Israel's 'Genocide' Defense: A Mechanism of Denial and Escape

The dominant discourse in Israel, both public and academic, frames accusations of genocide in Gaza as a political tool aimed at delegitimizing the state's existence. Even within the Israeli mainstream, where atrocities in Gaza are acknowledged as horrific and moral accountability is deemed necessary, there is strong resistance to the term 'genocide.' This perspective holds that applying the label transforms a complex military conflict into a sweeping indictment, potentially isolating Israel internationally. This defensive posture, characterized by a deep-seated rejection and self-protection, was also evident in Israel's reaction to the documentary "[Nezah]."

The primary Israeli defense strategy emphasizes a sharp distinction between the formal legal definition of genocide and its public or historical perception. Legally, the focus is almost exclusively on proving explicit "intent to destroy," detached from the outcome or victim count. Publicly, however, the concept is perceived as reserved for extreme events of systematic, total annihilation, such as the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide. This creates an artificial barrier between the scale of destruction and the question of intent, treating the immense devastation in Gaza as a horrific fact in itself, but not necessarily legal or moral evidence of genocidal intent.

International legal frameworks for genocide require examining both destruction and intent. While Raphael Lemkin's original concept of genocide included the destruction of a group's social and cultural foundations, the 1948 UN Genocide Convention adopted a narrower focus on physical or biological annihilation. However, the extent of physical and institutional destruction remains relevant. Reports from the UN, World Bank, and EU indicate that 82% of structures in Gaza have been damaged, with 371,888 housing units destroyed or damaged, representing 76.6% of the total. Euro-Med Monitor estimates over 70,000 tons of explosives were used, exceeding the combined bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, and London in WWII.

Despite this evidence, much of the destruction remains largely invisible to the Israeli public. International media access to Gaza has been restricted, and Israeli media has rarely shown the scale of devastation. Satellite imagery from Google Maps reveals entire areas erased, with residential buildings, streets, public facilities, and infrastructure destroyed. The conflict has crippled essential collective institutions: all 12 universities in Gaza are destroyed or severely damaged, halting education for over 90,000 students. Schools, archives, libraries, cultural centers, water facilities, bakeries, and hospitals have also been destroyed or rendered inoperable.

This difficulty in confronting the reality in Gaza is partly attributed to a political culture that has long separated Israel's image as a democracy from the reality of occupation and discrimination in the territories since 1967. This separation allowed Israeli society to maintain its democratic self-perception without grappling with the contradiction between democracy within Israel and the system of occupation and discrimination against Palestinians. This has led to a form of "gated democracy" and moral compartmentalization, enabling mobilization for democratic institutions while excluding the occupation and Palestinian self-determination from central public discourse.

The framing of genocide claims solely as a de-legitimization tactic allows Israeli society to shift focus from the destruction itself to a sense of victimhood, from what Israel is doing in Gaza to what the world is doing to Israel. The accusation is immediately framed as a malicious attack on the state, neutralizing substantive discussion about the destruction. However, the debate over Gaza cannot remain confined to semantic arguments or disputes over evidence. While one can dispute the legal definition of genocide or the evidence of intent, the factual documentation of destruction cannot be ignored. The question is not whether Gaza has been destroyed, it has. The crucial question is what this destruction, examined alongside patterns of conduct and evidence of intent, reveals about the nature of the war.