Why has Israel signed up to peace deal if genocide in Gaza is its aim?

Last week's attack on the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester was gin-clear proof - if any were needed - that protest against Israel has become a Trojan horse for antisemitism in the UK. The atrocity, in which two Jewish people were killed, took place in a beautiful house of worship intimately connected with my family for decades. It was my childhood synagogue, the place I was married, and where my late grandfather - who came to this country to escape persecution against Jews at the turn of the century - was a choir master. The perpetrator of the Heaton Park atrocity wasn't fielding political protest against the state of Israel. (North Manchester is thousands of miles away from Gaza.) Rather his actions were symptomatic of the antisemitism that has been roaring across the country since October 7.

But what has fuelled Jew-hatred in the UK and beyond is the reckless and fallacious tactic of accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. It has been propagated by the most vitriolic elements of the pro-Palestinian movement, offering in the process ideological cover to those who bring fear, intimidation and destruction to the streets of Britain under the guise of activism. We hear it not only from knuckle-headed marchers chanting "Free Palestine" (but never "Free Palestine from Hamas") on the front line. And in the trickle down to the self-promoting celebrities and entry-level podcasters whose performative outrage is often underpinned by manifest ignorance of the Middle East but whose reach is massive.

By parroting the baseless "genocide" narrative, these voices have not only distorted reality - they have armed antisemitism. So as the prospect of a fragile peace deal emerges, which, if conditions are met, could finally allow Gazans to flourish free from the Hamas death cult that has long held them in a chokehold, will the false cries of "genocide" finally cease?

Will the very fact that Israel is pursuing such a deal be proof enough that the Jewish state has no wish to erase Gazans from the land? That it only seeks only the return of its hostages - around twenty believed to still be alive - and the right to live in peace within safe, secure borders? It must be so.

That said, the use of genocide as a way to define Israel's defensive military action in Gaza has always been the bitterest of ironies as well as fallacies.

The atrocities of October 7th were, after all, carried out by a genocidal terrorist organisation that orchestrated the largest single-day killing of Jews since the Holocaust.

Indeed, the modern Jewish state was founded in gas chambers of that genocide, after six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.

If Israel's response were truly genocidal, Gaza would have been flattened on October 8th. Instead, Israel repeatedly warned Gazans to evacuate before major operations. And though thwarted on the ground, sent truckloads of aid - something Britain never did to the bombed enemy cities of the Reich during its war against the Nazis.

Of course innocent people die in war. Each one a terrible and needless tragedy. But the "casualty figures" so freely cited by critics of Israel come from a Gazan Ministry of Health - more irony - controlled by Hamas terrorists.

Statistics which include the thousands of Hamas fighters killed as well as the vast number of Gazans tragically killed when rockets aimed at Israel misfire and land within the strip.

The cry of "genocide" should fall silent - muzzled, at least, by proof that Israel is willing to engage with Trump's proposed deal.

If it doesn't, it will reveal where the true appetite for hatred lies: in those whose actions led to the spilling of Jewish blood in our own dear country.