\u00a0 Mamdani\u2019s ignorant opinion illustrates Kissinger\u2019s concern, relying on emotional display rather than the facts. If his mayoral administration continues to elevate emotions over facts, New York is in for a bitter four years.<\/p>\n

Daniel M. Kolkey is an attorney, former judge, and former counsel to Gov. Pete Wilson. He serves on the board of the Pacific Research Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On July 21, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a \u201cwar criminal\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[1160,37,649],"class_list":["post-251878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-commentary","tag-israel","tag-opinion"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117107530318004710","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}