Defining This Genocide

Understanding the Crime of Genocide

In 1943 and 1944, Polish Jewish refugee Raphael Lemkin created the concept for a new category of international crime to encompass the never-before-seen scope of the Nazi effort to destroy the Jews. Lemkin, himself an attorney and prosecutor, named this crime, “genocide,” a new word derived from Latin and Greek roots. This new crime would address not only the actual killers, but those who were complicit, those who enabled, and those who incited. He published his findings in a book titled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. The concept of genocide was formally adopted by the international community and became the basis for postwar prosecutions in many countries, including the famous Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. Thousands of prosecutions targeted not only military generals, but also politicians, diplomats, radio announcers, publishers, propagandists, bankers, lawyers, doctors, economic boycotters, and even strategists.

Genocide thus addressed the full scope of the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Moreover, genocide encompasses a variety of converging destructive acts, such as: “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.” Tens of thousands of people were convicted in numerous countries across Europe and in Japan for acting directly or indirectly in concert with the Nazi effort. Genocide was about more than the hands-on killers; it was about those who directly encouraged it with their words, deeds, and economic actions. 

Other Genocides

Since WWII, history and prosecutors have identified numerous twentieth and twenty-first century genocides, including those which occurred before the new descriptive name was attached. These include the annihilation of the Herero and Namaqua in Southwest Africa by German colonizers (1904), the mass murder of 1.4 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire (WWI), the Genocide in Rwanda (1994), the Genocide in Darfur (2003), and the Uyghur Genocide (ongoing). 

There is no free speech exemption for genocide — “incitement” is a specific component crime. There is no exemption by personal category; it applies to everyone “whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials, or private individuals.”

The Present Military and Nonmilitary Genocide Against Israel

The present genocide against Israel is as diverse and internationalized as the Nazi Holocaust, which saw the conviction of tens of thousands of military persons, private citizens, and public officials who aided and abetted acts designed to destroy the physical, cultural, economic, and social life of Jews globally. It is comprised of military, propagandistic, cultural, economic, academic, and political aspects.

Several governments, militia groups, and terrorist organizations, acting in concert and singly, have combined to destroy by military means Jewish Israel and the world’s pro-Jewish community. The culprits: Iran and its terrorist surrogates, namely, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hezbollah allies in Iraq and Syria, as well as the Houthi rebels in Yemen. As in the Nazi era, this organized destruction effort is aided by academics, NGOs, 501(c)(3) non-profits, publishers, and organized boycott and protest groups which call for the physical, economic, diplomatic, and cultural destruction of Israel.

Mere protest, criticism, and even hate speech do not in any way qualify as genocide, even though these may violate hate speech or discrimination laws. Only incitement to collective destruction, dismantling, removal, and replacement qualifies as a crime in furtherance of genocide. The Boycott, Divestment and, Sanctions movement qualifies as genocidal if its purpose is to destroy the Jewish State by nonmilitary means. By extension, in many countries, efforts to identify, boycott, isolate, harass, and expel Jews are part of this global campaign to destroy Jewish Israel and the overwhelming majority of Jews who identify as pro-Israel — which amounts to an estimated three quarters of all Jews on Earth. 

Adjacent to the crime of genocide, in many jurisdictions worldwide, is the crime of antisemitic conduct, the working definition of which can be seen at the website of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental organization with 35 member countries: holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism.

Updated 2025-12-30 12:10 EST.