War in our time is not only about taking land or gaining decisive victories on the battlefield. Indeed, recent experience in Ukraine and the Persian Gulf shows just how hard that is. But nations and movements at war now employ information or cognitive war to undermine the confidence of targeted populations in their governments, their causes, and reality itself. Cognitive warfare also serves to isolate, stigmatize, and incite hatred against enemies. A notable example is the intense campaign on the Left and the Right to corrupt the meaning of the term genocide, particularly about Israel and, to a lesser degree, Azerbaijan. The United States has been and is targeted in campaigns of vilification by the Soviet Union, Russia, China, and radical Islamists.
The accusation of an Israeli genocide against Palestinian Arabs is an old invention of Soviet and PLO propaganda, mainly to cover up the failures of Palestinian leadership during and after 1948 and the defeats of Moscow’s Arab proxies in genocidally motivated wars against Israel. Nonetheless, the charge persists and is clearly intended to be a charge against all Jews, not just Israel or Israelis. This antisemitic narrative drowns out legitimate criticism of Israel in a chorus originating from Tehran and its proxies.
The tactic of preemptively accusing others of the crimes you have committed, are committing, or intend to commit is an old Soviet tactic, originally used to conceal the enormity of Stalin’s genocides against the Ukrainians, the Crimean Tatars, the Chechens, the Ingush, and others. Today’s antisemites on the left and right have merely freshened it up.
On the Left, Columbia University Prof
On the right, Tucker Carlson also accuses Israel of genocide and of not being a democracy. Additionally, he has served as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin’s justifications of his genocidal war against Ukraine. Thus, it is also no surprise that Carlson has become a hero to white supremacists.
Worse yet, this poisonous concoction of ideas has infected some foreign policy think tanks in Washington, D.C. Eldar Mamedov, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, readily ascribes the charge of genocide to anyone he does not like. Mamedov, who was expelled from his position in the European Parliament for involvement in Qatargate, accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza and of having “its fingerprints” all over the expulsion of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020-23.
Unfortunately for Mamedov, Sachs, and Carlson, both charges are baseless. Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023, genocidal attacks by Hamas that raped, murdered, and kidnapped men, women, and children is harsh, but it is not genocidal, as U.S. military expert John Spencer pointed out. Indeed, the Palestinian population has grown 10-fold since 1948, or why this genocide only began in 2023 after Hamas’ own genocidal attack on Israel. As Bret Stephens wrote in the New York Times, if Israel wished to commit genocide, “why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly more deadly?”
Mamedov’s remarks are equally groundless regarding Karabakh. In 1993, several UN Security Council resolutions spoke to the forced displacement of Azerbaijani civilians from what was regarded as Azeri territory. Nevertheless, about 700,000 refugees fled to Azerbaijan and were replaced by Armenians.
Many Armenian diaspora communities and the Armenian government accused Azerbaijan of ethnic cleansing in 2023 when it won the territory back, while failing to acknowledge that the Armenians had themselves engag
The groundless accusations being leveled by Sachs, Carlson, Mamedov, and others are no accident and do reflect a visceral antisemitism. Mamedov deploys the smear tactic of guilt by association, e.g., his attacks on Jared Kushner’s luxury hotel project in Albania. It is dismaying that an institution purportedly devoted to the critique of foreign policy publishes such vitriol in its ironically named flagship publication, Responsible Statecraft. But antisemitism validates the French proverb, “Les extrêmes se touchent” (the extremes touch each other). In these narratives, we see the same denial of facts and support for the narratives of America’s enemies at the expense of U.S. friends and partners, whether they be Israel, Azerbaijan, or, in Carlson’s case, Ukraine. A founder of the German Socialist movement, August Bebel, called antisemitism the “socialism of fools”. It is also the racism of fools.
These fallacious and poisonous narratives must be exposed to the pitiless glare of the truth. President John Adams, a co-author of the Declaration of Independence, stated that "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." On Independence Day, this is a fitting response to those who would employ lethal narratives to incite hatred and warfare at home and abroad.