The Meaning of Genocide and the Gaza War: Explained
- Ofek Kehila
- Sep 20
- 3 min read
What is the meaning of the term genocide? Does it apply to the war in Gaza? Let’s delve into the origins of the concept, its legal definition, and the debate around the question of whether it applies to the Gaza war.
Genocide: Origins of the term
The term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer who fled to the US in 1939, right after Nazi Germany had invaded Poland. During 1943-1944, in the final stages of the Holocaust, Lemkin employed the concept to describe the campaigns conducted by Nazi Germany to exterminate entire ethnic groups, such as the Jewish, Slavic, and Romani people in occupied Europe and elsewhere. He himself lost many of his family members in the Holocaust.
Genocide, from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin word cide (killing), was defined by Lemkin as “the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.” Throughout his life, the Polish lawyer devoted himself to persuading the world that genocide must be considered an international crime. Thanks to his efforts, in 1948 the United Nations adopted the Genocide Convention, where genocide was classified as a crime under international law.
Genocide: Its legal definition
Article II of the Genocide Convention reads: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Until today, Article II of the Genocide Convention serves as the legal definition of genocide.
Accusations of genocide and legal difficulties
Following the October 7 Hamas-led attack and the Gaza war, Israel has consistently been accused of committing genocide against the Palestinians. For instance, in December 2023, South Africa’s allegations of genocide committed by Israel resulted in an ongoing case at the International Court of Justice, and more recently, the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution determining that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza according to international law. Among the organizations that accused Israel of genocide are Amnesty International, B’Tselem, and more.
However, these accusations are facing major difficulties. The most important of these difficulties is that the legal definition of genocide has a high threshold for proof. In other words, the current definition makes it hard to prove genocidal intent by Israel. As a result, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Amnesty International, and other organizations are now challenging the traditional definition of genocide and are attempting to change or reinterpret it.
Current debate on genocide
The difficulties arising from the legal definition of genocide and the attempts to change it have sparked a heated debate among countries, organizations, legal entities, and people around the world. As explained by The Times of Israel's Luke Tress, “According to supporters of Israel, these reinterpretations are biased attacks against the Jewish state that chip away at international norms. Those in favor of the changes, meanwhile, describe them as an acceptable and necessary update to laws formulated in the ashes of World War II.”
According to Professor Danny Orbach, a military historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the accusations of genocide are unfounded since, throughout the Gaza war, Israel strives to minimize civilian casualties. “This is the opposite of genocide, where the attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group is a necessary condition,” he explains.
In a recent study, Prof. Orbach and colleagues re-examine the Gaza war to debunk the genocide allegations. “Scholars and organizations alike define genocide in increasingly looser terms. When you misuse words or change agreed-upon definitions, they lose their meaning. If the Gaza war were declared a genocide, the term would lose all meaning. This is because virtually every war in the past century could then be considered a genocide,” Orbach concludes.
Whether the Gaza war will eventually be considered a genocide or not, the irony at the heart of this debate is that the same legal system that was first established in answer to the atrocities of Nazi Germany is now being employed against Israel, the Jewish state.
Ofek Kehila (Israel, 1987) is a scholar of Spanish Golden Age literature and Latin American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. His research bridges the gap between those traditions, highlighting their aesthetic, cultural, and historical dialogue. He holds a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2022) and was a postdoctoral fellow at Freie Universität Berlin (2023-2025).