Both a United Nations commission of inquiry and Amnesty International documented a "pattern of conduct" by Israeli authorities, concluding that genocidal intent is the "only reasonable inference" that could be drawn based on the evidence.[2][3] A United Nations panel also concluded that statements made by Israeli officials indicate genocidal intent.[4][5] Multiple experts in genocide studies, including the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention[6] and Genocide Watch[7][5] and others[8][4] affirm genocidal intent to the actions or statements made by Israel officials. Genocidal intent and incitement have also been attributed to Israeli journalists.[9][4][10] The attribution of genocidal intent to Israel often focuses on the multitude of verbal statements made by Israeli officials that dehumanize Palestinians and which incite, justify, or praise atrocities against them.[11][12][13]
The United Nations commission of inquiry found that Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had engaged in the crime of "direct and public incitement to commit genocide" with their comments. According to the commission, genocidal incitement "is a crime in itself, whether anyone acts on it or not".[15]
Legal discourse
According to a 2025 United Nations commission of inquiry that convened on Israel's actions in Gaza, genocidal intent can be established through “direct evidence, such as statements expressing an intent to destroy," or inferred from "circumstantial evidence, taking into account the totality of the evidence, by inference through the examination of the pattern of conduct".[16]
Overview
On 7 October, after armed incursions and massacres in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to exact a "huge price" by turning Hamas hideouts "into rubble",[17][18] while Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared, "We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly."[19] Professor Omer Bartov interprets these statements as genocidal intent.[20] Scholar Mark Levene noted the increasing rhetoric of genocide and ethnic cleansing under the preceding Netanyahu governments.[21]
The Israeli historian Raz Segal and legal scholar Luigi Daniele also pointed to increasing genocidal rhetoric before October 2023, highlighting a May 2023 Times of Israel article that said that the only way to achieve peace is to "obliterate" Palestine.[9] Segal and Daniele draw parallels between that article's rhetoric and scholarship that points to Russian media outlets' rhetoric in the Russian invasion of Ukraine as genocidal.[22] Segal and Daniele also point to previous comments by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the former Knesset member Ayelet Shaked, and Smotrich, who in February 2023 called for the destruction of Palestinian villages in the West Bank.[9] The genocide scholar Shmuel Lederman detailed how these comments by Smotrich, alongside others denying Palestinian nationhood and calling for their destruction or removal from territory claimed by Israel, were in the consideration and mindset of Hamas's leadership in Gaza before October 2023.[23] News outlets at the time of Smotrich's comments also highlighted their genocidal nature.[24][25] Segal also mentioned how children were targeted, as in the Rohingya genocide case.[1]
In a report presented to the UNHRC in March 2024, Francesca Albanese concluded that Israel was committing genocide.[26][27][28] She wrote that genocidal intent can be inferred from "the totality of conduct targeting the totality of Palestinians, in the totality of the occupied Palestinian territory".[29] Israel rejected the report.[30][27][28] Albanese later accused Israel of "carrying out a systematic campaign of forced displacement, destruction, and genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank".[31][32] Albanese and Amos Goldberg have said an aim towards a Greater Israel is a factor.[33][34]
Professor Maryam Jamshidi cites Israel's stated goal to "destroy Hamas including both the extermination of its political and administrative leadership and the annihilation of its civilian police force and military wing", and its targeting of the "intellectual, cultural, and religious leadership of Gaza". She writes that genocidal intent can be proven "through evidence that the protected group's civilian leadership, as well as its military and law enforcement, have been targeted for elimination" when this renders the rest of the group more vulnerable to illegal abuses such as forced migration. Targeting civilian organisations controlled by Hamas is illegal under international law.[35]
Professor John B. Quigley argued that the living conditions the war has inflicted on Gaza could be used as proof of genocidal intent in the absence of direct evidence, as they are so destructive that Israel should have known they would result in the extermination of Palestinians in Gaza.[37] Melanie O'Brien said that, in addition to statements by Israeli leaders, "patterns of conduct" such as large-scale loss of life, mass bombings, and aid blockade show intent.[1] Iva Vukusic pointed to the "systematic deprivation of basic needs".[1]
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention states that Israel's deliberate destruction of cemeteries in Gaza is a crime indicative of genocidal intent "because of its erasure of a people’s ancestors and therefore of their historical presence,"[6] adding that "intentional murder and forced displacement of all Palestinians from their ancestral homes...has been going on since Israel’s founding, but sped up significantly first after Netanyahu assumed power in 2022 and again after October 7, 2023."[38]
Genocide Watch, states that genocidal intent may be established either through "statements or orders" by state officials, or through a "systematic pattern" of acts listed in the Genocide Convention, and — contrary to common misconception — the Convention requires only an intent to destroy "part of a people."[7][5] Genocide Watch further reports a database of "over 500" statements by Israeli officials indicating incitement and intent in Gaza;[39] however, Genocide Watch founder Gregory Stanton states that ICJ precedent suggests that genocide must be the "only intent" to warrant a conviction which could allow Israel to argue additional aims such as "defeating Hamas," thereby complicating proof of exclusive genocidal intent.[40]
Examples
Israeli prime minister and cabinet ministers
"Davidster" (Star of David) by Dick Stins, a.k.a. "the Amalek monument", is a Holocaust memorial in The Hague. The text at the side (in Dutch and Hebrew) is from Deuteronomy 25:17, 19 – "Remember what Amalek has done to you ... do not forget."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's repeated invocation of Amalek and the phrase "remember what Amalek did to you"[43] during the war has been considered evidence of genocidal intent by many critics,[44] including South Africa.[45][46][47] "Remember what Amalek did to you"[a] is used at Holocaust memorials, including Yad Vashem.[41] Amalek was "the foe that God ordered the ancient Israelites to genocide",[48] and scholars have called the verse an instance of "divinely mandated genocide".[49][47][20] In February 2025, Norman J. W. Goda argued that there was undue attention paid to this phrase to conclude genocidal intent.[50]Genocide Watch states that "That the President of Israel invoked this divine mandate [of Amalek] for genocide is evidence of his genocidal intent to destroy in part the Palestinian people of Gaza. The historical parallel is precise: Palestinians in Gaza live in nearly the same area as the ancient Amalekites."[5]
According to scholars Mark Levene and Abdelwahab El-Affendi, since 7 October 2023, official and semi-official sources have engaged in rhetoric suggestive of genocidal intent.[51][52] The Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard said that the 7 October attacks, the Gaza war hostage crisis, and Hamas's war crimes "generated rage that transformed what has been the rhetoric of marginalised groups into a flood of statements now made by politicians, journalists and celebrities,... provid[ing] a tailwind" for others to find such speech acceptable. He added:
We have become accustomed to genocidal rhetoric that comes from Hamas. The Hamas covenant has obvious severe antisemitic articles, and also some that could be interpreted as expressing desire to eliminate the Jews in Israel.... In the past, it was seen inside Israel as something that was beyond the borders of legitimacy to talk that way about Palestinians.... But October 7th broke that red line.[53]
On 9 October 2023, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said:
I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.[54][55]
The statement was characterised as dehumanisation.[20][56] According to Kenneth Roth, while some excuse this remark as referring only to Hamas, the context makes clear that "human animals" refers to everyone in Gaza.[57] On 10 October, Gallant said: "Gaza won't return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything."[58][59][41]
In May 2025, Netanyahu said in closed-door testimony to members of the Knesset that Israel was "destroying more and more houses [in Gaza, and Palestinians accordingly] have nowhere to return", and that "the only obvious result will be Gazans choosing to emigrate outside of the Strip".[60] The International Commission of Jurists characterised these statements as support for forced displacement,[61] and former UK Supreme Court justice Jonathan Sumption said that they would be likely to substantiate a case of genocidal intent.[b][62]
In July 2025, Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the IDF to relocate all Gazans to a "humanitarian zone" in the destroyed city of Rafah, in preparation for an unspecified "emigration plan".[63][64] Legal experts condemned this as a violation of international law, including crimes against humanity,[63] and an open letter by Israeli legal scholars said that the plan "could amount to the crime of genocide".[65]
Israeli Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter called for the war to be "Gaza's Nakba".[66] Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu called for dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza.[66][67] Minister of Communications Shlomo Karhi advocated for the forced removal of civilians and for Israel to settle the region, a position that other ministers endorsed.[68]Dov Waxman said that some of the rhetoric right-wing ministers use can be seen as "potentially genocidal" in its dehumanisation of Palestinian civilians. He added that these statements can have only limited impact on Israeli policy, as they were made by ministers "not in the war cabinet", but are still concerning.[66][69]
I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did when they murdered their families, raped them and kidnapped their citizens! Neither a dove nor an olive leaf, only a sword—to cut off Sinwar's head![70]
Israeli energy (later defense) minister Israel Katz said: "All the civilian population in Gaza is ordered to leave immediately. We will win. They will not receive a drop of water or a single battery until they leave the world."[71][72]
On 29 April 2024 Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, "There are no half measures ... Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – total annihilation. 'Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.'"[73] The Israeli newspaper Haaretz described his comments as a call to genocide.[74] In August, Smotrich said that "it might be justified and moral" to "starve 2 million people", lamenting that the world would not allow it.[75][76] The Knesset member Ofer Cassif claims the plan for genocide dates back to Smotrich's Subjugation Plan in 2017, which he called the "prime exhibit" of Israel's genocidal intent.[77] On 6 May 2025 Smotrich said that Gaza would be "entirely destroyed" and that Palestinians would "leave in great numbers to third countries".[78][79]
Israeli president and members of Israeli parliament
An aerial view of the Flour Massacre captured by an Israeli drone. Aid trucks and Palestinian pedestrians (some dead) are visible.
President Isaac Herzog blamed the "entire nation" of Palestine for the 7 October attack.[81] He added: "It is not true, this rhetoric about civilians being not aware, not involved."[8] Herzog later claimed that his remarks had been taken out of context, saying that he was attempting to highlight "the involvement of many residents" and that he accepted that there are innocent Palestinians in Gaza.[82]
Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Nissim Vaturi wrote that the government was allowing too much aid to enter Gaza and that the IDF should "burn Gaza now".[83] He said that Israel's goal was "erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth."[84] When asked to clarify his statements by Kol BaRama, Vaturi reiterated that Gaza and its inhabitants must be destroyed, saying: "I don't think there are any innocent people there now... If there is an innocent person there, we will know about them. Whoever stays there should be eliminated, period."[85] In 2025, Vaturi called Palestinians "scoundrels" and "subhumans" and called for the adult men in Gaza to be killed.[86][87]
Yitzhak Kroizer, who represents the extreme-right Otzma Yehudit party in the Knesset, said that the "Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death."[88]Tally Gotliv of the Likud party called for the use of nuclear weapons against Gaza.[88]Moshe Saada, also of the Likud party, approvingly quoted an acquaintance who told him that everyone in Gaza should be killed.[89]Ariel Kallner of the Likud party wrote that there is "one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of [1948]. Nakba in Gaza and Nakba to anyone who dares to join".[90]
In January 2025, eight members of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee signed a letter to Defense Minister Israel Katz proposing that Katz order the destruction of all of Gaza's food and power supplies and "kill anyone without a white flag".[91][92] The Palestinian official Rawhi Fattouh said of the letter, "The Knesset has become a den for bloodthirsty extremists...now they are astonished that Palestinians in Gaza are still alive".[93]
The Knesset members Amit Halevi and Limor Son Har-Melech disagreed with a doctor who argued that suffering children in Gaza should receive "painkillers or minimal medical treatment". Halevi said, "When fighting a group like this, the distinctions that exist in a normal world don't exist." Halevi and Son Har-Melech both also claimed that reports of starvation in Gaza were Hamas lies.[94] Halevi had previously said: "We want to occupy the territory to cleanse it of the enemy; otherwise, it will kill your children and kidnap your grandchildren again."[95][96]
Israeli army officers
Ghassan Alian, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, said: "There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell."[53]Giora Eiland wrote, "Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist" and "Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieving the goal."[20] The Israeli scholar Omer Bartov noted that no Israeli politician nor anyone in the IDF denounced this statement.[20]
Of Israel's bombing of Gaza, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari said, "while balancing accuracy with the scope of damage, right now we're focused on what causes maximum damage".[97] Legal scholars interpreted this as intention to destroy Gaza.[8]
The legal scholar Nimer Sultany highlights statements by Israeli army commanders leading ground operations in northern Gaza that call for depopulation and a "scorched earth" approach.[98] Soldiers have echoed such sentiments on social media.[98] Former Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya'alon said, "The path we are currently being led down involves conquering, annexing, and ethnic cleansing."[99]
In comments published in August 2025, Aharon Haliva, the former head of Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate, said that 50 Palestinians should be killed for every Israeli killed on 7 October, "regardless of whether they are children or women", and called the killing of 50,000 Palestinians in Gaza "necessary and required so that future generations will say to them: you humiliated us and killed us, but that was the price".[100][101][102]
Other Israeli officials
On 11 June 2024, the official Israeli Twitter account posted that "Gazan civilians participated in the horrific events of October 7", later citing a statement that "there are no innocent civilians there".[103] Far-right politician Moshe Feiglin said: "There is one and only solution, which is to completely destroy Gaza before invading it."[104][105] In May 2025, Feiglin said, "every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy".[106][107]
Israeli media
In 2023, a group of over 55 scholars in genocide studies, statement that there was widespread incitement to genocide in Israeli media since October 7, including calls to turn Gaza “into a slaughterhouse”, "violate all norms on the way to victory" and "let there be a million bodies" of dead Palestinians.[4][108] According to B'Tselem, incitement and dehumanisation play a role in the genocide.[109] Dehumanisation of Palestinians has been a long-term issue in Israel,[110] with the Israeli media contributing to it.[10]
Israeli public opinion
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention states that "the vast majority of Israelis agree with...[Israel's] plan and clearly will support anything to see it realized – from apartheid to extermination."[111] A January 2024 Tel Aviv University poll of Israeli Jews found that 51% believed the IDF was using an appropriate amount of force in Gaza and 43% believed it was not using enough.[112][113] In a February 2024 Israel Democracy Institute survey of Israelis, 68% of Jewish respondents supported preventing all international aid from entering Gaza.[114][115] A March 2025 poll of Israeli Jews found that 82% supported the forced expulsion of Gaza residents;[116][115] 47% responded affirmatively to the question: "When conquering an enemy city, should the IDF act like the Israelites led by Joshua when they conquered Jericho, that is, kill all its inhabitants?"[116][117] A June 2025 poll by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that 64% of Israelis largely agreed with the statement "there are no innocent people in Gaza".[118][10] A July 2025 Israel Democracy Institute poll found that 79% of Israeli Jews were "not so troubled" or "not troubled at all" by reports of famine and suffering in Gaza.[119]
↑ Sumption wrote: "Statements like these from the prime minister and senior ministers in his cabinet have to be considered together with the sheer scale of the human casualties and the indiscriminate physical destruction inflicted on their orders. The most plausible explanation of current Israeli policy is that its object is to induce Palestinians as an ethnic group to leave the Gaza Strip for other countries by bombing, shooting and starving them if they remain. A court would be likely to regard that as genocide."
↑ Amnesty International report 2024, p.35: "The evidence presented in the report clearly shows that the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, as such, was Israel's intent—either in addition to or as a means to achieve its military aims. There is only one reasonable inference that can be drawn from the evidence presented: genocidal intent has been part and parcel of Israel's conduct in Gaza since 7 October 2023, including its military campaign."
↑ UN Commission of Inquiry report 2025, p.64: "On the basis of fully conclusive evidence, the Commission finds that statements made by Israeli authorities are direct evidence of genocidal intent. Additionally, on the basis of circumstantial evidence, the Commission finds that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference that could be drawn, based on the pattern of conduct of the Israeli authorities. Thus, the Commission concludes that the Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces have the genocidal intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."
↑ UN Commission of Inquiry report 2025, p.54: "The Commission finds that many statements made by Israeli officials contain dehumanising sentiments that encourage hatred toward Palestinians and violence against Palestinians and are consistent with the pattern of conduct...that point to an intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a group. The Commission considers that these statements by Israeli officials are reasonably interpreted as statements expressing an intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza and they have been acted on as such by Israeli security forces in the Gaza Strip. They are direct evidence of dolus specialis."
↑ Amnesty International report 2024, pp.26–35: "Bearing in mind that...the othering and dehumanization of the protected group and that the use of derogatory language...can provide evidence of genocidal intent, Amnesty International examined Israeli officials’ use of dehumanizing, racist and derogatory rhetoric against Palestinians.... It reviewed 102 statements made by Israeli government officials, high-ranking military officers and members of the Knesset made between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 which dehumanized Palestinians, or called for, or justified, genocidal acts or other crimes under international law against them."
↑ Kulkarni, Pavan (18 December 2023). "It is clear that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, UN-Panel concludes: Peoples Dispatch". Peoples Dispatch. Archived from the original on 13 August 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025. Army's spokesperson Daniel Hagari, who bragged of dropping 'thousands of tons of munitions'...had no qualms admitting that 'we're focused on what causes maximum damage', rather than 'accuracy'. Referring to Palestinians as 'human animals', Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who prided in having 'released all the restraints' on the military, had said in the early days of the war that 'we will eliminate everything' in Gaza...Legitimizing the mass killing of civilians in Gaza, Israeli President Isaac Herzog had declared that 'an entire nation out there is responsible' for the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, arguing that the 'rhetoric' about innocent civilians is 'absolutely not true.'... 'This practice of casting an entire population as enemies, as legitimate military targets, is a common genocidal mechanism,' Raz Segal, a prominent Jewish Israeli scholar of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said in his remarks at the panel discussion.
↑ "Israel's Twelve Tactics of Denial". Genocide Watch. 25 May 2025. Retrieved 23 September 2025. Claiming that Israeli leaders have made no statements advocating destruction of the Palestinian population of Gaza is simply false. There are over 500 recorded instances in a database of statements by Israeli politicians, officers, and other public figures that show incitement and intent to commit genocide in Gaza.
↑ Goda 2025: Netanyahu quoted...'Remember what Amelek did to you.' The line immediately became 'proof' not only of Israel's genocidal intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza but also of Israel's genocidal nature...There is a lot to unpack here, but the following is worth noting. Netanyahu's October 28 speech mentions several figures in ancient Jewish history, including Judah Maccabee and Bar Kochba, both of whom rebelled against imperial rule. Netanyahu also reminded his listeners that the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza worked 'to avoid harming non-combatants,' and he urged Gaza's civilians to go to more safe areas. Whatever one thinks of Netanyahu, those who cite his speech as incitement to genocide do not mention these passages.
↑ "Public Statement: Scholars Warn" 2023 ("Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared on 9 October that 'we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly'. He subsequently announced that Israel was moving to 'a full-scale response' and that he had 'removed every restriction' on Israeli force.").
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