Intent and incitement in the Gaza genocide

In assessments of the Gaza genocide, experts state that statements by Israeli political and military leaders—coupled with eliminationist media rhetoric, and Israel's conduct in Gaza—indicate genocidal intent and incitement against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. Genocidal intent is also evidenced by the scale and systematic nature of actions that exceed any legitimate military objective — including the extensive targeting of children, widespread sexual violence, the destruction of cultural heritage, and the imposition of life-destroying conditions — together with the persistence of these practices despite full awareness of their catastrophic effects.

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. A United Nations panel also concluded that statements made by Israeli officials indicate genocidal intent.

Multiple genocide studies experts — including the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, Genocide Watch and others — draw attention to the multitude of verbal statements made by Israeli officials that dehumanize Palestinians and which incite, justify, or praise atrocities against them. 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. Incitement to genocide is a stand-alone crime that is prosecutable even if genocide does not occur. Genocidal intent and incitement have also been attributed to Israeli journalists and United States congressmen.

Legal standard

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".

Background

Since its foundation in 1948 and the Nakba, Israel has been accused of carrying out genocide against Palestinians during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Israel's treatment has been characterised as "slow-motion genocide", as well as a corollary or expression of settler colonialism and indigenous land theft.

After 7 October 2023

Approximate situation on October 7–8

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", while minister of defense Yoav Gallant declared, "We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly." Professor Omer Bartov interprets these statements as genocidal intent. Scholar Mark Levene noted the increasing rhetoric of genocide and ethnic cleansing under the preceding Netanyahu governments.

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. 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. Segal and Daniele also point to previous comments by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the former Knesset member Ayelet Shaked, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who in February 2023 called for the destruction of Palestinian villages in the West Bank. The genocide scholar Shmuel Lederman detailed how these comments by Smotrich, alongside others denying Palestinian statehood and calling for their destruction or removal from territory claimed by Israel, influenced Hamas' decisions before October 2023. News outlets at the time of Smotrich's comments also highlighted their genocidal nature.

In a report presented to the UNHRC in March 2024, the legal scholar Francesca Albanese concluded that Israel was committing genocide. 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". Israel rejected the report. 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".

In June 2024, historian Yoav Di-Capua said a "genocidal mindset" was pervasive among settler communities and politicians in Israel, often mirroring Hamas' own genocidal ideology. He charted the history of this ideology among Israel's "ultra-orthodox Zionist nationalists", or Hardal, from the 1970s up to the Gaza war, and its influence on the politics of Netanyahu's government, particularly Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. According to Di-Capua, this genocidal ideology included Jewish supremacy and a desire for maximalist territorial expansion across the biblical Land of Israel. Di-Capua described Netanyahu as a "political captive" of Hardal, saying he had "echoed" their rhetoric of "eradication". He said Smotrich and Ben-Gvir seek the adoption of this ideology as national policy and are using the Gaza War to implement their plan.

Statements by Israeli officials

Israeli prime minister and cabinet ministers

Genocide Watch reports a database of "over 500" statements by Israeli officials indicating incitement and intent in Gaza. Zoé Samudzi, a sociologist and genocide studies scholar, stated in September 2025 that most experts now believed "annihilatory intent has rarely been more explicit than the repeated comments made by Israeli leadership in the progression of the state's aggression from the days after 7 October 2023".

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. 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.

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.

The statement was characterised as dehumanisation. 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. On 10 October, Gallant said: "Gaza won't return to what it was before. There will be no Hamas. We will eliminate everything."

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". The International Commission of Jurists characterised these statements as support for forced displacement, and former UK Supreme Court justice Jonathan Sumption said that they would be likely to substantiate a case of genocidal intent.

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". Legal experts condemned this as a violation of international law, including crimes against humanity, and an open letter by Israeli legal scholars said that the plan "could amount to the crime of genocide".

Israeli minister of agriculture Avi Dichter called for the war to be "Gaza's Nakba". Following the October 7 attacks, then Minister of Intelligence Gila Gamliel recommended a plan which proposed the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt. Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu called for dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza. 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. 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. Minister of Education Yoav Kisch said "Those are animals, they have no right to exist. I am not debating the way it will happen, but they need to be exterminated." He further said "until we see hundreds of thousands fleeing Gaza, we, the IDF has not achieved its mission."

In February 2024, May Golan, the minister for social equality and minister for women's empowerment, made a speech in the Knesset in which she said:

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!

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."

In August 2024, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that "it might be justified and moral" to "starve 2 million people", lamenting that the world would not allow it. 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. On 6 May 2025 Smotrich said that Gaza would be "entirely destroyed" and that Palestinians would "leave in great numbers to third countries". National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the Otzma Yehudit Party, echoed Smotrich in calling for Israel to block all humanitarian aid into Gaza until Israeli hostages were released, and called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, referring to such an expulsion as "voluntary migration". Both Smotrich and Ben-Gvir were sanctioned by the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand for inciting violence against Palestinians, while the government of Slovenia banned them from the country.

In August 2025, Eli Cohen, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure and former minister of foreign affairs, called for Gaza City to be turned into a wasteland, saying "Gaza City itself should be exactly like Rafah, which we turned into a city of ruins."

In September 2025, Zoé Samudzi said that most experts believed "annihilatory intent has rarely been more explicit than the repeated comments made by Israeli leadership in the progression of the state's aggression from the days after 7 October 2023".

Amalek

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's repeated invocation of Amalek and the phrase "remember what Amalek did to you" during the war has been considered evidence of genocidal intent by many critics, including South Africa. Finance Minister Smotrich also said, "There are no half measures ... Rafah, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat – total annihilation. 'Thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.'" The Israeli newspaper Haaretz described his comments as a call to genocide. "Remember what Amalek did to you" is used at Holocaust memorials, including Yad Vashem. Amalek was "the foe that God ordered the ancient Israelites to genocide", and scholars have called the verse an instance of "divinely mandated genocide". In February 2025, Norman J. W. Goda argued that there was undue attention paid to this phrase to conclude genocidal intent. 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." In response to this accusation, the Israel Democracy Institute issued an opinion stating that the references to Amalek in the context of the war were misunderstood. According to the opinion, the commandment to annihilate Amalek has effectively been erased from Jewish law; moreover, the indictment misquoted Netanyahu - he did not refer to the commandment to annihilate Amalek, but rather to the commandment to remember what Amalek did.

Israeli president and members of Israeli parliament

President Isaac Herzog blamed the "entire nation" of Palestine for the 7 October attack. He added: "It is not true, this rhetoric about civilians being not aware, not involved." 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.

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". He said that Israel's goal was "erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth." 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." In 2025, Vaturi called Palestinians "scoundrels" and "subhumans" and called for the adult men in Gaza to be killed.

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." Tally Gotliv of the Likud party called for the use of nuclear weapons against Gaza. Gotliv later praised the value of revenge in relation to the Gaza war, saying "'May your village burn!' Yes yes as far as I'm concerned it is a great chant to wish upon Gaza to be erased and go up in flames." She further called to "Wipe out the memory of Amalek!" Likud Knesset member Boaz Bismuth said in relation to Gaza: "It is forbidden to take mercy on the cruel, there's no place for any humanitarian gestures. The memory of Amalek must be erased." Moshe Saada, also of the Likud party, approvingly quoted an acquaintance who told him that everyone in Gaza should be killed. 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". Galit Distel-Atbaryan of Likud wrote "Erase Gaza from the face of the earth. Let the Gazan monsters rush to the southern border and flee into Egypt, or die. And let them die badly. Gaza should be wiped off the map, and fire and brimstone on the heads of the Nazis in Judea and Samaria. Jewish wrath to shake the earth around the world. We need a cruel, vengeful IDF here. Anything less is immoral." In 2024, Keti Shitrit of Likud said "If you ask me personally, not as a member of the Knesset, I'd flatten Gaza. I have no sentimental feelings about it, because there's no separating the murderers of women and children from the citizens of Gaza." Zvika Fogel of Otzma Yehudit called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, saying that not a single Palestinian should remain in the Gaza Strip at the war's conclusion. In May 2025, Zvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionist party appeared to celebrate public indifference to Palestinian civilian casualties, saying "Last night, almost 100 Gazans were killed. And the question you asked me just now had nothing to do with Gaza. Do you know why? Because it doesn't interest anyone. Everyone has gotten used to [the fact] that [we can] kill 100 Gazans in one night during a war and nobody cares."

After Hamas released the bodies of the Bibas family, Ohad Tal of the Religious Zionist Party compared Gaza to the biblical city of Sodom, which was destroyed by God for its' wickedness. Tal said that "No one there in Gaza protested, no one in this Sodom condemned, no one tried to save them. A collective of murder, and there is no righteous person in Sodom." Avihai Boaron of Likud compared Hamas to Amalek, saying "Only a neo-Nazi-Shiite ideology of systematic murder of Jews, based on a brutal and sadistic culture, can give rise to such animalistic barbarity. If they could, they would murder us all and rape all our daughters. This is the very nature of Amalek. His purpose. His whole essence, to hunt down the Jews and kill and destroy them." Boaron had previously, in 2011, published an editorial that called for Amalekites to be put in extermination camps.

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". 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".

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. 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." Halevi had additionally called newborn Palestinian babies in Gaza "terrorists." In May 2025, Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionist Party said that the children of Gaza were his enemies and denied that children in Gaza were starving.

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." 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." The Israeli scholar Omer Bartov noted that no Israeli politician nor anyone in the IDF denounced this statement.

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". Legal scholars interpreted this as intention to destroy Gaza.

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. Soldiers have echoed such sentiments on social media. Former Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya'alon said, "The path we are currently being led down involves conquering, annexing, and ethnic cleansing."

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".

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". Far-right politician Moshe Feiglin said: "There is one and only solution, which is to completely destroy Gaza before invading it." In May 2025, Feiglin said, "every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy".

Israeli conduct exceeding military objectives

Genocidal intent is also evidenced by the scale and systematic nature of actions that exceed any legitimate military objective — including the extensive targeting of children, widespread sexual violence, the destruction of cultural heritage, and the imposition of life-destroying conditions — together with the persistence of these practices despite full awareness of their catastrophic effects.

Genocide studies scholar, Shmuel Lederman suggests that the determination of genocidal intent include "the foreseeable consequences of a given policy" which considers the "structural nature of genocidal dynamics", rather than attempting to determine the "obscure mental states" of those engaged in genocide. Professor John B. Quigley argues 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. President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, 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. Professor Maryam Jamshidi contends that Israel's long-standing actions toward Palestinians — including the Gaza blockade, civilian infrastructure destruction, high civilian casualties, mass displacement under "safe zones", IDF operations against targets, extensive evidence of atrocities, and UN reports indicating genocide—make it more likely that the ICJ will rule in South Africa's favor. She also argues that genocidal intent can be demonstrated when evidence shows that eliminating a protected group's civilian, intellectual, cultural, religious, military, and law enforcement leadership is intended to leave the rest of the group more vulnerable to unlawful abuses like forced migration. In September 2025, David Simon, director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, said there had been a surge in use of the word "genocide" in relation to Gaza, and that the "man-made famine" in Gaza had made it easier for people to read genocidal intent from Israel's actions. Jeffrey S. Bachman and Esther Brito Ruiz also highlight the use of starvation on the population of Gaza as definitive evidence of Israel perpetrating a genocide.

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," 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."

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." 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.

Israeli media

In 2023, a group of over 55 scholars in genocide studies stated 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. According to B'Tselem, incitement and dehumanisation play a role in the genocide. Dehumanisation of Palestinians has been a long-term issue in Israel, with the Israeli media contributing to it. Ayala Panievsky, a researcher at Molad, compared Israel's Channel 14 to Radio Rwanda and believed they should be tried for incitement to genocide.

Potential motive

Many see the Gaza genocide as a consequence of Zionism and a continuation of the over 75 years of violence since the Nakba, in which Palestinians were killed and dispossessed to establish the State of Israel in Palestine.

Alongside but separate to intent is potential motive. The Israeli government has said that the military actions it has undertaken are in response to the October 7 attacks and sought to destroy Hamas and overthrow its governance of the Gaza Strip, while denying that their military operations constitute genocide. Multiple commentators argue that part of the motive is retaliation for the October 7 attacks. Nimer Sultany argues that anti-Palestinianism is in part the motive, while historian Mark Levene points to Zionism. Multiple genocide scholars argue that settler colonialism is an important motive. Raz Segal and B'Tselem also highlight the increasing idea of Jewish supremacy in Israeli politics, while reports by Albanese and Amos Goldberg highlight the project of Greater Israel.

Statements by American officials

U.S. congressmen and senators

In the Florida legislature, Democratic representative Angie Nixon, supporting a ceasefire resolution, highlighted the high death toll of Palestinians questioning how many had to die before a ceasefire was called for, Republican representative Michelle Salzman replied instantly "All of them." Salzman's remark, perceived as a call for genocide, led to calls for censure or resignation from Nixon and the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called for her to be censured or to resign. CAIR-Florida Executive Director Imam Abdullah Jaber said in a statement: "This chilling call for genocide by an American lawmaker is the direct result of decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by advocates of Israeli apartheid and their eager enablers in government and the media."

Republican US congressman Max Miller, on Fox News, stated that Palestine is "about to get eviscerated ... to turn that into a parking lot." He said there should be "no rules of engagement" during Israel's bombardment of Gaza. Miller also questioned the accuracy of the Gaza Health Ministry's claim that 10,000 people have been killed in Gaza, saying that he believes many of those killed have been "Hamas terrorists" and not innocent civilians.

Republican U.S. representative Brian Mast compared Palestinians to citizens of Nazi Germany in November 2023 on the House floor, stating "I don't think we would so lightly throw around the term 'innocent Nazi civilians' during World War II. It is not a far stretch to say there are very few innocent Palestinian civilians." On January 31, 2024, Mast made remarks during a confrontation with Code Pink activists regarding the war in Gaza. When asked about images of Palestinian babies killed in Israeli attacks, he responded, "These are not innocent Palestinian civilians." During the exchange, Mast also stated, "It would be better if you kill all the terrorists and kill everyone who are supporters", and said that "there's more infrastructure that needs to be destroyed" in Gaza. Republican Tennesse representative Andy Ogles said "I think we should kill them all." Arkansas senator Tom Cotton remarked "As far as I'm concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza." Michigan representative Tim Walberg said "We shouldn't be spending a dime on humanitarian aid. It [Gaza] should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick." South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham called the genocide a "religious war" and said he sides with Israel, calling on it to do "whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself; level the place."

Florida representative Randy Fine called for Gaza to be nuked like Nagasaki and Hiroshima and made numerous statements endorsing genocide and starvation in Gaza, such as "There is no suffering adequate for these animals. May the streets of Gaza overflow with blood," "Release the hostages. Until then, starve away," "There is no starvation. Everything about the 'Palestinian' cause is a lie," and "Kill. Them. All. #NoMercy #BombsAway."

Former U.S. president Joe Biden said "I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I'm sure innocents have been killed, and it's the price of waging a war." Former presidential candidate in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primaries, Nikki Haley, wrote "finish them" on an Israeli bomb bound for Gaza.

Others

Fox News commentator Jesse Watters claimed "This population in Palestine is hostile, it's uneducated. It's even more radicalized than they were at the beginning of this. I mean, now, they have no homes at all. They're even more hateful of the Israelis. And their birthrate is explosive."

Denial and justification

The Israeli government denies that its operations constitute genocide. It states that the military actions it has undertaken are in response to the October 7 attacks and sought to destroy Hamas, overthrow its governance of the Gaza Strip, and free the hostages taken in the October 7 attacks.

Genocide Watch asserts that Israel employs twelve documented genocidal denialist tactics: falsely minimizing statistics on civilian deaths, attacking critics, dehumanization, attributing casualties to mistakes or ancient enmity, invoking legalistic defenses, and blaming victims.

Common denial rhetoric includes ad hominem attacks against critics of Israel's genocide, asserting that the accusations are motivated by antisemitism or support for Hamas. Other frequent claims include downplaying Israeli violence and the death toll in Gaza, justifying Israel's actions in terms of self-defense or international humanitarian law, and arguing that Israel's relationship to the Holocaust means it is incapable of perpetrating genocide. Historian Taner Akçam has found a high degree of similarity between Armenian genocide denial and Gaza genocide denial.

Israeli historian Raz Segal writes that prominent institutes which document the Holocaust, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Shoah Foundation, start from the premise that the Holocaust is unique and Israel, viewed as a nation of Holocaust survivors, cannot commit another genocide. This has contributed to the "rationalization and legitimation of Israel's genocide in Gaza from the very beginning."

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." 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.

In a February 2024 Israel Democracy Institute survey of Israelis, 68% of Jewish respondents supported preventing all international aid from entering Gaza, and 55% of Jewish respondents opposed ending the war.

A March 2025 poll of Israeli Jews found that 82% supported the forced expulsion of Gaza residents; 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?" 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". 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.

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