Genocide has been alleged against many states throughout history, including France, the United States, Nigeria, China, Cambodia, and others during the Cold War. And in those cases, the charge was not in itself an attack on any people.[1] Israel’s case is different in two respects.
First, Israel has faced the genocide charge across its entire existence. Second, the fury with which the accusation detonated after October 7 – within hours of a real massacre of Jews – is without parallel in the history of such claims.[2] The permanent and reflexive nature of the charge of genocide against Israel diverges from a mere description of events and has become simply a new, anti-Zionist, genocide blood libel to attack and target Jews worldwide.
A study by Holocaust historian Norman Goda, published by Indiana University’s Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, traces the recurring motifs that accompany the genocide accusation against Israel.[3] They include: the claim that Jewish scriptures are inherently genocidal; the erasure of Hamas’s clearly stated aims to exterminate the Jewish state; and the pairing of the genocide charge with a fixation on the killing of children – a modern version of the medieval blood libel, in which Jews were accused of murdering youth.[4]
However, the feature that most sets this accusation apart is that it implicates Jews everywhere.[5]
Part of the GenoLIE narrative holds that Jews worldwide are complicit – as “Zionist enablers,” manipulators of Western governments, or as community leaders said to weaponize accusations of antisemitism to silence critics. As Goda points out, other genocide charges throughout history did not turn Hutus in Belgium or Serbs in in the U.S. into suspects.[6] But a Jew in Paris or Sydney who has never been to Israel is indicted because he is Jewish. That is the racist mechanism of the new blood libel by which a claim about a government’s policy becomes an indictment of a people.
The consequences of this antisemitic rhetoric are real. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2024 – the highest total in the 46 years it has tracked them, following what was already a record year in 2023.[7] And for the first time, most of the incidents – 58% – were tied to Israel or Zionism.[8] [9]
France’s leading Jewish body observed that the relentless framing of Israel as genocidal, and of its supporters as complicit, has worked to demonize Jews and rationalize hostility toward them.[10] In the United States, the antisemitic rhetoric has crossed into both political affiliations, from Hasan Piker on the far-left to Nick Fuentes on the far-right.
The far right’s use of the GenoLIE is the most revealing, as most white nationalists do not legitimately care about Palestine – they simply use it to support their Jew hatred. In late 2023, the American neo-Nazi Mike Peinovich addressed a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, calling Israel “a pure genocidal state,” and claiming that Americans had been tricked into backing Israel by Jewish control of the banks, the media, and the politicians.[11] Similarly, Fuentes calls Israel an ethnostate “committing a genocide” and blames “organized Jewry in America” for domestic ills.[12]
The Global Network on Extremism and Technology found that neo-Nazi groups in Canada moved quickly to exploit the deaths in Gaza to push antisemitic narratives to their own audiences. A sharp rise in white supremacist activity was reported after October 7, with extremists using widespread anti-Israel rhetoric as cover to carry new blood libels into public meetings and protests.[13]
The GenoLIE is dangerous yet deeply revealing of the state of global antisemitism. Because when the genocide libel is applied permanently to the one Jewish state alone, in the language of ancient antisemitic blood libels, to target Jews who are not connected to the alleged conduct, the charge has crossed from politics into pure Jew-hatred.
The “Gaza Genocide” is one of the biggest lies of the 21st century. It was generated and promoted by anti-Zionist and antisemitic networks following the October 7 Massacre to prevent Israel from saving its hostages, delegitimize the Jewish state, and fuel global antisemitism.
Read the next piece to learn more on the Gaza GenoLIE puzzle.
[1]Norman J.W. Goda, “The Genocide Libel,” ISCA Research Paper 2025-3, Indiana University, February 2025. https://isca.indiana.edu/publication-research/research-paper-series/norman-jw-goda-research-paper.html
[2]Ibid.
[3]Ibid.
[4]Ibid
[5]Ibid.
[6]Ibid.
[7]“Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2024,” Anti-Defamation League, April 2025. https://www.adl.org/resources/report/audit-antisemitic-incidents-2024
[8]Ibid.
[9] The ADL counts Israel-related activity as antisemitic where it invokes antisemitic tropes or calls for Israel’s destruction.
[10]CRIF statement (January 2025), quoted in Goda, “The Genocide Libel.” https://isca.indiana.edu/publication-research/research-paper-series/norman-jw-goda-research-paper.html
[11] “Neo-Nazis and the Far-Right Are Trying to Hijack Pro-Palestine Protests,” Vice, November 1, 2023, https://www.vice.com/en/article/neo-nazis-hijack-pro-palestine-protest-mike-enoch/
[12] “Nick Fuentes,” Canary Mission, https://canarymission.org/individual/Nick_Fuentes
[13] “‘Let Them Kill Each Other’: The Israel-Palestine War is the Perfect Storm for Canada’s Far-Right,” Global Network on Extremism and Technology (GNET), King’s College London, October 30, 2023. https://gnet-research.org/2023/10/30/let-them-kill-each-other-the-israel-palestine-war-is-the-perfect-storm-for-canadas-far-right/