Responding to the Genocide Accusation An Interview with O Globo in Brazil
O Globo, a major newspaper in Brazil interviewed me about the genocide accusation. The text was published on Sunday.
Here is the longer English language version done via email.
Jeffrey Herf
September 1, 2025
O Globo Newspaper in Rio de Janerio, Brazil conducted an interview with me. It appears in Portuguese in the print and online edition today. However, as it is behind a paywall, I offer this English language version for my Times of Israel blog. I offer it as well in response to the decision of almost 500 “genocide scholars” to find that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. I dissent. See blow.
O Globo: We interviewed Jewish Israeli Omer Bartov, Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University; Australian Melanie O’Brien, President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars; and British scholar Martin Shaw, author of War and Genocide, What is Genocide, and Genocide in International Relations. They all agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. In your view, why is it not genocide?
Jeffrey Herf (JH): It is not a genocide for the following reasons.
Despite perfectly understandable, and oft-quoted expressions of rage in the immediate aftermath of the attack of October 7, 2023 not a single decision maker—that is Prime Minister Netanyahu or the Chiefs of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces have ever said that it is Israel’s intent to murder the people of Gaza. There is no evidence of genocidal intent.
Israel’s intent from the beginning of its retaliation has repeatedly been publicly declared. Its intent is to win a war to bring about the military defeat of the Hamas terrorist organization, an organization that came to exert sovereign power over Gaza since 2007. A military campaign to defeat a terrorist organization is a particular kind of warfare that is wholly distinct from genocidal campaigns such as that of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Turkey’s attacks on its Christian populations, including the Armenians, and the Tutu mass murder of the Tutsis in Rwanda. In each of those episodes, the intent and the purpose of the violence was to eliminate a particular group of people. That has never been the case in Israel’s war in Gaza.
It is not genocide because Israel, like every other government in the world, including Brazil’s, would have to respond as Israel has because no government in the world can tolerate the existence of a truly genocidal organization on its borders. Any government would need to wage war to crush that organization as part of its right of self-defense and its obligation to protect its own citizens.
The accusation of genocide—first made when Israel was literally in the first weeks of its campaign—completely ignores the agency and responsibility of Hamas for the suffering of the people living in Gaza. It ignores the fact that Hamas, and its Iranian supporter, are themselves waging war to destroy the state of Israel. It ignores that this is, in fact a war in which Israel is at war at the same time with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houties, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. It tends to conflate Hamas with “the Palestinians” or the people of Gaza, as if a terrorist organization, or say a criminal organization in one of Brazil’s cities, is representative of all Brazilians or inhabitants of a city.
In order to defeat Hamas, Israel must fight an enemy that built the largest tunnel system known in military history, certainly in modern military history, a system designed to protect its soldiers while leaving civilians defenseless. As Hamas fights from hospitals, schools, mosques, private apartments, and the tunnel system is built underneath them, it is impossible to defeat Hamas, to win this war, without inflicting civilian casualties. The cynicism and evil of Hamas’ strategy of war-fighting forces Israel to choose either to admit defeat and allow Hamas to survive or to wage war to defeat it with the cost to lives lost by civilians. Every government in the world, including Brazil’s own left-leaning government would have to make the same awful choice, that is, to wage war knowing that doing so would bring about civilian casualties. The fault for the resulting deaths and destruction lies primarily with Hamas. No one anywhere in the world, and certainly not the three authorities you cite, have proposed a way of defeating Hamas that would not entail loss of civilian life because Hamas has made it impossible to be defeated without such civilian casualties. The question for those making the false charge of genocide is this: Do you or do not you not support Israel’s military victory over Hamas, or do you want Hamas to survive this war so it can continue to try to destroy Israel by forces of arms?
The genocide accusation should be understood as a central component of Hamas’ political warfare to win this war. It may be the first organization in human history which intentionally waged war in such a manner to multiply deaths of the people it is claiming to defend, in hopes that publicity of the resulting disaster will generate sympathy for its aims and opprobrium on Israel. In this effort, though it has failed abysmally as a ministate to provide a decent life for Gazans, it has proved successful in placing the blame on Israel.
The facts matter. The world press has been willing to accept the factual assertions of the Hamas Health Ministry, an organ of the terrorist organization. Such figures do not include the percentages of Hamas soldier’s vs civilians. Hamas’ control over the press allows it to send photos around the world that suggest that Israel is intentionally aiming at civilians.
If Israel was intent on a genocide in Gaza it would not have sent warnings to people to move away from areas of combat or places it was intending to attack. It would not be urging civilians to move to “humanitarian zones.” If Israel was committing genocide the number of people killed in Gaza would be far higher than the 60,000 or so listed by Hamas. 800,000 Tutsis were murdered within months. Various Nazi death camps murdered hundreds of thousands in less than year. The mobile killing squads of the Nazi regime, the Einsatzgruppen, murdered about a million Jews with bullets from spring 1941 to spring 1942. Similar speech and huge numbers took place in the Cambodian genocide. Even the 60,000-figure offered by Hamas—and we do not know if it is accurate—indicates that Israel’s efforts to reduce civilian casualties as much as possible while also waging war against Hamas has been very impressive, as tragic, and awful as the toll has been. But then it is far too often left unsaid that none of the people in Gaza would have died, been wounded or traumatized in Gaza if Hamas had not begun this war with acts of genocidal aggression.
O Globo: Why do you draw a parallel between accusations of genocide and antisemitism?
JH: Because they make an absurd accusation which is easily refuted by the facts, but which stirs the deepest conscious and unconscious hatreds about Judaism, the Jews, and Israel in Western culture. These hatreds are there in the old Christian lies about deicide, that the Jews murdered Jesus, and they are there in the conspiracy theories of Nazism and the far right, as well as of the far left. Such theories describe the Jews as enormously powerful, and wholly evil. The accusation that Israel commits genocide reawakens these ancient hatreds of Christianity, Communism, and Nazism, and draw as well on the Islamist extremist interpretation of Islam. The accusations of deicide, child murder, conspiracy to cause wars, and other libels have always been the precursor to attacks on the Jews. Antisemitism has at its core been a conspiracy theory that imputes power and evil to the Jews. The genocide accusation, brought into world—not just regional—politics by the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc in the 1960s and 1970s is the most important form of this much old antisemitic libel. The state of Israel, in defending its right to exist is a nightmare for antisemites. They believe that their lies about the Jews have become reality in the form of the state of Israel. The libel amounts to saying the Israel has no right to defend itself because it should not exist.
O Globo: How does this differ from other recognized cases of genocide, such as Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia?
JH: See above reply.
O Globo: You argue that accusing Israel of genocide overlooks the crimes and genocidal intent of the terrorist group Hamas, which does not recognize Israel’s existence. Would you say the October 7 attacks were genocidal, as opposed to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza? Why?
JH: I have called the attack of October 7 an “interrupted genocide” in an essay Quillette magazine. Here is the link: https://quillette.com/2024/07/18/an-interrupted-genocide-7-october-gaza-israel/ Hamas established special units, Nukhba groups. They were a contemporary form of what the Nazis called the Einsatzgruppen, units designed for one purpose only: to murder a particular group of people, Israelis. I visited one of the Kibbutz that had been attacked on October 7. In that essay I wrote the following:
“As I walked among the ruins of Kfar Aza, it was abundantly clear to me that the intent of the meticulously planned 7 October assault was genocidal—the terrorists sought to kill as many Israelis as possible, sparing only those who were kidnapped to be held hostage. The atrocities committed in Kfar Aza were replicated in twenty other kibbutzim, and at the Nova music festival where hundreds more were slaughtered. The Hamas invasion was not just an act of military aggression, it was what historians of Nazism and World War II call a “war of extermination,” the purpose of which was the liquidation of a population.
The death squads were extremely well-informed about the villages they attacked, and they rapidly overwhelmed Israel’s small and insufficiently equipped security forces. They then went from house to house murdering everyone they encountered. I took the photograph below in what was once the living room of a small family home. The walls are riddled with bullet-holes produced by shots fired from an automatic weapon inside the house. Those victims were not the collateral damage of an attack on a military target, they were the attack’s intended target.”
O Globo: Even acknowledging Hamas’s genocidal intent, couldn’t one argue that Israel, as a state, bears greater responsibility to avoid actions that could be interpreted in that way?
JH: On Israel’s efforts to avoid civilian casualties see answer to first question.
O Globo: Nearly two years later, Hamas’s military capabilities are almost entirely destroyed, as are those of its allies Hezbollah and Iran, whose top leaders have been killed. In this context, do you believe Israel’s military offensive in Gaza is still justified? Why?
JH: Your question invites another. If Hamas’ military capabilities are “amost entirely destroyed”—and you are not in a position to assert that is the case—why doesn’t Hamas surrender, admit defeat, release all of the hostages, end the war, and go into exile. Why not do what Yassir Arafat did in Beirut in 1982, end the war to spare the city and population of Beirut? There are hotel rooms in Qatar and Teheran waiting for Hamas leaders to occupy. Hamas is not yet defeated. The question for any government of Israel is how to ensure that Hamas does not continue to exert political power and influence in Gaza. I do not know the answer to that question, but neither to any of those accusing Israel of genocide. Whether or not to continue the war is a question for the people of Israel to decide. I do not support the policies of its current right-wing government, but the question is whether or not to continue the war. The war itself is not a case of genocide.
O Globo: Throughout the conflict, Israel blocked the entry of food and medicine. According to the WHO, 94% of hospitals have been damaged or destroyed. The newspaper Haaretz reports that 70% of buildings have been destroyed, many through deliberate demolitions. The population in Gaza has been subjected to ongoing forced displacement, with Israeli officials openly expressing their intention for Gazans to leave the enclave for other countries. Aren’t these indications that Israel intends to undermine the Palestinians’ ability to organize socially in the enclave over the long term?
JH: The first part of your question is false. It is not true that “throughout the conflict” (it is a war not just a “conflict”) that Israel has blocked entry of food and medicine. It blocked entry of some food for a few months this spring. That was wrong. But throughout the war Israel and the United Nations have provided food. Yet, as numerous reports in The Times of Israel and elsewhere indicate, Hamas has stolen the food, sold it an exorbitant price, and used it to feed its soldiers in the tunnels. Some Israeli right-wing ministers have spoken of wanting to make the Gazans leave Gaza but that is not government policy. Israel has been mistaken in not articulating a clear vision of a post-Hamas Gaza. The issue of whether there is an “other Gaza,” a Gaza that does not support Hamas, and how that sentiment can assume political power is crucial. But a Gaza willing to live in peace beside Israel can only emerge after Hamas is defeated and with some form of political authority willing to use armed force to prevent its return. Here the experience of Allied Occupation in Germany after Hitler Germany was defeated is worth recalling.
O Globo: If not genocide, is Israel committing other crimes in the enclave? Would war crimes and crimes against humanity be among them?
JH: I hold Hamas responsible for the humanitarian suffering Gaza. It is its leaders, not Israel’s that should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It’s method of waging war amidst civilians is itself a violation of rules of war in international law. Its hostage taking is simply kidnapping raised to the level of state policy. None of this suffering would be happening or continuing to happen if Hamas would surrender as it should have long ago. If world opinion, in Brazil and elsewhere, had focused on the evil ideology of Hamas, and then its war of aggression and genocide, perhaps it would have surrendered long ago. The genocide accusation is a desperate but sadly effective way of waging political warfare against Israel.
O Globo: The United States provides political and military support to Israel. Is its role crucial to the continuation of the conflict?
JH: The continuation of the war—again you used the euphemism “conflict”—is entirely the fault of Hamas. The United States, under Presidents Biden and Trump have fortunately come to Israel’s defense when it is under attack—I repeat—from Iran, the Houties, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Hamas affiliated groups in the West Bank. The United States is crucial to Israel’s survival. Without it, Israel would be terribly isolated. Your question, yet again, avoids the core reason why the war continues. That is because Hamas refuses to surrender and believes its propaganda campaign is succeeding in turning world public opinion against Israel.
O Globo: Israel’s international image has deteriorated. What would need to be done to restore it?
JH: A coalition government in Israel that did not include the far-right ministers but does include the large moderate Zionist majority in Israel would help. But the deterioration of Israel’s image is a fact that has been taking place for many decades in global intellectual life, and at the United Nations. The false accusations that Israel is a form of racism, settler colonialism or apartheid go back to the 1970s and were ignited again in the BDS campaigns, campaigns that appear to have won favor from many academics in Latin America, including in Brazil. So, restoring Israel’s image would require an intellectual revolution in academia, the press, and public life in Brazil and elsewhere, one that would critically examine the historically false assertions about the nature of Zionism and the state of Israel.
Israel has made mistakes but now is the time for intellectuals and journalists to examine their own biases. The reputation of the press around the world regarding Israel has also deteriorated. The issue of how to restore its credibility regarding Israel is one that should be discussed. I hope you and others at O Globo will take the trouble to get in touch with David Horovitz, the editor of the Times of Israel, and to read that paper on a regular basis. That would be a starting point for a long overdue self-examination among journalists who have become comfortable pointing the finger at Israel and failing to hold Hamas to account.”