Palestinians in Gaza are suffering. That doesn’t mean it’s genocide

Last week Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, expressed his concern that Israel ‘may have breached international law’ in its three-month bombardment of Gaza. Two days later, at the International Court of Justice, South Africa’s lawyers presented their case accusing Israel of genocide. 

The number of civilian casualties is indeed horrifically high. According to the ministry of health in Gaza on 9 January, more than 23,000 Palestinians had been reported killed since the start of the conflict. However, since the ministry is run by Hamas, that figure can’t be taken at face value. Indeed, it’s a practical certainty that it contains Hamas combatants – according to one reckoning, as many as 8,500. Still, when all the relevant qualifications have been made, the suffering of civilians in Gaza remains appalling in kind and massive in scale. 

But is that sufficient to make it immoral or illegal? Most people in the West – or at least its English-speaking parts – think that the war to defeat genocidal Nazism in 1939-45 was morally justified.