Why is it important to say genocide?

(Haaretz; Peščanik.net)

Yagil Levi is one of the most vocal critics of the Israeli military and the war in Gaza. His analyses will likely serve for years to come as a basis for understanding the state of our military and Israeli society in recent decades. However, he is wrong when he claims in his latest article that the use of the word “genocide” allows the Jewish public to avoid a much-needed discussion of the war in Gaza (Haaretz.

Levy’s main argument is that genocide is a legal concept, that the debate about it focuses almost exclusively on the technical question of whether the conditions for defining this war as genocide are met. The legal question seems to be practically beyond doubt. Many lawyers around the world argue that it is genocide. Professor William Schabas argues that this is the strongest case of genocide out of the 19 cases brought before the International Court of Justice to date. More importantly, the September 2025 report of the United Nations Commission on the Gaza Strip found that genocide was taking place. The report bases its authority not only on the systematic approach and the evidence it provides, but also on the expertise of the person who headed the committee that drafted it: Judge Navi Pillay spent eight years at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, four of which as its president.

But this is not a legal technicality, but a substantive issue. In accordance with the definition of the creator of the term genocide, Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, this is an attempt to forcibly eliminate the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and ethnically cleanse the West Bank. It is not about the destruction of individuals, but of an entire collective. Only a fraction of the legal cases defined as genocide involve the killing of the majority of the group, while all of them document an attempt to wipe out the entire collective. Israel carries out this through mass killing, starvation and prevention of humanitarian aid, systematic destruction of buildings and infrastructure, persecution, destruction of the health network, abolition of the Palestinian Authority and killing of members of the Palestinian elite. These are characteristics of most genocides that have occurred in modern history.

This principle is followed by researcher and lawyer Philip Sands, one of the most important in the field. Sands wrote the book "East-West Street" (East West Street, 2016) which deals with Raphael Lemkin and other Jewish jurists who shaped international law after World War II. In August 2025, it is on the podcast New York Times explained that the actions of the State of Israel may not be considered genocide in the legal sense, due to the very high threshold that international law sets for proving that crime. But essentially, Israel is committing genocide as Lemkin understood it.

Therefore, the use of the term “genocide” is very important. It describes very precisely Israel's policy towards the Palestinian people, its murderous force, the depth of the ruling sadism, the crisis of the legal system, the partnership between state structures and large sections of society, the radical dehumanization that dominates public discourse, and the profound moral breakdown of Israeli society.

This requires the State of Israel to reexamine not only the instructions for opening fire and the military's policy of selecting targets that entail great collateral casualties. It also requires examining the very roots of our existence, the path of Zionism and the State of Israel since the Nakba, as well as the entirety of modern Jewish history.

The word “genocide” denotes a deeply ethically and politically conscious act of destruction on a historic scale. It also means that, as in most cases of genocide (though not the Shoah), when two parties bear responsibility for the violence before the event or process, there is no symmetry between the killer and the victim. All because one party attempted to destroy the other. This word denotes an event that will haunt Israeli, Jewish, Palestinian, and world history for years. It also implies an uncompromising demand for accountability, justice, and historical recognition of injustice.

Israel denies the scale and historical significance of its crimes, which have sent shockwaves around the world. For much of the global public, the genocide in Gaza is a crucial symbolic event of the 21st century that channels every struggle for justice, freedom, and equality. The Palestinian cry undermines Western political and moral foundations and calls for a rethinking of modern history. Today, the question raised by the Palestinians, similar to the question raised by the Jews after the Shoah, resonates throughout the world: how could the world stand by and watch the crime?

The most painful question that shakes the historical memory of the West to its foundations was written by Gazan doctor Ezidin Shehab in his diary on April 23, 2025: "How does a victim become a perpetrator?"

All of this is denoted by the word “genocide.” We must not hesitate to stand before it, ashamed and confused, in order to assume historical and legal responsibility out of the great debt owed to the Palestinian people and, above all, out of the urgency to stop the ongoing genocidal violence.

(Translated from the Hebrew by Alma Ferhat)