There is a way of proving - I mean logically, bulletproof proving - that Israel was not committing genocide in Gaza. And as I came up with that, I realized that the same method can also be used to either debunk or support most similar accusations of systemic, large scale crimes.
I've written before about the falsifiability audit I've developed for my Derechology philosophy framework. Briefly, it says that if a load-bearing assumption of an argument is false, then the entire argument is false. The assumption can be explicit or, more often, implicit. Identifying those hidden assumptions is not always easy, but to test if it is load bearing is not too hard: if an assumption is taken away, does the entire argument fall apart? If so, it is load bearing.
Recently, I turned this audit toward the "genocide" libel against Israel - and discovered something more powerful than I expected: a simple three-part test that doesn't just debunk the genocide accusation, but provides a universal method for distinguishing real systemic crimes from activist fabrications.
I was thinking about the load-bearing assumptions behind the genocide libel. So have others. The major one they (and I) have concentrated on was that genocide requires intent, and the proofs of intent shown by Amnesty, the UN and South Africa's ICJ filing are all out of context, falsely framed and/or do not represent Israeli policy. But they then go down other legal issues, like using an ICJ minority opinion as legal jurisprudence. It is a lot of smoke and mirrors all meant to arrive at their pre-determined conclusion. But a causal observer cannot weigh the quality of the arguments, and figures out that "the truth must be in between" - which still damns Israel.
But I then realized that there was a deeply implicit load-bearing assumption, a set of prerequisites that are absolutely indispensable for Israel to be committing that crime.
For Israel to be committing genocide in Gaza, at least one of the following three things must be true. There is no fourth option.
1. Israel's military protocols themselves are illegal
The IDF's Rules of Engagement, its legal review system (the MAG Corps), its procedures for target approval, civilian warnings, proportionality assessments - these protocols themselves violate international humanitarian law. They are designed to enable or require genocidal actions.
2. Israel secretly suspended its legal protocols for this war
Despite having documented procedures that comply with international law, Israel issued hidden directives suspending or bypassing these protections specifically for the Gaza conflict. There exists a covert policy - memos, orders, command decisions - that tells the IDF to ignore its own legal framework. Essentially, the IDF has two sets of ethical books, one it shows the world and one that it actually uses against Palestinians.
3. Israel's protocols are routinely violated and those violations are systematically tolerated
Even though proper procedures exist on paper, soldiers and commanders regularly and blatantly ignore them in practice, and military leadership knowingly tolerates these violations. There is a pattern of strikes contradicting legal approvals, ignored warnings from legal officers, and no disciplinary action despite known abuses.
That's it. Those are the only three possibilities. There is no fourth branch. No loophole. No 'but what about...' that escapes this framework. I've consulted multiple AI systems and legal frameworks, and no one can identify any other logical possibility.
For the IDF to commit genocide as an army, one of these must be true. I'm not saying there couldn't be individual war crimes, or excessive force, or inadequate controls to stop tragic mistakes, but for the specific charge of genocide, if these are all false, then the charge is false.
Nothing else matters. No matter how much evidence the NGOs bring to show the number of deaths, the scale of destruction, the suffering of civilians, supposedly inflammatory statements by individual officials, the displacement of populations, limits to aid, food shortages or other humanitarian crises - none of them could possibly add up to genocide. There must be another explanation that fits the facts better.
Because for genocide to occur, the system itself must be designed for elimination of a people.
Did Amnesty (or the UN or South Africa) prove, or even hint, at any of those three statements being true in their lengthy reports?
Branch 1 (Illegal protocols): No. The IDF's Rules of Engagement are documented and publicly available. They require distinction between civilians and combatants, proportionality assessments, legal review of targets, warnings where feasible. These procedures align with international humanitarian law.
Branch 2 (Secret suspension): No. Amnesty provides zero evidence of any directive, memo, or order suspending legal protections. To claim this without evidence borders on conspiracy theory - you're asserting that a massive covert operation exists but somehow left no documentary trace and every member of the IDF is in on the scam - religious, secular, Druze. Yet there is not one whistle blower.
Branch 3 (Systematic tolerance): No. While individual incidents are under investigation and some officers have been dismissed, there is no evidence of command-level tolerance for violations. The existence of investigations and disciplinary actions directly contradicts the claim of systemic impunity. There have been violations, but not a system-wide breakdown of order in the IDF. The whistle-blowers who occasionally surface in Haaretz are the exceptions to prove the rule - they might discuss what happened in their unit but no one says that mass murder was acceptable to the army.
Amnesty proved none of the three. Yet they concluded genocide anyway.
As Sherlock Holmes might say, when one eliminates the impossible, whatever is remaining, no matter how improbable to Israel-haters, must be true. There must be an alternative explanation for the damage and death. And Israel has provided one: they are fighting an enemy that deliberately operates from civilian areas, using human shields, storing weapons in homes and mosques, launching attacks from schools and hospitals. In fact, Israel's explanation fits the facts better. It is entirely consistent with:
- High civilian casualties in dense urban combat
- Multiple displacements as the battlefield shifts
- Warnings before airstrikes
- Evacuations of civilians before heavy military action (ironically, Amnesty frames this life-saving decision as evidence of genocide)
- Investigations of alleged violations
- The IDF admitting mistakes when they occur
- Stated military objectives focused on Hamas
- Allowing in tens of thousands of tons of aid and coordinating with the aid agencies (besides UNRWA)
Without proving one of the three systemic conditions, the most logical explanation is the one Israel provides, not the one Amnesty asserts. And Amnesty's explanations of the facts that don't fit what a genocidal state would do veers into conspiracy theory territory. They position their analysis as fact-based but the counter-evidence that Amnesty explains away shows that it is unfalsifiable.
Instead, Amnesty wrote a report filled with 280 pages of evidence about outcomes - deaths, destruction, suffering - presented as if the structural prerequisites don't need to be established. They never identify which of the three branches they're claiming, never provide the necessary structural proof, and apparently hope readers will assume "all this death must mean one of them is true."
That's not how logic works. That's not how law works. And it's certainly not how ethical accusation works.
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What I've stumbled upon here isn't just a defense of Israel - it's a universal diagnostic for separating real systemic evil from activist-driven lies.
The same three-branch test applies to any accusation of systemic human rights violations by a nation, military, or large organization. Let’s call this The Accuser’s Trilemma: A three-branch test for any claim of systemic evil. Either the system (1) mandates harm, (2) covertly suspends legality, or (3) tolerates violations. If not, the accusation is structurally false.
Let me show you how:
The Holodomor (Soviet Ukraine, 1932-33): PASSES
- Branch 1 proven: Explicit orders existed to confiscate grain from Ukrainian regions, designed to cause mass starvation of a national group. The protocol itself was eliminationist.
Apartheid South Africa: PASSES
- Branch 1 proven: Laws explicitly mandated racial classification and segregation. The legal framework itself institutionalized racial hierarchy.
Catholic Church child abuse (1980s-2000s): PASSES
- Branch 3 proven: Internal documents show bishops knowingly relocated known abusers rather than reporting them. Pattern of tolerance across multiple dioceses.
Armenian massacre (1915-1917): ALMOST CERTAINLY PASSES
- Branch 1 - Some indications, a lot of documents destroyed, but not proven
- Branch 2 - Strong circumstantial evidence; diplomats and survivors described systematic killings; but full documentation missing.
- Branch 3 - Strongest case: Massive deportations into known death zones (e.g., Syrian desert); evidence of indifference or complicity
Israeli apartheid within the Green Line: FAILS
- No branches proven or indicated. Israeli law (with slight exceptions like the Law of Return) does not distinguish between Arab and Jewish citizens and there is no indication of systemic violation of written laws. Israel does have an independent judicial branch, after all.
This test does not prove there are no individual violations, or discrimination doesn't exist, or Israel is perfect. But it does show that the accusations against Israel as a government, or as an army, simply cannot be true. Systemic accusations - claims that the structure itself is evil - require systemic proof. You must show that the protocol mandates harm, or was secretly bypassed, or is systematically unenforced.
The test is simple. The logic is airtight. And the implications are devastating for those who traffic in false accusations of systemic evil.