There is Popularized Impression And There is Reality

"We discovered that, in our opinion, much of the coverage of the Gaza war is just factually wrong. If Israel wanted to kill as many civilians as possible, like in a genocidal situation, or was even indifferent, it could just kill hundreds with one bomb."

"You don't see any clip or other forensic evidence in the Gaza war for frontal massacre, putting a line of civilians against the wall and mowing them down, or executing prisoners from close range, you know one by one."

"[The Palestinian-American Medical Association claimed children were shot by snipers] intentionally, virtually every day. We don't rely on any source that our critics cannot check and verify by themselves."

"Allegations of indiscriminate or disproportionate bombing as evidence of genocidal intent are also examined, and found wanting. The IDF, according to the study employed an array of unprecedented precautions to limit collateral civilian damage, including advance warnings."

"[Deaths in] safe zones [were rare, relative to active combat areas]."

"Safe zones, as defined in international law, should actually be the initiative of the defender. Hamas shot hundreds of rockets from the safe zones." 

Professor Danny Orbach, military historian, History and Asian Studies, Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Debunking the Genocide Allegations

Chapter 1 examines accusations of the deliberate starvation of Gaza’s civilian population.

Chapter 2 addresses the lack of sufficient context for understanding Israel’s military actions during the war, particularly the challenges of urban warfare. We focus primarily on Hamas’s “human shields” practice and overall strategy, recognizing that war is shaped by reciprocal measures taken by all parties involved. Thus, the actions of one side to the conflict cannot be assessed without considering those of its adversary.

Chapter 3 provides an in-depth analysis of claims regarding deliberate killings of civilians.

Chapter 4 investigates allegations that Israel systematically violated the principles of distinction and proportionality in its strikes on the Gaza Strip.

Chapter 5 critically reviews Gaza Health Ministry (GMOH) data and manipulations. While recognizing the uncertainty of the available figures, we offer a speculative scenario for how these manipulations skewed the actual gender and age distribution of casualties, and draw conclusions as to plausible combatant-civilian casualty ratios.

Chapter 6 explores the capability of UN agencies, humanitarian organizations, and major media outlets to assess humanitarian crises in closed societies under oppressive regimes such as Hamas-controlled Gaza. It draws a comparison to Iraq under U.S. sanctions between 1991 and 2003, and explores the inability of said organizations to pierce the heavy-handed humanitarian deceptions of the Iraqi regime.

Chapter 7 evaluates the ability of UN agencies and human rights organizations to credibly distinguish between civilians and combatants among war casualties in contexts marked by manipulation and politicization within closed or controlled societies. This chapter includes findings from a comparative analysis of the 2002 Battle of Jenin, the 2006 Lebanon War, and previous conflicts in Gaza.

Chapter 8 analyzes the methodologies used by UN agencies, human rights organizations, and affiliated journalists and researchers that have led to recurring analytical failures, as well as the lack of subsequent insights or corrective action, even when these failures were eventually acknowledged by the same organizations.

The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Jerusalem 

 

 

International affairs has been gripped by the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. A claim that has been embraced by those calling themselves experts in the field of human rights, and by leaders of countries that Israel formerly considered Western democratic allies. Recently, a new study has been published that through thorough research of the accusation and meticulous attention to the reality of proofs available has found the accusations to be entirely false in their hysterical and often triumphant declarations.

 

The Israeli think tank's study runs to 330 pages, entitled "Debunking the Genocide Allegations", where military historians and quantitative analysts systematically address the claims accusing Israel of crimes against humanity. Their conclusions following careful study is that the evidence fails to support the charge that Israel is committing genocide in its offensive against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas which perpetrated a mass atrocity in southern Israel when thousands of its operatives rampaged through farming villages raping and slaughtering Israelis. A massive crime against humanity itself that instigated the conflict in Gaza.

 

Around the time of the study's release, a United Nations group -- the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory -- had issued its own report. Theirs, concluding that genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is being perpetrated by Israel. According to the commission, Israeli authorities and security forces carried out four of the five qualifying acts for genocidal intent outlined in the 1948 Genocide Convention: killing members of a group; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life meant to destroy the group; and imposing measures intended to prevent births.

 

Palestinians leave a food distribution point run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation with bags and boxes, near the Netzarim corridor in the central Gaza Strip, on August 3, 2025. Photo: Eyad BABA / AFP

 

The researchers working alongside Dr. Orbach took "a multi-layered approach" with the use of open-source facts, legal analysis and ethical analysis. Released through the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, the report  reached a conclusion wildly divergent from that of the UN body. The focus on intentionality, central to the genocide allegations, that Israel deliberately took measures to annihilate the population of Gaza through a program designed to starve civilians, massacre non-combatants and bomb indiscriminately, were found to be totally inaccurate; in fact completely manufactured slander.

 

The vast majority of civilians in this war, pointed out Dr. Orbach, were killed for a variety of reasons not represented by malicious intent; being caught in the crossfire, misunderstandings or incorrect assumptions by Israeli soldiers, or having been used as living shields by Hamas. One core plank in the genocide accusation is that Israel deliberately sought to starve the population of Gaza. supported through repeated claims by humanitarian groups. Fundamental methodological and factual errors compounded the issue, found the study authors; the benchmark of 500 aid trucks daily as minimum for Gaza's population survival was based on misinterpreted prewar data when the actual average of food trucks entering Gaza in 2022 was 73 daily.   

"[The United Nations] bears responsibility for the death of many Gazans, by not cooperating with evacuations to safe zones when there was still time."

"Hamas, furthermore, ought to have opened its network of underground tunnels for civilian safety."

"What Hamas did was put Palestinian civilians in danger intentionally, because they knew that the world will blame Israel."

"The humanitarian bias [coming from UN agencies and  human rights organizations who suspect a humanitarian disaster is about to happen and] exaggerate in order to mobilize public opinion." 

"Political biases of the experts suddenly became very important. These manipulations meet a very eager audience. ...Then it gets more and more space in the media."

Professor Danny Orbach  

Troops of the IDF’s Golani Brigade are seen operating in the Morag Corridor area of the Gaza Strip, in a handout photo issued by the military on April 17, 2025. Photo: Israel Defense Forces

 

 During much of the conflict, in fact, Israel facilitated food entry into Gaza at or above prewar levels. No wars predating the conflict in Gaza saw any military undertaking the care of the population whose country they had invaded for defensive/offensive reasons "where one side supplied humanitarian aid in massive amounts" for two years, to enemy-controlled territory. And nor did gruesome predictions that tens of thousands would die of starvation materialize. Medical and mortality data that Hamas's own Gaza health ministry gathered failed to register famine or mass nutrition-related deaths. 

 

Neither surveys on the ground nor reliable nutritional assessments validated claims of widespread starvation based on circular citations and media echo chambers. As to the charge that Israel acted on a policy of systematically killing civilians, the study authors relied on the absence of intent and systematic execution; prerequisites of genocide's legal definition. The researchers stated no credible proof was found that Israeli policy-directed attacks aiming to kill civilians could be found after surveying extensive forensic evidence, testimonies and video documentation from Gaza.

 

61 of some 50,000 war casualties by official Gazan counts only could be plausibly attributed to deliberate IDF actions, linked to unreliable or disputed sourcing. According to the study, the IDF employed an array of unprecedented precautions for the purpose of limiting collateral civilian damage, including advance warnings of strikes. Dr. Orbach described a phenomenon akin to a domino effect, when anti-Israel individuals stationed within world bodies make false claims, then quoted by NGOs, and subsequently appear in the media, finally cited by other publications "So the average viewer thinks there are numerous sources which document the Israeli crimes in Gaza." 

 

 

"So the average viewer thinks there are numerous sources which document the Israeli crimes in Gaza. On a similar idea, a report from the Network Contagion Research Institute and the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab, called "The 4th Estate Sale" How American and European Media became an Uncritical Mouthpiece for  Designated Foreign Terror Organization [made the case that large numbers of media uncritically parroted Hamas talking points]." 

"The Hamas-run health ministry published in the beginning of the war that 70 percent of the war casualties are women and children. Even they retracted this later. But again the retraction was very silent, and the initial news was very loud."

Professor Danny Orbach