What is Happening In Gaza Is Not Genocide
The word genocide carries an unbearable weight. It is the most damning accusation that can be leveled at a people or a nation, because it describes a systematic attempt to erase an entire group from the face of the earth. The Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and the destruction of Native American peoples are paradigmatic examples. When the word is misused, we dilute its meaning and dishonor the memory of true victims.
I say this not as an academic, but as someone who has wrestled with genocide’s history. I studied the Holocaust as a graduate student of ethnographic film and worked for five years at the Shoah Foundation, where I engaged daily with survivor testimony. Later, as a co-producer on a PBS documentary, I helped tell the story of the Armenian Genocide, where Ottoman leaders organized deportations and extermination. And in Southern California, I worked as an archaeological excavator confronting the legacy of the Tubatulabal people – one of many Native American nations erased by colonial violence.
These experiences taught me that genocide, while varying in form, has a definitional core: it is the systematic effort to eradicate a people. Nazi Germany mobilized its entire state to murder Jews, Roma, and others in an industrialized campaign of extermination. The Armenian Genocide was similarly coordinated, carried out through forced marches, mass killings, and starvation. The destruction of Native American nations took different forms, but it too involved deliberate policies of removal, assimilation, and massacres designed to eliminate Indigenous peoples.
By contrast, what is happening in Gaza, however brutal, does not meet this definition. To call it genocide is historically inaccurate.
What we are witnessing is a war – one initiated by Hamas, whose charter and rhetoric declare the elimination of Israel as their goal. On October 7, Hamas massacred civilians, murdered families, and abducted children and the elderly. These atrocities were deliberate strategy, consistent with its long-documented ideology. Israel’s military response, however devastating, is aimed not at destroying Palestinians as a people but at defeating Hamas.
That distinction matters. Genocide requires intent: the purposeful destruction of a people for who they are. Israel does not seek the destruction of Palestinians. Nearly two million Arab citizens of Israel live with full legal rights, voting in elections, serving in parliament and on the Supreme Court, and working across all professions. Their lives are not free from discrimination, but their citizenship shows that Israel has no program to eradicate Palestinians.
At the same time, Israel’s conduct in the West Bank must be acknowledged. Settler violence against Palestinians has escalated, often unchecked. Families are attacked, farmland is seized, and too often the state protects perpetrators rather than victims. Settlement expansion and legal maneuvers steadily squeeze Palestinians from their land. This is not genocide, but it is corrosive to Israel’s democracy, unjust to Palestinians, and politically disastrous. If Israel insists it does not target Palestinians as a people, it must demonstrate that commitment as firmly in the West Bank as within its recognized borders.
This does not excuse Hamas’s responsibility for the current war. But it underscores that Israel, too, must be held accountable. Civilian deaths in Gaza are horrifying, and displacement is tragic. These may constitute war crimes, and they must be investigated. But war crimes, as serious as they are, are not genocide.
Calling everything genocide robs the word of meaning. It also obscures where genocide is actually happening today. The Rohingya of Myanmar have been driven from their homes in campaigns the United Nations has described as genocidal. In Ethiopia’s Tigray region, investigators have documented mass killings, sexual violence, and starvation tactics aimed at destroying communities. In Sudan, non-Arab groups in Darfur, including the Masalit, have been targeted for massacres by militias with genocidal intent. These are the kinds of situations where the word applies.
Meanwhile, Hamas itself openly advocates genocide. Its founding documents call for Israel’s destruction, and its fighters proudly broadcast their murders and kidnappings. If the word genocide belongs anywhere in this conflict, it describes Hamas’s aims, not Israel’s.
To preserve the integrity of the term genocide is not to minimize Palestinian suffering. It is to insist on historical and moral accuracy. Words matter, and this one matters most of all. The Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and the destruction of Native Americans represent humanity’s darkest impulses. We honor their victims not by bending history for politics, but by safeguarding truth.
The tragedy in Gaza is real and devastating. But it is not genocide. To say otherwise dishonors the past and clouds our understanding of the present.
