à traduire : https://forward.com/opinion/759877/israeli-genocide-gaza-liberal-jews/
As an Israeli political scientist researching Israeli and Palestinian politics, I’m regularly invited by different universities to speak about the Middle East. Inevitably, someone in the audience asks what I think about the allegation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
While I have been unequivocal about my opposition to the current war, I tell them that I’m not a lawyer or an expert on international law. Therefore I have no authority with which to judge on the question of genocide.
It’s true that I cannot offer an authoritative legal answer. But I respond to these questions the way I do because it’s been hard for me to talk, or even think about, the question. For a long time, it wasn’t clear to me exactly why. In a private conversation many months ago with an Israeli colleague who is a law professor and a scholar of international law, I let my guard down:
“Surely, this is not a genocide, right?”
“Why do you think that?” she asked.
“Because I hope it is not a genocide,” I answered.
With a lot of compassion, she told me that it was important that I hoped it was not a genocide, but that did not change the facts on the ground. “You should think about why it’s important to you that what you see in front of your eyes is not a genocide,” she said.
The destruction of Gaza, including the killing of thousands of children and the restriction on humanitarian aid, is undeniable. The incitement for genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Israeli public sphere — from the government, in the pro-government media, and in everyday speech, is also undeniable. Then why are so many of us liberal Jews still reluctant?
I’ve thought about my colleague’s words every day since we spoke, and I think there are several reasons for many liberal Jews’ tremendous difficulty in seriously confronting the question of whether Israel is committing genocide, including a misunderstanding of what genocide can look like. None of these, however, if we are truly honest with ourselves, justify turning away from it.
For many Jews, and even more so for Israelis, our education about genocide begins and ends with the Holocaust. We have been educated to understand genocide as presenting in one, very specific fashion. Yet, the Holocaust was a unique instance. Sadly, there are many other expressions of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shares case studies from its Center for the Prevention of Genocide of “threats of large-scale, group-targeted, identity-based persecution” that could possibly become a genocide. They include incidents in Sudan, Ukraine, India, China and many others. None of these cases include gas chambers or numbers tattooed on forearms; most of them do not have a death toll in the millions. Yet they are deemed dire enough to appear as cases to monitor under the museum’s mission to “confront genocide.”
As I read about Myanmar, where the USHMM determined in December 2018 that genocide had been committed against the Rohingya Muslim minority, I was struck by how similar the incitement against the Rohingya sounded to what I constantly heard in Israel. The Burmese officials called all Rohingya “terrorists” and a threat to the nation. Israeli ministers say that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza. They say Gaza should be flattened and burned and they outline exactly how they are preventing humanitarian aid from entering. In March 2025, the government’s security cabinet formally approved setting up an agency to direct the expulsion of Gaza’s residents.
The more I learn about genocide, the more shocked and embarrassed I am by my own ignorance. Once I actively tried to be better informed about genocide, the picture in Gaza became terrifyingly clear.
Another reason many wish to disbelieve Israel is committing genocide is because it has been accused of it since the Oct. 7 attack. For example, Israeli historian and genocide scholar Raz Segal published an article in Jewish Currents on Oct. 13, 2023 titled “A Textbook Case of Genocide.” Israel had just begun its retaliatory strikes on Gaza (which at that point had killed more than 1,800 people), and the quick jump to the assertion of genocide, which Segal was not the only one to make, seemed startling.
I was taken aback by Segal’s certitude. How could he have gathered the data and performed the necessary rigorous analysis so quickly? I felt he was being alarmist and irresponsible as a scholar, jumping to a conclusion before there was clear evidence.
Nearly two years later, I understand that Segal was primarily talking about Israeli leaders’ public incitement for war crimes that was “quite explicit, open, and unashamed” from day one. His article was a warning about the murderous destination that dehumanization and violent rhetoric lead to.
The difference between me and Segal was that I thought the threats barked by Israeli politicians and generals were the macho bluster of panicked leaders responsible for the worst security failure in Israeli history. I didn’t believe they intended to do what they said they were going to do. He, however, believed them.
I realize now, as the international community has failed to stop the total destruction of Gaza, that the speed of his and others’ prompt pronouncements was not irresponsible, knee-jerk scholarship. If anything, when it comes to the threat of genocide, being alarmist is precisely what is needed.
There is no doubt that antisemitism has reared its ugly head in the aftermath of Oct. 7. I was stunned by some of the rhetoric I heard coming out of many campus protests, and how justifiable outrage at Israel’s actions translated into hatred toward individual Jews and Israelis. Yet the fact that some of those who charge genocide may be motivated by antisemitism does not in itself settle the question of what’s happening in Gaza.
It seems to me that this muddled terrain has made many liberal Jews think they have to choose between fighting antisemitism and confronting the reality of Gaza. In some circles, I have even encountered a trend of labeling the mere discussion of genocide an antisemitic act to silence speech.
I understand the fear of giving fodder to antisemitism in a time when this ancient hatred is again spreading like a pandemic. But even if you believe that many, if not all, of the allegations of genocide are motivated by antisemitism (which I do not), the urgency of starving and maimed children in Gaza necessitates our informed and urgent attention to what Israel’s government is doing, particularly if we care about Israel.
There are several intellectual reasons why I struggled to confront the question of whether Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. But the biggest hurdle was emotional.
Even as an Israeli who has always been critical of the occupation and apartheid in the West Bank, and as a scholar of far-right Israeli politics (which now dominate the government), I still feel deeply connected to my home. I am familiar with emotions of outrage and revulsion with the conduct of the Israeli government and the dissemination of Jewish supremacy, but the question of genocide, I now understand, provoked new feelings I had not encountered before — shame and guilt.
As psychologists note, shame and guilt are similar and often appear together, but there are crucial differences. Feeling shame is associated with embarrassment over the actions of members of our group that we think negatively reflect on our group’s identity. Guilt occurs when we feel collective responsibility for the negative actions of our group members. Shame leads to avoidance — hiding, denying or looking away from such actions. Guilt, on the other hand, motivates reparative or restorative responses.
Liberal Jews like myself need to overcome our shame, which pushes some of us to avoid or even deny the reality of Gaza. Instead, we must grapple with guilt; guilt not in the sense of personal culpability, but rather in our collective responsibility toward and solidarity with our Israeli kin and our Palestinian neighbors. Writing this article is my first step in this direction.
Another emotion that prevents us from speaking honestly about this question is fear. Only two years ago, I couldn’t have imagined experiencing such fear around free speech in the U.S. When my colleague said I should ask myself why I wanted to believe it wasn’t genocide, I didn’t have a clear answer. I now know that I was confused, ignorant and ashamed. Now I am afraid. I worry about the personal, professional and communal consequences of speaking honestly. But the answer to fear cannot be silence.
Lihi Ben Shitrit is the Henry and Marilyn Taub Associate Professor of Israel studies at New York University’s department of Hebrew and Judaic studies and the director of NYU’s Taub Center for Israel Studies. She is the editor of The Gates of Gaza: Critical Voices from Israel on October 7 and the War with Hamas.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspectives in Opinion. To contact Opinion authors, email opinion@forward.com.
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Tu m'as dit "va à Gaza et reste là bas".
Tu m'as dit "va à Gaza et reste là bas". Mais William si j'y vais tu viendras avec moi. Ce n'est pas une proposition, c'est un ordre. Je te traînerai de force dans les ruines, je t'obligerai à marcher dans les décombres d'un territoire rasé à 90%. Comme tous les Gazaouis tu te réveilleras en sursaut sous le fracas de 300 bombes quotidiennes qui déchiquètent les chairs. Je t'empêcherai de te boucher le nez et de fermer les yeux à la vue d'un charnier. Nous vivrons l'enfer ensemble William. Mais j'ai peur, je suis terrorisée car contrairement à toi je sais ce qu'il se passe là bas. C'est un génocide et ce n'est pas moi qui le dit William c'est l'ONU, ce sont les images des corps décharnés, ensanglantés, mutilés, ce sont les humanitaires et les journalistes sur place... enfin ceux qui sont encore en vie. Car ils sont plus de 600 à avoir été assassinés par l'armée israélienne.
Tant que tu es confortablement installé dans ton canapé, à des milliers de kilomètres des massacres, je t'entends rire. Probablement tu pourrais me citer Enthoven : "Il n’y a aucun journaliste à Gaza. Uniquement des tueurs, des combattants ou des preneurs d’otages avec une carte de presse". Ou me citer un éditorialiste de Cnews qui matraque à chaque minute que tous les arabes et les musulmans sont des terroristes. Tiens ! Nous amenerons Raphaël et un éditorialiste avec nous, ça te fera des compagnons avec qui partager tes propos négationnistes pendant que nous éviterons les tirs et les bombes tout en essayant d'oublier nos ventres tiraillés par la faim et nos gorges sèches.
Tu sais avec qui nous pourrions aller là bas, là où règne la faim, la terreur et la mort ? Avec les journalistes du Point. Tu sais pourquoi William ? Parce qu'ils ont écrit une chronique "humoristique" sur la Flotilla pour Gaza qui te ferait sûrement marrer. Ils ont imaginé un "journal de bord (imaginaire) " d'un membre de la flottille et ils ont titré : "Attention, tout ceci n’est que pure fiction, aucun activiste n’a été noyé pendant l’écriture de ce texte." Chez le Point, ils se marrent bien entre deux chroniques de Bérengère Viennot et de Sophia Aram. Ils rient des civils qui tentent de briser un blocus humanitaire et de dénoncer la famine à Gaza. Ils rient des viols répétés du droit maritime et du droit international par Israël. Et je me dis qu'un petit séjour dans l'odeur de la poudre et de la putréfaction les ferait peut-être moins rire (mais je ne suis pas certaine de cela).
Mais comme tu t'en doutes William, nous n'irons pas là bas. Je suis flattée que tu aies tant surestimé mon courage. Je ne suis pas capable d'embarquer dans une flotille direction Gaza, je ne serai pas capable de surmonter la peur et la tétanie qui m'assailleront lors d'une attaque de drône israélien, je ne serai pas capable de gérer mon angoisse lorsque l'armée d'un État génocidaire fera irruption sur le bateau et me kidnappera, je ne serai pas capable de supporter la torture et leur prison. Le seul courage que j'ai est celui de manifester et d'écrire et cela t'a suffit, William, pour vouloir m'envoyer mourir à Gaza.
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