Why it's wrong to call Israel's war in Gaza a ‘genocide'

Washington Post

2 days ago

Norman J.W. Goda is the Norman and Irma Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida. Jeffrey Herf, the author of 'Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left, and Islamist,' is a university professor of history emeritus at the University of Maryland at College Park.
Recent weeks have seen a flood of new genocide accusations against Israel. The trigger has been Israel's recent blockade of aid to Gaza (now lifted), as well as its latest military actions there. But in fact, the charges of genocide began shortly after the Hamas massacres of Oct. 7, 2023. The accusations can be found everywhere from podcasts to TV interviews to op-eds to social media posts. Accusers include politicians, activists and influencers, and hail from the Middle East, Europe and North America. Many today insist that it is critical — even morally required — that we use the word 'genocide' to describe Israel's war in Gaza. No other term will do. Those not joining the chorus are allegedly complicit in genocide. Those questioning the nature of the accusation are labeled genocide deniers.
Why this insistence? Efforts to delegitimize Israel as colonial and racist began before the state was declared in 1948. Genocide, meanwhile, is the crime of crimes; a state committing genocide is forever illegitimate. Given this history and gravity, we should pose some questions. Israel's war against Hamas in the urban environments of Gaza has led to thousands of civilian casualties. But is genocide really the correct way to describe the war? Do the accusers define genocide accurately in terms of law, or have they stretched the definition of the crime? Is their evidence reliable? Finally, can we say that the genocide accusation, made against Israel and its supporters in this way, is antisemitic?
Genocide is a political as well as a legal term. Columbia anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani once called it 'a label to be stuck on your worst enemy, a perverse version of the Nobel Prize, part of a rhetorical arsenal that helps you vilify your adversaries.' In this context, the internationally accepted legal definition of genocide ensconced in the U.N. Genocide Convention of 1948 has been frustrating for some. Physical destruction of a group based on ethnicity, religion or nationality is the heart of the crime. The definition excludes other actions, such as the movement of civilians from their homes and certain infractions that some call 'cultural genocide.'
There have been efforts to stretch the definition since the 1960s. In 1967, the Russell Tribunal, an unofficial court of intellectuals and activists, found the United States guilty of genocide for its war in Vietnam. Among other acts, the movement of Vietnamese civilians to strategic hamlets was said to have constituted genocide, because it disrupted social and cultural structures. Today's academic theory of settler colonialism redefines genocide further as a structural process that destroys indigenous peoples either through resettlement or assimilation. It is the centerpiece of many genocide accusations, including that by the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese, who thinks that litigating this argument against Israel will bring freedom for indigenous people everywhere. But this is activism, not law.
What is the difference? Few know the name Alice Wairimu Nderitu. From 2020 to 2024, the Kenyan human rights advocate was U.N. special adviser on the prevention of genocide. Kofi Annan, secretary general from 1997 to 2006, created the office, which collects information on rights violations that might lead to genocide. After Israel began its response to the Oct. 7 attack, Nderitu would not say that it was committing genocide. Such a determination, she insisted, was legally and factually complex; it demanded detailed examination by a competent court with proper jurisdiction. Nderitu was pressured and received threats. One called her a 'Zionist rat' who supported the 'rape and murder of little kids by your bestial masters.' Her mandate was not renewed.
Even without stretching the definition, many genocide accusations have problems. The June 1 Sunday Opinion column by Post columnist Shadi Hamid, 'A genocide is happening in Gaza. We should say so.,' was emblematic. No one thinks that the movement of Gaza's civilians away from military operations has not been dire. But Hamid sees purposeful ethnic cleansing, which he then uses to build his argument for genocide. His most important evidence is recently leaked comments by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that discuss prohibiting civilians from returning to the places from which they came after receiving aid from distribution centers, as they would mix with Hamas. But Maariv, the newspaper reporting these rather confusing comments, notes that they contradict statements by Israeli defense officials, which would allow return.
The argument for genocide relies heavily on casualties among noncombatants in Gaza. Hamid cites a January 2025 study in the British medical journal the Lancet, which argues that the Gaza Ministry of Health has underreported civilian mortality figures by more than 40 percent. Those accusing Israel of genocide have long played a confidence game with casualty figures, proceeding initially from those provided by the Hamas-controlled health ministry. The ministry refuses to distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, and it has inflated the numbers of women and children killed. The Lancet article expands these figures further based on an algorithm applied to casualty lists, in order, it says, 'to provide an estimate of deaths not appearing on any list.' It does not take a statistician to imagine problems here.
From the beginning of this terrible conflict, Israeli leaders made it very clear that their war is against Hamas, not the people of Gaza. On Dec. 29, 2023, Israel's legal representative Tal Becker, in his opening statement to the International Court of Justice, offered arguments that those who lob the word genocide ignore. These bear repeating. Hamas, Becker said, was pursuing 'a reprehensible strategy of seeking to maximize civilian harm to both Israelis and Palestinians, even as Israel seeks to minimize it.' He added that, 'if there have been acts that may be characterized as genocidal, then they have been perpetrated against Israel. If there is a concern about the obligations of States under the Genocide Convention, then it is in relation to their responsibilities to act against Hamas's proudly declared agenda of annihilation, which is not a secret, and is not in doubt.'
Those accusing Israel of genocide avoid describing Hamas's exterminatory ideology and the genocide, commenced on Oct. 7 and then interrupted, that followed from it. They also avoid facing the now extensively documented facts regarding the genocidal nature of actions of Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. Further, the genocide accusation made from the earliest days of the war was an effort to force Israel to end, Becker said, 'operations against the ongoing attacks of an organization that pursues an actual genocidal agenda.' Becker further described Hamas's cynical strategy of waging war amid civilians who were denied access to the safety of its massive underground tunnel system, and he observed that 'the appalling suffering of civilians — both Israeli and Palestinian — is first and foremost the result of this despicable [Hamas] strategy; the horrible cost of Hamas not only failing to protect its civilians but actively sacrificing them for its own propaganda and military benefit. And if Hamas abandons this strategy, releases the hostages and lays down its arms, the hostilities and suffering would end.' Those accusing Israel of genocide fail to point to the responsibility of the aggressor, Hamas, for starting and continuing this war.
Given the depth of these distortions, the question must be asked: Are today's accusations antisemitic? The genocide accusation hurled against Israel draws on deep wells of fear and hatred, both conscious and unconscious, that lurk in radical interpretations of both Christianity and Islam. These currents view Jews as uniquely evil and murderous. The Gaza genocide accusation has shifted opprobrium from Jews as a religious/ethnic group to the state of Israel, which it depicts as inherently evil.
And in fact, genocide charges against Israel litter the records of the United Nations throughout Israel's existence, from 1948 to the present. In 1983, Israel was charged with poisoning Palestinian girls in the West Bank as part of a genocidal plan. In 1997, it was accused of infecting Palestinian children with the HIV virus, also said to be part of a genocidal campaign. Mass poisoning and especially the depraved killing of children are among the oldest antisemitic tropes. The latter has been used liberally today by Palestinian and other nongovernmental organizations, which argue that Israeli snipers deliberately target Palestinian children with shots to the head. All such accusations are false.
The genocide accusation also threatens diaspora Jews. During episodes of actual genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s, no one attacked Serbs living in Germany or Hutus living in Belgium. But the lethal implications for Jews are now plain, with the brutal May 21 murders in Washington of two Israeli Embassy staffers, one of whom, Sarah Milgrim, was a U.S. citizen. The alleged killer, Elias Rodriguez, referred to the allegations of Israeli genocide. His last letter proclaimed: 'Those of us against the genocide take satisfaction in arguing that the perpetrators and abettors have forfeited their humanity.' Susan Abulhawa, a noted Palestinian American writer whose books are read on university campuses, was unapologetic. 'Now,' she complained, 'we're supposed to feel bad for two genocide cheerleaders after watching these colonizer baby killers slaughter people by the hundreds every day for two years.' Abulhawa added: 'No genocidal Zionist should be safe anywhere in the world.'
As historians, we conclude with a cautionary note. Today, no one has an accurate figure of how many people have died in this war, how many deaths are those of Hamas fighters, and how many of Gazan civilians. The world press readily repeats casualty figures and predications of starvation made by the Gaza Ministry of Health. It needs to practice more humility and skepticism. There is no reason to view a Hamas-controlled entity as a credible source regarding ongoing events, especially since Hamas has for years used the civilian casualties that its mode of warfare brings about as a central element of its political warfare against Israel.
Historians, journalists and governments should view every assertion made by this proudly antisemitic terrorist organization with great skepticism, and they also should give weight to the assertions of the government of Israel, which, unlike Hamas, must face a political opposition and a free press. This is not to deny that this war has brought enormous suffering to the people of Gaza. But the central cause of that suffering is the war that Hamas began and, as Tal Becker observed 18 months ago, refuses to end.