• home
• about
• new
• essays
• AI
• book

Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

Israel and the Genocide Accusation

Law, Politics, and the Struggle over Meaning

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

Introduction: When Words Become Weapons

Few accusations carry as much moral weight—or as much political volatility—as the charge of genocide. Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched its deadly attack on Israel and Israel responded with overwhelming military force in Gaza, the word has been invoked by protesters, jurists, and scholars around the world. South Africa brought a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention.[1] The word now frames debates at the United Nations, dominates university protests, and divides Jewish and Palestinian supporters alike.

But what does it mean to accuse a state like Israel—founded in the wake of the Holocaust—of committing genocide? How does such a charge differ from other war crimes or crimes against humanity? And why has this debate become so emotionally and politically explosive?

This essay examines the genocide accusation against Israel through three lenses: the legal, the political, and the moral-symbolic. Each of these domains tells part of the story, and together they reveal why this accusation resonates so powerfully—and why it remains so contested.

1. The Legal Dimension: What Counts as Genocide?

The Genocide Convention of 1948 defines genocide as acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” Importantly, it requires intent—the specific purpose of extermination. Killing large numbers of civilians, even on a devastating scale, does not automatically qualify as genocide unless that intent can be proven.

Israel's critics—including South Africa, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch—argue that Israel's statements and actions in Gaza show precisely such intent. They point to:

Statements by Israeli officials calling Gazans “human animals” or suggesting that Gaza should be “erased.” The scale of destruction: tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, most of Gaza's population displaced, hospitals and universities destroyed. Policies of blockade and starvation that, according to the UN, create conditions “incompatible with human life.”

In their view, this pattern goes beyond collateral damage or military necessity—it reflects an intention to destroy a people, at least in part.

Israel, for its part, rejects this entirely. Its legal defense emphasizes self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, arguing that Hamas hides among civilians and uses human shields. Civilian casualties, it claims, are tragic but unintended consequences of legitimate warfare against a terrorist organization that initiated the conflict. Israeli leaders insist there is no policy to destroy the Palestinian people, only to dismantle Hamas's military capacity.

The ICJ has not ruled on the merits of the genocide claim yet; it has only ordered provisional measures urging Israel to prevent acts of genocide and allow humanitarian aid. That very step, however, gave the accusation unprecedented legitimacy in the eyes of many observers—and provoked outrage in Israel and among its allies.

2. The Political Dimension: Competing Narratives of Victimhood

Beyond the legal definitions, the genocide accusation strikes a deep political nerve because it challenges Israel's foundational narrative—that of a people who survived the Holocaust and reclaimed their homeland. For Israel's supporters, to accuse the Jewish state of genocide is not just false; it is a profound moral inversion, turning victims into perpetrators and trivializing the Holocaust itself.

For Palestinians and their supporters, however, this inversion reflects long-standing asymmetries in international politics. They see Israel's invocation of the Holocaust as a shield against accountability, and the charge of genocide as a way to force moral and legal recognition of the Palestinian catastrophe—what they call the Nakba, or “catastrophe” of 1948, when over 700,000 Palestinians were displaced.

These competing victimhood narratives—Holocaust versus Nakba—are not merely rhetorical. They form the emotional core of each side's self-understanding. Thus, when the word genocide enters the conversation, it is never merely descriptive; it is existential. For one side, it is a plea for survival; for the other, an accusation of betrayal of the very values that justified the state's existence.

3. The Symbolic and Moral Dimension: The Struggle over Memory

Accusing Israel of genocide touches perhaps the deepest nerve in global moral consciousness. The Holocaust was the defining genocide of the 20th century, and it was precisely in response to it that the Genocide Convention was drafted. To apply that term now to the state that arose as a refuge for Holocaust survivors feels, to many Jews, like an intolerable distortion of history.

This is why Israel's defenders react with visceral anger. They see the accusation as an antisemitic trope—one that delegitimizes Jewish self-determination and erases the trauma that underlies the state's founding. The emotional response is not only political; it is deeply personal.

For Palestinians and their advocates, however, the Holocaust's moral authority has too long silenced their suffering. They argue that empathy for Jewish trauma should not preclude recognition of Palestinian suffering—especially when that suffering results from Israeli state policy. For them, the genocide accusation is a form of moral counter-speech, a way to reclaim global sympathy and break through the narrative monopoly of the victim-turned-state.

Thus, the debate is not just about law or evidence, but about who gets to define the moral order of our times.

4. Between Tragedy and Intent: The Gray Zone of Modern Warfare

Modern urban warfare—especially against non-state actors embedded in civilian populations—creates moral and legal gray zones. Israel's bombing of Gaza is catastrophic, but the question remains: does catastrophe equate to genocide?

Some legal scholars argue that the threshold for genocide must remain high, precisely to preserve its distinct moral gravity. To call every mass atrocity a genocide risks diluting the term's power and confusing intent with outcome. Others contend that the Gaza war demonstrates how the genocide concept must evolve to address new forms of state violence that rely on technology and economic siege rather than direct extermination camps.

What makes the Gaza case particularly agonizing is the simultaneity of two truths: Hamas committed atrocities against Israeli civilians, and Israel's response inflicted devastation on an entire population. In such a context, moral binaries collapse. Both peoples perceive themselves as victims of annihilation—and both invoke existential language to justify their survival.

5. The Global Divide: From The Hague to the Street

The genocide debate has also become a global proxy war of moral alignment. In the Global South, the accusation resonates strongly, echoing colonial histories and solidarity with oppressed peoples. In the West, especially in Europe and North America, it fractures the liberal consensus: human rights organizations often side with the accusation, while governments hesitate, fearing political backlash and historical guilt.

University campuses have turned into battlegrounds of moral rhetoric: “From the river to the sea” versus “Never again is now.” Each slogan compresses decades of trauma, law, and identity into a few emotionally charged words.

At the same time, the genocide accusation has revealed a widening gap between popular moral outrage and institutional restraint. Courts, diplomats, and politicians speak in cautious legal language, while activists and social media erupt in moral absolutism. The result is an increasingly polarized discourse, where nuance is drowned out by moral certitude.

6. Conclusion: The Tragedy of Competing Absolutes

The accusation of genocide against Israel is not just a legal claim—it is a struggle over meaning, history, and legitimacy. It exposes the moral double binds of our time: the impossibility of reconciling historical trauma with present injustice, self-defense with humanitarian catastrophe, Jewish survival with Palestinian dignity.

Whether or not Israel is ultimately found guilty of genocide in legal terms, the accusation itself has already reshaped the moral landscape. It has forced a reckoning with the limits of military power, the fragility of international law, and the enduring potency of the word genocide—a word that still carries the echo of “never again,” but whose meaning is now fiercely contested.

Perhaps the deepest tragedy is that both peoples—Jews and Palestinians—carry within their histories the fear of extinction. In such a world, moral clarity is rare, and empathy becomes the first casualty. The challenge for the international community is not only to adjudicate guilt but to restore the possibility of seeing the other as human.

Until that happens, the word genocide will continue to haunt this conflict—not just as a legal charge, but as a mirror held up to humanity itself.

NOTES

[1] "South Africa's genocide case against Israel", Wikipedia.