Whether or not Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is beside the point, and, anyhow, the word “genocide” has lost its power to enrage us and goad us into action. So let’s not get caught up in arguments about whether or not Israel’s actions in Gaza fit anyone’s definition of genocide. Instead, we should all be able to agree that whether or not Israel is committing the crime of genocide, it is unquestionably committing the crime of murder.Media sources differ as to the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign in response to the deadly attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Estimates range from 30,000 to more than 80,000, and because Israel does not permit journalists into the Gaza Strip, all news sources rely on the Gaza Health Ministry for their information. When the World Food Program of the United Nations reported that the hunger crisis in Gaza has reached “new and astonishing levels of desperation, with a third of the population not eating for multiple days in a row,” “Israel accused Hamas of engineering a narrative of starvation by looting aid trucks and . . . the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations of failing to collect hundreds of truckloads of aid” (New York Times, 24 July). Who is telling the truth?Omer Bartov, an Israeli-American historian of holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, who grew up in Israel and served in the Israeli military, published a guest essay entitled, “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know it When I See It” (New York Times, 15 July), in which he concluded that “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.” The reaction from both Israel and its American supporters was predictable. Bret Stephens, in the New York Times of 22 July, argued that “No, Israel is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza,” because if it were, the death toll would be much higher. And in response to South Africa’s accusation of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the charge “outrageous” and “antisemitic.”Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who coined the term “genocide” in 1944, defined it as “the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group” by means such as “the disintegration of [its] political and social institutions, of [its] culture, language, national feelings, religion, and [its] economic existence.” The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, approved and ratified by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948, defined genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical [sic], racial or religious group.”My Jewish faith condemns murder in the strongest terms. It affirms that every human being is created in the image of God; to murder is to destroy the divine image. It forbids me to stand idly by the blood of another. It demands that even an enemy must be treated decently.In my Vermont community, there are many people who make the effort to oppose injustice and hatred and to stand up for decency. They demonstrate peacefully, write letters to the editor, and support worthy causes with a check or with their voice or with their vote. But I have yet to hear the voices of our various faith communities expressing their commitment to their faith by condemning Israel’s murder of Palestinians.I know that many well-meaning people avoid criticizing actions by the state of Israel because they’ve been bullied into believing that to do so is antisemitic, and they don’t want to offend their Jewish friends and neighbors. But if I condemn some actions of the U.S. government, that doesn’t make me anti-American, and legitimate criticism of the actions of the state of Israel in the name of peace with justice is not antisemitism!Genocide? Perhaps. Murder? Undeniably. —Rabbi Dov Taylor