Gaza genocide denial

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Gaza genocide denial has been ongoing since the beginning of the Gaza genocide and follows similar patterns as other cases of genocide denial. [1] [2] It includes literal denial, rejecting the facts of mass killings and other atrocities committed by Israeli forces; interpretive denial, disputing Israeli responsibility for the massive destruction; and implicatory denial, minimizing the political and moral implications of genocide. [3]

Contents

Tactics

Some people who have condemned the Gaza genocide have faced censorship including professional consequences. [4] [5]

Rhetoric

In a paper analyzing the subject, political scientist Omar Shahabudin McDoom identified ten techniques of denial found in media coverage: [1]

  1. "Framing large-scale violence as both a legal right and a moral duty"—synthesizing claims of self-defense and minimizing Israeli agency in a form of interpretative denial [1]
  2. Deflecting all blame to Hamas for starting the war and allegedly using human shields, a kind of implicatory denial [1]
  3. Whataboutism, claiming that Israel is unfairly singled out for allegations of genocide as part of an orchestrated campaign motivated by antisemitism or anti-Zionism and intended to delegitimize the state of Israel. [1] [6] For example, major newspapers such as the New York Times , the Washington Post , and the Wall Street Journal published editorials denying the genocide and calling the allegations “a moral obscenity,” a “blood libel,” and a “media manufactured genocide”. [1]
  4. Obfuscation, falsely claiming that Israel goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties and has "the best civilian-combatant kill ratio in the world" [1]
  5. Delegitimizing the accuser, including accusations of supporting Hamas and being antisemites. [3] [5] [1]
  6. Demonizing Israel's enemies while emphasizing Israel's alleged superior moral character [1]
  7. Exaggerating the threat posed by Hamas [1]
  8. Redirecting compassion from Palestinians to victims of the 7 October attacks [1]
  9. Trivialization and normalization of violence as inevitably occurring during wartime. [1]
  10. Strategic misdirection, pointing to irrelevant information such as Gaza's long term population growth [1]

At an extreme, deniers have rejected that Israel has committed any war crimes whatsoever. [1]

Martin Shaw writes that Israel's supporters used the ideology of anti-antisemitism as institutionalized in the United States, Germany, and other Western countries to block recognition of the genocide. [2]

A number of legal scholars have argued that Israel used permissive interpretations of international humanitarian law to deny that genocide is occurring and justify its actions, for example killing 100 civilians for one Hamas militant. [7] [8] [2]

Legal scholar Sonia Boulos notes that many "liberal elites" who are not "the usual supporters of Israel" have denied the genocide. These liberals, she argues, tend to acknowledge violations of international law but minimize them by rejecting the term "genocide" to describe them and denying links between the Gaza genocide and the Nakba, in an effort to reduce the impetus for systemic change. She also criticizes responses to the Gaza genocide that center the emotional distress of Israeli observers rather than Palestinians who are experiencing the genocide. [9]

According to Israeli sociologist Ron Dudai, the predominant attitude in Israeli society in regards to the Gaza Strip famine and other atrocities is, "It’s all fake — and they deserve it." [10]

Analysis

Genocide scholar Omar Shahabudin McDoom writes that denial is not "merely after-the-fact justification but a constitutive part of violence itself". [1] An alternative to denial is approval and justification of atrocities, which is widely accepted by Israelis according to polls. [1]

One proposed reason why some people find it difficult to accept the evidence of Israeli atrocities is the idea "that Israel, the state of Holocaust survivors, can never perpetrate genocide". [11] [12] [6]

Tristan Strum describes Gaza genocide denial as a "conspiratorial worldview that is harmful, reactionary, and epistemically closed". [13]

Some scholars have argued that the United States government's response to the Gaza genocide is part of a decades-long pattern where it "denied, downplayed and rationalized atrocities by its allies". [14] [15] Enzo Traverso writes that Germany's memory culture, in which the uniqueness of the Holocaust is taken for granted, leads to denial of Israel's responsibility for the destruction of Gaza. [6]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 McDoom, Omar Shahabudin (2025). "It's Hamas' Fault, You're an Antisemite, and We Had No Choice: Techniques of Genocide Denial in Gaza". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–18. doi:10.1080/14623528.2025.2556582.
  2. 1 2 3 Shaw, Martin (4 March 2025). "Gaza and the Structure of Genocide in Palestine". The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 53 (2): 416–422. doi:10.1080/03086534.2025.2493304.
  3. 1 2 Shaw, Martin (21 July 2025). "The Dam of Gaza Genocide Denial Has Broken". New Lines Magazine. Retrieved 10 October 2025.
  4. ↑ Skaria, Ajay (1 April 2025). "Gaza and the Unsettling Equality of Academic Freedom". Critical Times. 8 (1): 33–84. doi:10.1215/26410478-11626905.
  5. 1 2 Fassin, Didier (2024). "The Rhetoric of Denial: Contribution to an Archive of the Debate about Mass Violence in Gaza". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–7. doi:10.1080/14623528.2024.2308941.
  6. 1 2 3 Traverso, Enzo (3 October 2024). Gaza Faces History. Footnote Press. p. search "Holocaust". ISBN   978-1-80444-179-4.
  7. ↑ Luigi Daniele Nicola Perugini Francesca Albanese. Humanitarian Camouflage: Israel Rewrites the Laws of War to Legitimize Genocide in Gaza (Report). Institute for Palestine Studies.
  8. ↑ Sultany, Nimer (9 May 2024). "A Threshold Crossed: On Genocidal Intent and the Duty to Prevent Genocide in Palestine". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–26. doi: 10.1080/14623528.2024.2351261 .
  9. ↑ Boulos, Sonia (19 September 2025). "The "G Word," Liberal Israeli Elites, and the Prospect of Decolonization". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–21. doi:10.1080/14623528.2025.2556564.
  10. ↑ Brison, Amos (22 August 2025). "How Israelis turned atrocity denial into an art". +972 Magazine. Retrieved 10 October 2025.
  11. ↑ Klein, Shira (8 January 2025). "The Growing Rift between Holocaust Scholars over Israel/Palestine". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–21. doi:10.1080/14623528.2024.2448061.
  12. ↑ "Raz Segal: Genocide Denial in Holocaust Studies". jacobin.com. Retrieved 10 October 2025.
  13. ↑ Sturm, Tristan (30 May 2025). "Conspiracist knowledge geographies and the potentiality of an impossible political alliance". Dialogues in Human Geography. doi:10.1177/20438206251345543.
  14. ↑ Zunes, Stephen (14 February 2025). "By Rejecting Evidence of Genocide in Gaza, the US Is Following a Familiar Pattern". New Lines Magazine. Retrieved 11 October 2025.
  15. ↑ Bachman, Jeffrey S.; Ruiz, Esther Brito (18 September 2025). "From East Timor to Gaza: How the United States Contributes to and Distances Itself from the Atrocities of Others (and How Genocide Studies Lets the United States Get Away with It)". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–15. doi:10.1080/14623528.2025.2556592.
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