Allegations have been made that the October 7 attacks were conducted with genocidal intent toward Israelis, and that it constituted a genocide or a genocidal massacre (or a wave of such massacres). In the course of the assault, Palestinian militants attacked communities, a music festival, and military bases in the region of southern Israel known as the Gaza envelope. The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,163 Israelis and foreigners, two thirds of whom were civilians. The genocidal acts that were said to have been committed include mass killings, dismemberment, infliction of serious bodily and mental harm, immolation, rape and sexual violence, infanticide, and decapitation.
Various legal experts and genocide studies scholars cite a multitude of reasonings for their allegation of genocide, including claims that victims were targeted for their Israeli-Jewish identity, that Hamas still adheres to the antisemitic language of its founding charter, or that the alleged intent to destroy the Israeli people "in part" fits the legal definition of genocide. Comparisons of the attack to the Holocaust have been made. Criticisms against the allegation include citing the taking of hostages as proof that there was no genocidal intent, or that the attack was likely intended as a terrorist attack.
A legal complaint that Hamas committed genocide was brought to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in November 2023. An ICC arrest warrant was issued for Hamas leader Mohammed Deif, charging the group with committing the crime against humanity of extermination.
Background
Both Israel and Palestine frequently accuse the other of planning to commit genocide.
October 7 attacks
On October 7, 2023, coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip. Around 6,000 Palestinians breached the border in 119 places and infiltrated Israel, including 3,800 from the Hamas "elite Nukhba forces" and 2,200 Palestinian civilians and other militants. 1,163 Israelis and foreigners were killed, including 859 civilians, 282 soldiers, 57 policemen and 10 Shin Bet members.
The militants stand accused of various atrocities, including sexual violence. About 250 Israeli civilians and soldiers were also taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip, including 30 kidnapped children. The Hamas assault prompted an Israeli counter-offensive in Gaza. The day is considered the bloodiest in Israel's history and the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Al-Qassam militants extensively recorded their actions through body cameras, probably for propaganda purposes. They also stole victims' phones to livestream their deaths on social media. Additionally, they posted messages or media on victims' social media accounts and went as far as calling relatives to taunt them.
Documents discovered on the bodies of Hamas operatives in Israel indicated that carrying out massacres was a key objective of the invasion. Israeli first responders reportedly found instructions on the bodies of the operatives, directing them to target civilian populations, including elementary schools and a youth center, with the explicit order to "kill as many people as possible". The documents also outlined the directive to take hostages for future negotiation purposes.
Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official, said in a late October 2023 interview that the October 7 attack was only the beginning and that Hamas would launch "a second, a third, a fourth" attack until Israel was "annihilated." In the same interview, he said that Hamas "did not want to harm civilians," but there had been "complications on the ground," and described Hamas's actions as justified resistance, stating that "we are the victims of the occupation."
Academic and legal discourse
Statements signed by multiple experts and specialists On 16 October 2023, an open letter signed by around 240 international legal experts argued that the Hamas-led attack on 7 October "most probably" constituted an international crime of genocide, stating that the acts appeared to have been carried out with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected group (Israelis). The letter was endorsed by legal experts from prominent institutions, including Harvard and Columbia Law Schools, King's College London, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dan Eldad, former acting State Attorney of Israel from February to May 2020, played a key role in drafting the letter. The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, chaired by former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, also signed the letter.
In response to an International Association of Genocide Scholars resolution condemning Israel's actions in Gaza as genocide, the "Academic Engagement Network", which seeks to counter "denigration of Jewish and Zionist identities", published an open letter authored by Elliot Malin, founder and president of Alpine Strategies, urging the IAGS to retract the declaration. Titled "Scholars for Truth About Genocide", the letter was signed by several hundred people, including attorneys Eli M. Rosenbaum and Alan Dershowitz, and several Holocaust educators and survivors' children, and was promoted by pro-Israel figures such as UK Lawyers for Israel and Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It argued that the IAGS resolution contained significant errors, such as overlooking the role of Hamas, which the letter argued was the only party in the Gaza war that had committed genocide. The letter was subsequently found to feature some signatories whose names had been added without their consent, faked individuals, and the names of people who were not academics. The fact-checking website Misbar said that it could not find any previous activity by Scholars for Truth About Genocide, and stated, "The statement's format and content also lack the credibility and structure expected from a scientific or academic document—contrary to the claims made by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The investigation found the statement relies on selective citations, omission, and misleading framing, falling short of the academic standards required to engage with the IAGS report."
General academic discourse Genocide Watch has accused both Hamas and Israel of committing acts of genocide in the Gaza war. On 17 October 2023, it published a "Genocide Emergency Alert" stating that "Hamas targeted Israelis simply because they were Israelis" and describing the attacks as "crimes against humanity, and war crimes." On 24 October 2023, Genocide Watch issued a follow-up statement noting that scholars of Holocaust and genocide studies, including Gregory H. Stanton and Israel Charny asserted that Hamas' actions against Israeli civilians to qualify as genocide and crimes against humanity.
The Jerusalem Institute of Justice argued in March 2024 that the Palestinian Authority was complicit in the genocide due to its "Pay for slay" policy, as well as their endorsement of the attack.
In an opinion article for The Hill, Israeli human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky and Stanislav Pavlovschi, a former judge at the European Court of Human Rights, asserted that Ghazi Hamad's statement that Hamas would repeat the October 7 massacre "again and again" was evidence of the group's genocidal intentions.
Sociologist Martin Shaw viewed Hamas' attack as "a wave of 'genocidal massacres,' localized mass killings whose victims were defined by their Israeli-Jewish identity", adding that the concept of the genocidal massacre, first proposed by Leo Kuper, was "a logical extension of the notion in the convention that genocide can include destroying a group 'in part.'" Stephen D. Smith, a specialist in genocide, also characterized the massacres on October 7 as a genocide. Adam Jones, author of a textbook on genocide, said Hamas' "wild and indiscriminate killing" qualified as a "genocidal massacre" that should be "acknowledged and condemned as such", but the very restrictive intentionality requirement in the legal definition of genocide was still a "high evidentiary bar to reach". Israeli historian and holocaust specialist Raz Segal similarly said: "I definitely see intent to kill a significant number of members of the group, to instill unbelievable trauma and terror among members of the group. But I don't see intent to destroy in relation to the Hamas attack that would render it an act of genocide."
Historian and professor of genocide studies Uğur Ümit Üngör noted that "many commentators rightly pointed out that Hamas committed a genocidal massacre", while also highlighting the killing of Arab Israelis and Bedouins during Hamas' attack as evidence that it may not have been "group selective". He suggested that the attack might fall under the category of "subaltern genocide", drawing comparisons to the mass killing of pied-noirs in Algeria. Political scientist Abdelwahab El-Affendi refuted the "subaltern genocide" thesis, pointing to a "near-consensus" in the field of genocide studies that "genocides are almost invariably perpetrated by states", which does not apply to the Gazan enclave. He stated that the attacks were consistent with terrorism and mass violence, but that the taking of hostages for prisoner exchanges indicated that the intent of the attacks was not genocidal. According to international law expert Raphael van Steenberghe, a lack of evidence that Hamas intended to destroy a substantial part of the Jewish population is "arguably the only obstacle to qualifying the October 7 attacks as involving a crime of genocide", as Hamas "may well have anticipated that their operations could not extend beyond a limited geographical area".
Law researcher Avraham Russell Shalev argues that Hamas's long-standing ideological framework is relevant for assessing genocidal intent. Shalev states that the scale, brutality, and targeting patterns of the October 7 attacks reflect Hamas's aims and that the attack represents not only a genocidal act but the operationalization of a sustained genocidal worldview.
Genocide scholars have argued that although there was a clear intention to kill a significant number of members of a group, genocide is more than that - it requires an intent to destroy a group or a substantial part of it, but that was never a possibility. Scholars have also cited the taking of hostages as proof that there was no genocidal intent.
Gábor Halmai, Professor Emeritus of Constitutional and International Law at the European University Institute, stated that the internal conflict caused by the 2023 Israeli judicial reform was interrupted by "Hamas' genocidal attack on 7 October 2023". He also predicted that the "Netanyahu government's genocidal reaction to Hamas's genocide" would further endanger internal democracy.
Comparisons to the Holocaust British historian Niall Ferguson characterized the events of October 7 as indicative of Hamas' intent to re-enact the Holocaust, and stated that Hamas should be "destroyed" to prevent this. Gideon Greif, a Holocaust historian, drew parallels between the October 7 attacks and the Holocaust in an article for Maariv. He highlighted the infliction of extreme suffering, including immolation, mutilation of corpses, alleged rape, and the kidnapping of babies; and the shared antisemitic hatred between Nazis and Hamas as evident in recorded statements of Hamas operatives proudly announcing the murder of Jews; and the extreme lack of mercy displayed by the attackers. Philip Spencer, a genocide scholar and author of numerous papers about modern antisemitism, stated that the violence on October 7 was "deliberately carried out to remind Jews of the extreme violence used by the Einsatzgruppen".