Gaza and the Scholars of Genocide

Why leading Holocaust and genocide experts — many of them Jewish or Israeli, many with Holocaust family histories — say Israel’s assault on Gaza is genocide

Introduction

“I will leave it to historians to debate whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza,” wrote Thomas L. Friedman on August 25, 2025, in the New York Times. With this glib deflection, Friedman tried to wash his hands of responsibility — a cowardly dodge, evasive and morally bankrupt. But the historians have already spoken. The experts have not hesitated. Israel’s campaign in Gaza is genocide.

The charge of genocide in Gaza is not just the language of protest or politics. It is the sober judgment of the very scholars who have built their careers studying the Holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia, Armenia — the crimes that defined the twentieth century. What makes their voices even more powerful is that so many of them are Jewish, Israeli, or the children of Holocaust survivors. They carry both the authority of scholarship and the moral weight of memory.

The Scholars Who Say Gaza Is Genocide

• Omer Bartov – Israeli-American historian at Brown University. Former IDF soldier. Son of Holocaust survivors.

• Amos Goldberg – Professor of Holocaust History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

• William Schabas – Canadian professor of international criminal law at Middlesex University. Officer of the Order of Canada. Member of the Royal Irish Academy. Descendant of Holocaust survivors.

• Raz Segal – Israeli historian at Stockton University. Specialist in the Holocaust and comparative genocide.

• Daniel Blatman – Israeli Holocaust historian at the Hebrew University.

• Barry Trachtenberg – Jewish-American Holocaust historian at Wake Forest University.

• Martin Shaw – British sociologist and one of the early theorists of genocide studies.

• Susan Akram – Professor of International Law at Boston University, expert on refugee rights.

• Marianne Hirsch – Jewish scholar of memory studies at Columbia University.

• Melanie Tanielian – Historian of famine and blockade at the University of Michigan.

• Marione Ingram – Jewish Holocaust survivor, author, and activist.

• Agnes Kory – Jewish Holocaust survivor and scholar.

Together they form an extraordinary chorus: Israelis, Jews, survivors, and world-renowned authorities, each declaring that what is happening in Gaza is genocide.

Defining Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide

Ethnic cleansing is a political and historical term, not a formal category in international law. It refers to the forced removal of an ethnic or religious group from a territory, usually through violence, intimidation, or coercion, in order to alter the demographic balance. The term was widely used during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. While ethnic cleansing is not a crime codified in international treaties, acts that constitute ethnic cleansing—such as forced displacement, deportation, or persecution—are crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Genocide, by contrast, is a strictly defined crime under the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It is any act “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” The acts that qualify include:

• Killing members of the group

• Causing serious bodily or mental harm

• Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group (such as famine or blockade)

• Preventing births within the group

• Forcibly transferring children from the group to another group

The crucial distinction is intent. Ethnic cleansing seeks to remove a population. Genocide seeks to destroy it. But the line between the two can blur: as the International Court of Justice has stated, ethnic cleansing can amount to genocide when it is carried out with the intent to eliminate a group rather than simply displace it.

The Case for Genocide

What convinces these scholars that Gaza is genocide is not a single factor but the convergence of evidence: the destruction of homes and hospitals, the deliberate blockade of food and water, the language of extermination voiced by Israeli leaders.

Omer Bartov, who once served in the Israeli army, now warns: “There was actually a systematic attempt to make Gaza uninhabitable, as well as to destroy all institutions that make it possible for a group to sustain itself, not only physically but also culturally.”

Amos Goldberg, writing from Jerusalem, stripped away the hedging: “Yes, it is genocide. This is the intentional destruction of Palestinian society. The goal is not just to defeat Hamas but to break the very possibility of life for Palestinians in Gaza.”

And William Schabas — the man who literally wrote the book Genocide in International Law — concludes: “This is arguably the strongest case of genocide ever brought before the International Court of Justice. We have both patterns of conduct and explicit statements from senior officials that show clear intent.”

When such figures speak, the world must listen.

Liability

Under the Genocide Convention, not only perpetrators but also accomplices are guilty. Schabas has pointed to the United States and Germany: states that supply weapons and shield Israel diplomatically. “To the extent that they are providing material assistance of a significant nature, they can be held responsible as accomplices to genocide.” The law is not ambiguous. The only question is whether it will be enforced.

Jurisdiction

The International Court of Justice is already hearing South Africa’s case against Israel. The International Criminal Court has authority over crimes committed in Palestine. Both institutions are on trial as much as Israel is. Schabas calls Gaza a “litmus test” for their credibility. If the courts fail here, they will confirm what so many already suspect: that international justice is applied only against the weak, never against the powerful.

Israeli Tactics in Gaza

The methods are documented and relentless. Bombing campaigns have killed over 60,000 by mid-2025. Human Rights Watch confirmed Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon in December 2023. B’Tselem declared the famine a deliberate policy. UN investigators have reported torture and sexual abuse of prisoners. Bartov describes the demolition of universities, mosques, and hospitals as a deliberate strategy to make Gaza “uninhabitable.” These are not collateral tragedies. They are, as scholars argue, evidence of genocidal intent.

Genocidal Language by Israeli Leaders

Intent is revealed in words as much as deeds. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered: “No food. No water. No fuel. We are fighting human animals.” Prime Minister Netanyahu invoked Amalek, the biblical enemy marked for extermination: “Remember what Amalek has done to you.” Finance Minister Smotrich called openly for “wiping out” Palestinian villages. Scholars point out that this is the same dehumanizing rhetoric that paved the way to Rwanda’s slaughter in 1994 and Bosnia’s massacres in Srebrenica.

The Betrayal of Holocaust Memory

For decades, Holocaust education has been framed as a call to mourn Jewish suffering and to support Israel as the bulwark against “never again.” But that framing is collapsing. Genocide is not the exclusive domain of Jews. To pretend otherwise is to betray the very universality that made the Genocide Convention possible in 1948.

At the 2024 Academy Awards, Jonathan Glazer — director of The Zone of Interest, a searing Holocaust film — stood before the world and cut through the evasions. Accepting his Oscar, he said: “Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.” Some in the audience booed. Hollywood grandees condemned him. Yet his words pierced through the hypocrisy: memory of the Holocaust has been weaponized, repurposed to sanctify violence against Palestinians.

The real lesson of Holocaust memory is not tribal. It is human. It is the ability to see today’s victims — in Gaza, in Rafah, in Khan Younis — as fully human. To feel their suffering not as propaganda, not as someone else’s tragedy, but as the very suffering that “never again” was meant to prevent.

If we cannot do that, then Holocaust remembrance has been stripped of its meaning and turned into a shield for oppression. Let’s listen to the experts. Silence is complicity.

Conclusion: Gaza Is Genocide

The verdict is in from the experts who know genocide when they see it: Omer Bartov. Amos Goldberg. William Schabas. Raz Segal. Daniel Blatman. Barry Trachtenberg. Martin Shaw. Susan Akram. Marianne Hirsch. Melanie Tanielian. Holocaust survivors like Marione Ingram and Agnes Kory. This is not a marginal opinion. It is a consensus forming among the very scholars entrusted with guarding the memory of the Holocaust.

They say Gaza is genocide. The question now is whether the world will act — or whether “never again” will be exposed as an empty slogan.