"Accusation in a Mirror": The Propaganda Trick That Brands Israel "Genocidal" Was Born in Rwanda in 1992

On the law, the case is dry. Article II of the Genocide Convention lists five categories of acts, only one of which involves killing, and all of which require the "intent to destroy" a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. An army that issues more than 105 evacuation orders, opens exit corridors and drops leaflets before striking is not trying to destroy a population: it is trying to move it out of the line of fire. In 2007, the International Court of Justice specified that a "substantial part" of the group must be targeted, to the point of threatening its survival. Gaza had roughly 2.2 million inhabitants when the war began; even taking the highest estimate, 60,000 civilian deaths, that comes to 2.7%. It is tragic. It is not genocide. As for Hamas, a political party with an armed wing, it is not even a protected group: the Convention deliberately excluded political groups from its definition.

Above all, the mirror reveals who profits from the lie. Hamas counts almost every death as civilian, including natural deaths and the people it executes itself; its fighters fall in civilian clothes; its "journalists" sometimes draw a Hamas paycheck or pose with weapons. And the more civilians die, the more the accusation sticks, the more sympathy pours in. The human shield is not a Hamas blunder: it is its business model. The word "genocide" was designed as a shield for victims; the mirror turns it into a weapon for perpetrators, aimed at the very people who paid the highest price for that word to exist.

The human shield is not a Hamas blunder: it is its business model.

That leaves the question that matters: how to fight back. Ukraine chose the judicial offensive, taking the matter to the ICJ to obtain a declaration that no genocide took place in the Donbas. Israel, for two years, has defended itself point by point, figure against figure. Except that refuting an accusation in a mirror on the accuser's ground already means accepting his frame: you end up debating the death toll instead of the maneuver. The useful response is to name the technique. Every time "genocide" is thrown out on a TV set or in a lecture hall, answer: accusation in a mirror, Butare, 1992. The anonymous author of the memorandum understood it before anyone else: whoever imposes the word has won before the first argument. It is time to take the word back.