As world leaders gather in New York this week for the U.N. General Assembly, a growing number of experts are calling on diplomats to address what they describe as genocide and famine in Gaza.
Israel strongly rejects accusations that it is guilty of genocide in its nearly two-year campaign in Gaza following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed nearly 1,200 people, with another 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
The Israeli military campaign that followed has killed more than 64,000 people, including more than 18,000 children, according to Gaza health authorities. Almost all of Gaza's estimated 2 million residents have been forced to flee their homes, often multiple times. Many Palestinians, as well as rights groups and some prominent Americans, have said Israel is responsible for genocide in the enclave.
In the United States, the word has started to enter the public discourse. Polls show Democrats and independents are increasingly likely to describe Israel's actions as genocide, even as Republican views have remained steady.
To understand what the term means and how it has become such a battleground, NPR spoke with historians, legal scholars, military analysts and people living through the war. The scholars say it's difficult to hold states legally responsible for any crimes. And some pointed to a thornier issue: the burden of proving that Israel's war in Gaza is motivated by "genocidal intent."
What does genocide mean?
The term "genocide" was introduced in 1944 by Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin to describe the extermination of European Jews during the Holocaust. Lemkin's early exposure to the history of Ottoman attacks on Armenians and the pogroms in Poland was instrumental in shaping his belief that groups needed protection under international law.
In 1948, four years later, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, often called the Genocide Convention, defining genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."
Both Israel and the U.S. have ratified the convention — Israel in 1950 and the U.S. in 1988.
How are countries tried for genocide in courts?
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands, handles disputes between countries, including under the Genocide Convention. A separate court, the International Criminal Court, entered into force in 2002 to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. But it has no jurisdiction over countries that haven't joined, among them the U.S., Israel, Myanmar and China. Outside the courts, the U.N. Security Council can authorize the protection of civilians, but that power is often paralyzed by the veto powers of the council's five permanent members.
In Rwanda, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ruled that the 1994 mass killings of the Tutsi minority constituted genocide, and it convicted several political and military leaders for organizing and inciting it. In the war following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, the ICJ found that genocide occurred in 1995 in Srebrenica, where around 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by a Serbian-aligned force. But the court did not hold Serbia directly responsible for committing genocide, only for failing to prevent it.
The U.S. has also formally recognized genocides against Armenians and Darfuris. Then-President Barack Obama labeled ISIS's actions genocide, and President Trump used the term to describe the situation facing white South Africans.
Gambia brought a still-ongoing case against Myanmar to the ICJ in 2019, accusing it of genocide over a military campaign that forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee. The U.K. and other states argued in that case that intent could be inferred from the mass displacement and harm to children. Myanmar claims it was targeting terrorists, but the court rejected its bid to throw out the case and is now weighing it on the merits.
Why is "intent" in genocide cases hard to prove?
Genocide is considered the hardest crime to prove in court.
The "intent" requirement makes it distinct, said Shannon Fyfe, a legal scholar at Washington and Lee University.
"Proving intent tends to be the most difficult part of any criminal case," she said. "The ICJ says genocidal intent must be the only reasonable inference from the available evidence."
The Genocide Convention's drafters added "as such" to require that acts be carried out because of who the group is, not just to achieve another goal — something judges struggle to assess.
Gaza: Early warnings, early rejections
Just days after Israel began its bombing campaign in Gaza, Raz Segal, an Israeli-American scholar of Jewish history and Holocaust and genocide studies, wrote that it represented a "textbook case of genocide."
In particular, Segal pointed to what he viewed as a deliberate intent to destroy, citing then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's order to impose a siege on the enclave.
Shortly after he publicly accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, the University of Minnesota rescinded its offer for him to lead the school's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
"People ask me, 'Wasn't it too soon on Oct. 13?' No. The convention is activated by the risk of genocide, not just its occurrence. That's the whole point of prevention. That's the meaning of 'Never Again,'" Segal told NPR, referencing a common saying calling for the Holocaust to never be repeated.
He added that denying Israel was committing any war crimes, including genocide, allowed for Israel's actions to be justified.
"As if the Hamas-led massacres that day were not terrible enough, Israel and its allies, primarily the United States, including President Biden, immediately started circulating this atrocity propaganda," he said. "The lies and fabrications — like the false claim about beheaded babies — continuously shifted the focus not to Israeli violence but to the alleged barbarity of the Palestinians, to the point where they were seen as a danger that no international law should apply to."
When did a Palestinian "genocide" become a legal claim? A timeline
In November 2023, the Biden administration was named in a federal lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the law firm Van Der Hout LLP on behalf of Palestinian individuals and the human rights organizations Al-Haq and Defense for Children International-Palestine, along with eight other plaintiffs.
The suit alleged that the "unfolding genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza has so far been made possible because of the unconditional support" of President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Laila Elhaddad, a Palestinian American author from Gaza and one of the plaintiffs, went to court on Jan. 26, 2024, and later told NPR that she knew it was a long shot, but she felt "uniquely obligated, as an American whose taxes were partly financing the killing of my family members," to take legal action.
She added, "We as Palestinians understood from the start the intent to genocide. Israeli leaders spelled out exactly what they planned to do and then carried it out. We never expected it to go this far. But with no one to stop Netanyahu and no red lines in place, it was no surprise that he felt emboldened to destroy everything."
On Jan. 31, 2024, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White wrote that he found indications that "the ongoing military siege in Gaza is intended to eradicate a whole people and therefore plausibly falls within the international prohibition against genocide." Still, White dismissed the case in 2024, saying the court could not intervene in U.S. foreign policy decisions.
For Elhaddad, the ruling was both validating and bitter.
"It was cathartic," she said, to testify about what her family had endured. But outside the courtroom, she felt silenced. "Even using the word 'genocide' in opinion pieces was a no from editors I worked with."
The hearing of Elhaddad's case, along with those of the other plaintiffs, began just hours after the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that it is plausible that Israel has violated the terms of the Genocide Convention in the war in Gaza, in a case brought forward by South Africa. The proceedings remain ongoing and have drawn support from more than 25 countries.
In its case against Israel, South Africa devotes nine pages to claims of genocidal incitement. The filing says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twice referred to the biblical story of Amalek, saying: "Remember what Amalek has done to you, says our holy Bible. We remember." He mentioned Amalek again in a letter to Israeli soldiers and officers.
In the Hebrew Bible, Amalek is a figure who tried to destroy the Jewish people. The reference has historically been used by the Israeli far right to justify killing Palestinians.
Amnesty International was the first major international organization to accuse Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza. Amnesty International Israel, which publicly disputed the genocide allegation in rare dissent from the global rights group, was later suspended for breaking with that conclusion. Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, Doctors Without Borders and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel have also accused Israel of committing genocide. Separately, a U.N. commission concluded that Israel has committed four of the five genocidal acts outlined in the Genocide Convention. While such findings carry no enforcement power, they could influence the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
Arguments against calling it a genocide
Israel's defense against the genocide case brought by South Africa rests on two claims: that it lacks genocidal intent and that its actions target legitimate military objectives. It also argues that the case reflects bias, citing a lack of trust in the U.N. and other international bodies.
Israel told the court it is fighting a legitimate war of self-defense against Hamas. The Israeli legal team said South Africa's accusations that Israel has intent to destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza are based on comments by Israeli officials that have been taken out of context and are based only on "random assertions" in order to show genocidal intent.
In an interview with NPR's Morning Edition, Amos Yadlin, the former head of Israeli military intelligence, called the charge of genocide "nonsense," saying that the goal is to destroy Hamas, not Palestinians.
Eran Shamir-Borer, director of the Israel Democracy Institute's Center for Security and Democracy and former head of the Israel Defense Forces' international law division, defended the legality of Israel's campaign in an email to NPR:
"Available evidence regarding Israel's policies and conduct in the war in Gaza – whether it relies on statements by Israeli officials or on Israel's conduct on the ground – does not suggest that such standards are even close to being met," he said, adding that "jumping straight to the genocide claim not only empties the sacred term of its meaning; it also undermines other categories of potential violations of the law."
John Spencer, a retired U.S. Army officer who has advised the Israeli military, told Morning Edition that Israel is not engaged in genocide and cited "the mountain of evidence of what Israel is doing to preserve infrastructure, civilian life, to provide services."
At times during the war, Israel has completely blocked aid from entering Gaza, citing reasons such as pressuring Hamas to surrender and accusing the group of seizing humanitarian supplies. Under pressure from the United States, Israel has allowed some aid into the territory, but humanitarian organizations say the conditions imposed by Israel severely limit the amount that can reach civilians.
Israeli officials have not provided public evidence to support their claim that Hamas systematically steals aid. Unlike in previous Gaza conflicts, international journalists are not permitted access to Gaza unless they are embedded with the Israeli military.
The U.S. government, under Biden and now under Trump, has firmly supported Israel's military actions, going well beyond diplomatic statements and even imposing sanctions on International Criminal Court judges and prosecutors, U.N. official Francesca Albanese and nongovernmental human rights organizations like Al-Haq.
Since the outbreak of the war in 2023, the U.S. government has sold at least $30 billion in weapons to Israel, delivered more than 90,000 tons of weapons and provided the Israeli government with $12.5 billion in funds to purchase weapons.
Legal definitions and political justifications
As scholars grapple with whether the war in Gaza is genocide, they return to the question of intent.
Fyfe, the Washington and Lee University legal scholar, said, "Genocide can occur within or outside of war. But it is never permissible, even if the war itself is. So war is not a defense. If the legal elements are met, they are met, regardless of other circumstances."
On intent, she said, "If a military leader intends to gain land and removing a group is the only way to do it, that's not necessarily genocide. But if the only reasonable inference from a siege or campaign is that the group itself is being destroyed as such, then that is genocidal intent."
In Gaza, she said, that distinction has blurred.
"There are statements from Israeli officials that suggest intent to destroy, but it's not always clear if they mean Hamas or Gazans," she said. "But I do not think it is reasonable to claim that the siege is a military objective, given that Hamas is already crippled."
"So it may be that the only reasonable inference that can be made about the siege is that it reflects genocidal intent. Objective behavior can, and may here, stand in for objective statements."
"Each Israeli strike may be a war crime, but serially they've destroyed more than 70% of Gaza's buildings and killed tens of thousands, mainly civilians," said A. Dirk Moses, Spitzer professor of international relations at City College of New York and editor of the Journal of Genocide Research. "In no way can this outcome be seen as collateral."
He also said that it is often forgotten that the Genocide Convention includes the destruction of a group "in whole or in part." "In Srebrenica, 'only' 8,000 men and boys were killed, but they were deemed a substantial part of the Bosnian population. That was enough for a genocide ruling."
Sonia Boulos, a professor of international human rights law at Nebrija University in Spain, argued that Israel's justification — that Hamas uses civilians as human shields — has functioned to deny Palestinians civilian status altogether.
"Even if one were to accept the premise that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, that fact does not alter the genocidal nature of rhetoric that dehumanizes Palestinians as 'human animals,' calls for the complete destruction of Gaza or invokes biblical references to Amalek," she said.
"Such utterances are not only genocidal in nature — they help explain the apocalyptic reality currently unfolding in Gaza," Boulos said.
What led two scholars to change their minds about Gaza?
Some scholars who initially rejected or avoided the term "genocide" have since shifted their stance, citing mass civilian killings, widespread destruction and restrictions on humanitarian aid as key reasons for their change.
Omer Bartov, an Israeli-born genocide scholar and military veteran, was among those who reconsidered his position. "There were people who expected that there would be genocide right away. There are people who think that Israel has always been involved in genocide. And I did not think that," he said in a Morning Edition interview. But he added that he found evidence and came to his conclusion in May 2024. "I asked myself: What is actually the goal of what the [Israel Defense Forces] is doing? Is it what it said — to destroy Hamas and to release the hostages? Or is it something else?"
In May 2024, nearly 1 million Palestinians were displaced from the southern city of Rafah and northern Gaza after Israeli forces issued evacuation orders. By August of that year, Rafah, once home to about 275,000 people, had been reduced to a desolate landscape of rubble. Many of those who fled south to areas deemed "safe" from the heavy bombardment in the north found little to no protection there.
Dov Waxman, a British-American professor of Israel studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, has also revised his stance after once publicly disputing Raz Segal's early claim that Israel was engaged in genocide. As of this writing, he is the only U.S.-based scholar in the field of Israel studies — an academic discipline focused on the history, politics and culture of contemporary Israel — to have done so publicly.
"I struggled to accept the possibility that Jews, the victims of genocide, could become perpetrators of genocide," Waxman said.
"As the months passed and the death and destruction mounted, I understood why experts were calling it genocide, but I still wasn't convinced," Waxman said, adding that his turning point came in March 2025, when Israel broke a ceasefire, cut off humanitarian aid and resumed its offensive.
"Deliberately making it impossible for Palestinians to live as a group in Gaza crosses the legal threshold for genocide," Waxman said.
Israeli officials have considered plans for pushing Palestinians out of Gaza since the early days of the war, and a proposal by Trump to build a "Riviera" in Gaza has added momentum.
How the war in Gaza is changing the discourse about genocide
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on Sept. 17 that Israel's actions in Gaza constitute a genocide, marking the first time the longtime senator has used the term to describe the war. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have also called it genocide.
Cultural figures such as YouTuber Ms. Rachel, comedian Theo Von — who has interviewed Trump and built a MAGA-friendly following — and Joe Rogan, the world's most popular podcaster, have also used the term.
David Simon, director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, says the word's use itself has surged in the public discourse. He links the rise to a broader awareness sparked first by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and again by images of Gaza's famine and destruction.
"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.'"
In an August 2025 Economist/YouGov poll, 69% of Democrats and 44% of independents said that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinian civilians. In a January 2024 survey from the same pollsters, only 45% of Democrats and 29% of independents said Israel was committing genocide. The percentage of Republicans who thought that genocide was being committed against Palestinians was unchanged at 17%.
In Israel, only a minority of the population shares that view.
A survey conducted in March 2025 and the subject of an essay in Haaretz newspaper found that 82% of Jewish Israelis polled backed the expulsion of Gazans and that nearly half, 47%, said they supported killing all Palestinians in "enemy cities captured by the Israeli army."
Martin Shaw, a historical sociologist and the author of What Is Genocide? and The New Age of Genocide: Intellectual and Political Challenges After Gaza, says that the public discourse reveals how "some people still think that only events like the Holocaust count as genocide, which no expert would argue. Gaza is different from the Holocaust, but it is still a deliberate attempt to destroy a people, which is the meaning of genocide."
Shaw, who wrote early in the war that Hamas' killings of Israeli civilians constituted "genocidal massacres" and who now believes Gaza is experiencing a genocide, said there is a new dynamic in how the public understanding of the word is being shaped. Israel, he said, believed that by banning international journalists from entering Gaza, "it could prevent the world from seeing its atrocities."
"It has tried to kill local Palestinian journalists," he said, "but so many ordinary people in Gaza have filmed what Israel is doing that the world has seen it nevertheless."
Israel denies deliberately targeting journalists. International news agencies have criticized past Israeli investigations into its military, stating in a recent joint letter following Israeli strikes that killed five journalists in Gaza that such investigations "rarely result in clarity and action."
The Committee to Protect Journalists says the war in Gaza is the deadliest conflict for journalists since it started gathering data in 1992.
Simon, of Yale University, observes that media blackouts are not new. But in the case of Gaza, "having social media serve as the source of information has made it much harder to agree on the basic understanding of what's actually been going on, and [has] added more to the algorithmic amplification that contributed to the acute polarization over the past two years."
Beyond debates
For many Palestinians, the public debates over the word are not just an abstract concept.
Elhaddad told NPR that since the 2023 lawsuit against the Biden administration — at which time at least 86 of her relatives had been killed — Israeli airstrikes, drones and shootings at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's food distribution sites have raised the death toll on her mother's side to 200. She shared a spreadsheet detailing the deaths, including notes when she was able to get them.
"It felt like the ground was moving beneath my feet, as if everything that made my parents' home familiar was being systematically erased," said Elhaddad.
Now that more prominent figures of different political persuasions have slowly begun to call Israel's actions in Gaza a "genocide," Elhaddad said, she has felt recognition of her own story.
"The tragedy is that it took over 60,000 Palestinian bodies and a full-blown starvation to reach this conclusion," she said.
This story was edited by Tony Cavin, Nishant Dahiya, James Hider. For more coverage, as well as for differing views and analysis of the conflict, please visit NPR's special series Middle East conflict.
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