Gaza genocide denial

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During a U.S. senate hearing in April 2024, defense secretary Lloyd Austin denied the Gaza genocide in response to a question by senator Tom Cotton.[1]

Gaza genocide denial has been ongoing since the beginning of the Gaza genocide and follows similar patterns as other cases of genocide denial.[2][3] It includes literal denial, rejecting the facts of mass killings and other atrocities committed by Israeli forces; interpretive denial, disputing Israeli responsibility for the massive destruction; and implicatory denial, minimizing the political and moral implications of genocide.[4]

Rhetoric

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In a paper analyzing the subject, political scientist Omar Shahabudin McDoom identified ten techniques of denial:[2]

  1. "Framing large-scale violence as both a legal right and a moral duty"—synthesizing claims of self-defense and minimizing Israeli agency in a form of interpretative denial.
  2. Deflecting all blame to Hamas for starting the war and allegedly using human shields, a kind of implicatory denial.
  3. Whataboutism, claiming that Israel is unfairly singled out for allegations of genocide as part of an orchestrated campaign motivated by antisemitism or anti-Zionism and intended to delegitimize the state of Israel. For example, major newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal published editorials denying the genocide and calling the allegations "a moral obscenity", a "blood libel", and a "media manufactured genocide".
  4. Obfuscation, falsely claiming that Israel goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties and has "the best civilian-combatant kill ratio in the world".
  5. Delegitimizing the accuser, including accusations of supporting Hamas and being antisemites.
  6. Demonizing Israel's enemies while emphasizing Israel's alleged superior moral character.
  7. Exaggerating the threat posed by Hamas.
  8. Redirecting compassion from Palestinians to victims of the 7 October attacks.
  9. Trivialization and normalization of violence as inevitably occurring during wartime.
  10. Strategic misdirection, pointing to irrelevant information such as Gaza's long term population growth.

At an extreme, deniers have rejected that Israel has committed any war crimes whatsoever.[2] Martin Shaw writes that Israel's supporters used the ideology of anti-antisemitism as institutionalized in the United States, Germany, and other Western countries to block recognition of the genocide.[3] Some legal scholars have argued that Israel used permissive interpretations of international humanitarian law to justify its actions. For example, three write that "an array of IHL concepts like safe zones, evacuations, human shields, and "hospital shields" have been mobilized by Israel as technologies of settler-colonial displacement and genocide, creating conditions of life leading to the destruction of Gaza’s Palestinians 'in whole or in part.'"[5][6][3]

Legal scholar Sonia Boulos notes that many "liberal elites" who are not "the usual supporters of Israel" have denied the genocide. She argues these liberals tend to acknowledge violations of international law but minimize them by rejecting the term "genocide" to describe them and denying links between the Gaza genocide and the Nakba, in an effort to reduce the impetus for systemic change. She also criticizes responses to the Gaza genocide that center the emotional distress of Israeli observers rather than Palestinians who are experiencing the genocide.[7] According to Israeli sociologist Ron Dudai, the predominant attitude in Israeli society in regards to the Gaza Strip famine and other atrocities is, "It’s all fake — and they deserve it."[8]

Marc Owen Jones, writing in Third World Quarterly, states that Pallywood, a term he defines as "a derogatory term suggesting that Palestinians stage scenes of suffering for propaganda purposes" has been "a recurring theme in disinformation campaigns against Gaza", and that "As Israel’s killing of thousands of Palestinian children and babies became harder to hide, high-profile Israeli accounts and media outlets claimed that Palestinians were fabricating casualty numbers and staging the killing of babies."[9]

Analysis

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Genocide scholar Omar Shahabudin McDoom writes that denial is not "merely after-the-fact justification but a constitutive part of violence itself".[2] One proposed reason why some people find it difficult to accept the evidence of Israeli atrocities is "the idea that Israel, the state of Holocaust survivors, can never perpetrate genocide".[10][11][12] Historian Taner Akçam compares Gaza genocide denial to Armenian genocide denial:

If we strip away the exceptionalist vocabulary and normalize our field, what lies before us is something remarkably familiar: a textbook case of denialism. For those working on the Armenian Genocide, the rhetorical playbook surrounding Gaza feels like déjà vu. The language currently used by denialists of the mass atrocities in Gaza – fear of annihilation, appeals to self-defense, and the inversion of victimhood – has been rehearsed for over a century in Turkish denialism. The logic is familiar: violence is always framed as a response, never as an initiative. And whatever happened is explained solely by the victims' own behaviour.[13]

Some scholars have argued that the United States government's response to the Gaza genocide is part of a decades-long pattern where it "denied, downplayed and rationalized atrocities by its allies".[14][15] Enzo Traverso writes that Germany's memory culture, in which the uniqueness of the Holocaust is taken for granted, leads to denial of Israel's responsibility for the destruction of Gaza.[12]

Following the UK governments denial that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza,[16] Amnesty International issued a statement that the UK misinterpreted the ICJ judgement on Gaza.[17] According to Tom Dannenbaum and Janina Dill, it was based on this misinterpretation of the ICJ judgement that the UK government frames its supposed lack of obligation to prevent genocide in Gaza.[18]

In Australia, Senator David Shoebridge accused the "Coalition of Gaza" of genocide denial for their refusal to acknowledge the Gaza genocide following the UN declaration finding that Israel was committing genocide.[19]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Seldin, Jeff (9 April 2024). "US defense chief denies genocide committed in Gaza". Voice of America. Retrieved 16 October 2025.
  2. ^ a b c d McDoom, Omar Shahabudin (2025). "It's Hamas' Fault, You're an Antisemite, and We Had No Choice: Techniques of Genocide Denial in Gaza". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–18. doi:10.1080/14623528.2025.2556582.
  3. ^ a b c Shaw, Martin (4 March 2025). "Gaza and the Structure of Genocide in Palestine". The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 53 (2): 416–422. doi:10.1080/03086534.2025.2493304.
  4. ^ Shaw, Martin (21 July 2025). "The Dam of Gaza Genocide Denial Has Broken". New Lines Magazine. Retrieved 10 October 2025.
  5. ^ Daniele, Luigi; Perugini, Nicola; Albanese, Francesca. Humanitarian Camouflage: Israel Rewrites the Laws of War to Legitimize Genocide in Gaza (Report). Institute for Palestine Studies.
  6. ^ Sultany, Nimer (9 May 2024). "A Threshold Crossed: On Genocidal Intent and the Duty to Prevent Genocide in Palestine". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–26. doi:10.1080/14623528.2024.2351261.
  7. ^ Boulos, Sonia (19 September 2025). "The "G Word," Liberal Israeli Elites, and the Prospect of Decolonization". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–21. doi:10.1080/14623528.2025.2556564.
  8. ^ Brison, Amos (22 August 2025). "How Israelis turned atrocity denial into an art". +972 Magazine. Retrieved 10 October 2025.
  9. ^ Jones, M. O. (2025). Evidencing alethocide: Israel’s war on truth in Gaza. Third World Quarterly, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2025.2462791 Quotation: "As Israel’s killing of thousands of Palestinian children and babies became harder to hide, high-profile Israeli accounts and media outlets claimed that Palestinians were fabricating casualty numbers and staging the killing of babies. The so-called ‘Pallywood’ narrative – a derogatory term suggesting that Palestinians stage scenes of suffering for propaganda purposes – has been a recurring theme in disinformation campaigns against Gaza. This narrative has served to cast doubt on any evidence of Israeli attacks on civilians, framing such reports as manipulations or fabrications. By discrediting Palestinian voices and visual evidence, this narrative undermines the legitimacy of Palestinian grievances and attempts to shield Israeli actions from international scrutiny."
  10. ^ Segal, Raz; Daniele, Luigi (5 March 2024). "Gaza as Twilight of Israel Exceptionalism: Holocaust and Genocide Studies from Unprecedented Crisis to Unprecedented Change". Journal of Genocide Research: 1, 2. doi:10.1080/14623528.2024.2325804. ISSN 1462-3528.
  11. ^ "Raz Segal: Genocide Denial in Holocaust Studies". jacobin.com. 27 January 2025. Retrieved 10 October 2025.
  12. ^ a b Traverso, Enzo (3 October 2024). Gaza Faces History. Footnote Press. p. search "Holocaust". ISBN 978-1-80444-179-4.
  13. ^ Akçam, Taner (18 September 2025). "What is the Future of Our Field, and What New Perspectives Do We Need? Eleven Theses". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–14. doi:10.1080/14623528.2025.2556583. Retrieved 12 October 2025.
  14. ^ Zunes, Stephen (14 February 2025). "By Rejecting Evidence of Genocide in Gaza, the US Is Following a Familiar Pattern". New Lines Magazine. Retrieved 11 October 2025.
  15. ^ Bachman, Jeffrey S.; Ruiz, Esther Brito (18 September 2025). "From East Timor to Gaza: How the United States Contributes to and Distances Itself from the Atrocities of Others (and How Genocide Studies Lets the United States Get Away with It)". Journal of Genocide Research: 1–15. doi:10.1080/14623528.2025.2556592.
  16. ^ Wintour, Patrick; Abdul, Geneva (9 September 2025). "UK has 'not concluded' Israel carrying out genocide in Gaza, Lammy says". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 16 October 2025.
  17. ^ "UK government must not engage in genocide denial". www.amnesty.org.uk. Retrieved 16 October 2025.
  18. ^ Dannenbaum, Tom; Dill, Janina (26 September 2025). "U.K.'s mischaracterization of obligation to prevent genocide in Gaza". Just Security. Retrieved 16 October 2025.
  19. ^ "Greens accuse Coalition of Gaza 'genocide denial'". ABC listen. 17 September 2025. Retrieved 16 October 2025.