The Holocaust deniers claim: “Calling Israeli actions genocidal is not antisemitism. It is a description of conduct, applied without prejudice to the religious or ethnic identity of the actor. Equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism is itself the rhetorical move that delegitimises political accountability for state violence.”
The claim is true in part and false in part. Whether a particular use of “genocide” in connection with Israeli actions is antisemitic depends on what is being asserted, on what evidence, with what associated rhetorical content, and in what context. The claim is sometimes genuinely descriptive (the South Africa ICJ case, for example, presents a legal argument under the Genocide Convention with citations to specific evidence and is conducted by serious lawyers; the IHRA Working Definition does not class such legal arguments as antisemitic). The claim is sometimes the cover for the broader Holocaust-inversion argument addressed elsewhere in this section, and in those cases it is part of an antisemitic discourse whether or not the speaker considers themselves antisemitic. The claim collapses these cases into one. The proper distinction is fine-grained and requires examination of the specific instance.
The IHRA framework and its contestation
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism, adopted in 2016 and adopted by various states and institutions, includes among its illustrative examples some types of anti-Israel discourse: comparing Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the State of Israel, denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination by claiming the State of Israel is a racist endeavour, and applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behaviour not expected of any other democratic nation. The IHRA framework explicitly states that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”. The framework draws a line, with most pure political criticism of specific Israeli policies on one side (not antisemitic) and certain rhetorical patterns on the other side (antisemitic).
The framework is contested. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (2021), an alternative academic definition produced by a group of scholars including Brian Klug, Susan Neiman and Bashir Bashir, draws the line differently, classifying more anti-Israel discourse as legitimate political speech and fewer types as antisemitic. The contestation is itself part of legitimate academic debate; both definitions agree that there is a distinction to be drawn, and that the distinction matters; they disagree about exactly where to draw it. Most working scholars on antisemitism accept the underlying point that some anti-Israel discourse is antisemitic and some is not, and that the careful distinction is the work.
When is “Israeli actions are genocidal” likely to be the cover for antisemitism
The claim is more likely to be denier-adjacent when it is accompanied by some or all of the following features:
It is presented as a self-evident claim requiring no specific evidence (as opposed to a claim under the Genocide Convention’s specific intent test, presented with evidence of the alleged intent). The South Africa ICJ application includes 84 pages of detailed evidentiary argument; a tweet asserting “Israel is committing genocide” without evidence is a different kind of speech act, not a legal argument.
It is paired with the wider claim that Israel’s existence is illegitimate, that Zionism itself is a form of Nazism (leaf 527), or that Holocaust memory is a Zionist construct (leaf 513). The combination shifts the discourse from a particular legal-political claim about a particular operation into the wider antisemitic frame.
It is applied with no equivalent application to other states with comparable or worse civilian death tolls in their military operations. The Israeli operation in Gaza has killed approximately 50,000 to 60,000 Palestinians since October 2023; this is a substantial figure warranting substantial scrutiny. The Syrian regime’s operations against its own civilian population since 2011 have killed approximately 500,000 Syrians; the Russian operation in Ukraine since 2022 has killed approximately 50,000 to 100,000 Ukrainians (figures vary by methodology); the Saudi-led coalition’s operation in Yemen since 2015 has killed approximately 150,000 to 250,000 Yemenis. The application of the genocide vocabulary to these other cases by the same speakers is a rough test of whether the vocabulary is being applied descriptively or selectively. Its frequent absence in the Syrian, Russian or Yemeni cases by speakers who apply it freely to Israel is a signal that the application is not pure description.
It is paired with the assertion that any push-back on the genocide claim is a “Zionist silencing tactic”, as if the contestation of the claim was itself proof of its validity. The pairing is an instance of the unfalsifiable framing that is characteristic of conspiratorial rhetoric.
When is “Israeli actions are genocidal” likely to be a sincere legal-political claim
The claim is more likely to be a sincere legal-political claim when it is accompanied by some or all of the following features:
It is presented with specific evidence: specific intent, specific operations, specific patterns of conduct, with citation to the Genocide Convention’s actual requirements. The South Africa ICJ application is the canonical instance.
It is made by speakers who apply genocide vocabulary consistently across cases (the Holodomor, the Cambodian killing fields, Rwanda 1994, Srebrenica 1995, the Yazidis under ISIS 2014, the Rohingya, the Uyghurs in Xinjiang). Consistent application is the marker of descriptive use as opposed to selective use.
It is made within a frame that recognises the Jewish dimension of the Holocaust as a historical fact and does not treat the Holocaust as a Zionist construct. The proper criticism of Israeli policy can include Holocaust references without falling into Holocaust inversion; the test is whether the references are made in ways that respect rather than dilute the historical record.
It is contested by the Israeli government and its supporters in the standard ways of legal and political argument (filing counter-pleadings, presenting evidence, contesting the legal interpretation), as opposed to being met with accusations of antisemitism applied to all critics regardless of the specific content of their argument.
Why the claim is harmful, in the cases where it is
The claim that “calling Israeli actions genocidal is not antisemitism” is, in itself, often correct as a political proposition. The claim becomes denier-adjacent when it is used as a blanket exemption from the analytical work of distinguishing the cases, with the implicit suggestion that no application of the genocide vocabulary in the Israel context could be antisemitic and that all accusations of antisemitism in this context are silencing. The blanket exemption is the part that does the work of denial; it allows the wider Holocaust-inversion arguments to circulate under cover of “legitimate political criticism”. The proper engagement with anti-Israel discourse is the careful distinction between the cases, on the evidence, with the IHRA and Jerusalem Declaration frameworks providing alternative analytical tools. The blanket exemption forecloses the analysis.
What kind of claim is being made: a legal claim under the Genocide Convention, a political claim about Israeli policy, or a rhetorical claim about Israeli identity? What evidence supports the claim? Is the genocide vocabulary being applied consistently across comparable cases?
See also
Sources
- International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, “Working Definition of Antisemitism”, adopted 26 May 2016, https://holocaustremembrance.com
- Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, 2021, https://jerusalemdeclaration.org
- International Court of Justice, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), proceedings from December 2023, https://www.icj-cij.org
- Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, United Nations, 9 December 1948
- David Hirsh, Contemporary Left Antisemitism, Routledge, 2018
- Brian Klug, “What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Antisemitism’? Echoes of Shattering Glass”, in Re-Thinking Antisemitism, Routledge, 2018
- Antony Lerman, Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? Redefinition and the Myth of the ‘Collective Jew’, Pluto, 2022
- Kenneth L. Marcus, The Definition of Anti-Semitism, Oxford University Press, 2015
- Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust, Yale University Press, 2001, on the boundaries of legitimate comparison
- Idith Zertal, Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, Cambridge University Press, 2005
- UN Human Rights Council, various reports on the situation in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, https://www.ohchr.org
- USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia, “Antisemitism” and “What is Genocide?”, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org