What is Behind The Outbreak Of Genocidal Hysteria?

Seven Theses on the political instrumentalization and banalization of the concept of genocide

These days the term genocide casually trips off the tongue of anti-Israeli protestors. But moral entrepreneurs supporting a variety of different causes also harness the symbolic power of genocide to supports their objectives. For example, some anti-abortion activists insist on portraying abortion as genocide[i]. In the same vein trans activists have denounced the ‘Genocidal Nature of the Gender Critical Movement’s Ideology and Practice’[ii]. Others have raised the alarm about gay genocide in Chechnya[iii]. Animal genocide and the representation of environmental pollution as genocides has also been thrown into the mix[iv]. Conspiracy minded individuals have raised the alarm about ‘white genocide’[v]

Activists and interest groups often complain that a particular example of an atrocity has not been officially recognized as a genocide.[vi] The term genocide – mainly because of its association with the Holocaust – carries formidable moral weight. When the term genocide was invented and recognized by the Nuremberg Trials and the 1948 Genocide Convention it was represented as the ‘crime of crimes’. As the epitome of evil the branding of a state or an act as genocidal has a significance that goes way beyond other labels such as ethnic cleansing, massacre or an atrocity.

For many decades after the 1948 convention most commentators confined the use of the term genocide to the case of the Holocaust and to the massacre of Armenian people by the Turks in the early part of the 20^th century. However, since the 1990s the term genocide has become trivialized and denuded of its original meaning. There is a constant attempt to expand the meaning of genocide. In November 2023, six western states - Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK- united to put forward a joint application before the ICC to expand the meaning of genocide[vi].

This initative has the support of a network of academics who claim to genocide ‘experts’ or ‘genocide scholars’. The distinctive feature of this ‘expertise’ is two-fold. In the first instance they wish to expand the meaning of genocide. Secondly, they are profoundly committed to the cause of anti-Zionism and wish to cast Israel into the role of a genocidal state.

Millions of young people have internalised the tendentious narrative that portrays Israel’s war against Hamas as a genocidal event. Others are confused by the meaning of this term. Below I outline my Theses on the current state of genocide-talk

7 Theses On The Narrative Of Genocide

Thesis 1

The concept of genocide is the subject of a constant attempt to expand its meaning

Given the grave moral force of the crime of genocide numerous claim-makers wish to appropriate it to legitimate the importance of their cause. Consequently, political activists and a new generation of academics have waged a campaign to broaden its meaning. The academic Zachariah Mampilly asserts that the term ‘genocide’ is not meant to be precise. He noted that it is ‘meant to serve a political, moral purpose, not to be a technical legal term’[vii]. This standpoint is echoed by the anti-Zionist academic Dirk Moses who contends that a ‘broader view of genocide’ is preferable to the current one.

A campaigning group that calls itself the International Association of Genocide Scholars argues that Israel is guilty of genocide even if its actions do not meet the ‘narrow’ definition of the UN Convention[viii]. In passing it is worth noting that anyone can join this so-called group of ‘Genocide Scholars’ so its pronouncements should be taken with a grain of salt.

One of the main motive driving the campaign to expand the definition of genocide is that as matters stand Israel cannot be legally branded as genocidal. As Mark Levine and Eric Cheyfits observed:

‘However, the manner in which the Genocide Convention was written and the subsequent case law strongly suggests that despite the heinous and ongoing nature of Israel’s actions in the Occupied Territories, it would be practically impossible to prosecute any Israeli leaders or state- sponsored individuals for the crime of genocide. Quite simply, the number of people killed and their percentage in the larger Palestinian population, or even in the regions in which they live, are nowhere close to the levels that have occurred in conflicts where genocide prosecutions have taken place[ix]’.

Levine and Cheyfits noted that; ‘Ultimately, broadening the sociological understandings and through them legal definitions of genocide will play an important role in the struggles to compel Israel, the United States, and far too many other governments—the Russians, Iranians, the Assad government in Syria, the Saudi “coalition” (in which the U.S. and UK play leading roles) in Yemen— to end their long- term, systematic oppression of brutalized populations and behave in compliance with international law’.

In effect what the broadening of the definition of genocide would mean that virtually every instance of violent conflict and atrocity could be encompassed by the genocide label.

Thesis 2

The advocacy of the concept creep of genocide is underwritten by the attempt to disassociate its definition from the criterion of intent

Historically, the main obstacle to the legal expansion of genocide was that the 1948 Convention emphasises the intentional quality of this crime. It referred to the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.’. Challenging the strict legal emphasis on intentionality is the key objective of genocide revisionism.

The academic Amos Goldberg has raised objections about the necessity for ‘genocidal intent’[x]. He notes that the focus on intent is ‘so limiting, it’s so artificial, and it betrays the reality of state mass violence’.[xi] Along with other revisionists he believes that it is necessary to work outside the ‘limited framework of the Geneva Convention[xii]. Some commentators have attempted to get across the obstacle represented by intentionality by using terms such as Ilan Pappé’s ‘incremental genocide’ or Kjell Anderson’s ‘cold genocide’ In Anderson’s case the use of the concept ‘slow-motion genocide’ is used to characterize acts of colonial oppression that occur over years or even generations[xiii]. In this way genocide is designated as a process whose driver is imperialism rather than the outcome of the intentional behaviour of a genocidal state and self-conscious genocidal actors.

Thesis 3

The revision of the concept of genocide seeks to detach it from its close historical association with the Holocaust.

One of the complaints made by critics of the criterion of intentionality is that it derives from the model of the Holocaust. This point was emphasised by Anderson when he stated that

‘The Genocide Convention emerged in response to the Holocaust, and the more closely mass atrocities resemble the Holocaust in form, extent, and motive the more likely they are to be labelled genocide. Yet many cases of genocide are atypical in the sense that they do not conform closely to these Holocaust-based understandings of genocide…The continuing influence of the Holocaust over our perceptions of genocide contributes to a substantial blind spot – so-called slow motion genocides – in genocide studies’[xiv].

The logic of Anderson’s concern with a ‘substantial blind spot’ in our understanding of genocide is to minimise the influence of the Holocaust in its formulation.

Some revisionist genocide expansionists go further and claim that Raphael Lenkin who originated this concept did so before the outbreak of the Holocaust. According to Michael McDonell and Dirk Moses, ‘the intellectual breakthrough that led to the concept of genocide occurred well before the Holocaust’.[xv]. From this standpoint the originator of the concept of genocide was more motivated by his interest in colonial violence than by the experience of the Holocaust. The conclusion to be drawn from this retrospective revision of the historical context for the emergence of the concept of genocide is to minimise the role of the Holocaust in its formulation.

Thesis 4

Genocide is reinterpreted as the inexorable consequence of imperialism/colonialism

Drawing on the invention of the concept of settler colonialism genocide is represented as its inevitable consequence. One of the main figure in the settler colonial theory school, Patrick Wolfe wrote of the logic of elimination’ inherent in a settle colonial society. From this perspective the imperative of genocide becomes the hallmark of societies deemed as settler colonial.

The tendency to interpret genocide as a process has grown in recent times. This revision of the concept allows critics of Israel to attribute to it the original sin of irrepressible genocidal behaviour. According to one account of ‘the continuity of Israel’s settler colonial policies and practices of massacre and genocide, beginning with the 1948 Nakba, continuing up to today’s Genocidal war on the Gaza Strip’ shows that ‘genocide is a fundamental feature of the structure of settler colonialism. It is a process and not an event’[xvi].

The representation of Israel as a settle colonial state calls into question the very legitimacy of this society. Since it is inherently genocidal this society cannot be saved – only destroyed. Other states accused of genocide – such as Germany – can be re-educated and saved from its destructive impulses. But not Israel for it is apparently a settler colonial state founded on acts of genocide.

Incidentally even the Holocaust is situated within the colonial logic of extermination to the point that in some cases its link to the impulse of annihilating Jews is all but abolished. The role of antisemitism as a drive of the Holocaust becomes minimised.

Thesis 5

From the decolonial perspective Israel has been cast into the role of a settler-colonial state and is therefore by definition a genocidal project

From the standpoint of anti-Zionist critics wedded to the idea that Israel is a settler colonial entity Israel represents apotheosis of genocidal behaviour. According to this perspective it does not matter what Israel does in any specific conflict its behaviour is deemed to be genocidal. Consequently, even before the post October 7 outbreak of the war in Gaza Israel was already condemned as a genocidal state. Six days after 7 October, when the war had barely begun, the ‘genocide scholar’ Raz Segal declared that Israel had initiated ‘a textbook case of genocide’[xvii]. In case anyone doubted the authoritative status of his observation, Segal reminded his audience that ‘I say this as a scholar of genocide, who has spent many years writing about Israeli mass violence against Palestinians’.[xviii]

In effect Segal and many of his colleagues assert that Israel’s genocidal behaviour preceded Hamas’ attack on this nation on 7 October. He referred to ‘a process of genocide by attrition’ which is rooted in ‘the 16 years of Israeli siege on Gaza before October 2023 – the longest siege in modern history’[xix]. Consequently, what Israel did or continues to do in its war against Hamas has little to do with it being branded as a genocidal state. For advocates of theory of settler colonialism, the modern state of Israel was a genocidal entity the minute it was created.

Thesis 6

The reinterpretation of genocide inexorably encourages the process of Holocaust inversion

The campaign to broaden the meaning of genocide and to defame Israel as from its birth a genocidal entity invariably leads to the process of Holocaust inversion. As Adam Bolton noted in his excellent essay ‘The meaning of genocide’, ‘the eagerness with which so many grabbed the chance to accuse Israel of genocide in the aftermath of 7 October surely does have something to do with the taboo-breaking thrill of inverting, and thereby finally cancelling out, the Shoah’[xx].

The branding of Israel with the crime of genocide cancels out the moral authority of the Holocaust and its association with the attempted annihilation of Jewish people. The eagerness with which anti-Zionist idealogues have sought to equate the policies of the State of Israel with genocide is underwritten by a form of ideological zealotry that is committed to the denial of the moral authority of the Holocaust. That is why the expansionary impulse driving the redefinition of genocide converges with the project of revising the meaning of the Holocaust to the point of denying its very essence.

Thesis 7

The concept-creep of genocide aims to dispossess the Holocaust of its momentous and unique status

Some commentators claim that the moral significance attached to the Holocaust serves as an obstacle to understand genocide. As Linda Kinstler wrote in the New York Times;

To invoke “genocide” is to immediately conjure up the memory of the destruction of the Jewish people and its associated architecture of murder: concentration camps and deportation trains, ghettos and gas chambers. This relation has at once augmented genocide’s moral force and undermined its legal uses. The Holocaust is viewed both as the awful standard against which all modern atrocities must be measured and as a supposedly unrepeatable catastrophe to which they must never be compared. The Genocide Convention effectively enshrined this paradoxical understanding of the Shoah and established a nearly impossible bar for genocidal intent based on its example[xxi].

In other words the moral force of the Holocaust has made it difficult for claims-makers of other causes to gain acceptance for their thin version of genocide. The response to the ‘awful standard’ set by the Holocaust ‘against which all modern atrocities must be measured’ has been to relativise this event and downgrade its significance. In this way the unique moral significance of this event becomes undermined.

In some cases the attempt to dispossess the Holocaust of its moral significance has eventually led to its minimisation and denial. This was frequently the case in the Arab response to the Holocaust. An important study by Meir Litvak and Esther Webman shows how the motif of denial was connected to equating Zionism with the Holocaust[xxii].

The promoters of genocide expansionism cannot help but eliminate the moral authority of the Holocaust

.

The proliferation of genocide rhetoric is a symptom of the climate of moral illiteracy that permeates the western world. It serves to retrospectively turn the real Holocaust into just another ordinary run-of-the-mill genocide and confuse people with what is happening in the current era. It also serves to mystify the meaning of violent wars and conflict. Mass killing of people is always to be condemned but not as an act of genocide but as an act of barbarity.

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[i] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/684239?journalCode=signs

[ii] Statement on the Genocidal Nature of the Gender Critical Movement’s Ideology and Practice, November 29, 2022, https://www.lemkininstitute.com/statements-new-page/statement-on-the-genocidal-nature-of-the-gender-critical-movement%E2%80%99s-ideology-and-practice

[iii] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39937107

[iv] For animal genocide see https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/ChareAnimal - book titled Animal Genocide and Its Aftermath. Also see ‘Ecocide Is Genocide: Decolonizing the Definition of Genocide Ecocide Is Genocide’ chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1720&context=gsp

[v] https://theconversation.com/trumps-white-genocide-claims-about-south-africa-have-deep-roots-in-american-history-257510

[vi] https://theconversation.com/genocide-70-years-on-three-reasons-why-the-un-convention-is-still-failing-108706

[vii] Cited in https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/magazine/genocide-definition.html

[viii] https://www.timesofisrael.com/critics-accused-of-quietly-rewriting-meaning-of-genocide-to-fling-charges-at-israel/

[ix] Levine, M & Cheyfitz E. (2017) ‘Israel, Palestine, and the language of genocide’, Tikkun (2017) 32 (2)., p.51

[x] See Goldberg, A., 2024. The problematic return of intent. Journal of Genocide Research

[xi] Cited in Cohen, M., 2024. Can Genocide Studies Survive a Genocide in Gaza?. Jewish Currents, 19.

[xii] This point is argued in Lederman, S., 2025. A Not So Textbook Case of Genocide. Journal of Genocide Research,

[xiii] Anderson, K., 2019. Colonialism and cold genocide: The case of West Papua. In Cultural Genocide (pp. 179-204). Routledge.

[xiv] Ibd.

[xv] Mcdonnell, M. A., & Moses, A. D. (2005). Raphael Lemkin as historian of genocide in the Americas. Journal of Genocide Research, 7(4), 501–529.

[xvi] Abdo, N., 2024. Israel’s settler colonialism and the genocide in Gaza: alternatives. Studies in Political Economy, 105(1), pp.94-106.

[xvii] https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide

https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide

[xviii] Raz Segal, ‘A Textbook Case of Genocide,’ Jewish Currents, 13 October 2023, https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide

https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide

[xix] Raz Segal (2025) Israeli Settler Colonial Genocide, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 53:1, p.186.

[xx] https://k-larevue.com/en/the-meaning-of-genocide/

The meaning of genocide by Adam Bolton

[xxi] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/magazine/genocide-definition.html

[xxii] https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/from-empathy-to-denial/