Israel-haters desperately want Israel to commit genocide.
Genocide is not determined by the likes of a student council election. You cannot vote it into being. Either there is evidence of systematic extermination, or there is not. And, in Gaza, there is not.
Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.
This is a guest essay by Nachum Kaplan, who writes the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
If you want to see the extent which the social sciences have morphed from academic disciplines into political tribalism, look no further than the International Association of Genocide Scholars passing a motion that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Beyond the pythonesque fact that such an association even exists, matters of law and history are not things that can be decided by a tribal vote, which is what best describes this association’s motion.
Let us be clear: There is no genocide in Gaza and not a shred of credible evidence of one. There are no mass graves, no extermination camps, and no systematic attempt to annihilate a people.
What is happening in Gaza is a war between Hamas and Israel. Hamas is a ruthless jihadist terrorist organization that butchered 1,200 Jews on October 7, 2023, abducted hundreds more, and still holds hostages underground. Israel is fighting to free the remaining hostages and dismantle Hamas’ terror machine so it cannot commit such atrocities again.
It is outright fraudulent to call this “genocide.” Even holding a vote on the question is obscene. It cheapens the meaning of genocide.
This vote reveals everything that is rotten in the modern social sciences, where ideological performance masquerades as scholarship and tribal votes, not truth, determine the narrative.
The more you look into it, the more surreal the organization and the vote becomes.
The first clue that something was amiss lay in the phrase “genocide scholars” in the group’s name. Genocide is not an academic subject. Academics in real subjects such as history, politics, or law can study genocide, but it is not a subject in and of itself.
So, I was not surprised to learn that this self-professed group is not really a scholar’s association. It is open to pretty much anyone, including activists, so the group’s name is itself a lie.
Author Salo Aizenberg did some research about the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and here’s what he found: “I have been asked by other scholars about the necessary credentials to join this esteemed group of ‘genocide scholars’ that generated worldwide headlines because 24 percent of members voted that Gaza was a genocide. There are 2 key criteria: (1) be alive, (2) have a valid credit card.”1
Organization member Dr. Sara E. Brown noted: “We were promised a town hall, which is a common practice for controversial resolutions, but the president of the association reversed that. The association has also refused to disclose who were the authors of the resolution.”2
Another lie was that most members voted that Israel was committing genocide. Conveniently missing from the group’s announcement was that only 129 of the association’s 500 members voted. Not even a majority of members voted, let alone supported the motion.
If this was not bad enough, no debate or discussion was held or permitted before for the vote.
So, this professional association of “genocide scholars” did not reach its conclusion through forensic investigation, courtroom proceedings, or research. They put it to a vote. Those who believed Hamas’ propaganda voted “yes.” Those who did not voted “no.” The “majority” carried the day, and Israel was branded a genocidal state.
Perhaps most disturbing is that these so-called “scholars,” who one would have thought were even more horrified by genocide than most, want Israel to be committing genocide so that they can smear the Jewish state. That is quite a pathology.
Yet, genocide is not like a student council election. You do not vote it into being. Either there is evidence of systematic extermination or there is not. And, in Gaza, there is not. If there were such evidence, there would be no need for a vote.
The vote was performative. It was not about saving lives, but signaling virtue to secure status within the tribe.
When Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer, coined the word “genocide” in 1944, he was describing the deliberate destruction of entire peoples — what the Nazis were doing to the Jews, the Roma, and the Slavs. The concept was later enshrined in international law with strict criteria: intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. That is the legal standard.
Nothing that is happening in Gaza gets anywhere close to this standard or looks anything like it. Israel has never stated, implied, or pursued the eradication of Palestinians. Israel’s leaders repeat, ad nauseam, that the war is against Hamas, not the Palestinian people. Israel has dropped thousands of leaflets and made literally millions of phone calls warning of impending attacks, and opened humanitarian corridors to save civilian lives. A genocidal regime would never do such things.
These so-called “scholars” ignore these facts because for them “genocide” is not a legal term or a specific crime; it is the self-righteous Left’s political weapon of choice with which to bash Israel and beat Jews. This ideological insanity has infected the humanities departments at Western universities and other institutions. These disciplines once sought to uncover truths about human societies. Today, they stage B-grade morality plays.
To belong in these circles, one must adopt the fashionable causes of decolonization, anti-racism, intersectionality and, above all, support the “Palestinian cause,” whatever that is. Israel must always be cast as the villain, and the Palestinians as eternal victims. Any scholar who questions this script risks professional ostracism. Thus, the vote was little more than activist members reciting a catechism.
This is why the social sciences are in crisis. Departments are shrinking, public trust is collapsing, and students are fleeing to disciplines that take reality seriously. Ordinary people can smell the post-modernist fraud. They know that scholarship is supposed to be about discovering what is true, not about declaring by acclamation what feels righteous.
The tragedy is that never has the proper study of social science subjects — especially history, politics, and philosophy — been more necessary. People believe the Palestinian version of events (which are lies from top to tail) because their historical and political knowledge is so poor. They cannot discern facts from propaganda because they cannot think critically, or because they have preconceived biases against Jews, or both. If they were properly schooled in the humanities, they would know that the crime of genocide is not just another tool in the activist’s dictionary, but the crime of crimes.
Think of the Ottoman Turks marching the Armenians into the Syrian desert, or the Holocaust, where Jewish children were gassed, burned, and shot by the millions. Think of the Hutus slaughtering some 800,000 Tutsis with machetes in Rwanda. As a young journalist, I interviewed a Tutsi survivor of this genocide and it remains one of the most affecting interviews I have done.
To suggest Israel’s military campaign against Hamas is anything like this is so insane and detached from reality that the only way someone could believe it is if they chose to do so to suit their political ideology. This is morally depraved because it reduces the weighty term “genocide” to mean anything they do not like, akin to these everyday inconveniences dressed up in apocalyptic language:
My latte came out lukewarm instead of hot? Genocide!
The internet cut out during my Zoom meeting? Genocide!
Netflix removed my favorite show? Genocide!
The waiter forgot the extra guacamole I ordered? Genocide!
My phone battery died at 12 percent? Genocide!
Starbucks spelled my name wrong, again? Genocide!
Apple released a new iPhone that looks like the old one? Genocide!
Someone took “my” parking spot? Genocide!
Worst of all, accusing Israel of genocide is a tactic to deny the reality of October 7th. If Israel is guilty of genocide, then Hamas is innocent by definition. If Israel is the perpetrator, then Hamas cannot be. So, these scholars’ vote is really about rewriting the story of October 7th and laundering Hamas’ atrocities into “resistance.”
Civilization rests on the principle that law and history are grounded in evidence. Trials require proof, historians require sources, and jurists weigh facts. That is how societies distinguish truth and facts from lies and propaganda. The alternative is ideological tribalism, where those who shout the loudest and have the most muscle behind them decide what is “true.”
When accusations of genocide are put to a vote, it is not Israel on trial as much as it is the concept of truth and the idea that there are facts that exist independent of ideology. When that idea dies, so does scholarship, justice, and civilization. Imagine if we voted on the following:
Gravity — Should we decide by majority whether objects fall up or down?
Two plus two — Is it 4, or whatever number people feel it should be?
The shape of the Earth — Round, flat, or hexagonal this election cycle?
Historical events — Did 9/11 happen, or should we take a show of hands?
Biology — Do humans need oxygen, or is that a Western imperialist construct?
Time — Is today Thursday, or are we all entitled to our own calendar?
Science exams — Should every answer be marked correct if the class votes for it?
Sports results — Who really won the game, the team with the most points or the one with more fans in the stands?
Weather — Is it sunny, or shall we democratically declare it cloudy with a chance of rain?
The narrative about genocide in Gaza — and the casualty numbers that purport to show it — come from Hamas and have been proven to be fabrications. Yet, these “scholars” have swallowed them whole like a giant python eating a guinea pig stuffed with lies.
The “scholars” held no debate, so they did not bother to ask kindergarten-level questions, such as how many of the dead in Gaza were Hamas fighters? How many deaths were caused by Hamas’ own misfired rockets? How many were the tragic but inevitable result of urban warfare against an enemy that deliberately hides among civilians? How many did Hamas kill for not supporting it? How many were natural deaths?
Instead, they believe the lies of a sociopathic terror group.
This matters because misuse of the word genocide corrodes everything it touches. It robs real victims of recognition, legitimizes blood libel, and shows Hamas that its vile tactics of taking hostages and using civilians as shields are effective.
If genocide can be voted into existence, then it means nothing. If every war becomes a genocide, then no genocide will ever shock humanity’s conscience again.
Aizenberg on X
Dr. Sara E. Brown on X
What people need to understand is that the charge of genocide has nothing to do with facts or reality and certainly has nothing to do with the welfare of the actual Palestinian people, who exist as props and symbols in the minds of Western liberals. Charging Israel with genocide is an attempt to transform Jews into Nazis and thereby morally delegitimize the Jewish state and the Jewish desire for self-determination. It's not enough that Jews be demonized and attacked, they must be humiliated and stripped of any claims to protected status. Every aspiring victim group has a bad case of Holocaust Envy and feels a deep need to reverse the Jews’ historical role from victims to villains, as a way to remove them from the top of the victim pyramid and transform Jews from a protected class into oppressors who deserve punishment.
As Israeli writer Shany Mor put it: “Hauling the Jews in to plead their case before a special tribunal and face the charge that they are the real Nazis has been the fantasy of every antisemite since the first gavel hit a sound block at Nuremberg.”
The charge of genocide against Jews also works to soothe Western guilt. If the Jews are now the perpetrators instead of the victims, one no longer has to wrestle with the memory of what one’s grandparents did, or failed to do, during the actual Holocaust.
Jew haters are sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust, sick of hearing that Jews are minorities who need and deserve protection, and many Europeans will never forgive Jews for making them murder millions of their families. The Palestinians are simply a pretext, the real goal here is to make Jews into hated outcast second-class citizens again, and stripping them of any moral status is the first step on the road to dehumanization.
What upset me the most is “journalists” unwillingness to do any research at all and just broadcast this disinfo to the world