I grew up learning about the Holocaust. The number “Six Million” is an indelible part of my consciousness. Here are a few other numbers:
1. Number of Jews Before the Holocaust (1939)
- Estimated global Jewish population in 1939:
≈ 16.6 million - World population in 1939:
≈ 2.3 billion - Jews as a percentage of the world population in 1939:
≈ 0.72%
2. Number of Jews Murdered in the Holocaust
- Estimated Jews murdered by the Nazis:
≈ 6 million - Percentage of global Jewish population killed:
≈ 36% (Some estimates place it higher, around 40%) - Percentage of European Jews killed:
Over 60% of Europe’s pre-war Jewish population was exterminated.
3. Number of Jews in the World Today (2024–2025)
- Estimated global Jewish population today:
≈ 15.7 million (including those with partial Jewish ancestry) - World population today:
≈ 8.1 billion - Jews as a percentage of the world population today:
≈ 0.19%
Note: The global Jewish population still has not returned to its pre-Holocaust numbers, even after more than 80 years.
It should also be remembered that the term ‘genocide’ was coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin during World War II, in 1944, specifically in response to the Holocaust. So I was mightily confused when South Africa filed a case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023, alleging that Israel was breaching the Genocide Convention in its actions in Gaza.
Had so many Gazans been killed that the term invented to describe the systematic murder of six million Jews was applicable?
Let’s check the numbers. In 1948, the Arab population of the Gaza Strip was approximately 80,000 to 100,000 people. When Israel captured Gaza in 1967, UNRWA reported an Arab population of 356,000. In 2005, just before Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, the Arab (Palestinian) population of the Gaza Strip was approximately 1.4 million people according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
Before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA reported the population of Gaza as 2.3 million. In July 2023, the UN “adjusted” this estimate, reducing it to 2.1 million for “humanitarian planning purposes”.
Reports by Palestinian officials claim the population of Gaza has fallen by 160,000 since the war began. According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, over 45,000 people, including 17,500 children, have been killed in the war, and 11,000 Palestinians are missing and presumed dead. It is important to note that the figures provided by Palestinian sources do not differentiate between combatants and civilians. So any claim of genocide includes Hamas terrorists
Even by Hamas’ estimates, less than 3% of the Gazan population has been killed in this “genocide”. And the numbers provided by Hamas are notoriously unreliable, unsubstantiated, frequently revised, and defy all logic.
In comparison, 70–75% of the Tutsi population was murdered in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and the Ottoman Empire murdered 70-75% of the total Armenian population during World War I.
While at least 100,000 have fled Gaza since the war began, this number cannot be used as a basis for any accusations of genocide.
Or can it? There are so many people and organizations routinely claiming that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. They can’t all be wrong. So I did what so many people today seem to be doing: I stopped using my brain and asked ChatGPT, “Is Israel committing genocide in Gaza?”
The artificial intelligence spat out a disclaimer before answering: “The question of whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is currently the subject of ongoing legal proceedings and intense international debate.”
This made me wonder how so many people are so sure, able to accuse Israel of genocide unequivocally and without hesitation. At the same time, artificial intelligence could not do so.
“The ICJ did not conclude that genocide had occurred—only that the claims warranted further examination—and it did not impose an immediate cessation of military operations,” ChatGPT admitted, adding that the ICJ acknowledged “the risk of genocide.”
“The International Criminal Court (ICC) has not formally accused Israel of genocide. However, it has taken significant legal steps related to alleged humanitarian crimes in Gaza—though these do not include allegations of genocide,” ChatGPT noted. “UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese reported ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe that Israel is committing genocide.”
This confused me even further. Despite the suffering of the people in Gaza, there were not nearly enough deaths to warrant accusations of genocide. ChatGPT explained that these accusations were based on the definition of genocide as per the Genocide Convention adopted by the UN in the wake of the Holocaust. The Convention defines genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group” which include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.
It soon became clear that the accusations against Israel were based on one word: intent. While Israel has not killed enough Palestinians to warrant accusations of genocide, our detractors have concluded that we have the intent to commit genocide. And the intent to commit genocide is genocide.
This conclusion has been drawn despite Israeli officials repeatedly stating they do not intend to commit genocide. Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel has “no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population” and that Israel is “fighting Hamas terrorists, not the Palestinian population.”
It should be noted that while Israel has declared war on Hamas, it has not declared war on any of the many Palestinian terrorist groups in Judea and Samaria or the 2.7 million Palestinians who live there. Ironically, while Israel declared war on Hamas in Gaza in October 2023, that declaration did not include Hamas in Judea and Samaria.
So, Israel’s intent to commit genocide is oddly specific, targeting ONLY Palestinians who are members of Hamas, and ONLY Palestinians who are members of Hamas in Gaza.
It should be noted that Hamas is a political group and not protected under the Genocide Convention. But the UN has not classified Hamas as a terrorist organization. While the UN has condemned Hamas by name for the October 7 attacks, the U.N. General Assembly has failed to pass any resolution condemning Hamas for this attack.
However, some human rights groups have come to a different conclusion. Human Rights Watch concluded that “multiple statements by senior Israeli officials show that the forced displacement in Gaza is intentional and is Israeli state policy.” They have added to this President Trump’s plan to allow Gazans to flee the region as part of the “forced displacement” that constitutes genocide.
And according to ChatGPT, genocide, even the intent to genocide, is far more evil than murder, even mass murder that has actually been carried out, since genocide threatens an entire people. So Israel’s implied genocide carried out in military action is far more evil than Hamas’ actions on October 7th. Hamas has never been accused of genocide or the intent to commit genocide, despite its intentions to murder every Jew in the world as explicitly stated in its charter and illustrated by its actions since its inception.
It should be noted that Hamas has never been accused of genocide or the intent to commit genocide at the ICC, ICJ, or by any “humanitarian” group.
So why do they lie about genocide? If they can accuse Israel of something that has been the personal domain of the antisemites, then their consciences are clean of six million murders of Jews.
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