The Death of Genocide

The word ‘genocide’ rolls effortlessly off our tongues. In the war raging for two years between Israel and Hamas, both sides have repeatedly enlisted the term to describe the other’s activity and thereby justify their own. For Israelis, Hamas’s October 7, 2023, murder, rape, burning, beheading, and kidnapping of more than 1,300 civilians is blatant proof of Hamas’s commitment to realizing its charter’s goals of obliterating the Jewish state through blood-soaked jihad and making Palestine Judenrein. The massacre is merely a prelude to the extermination of all Jews in the Holy Land. For Palestinian advocates on campuses and in progressive fora, the ideologically charged halls of the United Nations, and on the streets of Europe, Israel’s ferocious response to Hamas’s murderous orgy is self-evident genocide. One U.S. congressperson even termed Zionists “pro-genocide” people. As early as December 2023—barely two months into the war and before any serious determination of Gazan casualties—the Massachusetts Teachers Association stridently declared Israeli genocide in Gaza. One year later, horrified by the carnage in Gaza, even Pope Francis raised the specter of Israeli genocide.

The persistent, passionate rhetoric around the issue rings with psychological and doctrinal certainty. Yet, there is little consideration of genocide’s definition, any critical examination of what actually has occurred in Gaza, or a sober investigation of whether the war fulfilled genocide’s essential characteristics. Now, as the killing has abated and the war seems to be approaching its end, we should be better able to assess what evidence exists for the accuracy of the near ubiquitous accusations.

The Birth of Genocide

The term ‘genocide’ was developed by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born jurist who served as an adviser to the U.S. Department of War during World War II. It arose primarily as a result of the intentional mass slaughter of civilians and ethnic groups in that war. In 1944, Lemkin noted that a key component of genocide was “the criminal intent to destroy or cripple permanently a human group. The acts are directed against groups as such, and individuals are selected for destruction only because they belong to these groups.”¹

Lemkin understood that genocide fell under the rubric of war crimes, but needed to define a new category because genocide constituted a specific, particularly heinous, crime distinguishable from other, more generic war crimes.

The momentum created by the Nürnberg trials, revealing the Nazi atrocities in World War II, led the UN General Assembly to pass Resolution 96-I in 1946, which made the crime of genocide punishable under international law. Resolution 260-III, adopted in December 1948, approved the text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,² the first UN human rights treaty. The Convention entered into force in 1951 and was ratified by more than 130 countries. Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as “Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

The Encyclopedia Britannica currently defines genocide more simply as “The deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race.”

While academic criticisms have been leveled at the wording of these definitions, all genocide definitions bear two essential components: (1) the intent to destroy all or most of a specific national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, and (2) systematic behavior aimed at destroying a large percentage of the group, qua group. Whereas a targeted group in most other war crimes is identified by its status as an armed enemy, the targeted group in the case of genocide is determined by its racial, national, ethnic, or religious characteristics. In addition, genocide necessarily includes the intentional mass killing of the group’s non-combatant members.

The noted Holocaust historian Yehudah Bauer noted that the rationale for groups committing genocide usually contains a strong ideological component, in contrast to killing for self-defense. Indeed, in the current heated rhetoric accusing Israel of genocide, there is a strong ideological thrust: If Israel is guilty of genocide, it should forfeit any legitimate right to exist, just as the Nazi genocide undermined any legitimacy to Nazi rule.

Genocide vs. Mass Killing

The difference between general war-related deaths and genocidal deaths can be easily seen by examining World Wars I and II, both of which were vast killing fields that produced an extraordinarily high number of deaths. The Carnegie Institute estimates the total number of World War I war-related deaths at 16-17 million. In the context of this widespread carnage, only the Ottoman action against the Armenians (1-1.5 million killed), Assyrians (750,000 killed), and ethnic Greeks (348,000 killed) constituted genocide. Thus, of the 16-17 million war deaths, at most 2.6 million (16%) could be retroactively classified as a result of genocide.

As the deadliest conflict in human history, World War II was far more lethal. Seventy million to 85 million people are estimated to have died from war-related activity, while 50-56 million soldiers and civilians were killed directly. Deaths from systematic group extermination comprised but a small fraction of these: Jews (5.9 million), ethnic Slavs (2-2.5 million), Roma (250,000), Freemasons (80,000-200,000), disabled persons (250,000-300,000), and homosexuals (10,000-15,000). Hence, out of the 70-85 million war-related deaths, a maximum of nine million (10-13%) were the result of genocide.

Instances of post-World War II genocide campaigns were the Hutu massacres of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 and probably the Serbian massacres of Croats and Muslims in Bosnia from 1991 to 1995.

The Israeli government and all officials in charge of prosecuting the Gaza war consistently deny that their military campaign is aimed at Palestinians as a group and vehemently insist that Israel targets only Hamas combatants and those of other terrorist organizations, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. “Our war is not against the Palestinians in Gaza, who also are suffering under Hamas rule…. Our goal is to defeat and dismantle Hamas, which is an EU-designated terrorist organization, and rescue or bring about a release of all hostages,” claimed Haim Regev, the Israeli ambassador to the EU and NATO, soon after the war began.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly said that Israel’s war is against “terrorists, not against Palestinian civilians,” adding that Hamas has publicly vowed to repeat the “atrocities” of October 7 “again and again.”

At the International Court of Justice, where South Africa has brought the charge of genocide against Israel, Israeli representatives vigorously denied any intent to go to war against the Palestinians, qua people. One of the Israeli lawyers, Tal Becker, stated that Israel is complying with international law in its Gaza operations and that “Israel does not seek to destroy a people, but to protect a people—its [own] people,” adding that Israel is engaged in a “war of defense against Hamas, not the Palestinian people.”

There is prima facie evidence of a lack of intent to destroy the Gaza population, qua group, or the Palestinian people, as such. Israel has made repeated attempts to move Gazan civilians out of harm’s way by directing them away from battle zones. Since the beginning of the war, Israel has adjusted its tactics in an attempt to reduce civilian casualties. As in all wars, deadly mistakes occur. On April 1, Israel unintentionally killed seven humanitarian aid civilians working for the World Central Kitchen. Earlier in the war, in December, Israel accidentally killed three of its own citizens trying to escape Hamas captivity when Israel mistook them for Hamas fighters. These mistakes are no indication of intent. Lastly, both indiscriminate bombing and targeting civilians are contrary to the Israel Defense Forces’ code of military ethics, which adheres to accepted just war principles, prohibits targeting non-threatening civilians, and requires attempts to minimize civilian casualties.

Of course, this prima facie evidence against genocide is not conclusive. Those arguing that Israel is committing genocide do not believe the Israeli denials of any intent to destroy the people of Gaza, qua group, or the Palestinian people, as such. Yet this disbelief, however categorically expressed, constitutes no evidence for the presence of genocidal intent.

More significantly, many point to the large number of deaths in Gaza as conclusive proof of Israeli genocide. As of October 2025, the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health claimed that approximately 67,000 Gazans have been killed in the war. This number is based on the count of bodies brought to the Gaza morgues, which include deaths from natural causes.³ England’s Henry Jackson Society estimates those natural deaths to be approximately 5,000 per annum.⁴ A December 2024 Gaza Health Ministry study also points to 3,400-5,000 natural, unrelated war deaths up to that date.⁵ Thus, at most, 62,000 Gazans have been killed by the war. In addition, some of the Gaza deaths are a result of misfired Hamas and PIJ rockets landing in Gaza (estimated by Israel at the end of 2023 to be more than 2,400). Israel maintains that more than 21,000 of the Gaza deaths are Hamas fighters. We can infer, therefore, that at most 41,000 (67,000 minus 5,000 minus 21,000) civilians in Gaza have died in war-related causes. Neither the Hamas claim of 67,000 total Gazan deaths nor the Israel estimate of 21,000 Hamas fighters killed has been independently confirmed, and the Hamas claim has been challenged.⁶ Still, in the absence of confirmed estimates, we can use these numbers for analysis.

We have seen from World War I and World War II that mass deaths per se are not evidence of genocide. To determine whether genocide is being committed in Gaza, we can compare the Israel-Hamas war to other modern wars:

The number of deaths in Gaza by itself, as well as the percentage of the total Gazan population killed, and the percentage of the Gazan civilian population killed are all significantly less than their corresponding categories in the other major wars. The campaigns in World War I against Germany and Russia, in World War II against Germany, Japan, and the USSR, and in the Korean War against North and South Korea, all yielded far greater numbers of absolute deaths and percentages of population killed. Nevertheless, rightly, none has been categorized as genocide. The deaths reflect only the cruel and lethal nature of modern warfare. Suppose those vastly more deadly campaigns did not qualify as genocide aimed at destroying the target groups per se. In that case, it is difficult to see how the Israeli campaign in Gaza, with its lower number of deaths and percentages, could qualify as a genocide aimed at destroying the general population of Gaza.

Consider also the statistics of Gaza war deaths compared to the deaths of actual genocides:

Here, also, the percentage of Gazans killed relative to the total population (2.8%) is at least nine times lower than the percentage of the target populations killed in the actual genocide of the Roma people and 28 times lower than the genocide against the Armenians. The discrepancy is even greater if we consider all Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, over which Israel has substantial military control. In this latter case, the percentage of Palestinian people killed in the present war (1.32%) is more than 22 times lower than the percentage of the Roma genocide and 61 times lower than the Armenian genocide. Once again, it is difficult to conclude that the results of the present Israeli campaign bear any statistical similarities to the previous genocides.

Consider also one last relevant comparison. An important index for genocide is the civilian casualty count relative to the deaths of enemy combatants. If a fighting force intends to destroy another group, qua group, then civilians are natural targets and would represent a high ratio of casualties relative to combatants. This is most evident in the Nazi genocides against Jews and Roma, which targeted Jewish and Roma civilians exclusively, since these groups had almost no members engaging in combat. Conversely, a low ratio of civilian deaths to combatant deaths augurs for general war lethality rather than genocide.

In the non-genocidal campaigns of World War II, the civilian-to-combatant death ratio was approximately 2:1; in the Korean War, it was 3:1; in the Persian Gulf War, it was 9:1; and in the Iraq War, it was 2:1. In the present war in Gaza, it is at most 41,000/21,000 or 1.95:1.

The low 1.95:1 ratio is particularly noteworthy considering that the war was fought in a dense urban area where Gazan civilians had little protection. At the same time, Hamas fighters were largely protected in underground tunnels. In addition, Hamas positioned its military assets in and under schools, mosques, hospitals, and residential buildings, thus increasing the likelihood of civilian casualties. The urban fighting in Gaza is comparable in nature to the 2016-2017 international campaign in Mosul, Iraq, against ISIS, which was also fought in dense urban areas. The civilian-to-combatant death ratio in the Mosul campaign was 9:1, which is also the United Nations estimate⁷ for the ratio in most urban warfare. The rate of civilians killed in Gaza relative to combatants killed is more than 4.6 times lower than that of standard urban warfare.

In sum, intent to commit genocide is difficult to prove, and there is no direct evidence of Israeli intent to destroy either the Palestinians living in Gaza, qua group, or the Palestinian people, as such. However, there is prima facie evidence against such intent in the form of Israeli statements of its war aims, the adjustment of Israeli war tactics that are inconsistent with the intent to destroy the majority of the Gazan population, and the Israeli rules of military engagement proscribing targeting civilians. Most assertions of intent by Israel’s critics are inferred from the tragic Gaza death toll.

The statistics, however, tell a different story. The number of deaths in Gaza compared to the total Gazan population, the percentage of civilian deaths relative to the total population, and the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths, all resemble the pattern of general warfare and are manifestly dissimilar to the indices of the actual historical cases of genocide. As a result, there is no statistical evidence—nor other hard evidence—to justify the claim that Israel in fact committed genocide in Gaza.

The Death of Genocide

The vast scope of death and devastation in Gaza is shocking—”gut-wrenching” in the words of former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and I add, heart-breaking. The vivid images that came across our screens every day brought home to us the catastrophe that is the Israel-Hamas War. No person who values human life can be insensitive to the immense human tragedy that unfolded in Gaza. Together with Israelis and Palestinians, the world has learned that William Tecumseh Sherman was correct: War is hell.

Yet not all war is genocide. Unfortunately, compelling statistical evidence and fact-based analyses will not stop many from uncritically claiming that genocide took place in Gaza. For many, emotional recoil too easily overcomes critical reason. And for the many ideologues, there is immense political value in describing Israel’s actions as genocide: It condemns Israel and Israelis to the most heinous of crimes, thus strengthening the nihilistic argument to dismantle the Jewish state.

There are logical, moral, and historical consequences to categorizing the large number of Gazan deaths as genocide. As the claim goes viral in frequency and popularity, genocide becomes conflated with the general hellishness of war, and the concept loses its distinctive descriptive and prescriptive meaning. If the war in Gaza constitutes genocide, then so do World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and all modern conflicts possessing enormous lethality. The trajectory of this logic ultimately eliminates any category between peace and genocide. It denies legitimacy to any moral position between pacifism and all-out conflict unbridled by ethical principles or limiting rules of engagement.

If so, the Nazi extermination campaigns against the Jewish people, the Roma, ethnic Slavs, and homosexuals, qua peoples, as well as the Hutu massacres of Tutsis in Rwanda, will be understood as no worse than any bloody war. Genocide as a distinctive concept and manifestation of radical evil will have died—and so will our firm conviction to prevent its recurrence.

Should this happen, “Never Again,” will become “Again” in human history, perhaps in our lifetime.

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Notes