Numerous scholars and legal experts have made assessments of the conduct of Israel in the Gaza genocide.: "The opposition is political, as there is consensus amongst the international human rights legal community, many other legal and political experts, including many Holocaust scholars, that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza." Since late 2023, a growing number of experts have accused the Israeli government of committing genocide in Gaza, including within the fields of genocide studies, Holocaust studies, history, and international law.
In late 2023, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that "A growing number of academics, legal scholars and governments are accusing the Israeli government of carrying out a genocide". In December 2024, MSNBC anchorman Ayman Mohyeldin and his producer Basel Hamdan said "a growing list of genocide scholars and international law experts" describe Israeli actions as genocide. Academic assessments There is a growing consensus among genocide and Holocaust scholars, international legal experts, human rights organisations, and governments that Israel's actions in Gaza constitute genocide. Israel and its supporters deny the accusation.
Genocide studies scholars In November 2023, sociologist and genocide expert Martin Shaw said that states avoid the term genocide to avoid their responsibility to end it; moreover, he suggested, Israel avoids the term out of "a misplaced belief that Jews, having been prime historical victims of genocide, cannot also be its perpetrators".
In January 2024, in response to the public split in the field of genocide studies, the Journal of Genocide Research, edited by A. Dirk Moses, launched its new forum "Israel-Palestine: Atrocity Crimes and the Crisis of Holocaust and Genocide Studies". In his article, Shaw noted that while the application of the framework of genocide to Palestine had, in the words of one commentator, "habitually evoked fanatical pushback", the nature of Israel's assault on Gaza "represented a strategic choice" rather than an inadvertent consequence, and thus calling it genocide was both warranted and inescapable.
In her contribution to the journal, Zoé Samudzi, a sociologist and Visiting Assistant Professor of Genocide Studies and Genocide Prevention at the Strassler Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, said that Israel's actions in Gaza arguably included "nearly every act outlined in Article II" of the Genocide Convention, but that the extent of its actions and its "legal impunity" meant it was better understood through Lemkin's original, more comprehensive definition of genocide. Samudzi and another contributor affiliated with the Strassler Center, Elyse Semerdjian, called Israel's attacks on infrastructure, food, and water genocidal. In his contribution, the genocide scholar Uğur Ümit Üngör said that Israel's actions were a form of "subaltern genocide", in which violence by a weaker party (Hamas) is met with disproportionate retaliation by the stronger party (Israel), culminating in genocide.
In February 2024, Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Professor of Politics at Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, said that among the scholars who took part in the Journal of Genocide Research forum, "there was uneven worry about the health of the field", but that there was "near consensus" that Israel's actions on Gaza were "certainly 'genocidal' if not outright genocide". He said, however, that "the increasing polarisation and partisanship in the field", along with the complicity and denial of "major democracies", struck a "very serious blow to the whole endeavour of genocide prevention".
Holocaust scholar Shmuel Lederman said that from mid-2024 there was broad agreement among those genocide scholars who expressed views on this that Israel's actions constitute genocide.
In May 2025, NRC wrote that leading scholars in genocide studies are "surprisingly unanimous" that Israel is committing genocide. In an interview with NOS, Martijn Eickhoff, the director of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said that the denial of access to food for Gazans is potentially genocidal, and highlighted the increasing rates of hunger and food insecurity in Gaza as genocidal violence. In June 2025, Melanie O'Brien, a professor and president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), said that, according to international law, Israel is committing genocide. She has also said that international law does not provide a defence against genocide, even in self-defence.
On 31 August 2025, the IAGS, the world's biggest academic association of genocide scholars, passed a resolution saying that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. O'Brien called the resolution a "definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide". It is the ninth time since its 1994 founding that the IAGS has passed a resolution recognising an ongoing or historical genocide. Some members criticised the process and evidentiary basis of the IAGS resolution. Genocide scholar Sara Brown said the leadership declined to hold a virtual town hall discussion that she described as standard for controversial resolutions, restricted dissenting views on the association's listserv, and did not disclose the names of the resolution's drafters; she called the process "an embarrassing absence of professionalism". Critics also questioned the representativeness of the vote, noting that only about 26% of members participated (129 votes out of around 500 members). IAGS president Melanie O'Brien said the turnout was typical for IAGS resolutions and that voting is conducted by email under the bylaws; the association also defended anonymous balloting and stated that similar votes usually draw 25-34% participation.
In response, 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 attorney 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, and that accusing Israel of genocide devalued the legal definition of 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 reported that there was no evidence of activity by Scholars for Truth About Genocide before the publishing of the letter; that the signatories to the letter included "some academics and experts in history, law, and the Holocaust" but "their numbers are very small compared to the total 514 signatories" which included political advocacy groups, individuals without relevant expertise like graphic designers, or odd entries like “CEO, Tel Aviv University"; and that the letter relied "on selective citations, omission, and misleading framing, falling short of the academic standards required to engage with the IAGS report."
In September 2025, David Simon, director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, said there had been a surge in use of the word "genocide" in relation to Gaza, and that the "man-made famine" in Gaza had made it easier for people to read genocidal intent from Israel's actions.: "Some of this may be driven by the images and reporting on the famine, which paint a much more vivid picture of the threat to human life than does mere statistics. But also, people considering the element of 'intent to destroy' that is part of the U.N. definition of genocide seem to find it more consistently now, in the context of a man-made famine, than they did with respect to the previous elements of conflict, which at least from a distance read more as 'war.'" Jeffrey S. Bachman and Esther Brito Ruiz, an associate professor and adjunct instructor in Peace, Human Rights & Cultural Relations at American University also highlighted the use of starvation on the population of Gaza as definitive evidence of Israel perpetrating a genocide. That same month, Samudzi said that most experts now believed "annihilatory intent has rarely been more explicit than the repeated comments made by Israeli leadership in the progression of the state's aggression from the days after 7 October 2023".
Holocaust studies scholars
The debate has polarised the field of Holocaust studies, especially among American Holocaust studies centres. Many Holocaust scholars have said that Israel's actions should be analysed as a case of genocide, along with other genocides in history.
Early in the Gaza war, some scholars also defended Israeli violence, said that the genocide is not comparable to the uniqueness of the Holocaust, or said that the charge of genocide is based in antisemitism, in some cases comparing Hamas and Palestinians to Nazis—though many of these have not issued further statements as the war escalated. In May 2025, Uğur Ümit Üngör said, "the gap between Holocaust historians and their colleagues who view genocides in a broader context is shrinking".
In 2023, Omer Bartov expressed concern that Israeli leaders had genocidal intent. In response to Bartov, five Holocaust scholars, while acknowledging Israeli officials' "despicable statements that cannot be ignored", said that only a few officials made such statements and the scholars justified the statements by pointing to Hamas's crimes. The scholars argued that the dehumanising language was "not evidence of genocidal intent".
Bartov later said that, as of May 2024, it was "no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions", while noting that very few in Israel (apart from Palestinians) held this view. In July 2025, he confirmed his genocide assessment even though it was "a painful conclusion to reach", and wrote that the reluctance of many scholars of the Holocaust and Holocaust commemoration institutions to identify events in Gaza as a genocide threatens universalist interpretations of Holocaust studies and Holocaust commemoration and may lead to a decline in the relevance of Holocaust education.
Some scholars of Holocaust studies, such as Norman J. W. Goda and Jeffrey Herf, have said that Israel is not committing genocide. Goda has further argued that some images from Gaza have been staged, and that statements by Israeli officials which others argue show intent, have been "doctored".
In 2024, the Gross Foundation ceased funding the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Ramapo College in New Jersey, after its director, Jacob Labendz, said "dehumanization is the seedbed of genocide and ethnic war" in relation to comments made by Israeli officials. Lauren Gross said, "Frankly, it is better that [the center] gets shut down because a Holocaust center should not be made to showcase Palestinian and Islamic professors criticizing Israel."