Laurence Gardner (“Genocide canard is a smokescreen for antisemitism,” Aug. 16) objects to Troy Jackson’s reference to Israel’s extensive bombing and killing of the residents of Gaza as “genocide,” claiming that Jackson is antisemitic. But Gardner’s logic is inconsistent. He writes: “Jackson has every right to be an anti-Zionist … every right to protest Israeli policies.” This is precisely what Jackson was doing, and he has good company.
The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded, last September, that “Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.” I submit that their findings are a reaction to Israeli policies, and are not evidence of antisemitism.
Gardner asks for evidence that genocide is or was the official policy of the Israeli government. According to the New York Times on July 24, 2025, Amichay Eliyahu, head of Israel’s Heritage Ministry, said Israel had no duty to alleviate hunger in the territory and was seeking to expel its population. It quoted Eliyahu as saying the government was “rushing toward Gaza being wiped out.” He spoke as Israel blocked all food deliveries to Gaza for months while starvation was rising. The Times was reporting on government policy, not antisemitism, no different than Troy Jackson’s comments.
Bob Howe
Brunswick