Our moral baseline
OZJF is a pro-Israel organization. We affirm that Israel has the right to exist, that Jewish self-determination is legitimate, and that the Hamas-led massacre of October 7, 2023 — in which roughly 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were murdered and more than 240 taken hostage, as documented in the Congressional Research Service report on Israel and Hamas (R47828) — triggered a lawful right of self-defense. We also believe Palestinian civilians are human beings whose dignity and lives matter, and that a credible pro-Israel stance must say so plainly. An advocacy organization that cannot acknowledge real mistakes by the government it supports is not defending Israel; it is defending a narrative. We would rather defend the country.
Those commitments are not in tension. Israel can be in the right about the war and still make grave mistakes inside it. A serious ally names both.
Why we reject the genocide framing
The word “genocide” has a specific legal meaning. Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) requires acts committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” That specific-intent element — dolus specialis — is what distinguishes genocide from other grave wrongs, including unlawful killing, disproportionate force, or war crimes. The International Court of Justice’s 2007 Bosnia v. Serbia judgment described the standard as “fully conclusive” evidence of intent to destroy a group as such.
Israel’s conduct in Gaza is, on the public record, inconsistent with that standard. Israel evacuates populations before strikes, negotiates humanitarian pauses, permits the entry of aid (even when insufficient), and treats Palestinian patients in Israeli hospitals. Whatever one concludes about proportionality, strike discipline, or cabinet rhetoric — all of which we discuss below — the totality of conduct does not meet the specific-intent threshold defined in the Genocide Convention. OZJF therefore rejects the sweeping genocide framing promoted in parts of the UN system and in activist discourse. That rejection is not a defense of every Israeli action. It is an insistence on legal precision.
Documented and credibly alleged failures
Rejecting the maximalist frame does not let the Netanyahu government off the hook. Several failures are either documented by Israel’s own institutions or credibly alleged by the United States and allied governments.
On April 1, 2024, an IDF strike killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in a deconflicted convoy in Gaza. The IDF’s own investigation, released April 5, 2024, concluded that the strike resulted from a serious violation of IDF procedures, that officers mistakenly identified an armed man with the convoy as a Hamas operative, and that two officers were dismissed while others received formal reprimands. WCK founder José Andrés publicly disputed elements of the account, and the broader pattern of deconfliction breakdowns drew sharp U.S. criticism. The State Department press briefing of October 7, 2024 and prior briefings repeatedly described aid-worker deaths and convoy strikes as unacceptable and preventable.
Humanitarian access has been a persistent, documented problem. The February 2024 National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20) framework, which conditions certain U.S. security assistance on credible assurances about international humanitarian law and the facilitation of U.S.-supported humanitarian assistance, generated a May 2024 administration report describing Israeli assurances as credible but also acknowledging that aid flow had been insufficient and that specific incidents raised serious concerns. The Associated Press reported on May 10, 2024 that Secretary Blinken had criticized Israel’s war conduct and the absence of a credible post-war “day-after” plan for Gaza. That is the voice of Israel’s closest ally, not of its detractors, and OZJF takes it seriously.
Rhetoric from coalition ministers has been genuinely corrosive. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have made public statements endorsing the idea of resettling Gaza or encouraging the emigration of Palestinians. The AP has reported on these remarks in detail. OZJF does not endorse or excuse this rhetoric. It is both morally wrong and strategically self-defeating: it hands Israel’s adversaries a propaganda gift, alienates allies, and misrepresents the views of the Israeli public and the stated policy of the IDF. The G7 Foreign Ministers’ April 2024 statement reiterated unified opposition to the forced displacement of Palestinians. That is the correct line.
In the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinian civilians has escalated since October 7. The United States imposed sanctions on violent settlers beginning in February 2024 under Executive Order 14115, as covered by the AP. Israel’s Military Advocate General’s Corps maintains a public posture of investigating alleged IDF misconduct in Gaza, documented on the MAG Corps page on addressing alleged misconduct (February 24, 2024). Those investigations are important, but their credibility depends on timeliness, transparency, and follow-through.
What accountability should look like
Accountability is not a slogan. It has operational content. It means the IDF continues to publish investigation findings with specifics, as it did in the WCK case. It means the MAG Corps moves cases to charging decisions on a reasonable timeline and publishes data about dispositions. It means the Knesset exercises real oversight of wartime conduct, including strike authorization, humanitarian logistics, and civilian-harm mitigation. It means Israeli civil society — including the press, reservist networks, and human-rights monitors — can scrutinize decisions without being treated as disloyal. It means ministers who call for population transfer are disciplined by their coalition partners or, where warranted, removed from office.
For the United States, accountability means using the tools Congress and the executive have already built: continued conditionality under NSM-20, targeted sanctions against specific violent actors in the West Bank, and honest congressional reporting consistent with the CRS record. It also means rejecting the genocide framing in UN fora while insisting, firmly and publicly, that Israel meet the standards the United States and Israel itself profess.
OZJF’s position is that honest criticism strengthens Israel. Covering up failures weakens it. A country that investigates its own errors, publishes the findings, and corrects course is a country worth standing with — and the best argument against those who would delegitimize Israel altogether is to ensure Israel behaves like the democratic state its founders envisioned.