I write these words from Poland, where 90 percent of Poland’s Jews — 3 million out of 3.3 million — were slaughtered during World War II. That is what genocide looks like. In stark contrast, roughly 70,000 of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents were killed during Israel’s war with Hamas, amounting to approximately 3 percent of the population. And that figure includes enemy combatants. Yet the same word, genocide, used for the systematic, intentional murder of 90 percent of Poland’s Jews — and two-thirds of Europe’s Jews as a whole — is being used to describe Israel’s war with Hamas. How can this be? And where is the moral equivalence?

Recently, more than 6,000 public figures signed an open letter denouncing the Gaza genocide libel, and while the acute suffering of the people of Gaza must not be minimized, these public figures are correct: it is grossly inaccurate and even immoral to label their suffering a “genocide.”

This does not mean that the IDF always acted justly and morally or that several prominent Israeli leaders have not made inexcusable statements. Nor does debunking the genocide lie minimize the very real and acute suffering of the Gazan population. A tragic death is a tragic death. But tragic deaths in war do not equate with a genocide.

Consider first the numbers involved.

The Holocaust killed 6 million of Europe’s 9 million Jews (67 percent); in Poland, 90 percent of Jews were murdered.

The Armenian genocide (1915–1916) killed 664,000–1.2 million of roughly 1.5 million Armenians (44–80 percent).

The Rwandan genocide (1994) killed 500,000–1 million people, overwhelmingly Tutsi, in just 100 days, out of roughly 1 million Tutsi in Rwanda.

Under the Khmer Rouge (1975–1979), nearly 2........

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