Israel and the Jewish people are enduring a broad genocide right now, but the human rights community, including the broad coalition of Jewish and pro-Israel activists, has not yet risen to declare it. While focused on the vast forest of abuses against others, the great tree of genocide against Israel has been overlooked. But the genocide against Israel checks all the boxes of the juridical, intentional and actual definition of that sustained crime.
Some prominent international lawyers are now considering how to facilitate the prosecution, conviction and imprisonment of those who are trying to destroy Israel by military means, as well as civilians in the United States and elsewhere around the world who are complicit by virtue of their funding, incitement and furthering of that goal.
Genocide is among the most powerful words in our lexicon of atrocities, reserved for the most heinous and systematic campaigns of human destruction. The offense vastly rises above ordinary hate speech and prejudice. Genocide means actual, deliberate destruction of a group.
Like so many other triggering words in our society, the term is vastly overused, misappropriated and diluted by the same groups who have called everyone they disagree with a racist, a Nazi and a fascist. These words, when misused, overused or popularly abused, can eventually lose their potency. However, just because thoughtless people cry wolf doesn’t mean wolves don’t exist.
The fact is that genocide has occurred around the world and is still occurring. When we utter the word, it can only mean the internationally legislated definition—that is, specific acts committed with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” That is the sole definition, and it cannot be updated, localized or reimagined.
Genocidal acts violate international law. Unknown to most is that those genocidal actions enumerated in the Genocide Convention also violate U.S. federal law and the local laws of about 100 countries.
Scholars take the term seriously. They know the history. During the 12-year Holocaust that began on Jan. 30, 1933, with the ascent of Adolf Hitler—continuing right through the war years and bludgeoning on until the fall of the Third Reich in the first week of May 1945—the world witnessed a new type of crime against humanity.
This never-before-seen campaign of human destruction involved an evil combination of military power, Wall Street financing, American corporate muscle provided by entities such as IBM, Ford, GM, the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation, plus a profusion of propagandists, mass-media practitioners, doctors, lawyers, judges and economic boycotters. During the 1930s and 1940s, they all came together across international lines to destroy the Jewish people. Poignantly, at the time the crimes were committed, the perpetrators often admitted as much—and some even proudly documented their activities.
During the war years, specifically 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 and international fascist effort to destroy the Jews. Lemkin, an attorney and prosecutor, named this crime “genocide,” a completely new word derived from both Latin and Greek roots to universalize its scope.
Prosecuting this new crime would hold accountable not only the actual killers, but those who were complicit, those who enabled and those who incited. Lemkin began his ideas on the campus of Duke University and then moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked with the U.S. Department of Justice in its juridical program against the Third Reich.
Lemkin set forth his findings in a little-known monograph titled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published by the Carnegie Institute of Peace. Chapter 9 is titled “Genocide: A New Term and New Conception for Destruction of Nations.” It opens with the words, “New conceptions require new terms. By ‘genocide,’ we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group.”
Later, Lemkin’s concept of genocide was expanded and formally adopted by the international community in a global treaty, referred to as the Genocide Convention, criminalizing the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Only five acts were identified as genocide: “(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.
The Genocide Treaty specifies that genocidal actions are committed not only by the killers, but also by those complicit in the killing. Article III states: “The following acts shall be punishable: (a) genocide; (b) conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) attempt to commit genocide; (e) complicity in genocide.”
Genocide thus addressed the full scope of the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Critically, genocide applied to more than the hands-on murderers. It was about those who directly encouraged, aided and abetted group destruction with their words, deeds and economic actions. There was no free-speech exemption. So, radio broadcasters, propagandists, rally organizers and newspaper editors were prosecuted for incitement under Article III(c). Importantly, mere hate speech was insufficient. Only destruction speech qualified as genocide.
Ultimately, after World War II, about 30,000 people were convicted in numerous countries across Europe and in Japan for acting directly or indirectly in concert with the Nazi effort by the guns they fired, the words they wrote, the laws they enacted and the pernicious economic boycotts they perpetrated.
Killing words can be deadly. Killing words become the fathers of mass destruction. Killing words till the social soil for the growth of hate, and ultimately, group annihilation. This is not sophistry; it is case law.
‘Crime against humanity’
For example, just before the 1939 Blitzkrieg, Nazi editor Julius Streicher wrote in Der Stürmer: “A punitive expedition must come against the Jews in Russia. A punitive expedition that will provide the same fate for them that every murderer and criminal must expect. Death sentence and execution. The Jews in Russia must be killed. They must be exterminated root and branch.”
For such crimes, Streicher was convicted and hanged.
Of penetrating importance is that the judges and the framers of the genocide laws held that it was impossible for so many to participate in destroying the Jews without the mass public poisoning of their minds. The judicial verdict against Streicher asserts: “In his speeches and articles, week after week, month after month, he infected the German mind with the virus of anti-Semitism and incited the German people to active persecution. … Streicher’s incitement to murder and extermination at the time when Jews in the East were being killed under horrible conditions clearly constitutes persecution on political and racial grounds in connection with war crimes … and constitutes a crime against humanity.”
Not only was Streicher tried and executed, but Hans Fritzsche, chief of the German Press Division, the man who issued instructions to German newspapers, was also prosecuted. The court found that Fritzsche “incited and encouraged the commission of war crimes by deliberately falsifying news to arouse in the German People those passions which led them to the commission of atrocities.” Hans Fritzsche eventually served eight years in prison, a term adjudicated by a special war-crimes tribunal. The kingpin of German propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, knew that justice was waiting for him and chose to commit suicide before he could be captured by advancing Allies.
The principles of genocide laid out after World War II, including those proscribing destruction speech, have been actively applied across the world. For example, following the 1971 Bangladesh War, an International Crimes Tribunal found Ghulam Azam of the terror group Jamaat-e-Islami guilty of 28 counts of inciting genocide for public denunciations of Hindus and Bengalis as “enemies of Islam” and calling for them to be “eradicated from the soil of East Pakistan.” The Genocide Tribunal found that Azam “expressed hatred and communal feeling towards the Hindu community with intent to destroy or deport this religious group from the country,” and that many of his statements “amounted to clear incitement to commit crimes against humanity and genocide.”
Azam received a 20-year prison sentence.
Sometimes, the destruction speech is ambiguous, though even code words can be damning. In the Rwanda genocide trials, three media personalities were convicted of incitement to genocide: Hassan Ngeze, Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza. The sentencing judge declared: “The power of the media to create and destroy fundamental human values comes with great responsibility. Those who control such media are accountable for its consequences.” The sentencing judge added that “without a firearm, machete or any physical weapon, you caused the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians.”
Explicit calls to destroy are not required. Even if euphemisms, catch phrases or code words are used to incite, adjudicating courts have consistently held that exhortations to kill via euphemisms or slogans can constitute genocide. For example, genocide trials have consistently held that terms of verminization, demonization and other forms of dehumanization or calls to destroy can be considered “incitement to genocide.”
The courts have held that denouncing people as “vermin” connotes that “extermination would be considered normal and desirable.” In Rwanda, Hutu leaders often referred to Tutsis as inyenzi—cockroaches. Belgian radio broadcaster Georges Ruggiu pled guilty to incitement to genocide in the Rwanda genocide trials for calling Tutsis inyenzi, which meant “persons to be killed.”
In 2012, Rwandan Hutu writer Léon Mugesera told an audience that “we the people are obliged to take responsibility ourselves and wipe out this scum.” After the genocide, Mugesera fled to Canada. But he was deported from Canada to Rwanda by virtue of a Canadian Supreme Court ruling that declared “reasonable grounds exist to believe that Mr. Mugesera committed a crime against humanity.”
Turning to tip lines
Over and over again, incitement to destruction of a national, religious or ethnical group has been held to be a genocidal crime.
Unbeknownst to many, international genocide law hits home as local law. Some 100 countries have adopted the Genocide Convention and most of its provisions as fully domestic crimes. That means that any of the enumerated crimes of genocide are integrated as local crimes across the world.
In the United States, the 1987 Proxmire Act, more formally known as the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987, was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan voice vote, thus making all elements of the Genocide Convention legislated federal crimes as well. The Department of Justice has long operated a Genocide Unit. The unit’s website calls itself more formally the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center, and its front-page text declares the unit is designed to prevent the United States from becoming a safe haven for individuals who commit “war crimes, genocide … and other human-rights abuses.” The unit operates a tip line at 866-347-2423. Sometimes, it is a long wait, but any caller sure of their information can cite the Proxmire Act and refer to Agent 70, who recently took the first Genocide Report in memory against those who chant “Globalize the intifada.”
Great Britain is a country whose recent past has not engendered a friendly environment for either Jewish people or Israelis. Today, the British government is considered anti-Israel due to domestic political factors and has concomitantly allowed genocidal actions to fester, including incitement to genocide, complicity with genocide and violations of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” However, before the tide turned against British Jews and Israel, genocide laws were enacted in the United Kingdom. Hence, the authorities are obligated to investigate—and they still publicly promise to do so.
Make no mistake: Such complaints will break new and uncertain legal ground for the United Kingdom in enforcing genocide provisions committed in Great Britain.
But the Greater London Metropolitan Police’s understanding and treatment of laws regarding hate speech and incitement to terrorism is evolving rapidly and more protectively, even if fitfully and sometimes frighteningly. In December, after the massacre of 15 people on Bondi Beach in Australia, the Met arrested a number of persons chanting “Globalize the intifada.” British police declared the phrase has become “a call to destruction.”
In addition, they have already arrested and charged more than 2,700 persons for supporting the terrorism-linked Palestine Action group. The Metropolitan Police also operates a genocide tip line.
In Canada, the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act remains in force. The Canadian government maintains a dedicated website, unit, and tip line that registers specified genocide complaints. If one calls the hotline, cite section 318, titled “Advocating genocide” and related sections.
‘Violations of law’
To this end, a cadre of volunteers and I have created a powerful informational and reporting website, StopGenocideAgainstIsrael.com, which provides all the specifics needed for anyone to make a report. The site includes all the cautions, then includes the exact phone numbers, emails and government genocide websites to report anyone engaged in genocidal conduct against Israel. This includes verbal or textual exhortations to destroy Israel, which is genocide.
In the United States, the Senate Ethics Committee has a stated goal of investigating and referring “violations of law.” It is open to receive incitement complaints, according to staffers.
After the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives, in a bipartisan move, resolved that chanting “From the river to the sea” constituted incitement to group destruction. The House Resolution text specifies that this chant constitutes “a rallying cry for action to destroy Israel and exterminate the Jewish people.” A similar resolution, HR 588, is now pending to similarly declare “Globalize the intifada” as not just hate speech but destruction speech, which is “a call to violence against the Jewish people.”
While active prosecution of incitement and actions advancing genocide against Israel may seem like an idea whose time has come, an elite group of human-rights lawyers has long advocated for it. In 2006, Canadian international jurist Irwin Cotler reacted to Iranian incitement at the United Nations. A Jerusalem Post headline read: “Cotler Advises US to Arrest Ahmadinejad for Inciting to Genocide.” In 2009, Cotler made headlines again in the Columbia Law News: “Leading Human Rights Activist: Iran Is Guilty of Trying to Incite Genocide against Israel.”
The next year, 2010, as a Canadian MP and law professor, Cotler penned for Genocide Prevention Now an essay headlined, “State-Sanctioned Incitement to Genocide in Ahmadinejad’s Iran: The Responsibility to Prevent.” He advocated global enforcement.
Israeli international law expert Avi Bell recently told my own podcast that he has long favored enforcing all genocide laws against those acting to directly and indirectly destroy the Jewish State. Bell was joined by leading civil-rights attorney Nathan Lewin, who asked why the federal genocide law, the Proxmire Act, was not being enforced now. Richard Heideman, who heads up the International Leadership and Security Action Council (ILSAC), wholeheartedly agreed with Lewin and Bell, asserting that “the time is long overdue.”
Naturally, three questions quickly arise in any such discussion. Can Israel be protected from genocide if it is committing genocide in Gaza? This dubious question is answered out of necessity because so many uninformed and misinformed people will ask it.
In truth, Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. Self-defense is not genocide. Military response is not genocide, even if civilian deaths occur due to the deliberate actions of Hamas in creating an entire territory of terror attack tunnels and involving non-combatants. Military preemption is not genocide; it has been a justified act since 1625, when statesman Hugo Grotius codified the notion in his fundamental work On the Rights of War and Peace. Proportionality is based not on equivalent numbers, but on the force required to achieve any just military objective.
The falsehoods and exhortations about genocide committed by Israel mimic the efforts of Goebbels and Streicher to create a myth of evil as a justification for the genocide against Jews and innocents during the time of the Third Reich. It all demonizes Israel to set the stage for a hoped-for ultimate genocidal action against the Jewish people and their Jewish state.
The second question inherently arising asks if the law extends to vocal politicians such as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Yes. The international Genocide Convention, in Article IV, covers all “Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III” and asserts they “shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.”
A third question arises. Yes, the law extends to the funders of incitement, such as the Soros foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and groups acting under the banner of “In Our Lifetime” and “By Any Means Necessary,” as well as to those Golden Calf Jews who support such groups. For those who don’t think a Jew can be prosecuted for such crimes, think again. Buchenwald prisoner Edwin Katzenellenbogen, an American Jewish doctor who cooperated with the guards, was sentenced after the war to a long term in prison by a U.S. Army tribunal.
The Second Holocaust is underway. What has been predicted for years is now rolling out across the planet. The six stages are: Identification, Exclusion, Pauperization, Deportation, Ghettoization, and then, Extermination. We are now only in the early phases. Throughout North America and parts of Europe, such as in Barcelona, Spain, we see mapping of Jewish and Zionist addresses for destructive and repressive action. Everywhere, Jews are starting to abandon their long-cherished homes in the English-speaking world, making aliyah to Israel. Israel has already staged a recent drill practicing for the mass absorption of more than 10,000 people into Israel in a short span of days.
Genocide against Israel advocates may think that once the Jews are concentrated in Israel, adversaries can finish them off with an Iranian bomb or perhaps a Turkish one borrowed from Pakistan. In late 2025, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez publicly regretted that he did not have a “nuclear bomb” to wield against Israel. However, Israel has what it needs to defend against any threat, conventional or nuclear.
In addition, the Hind Rajab Foundation in Belgium is already using local genocide laws against Israelis. The group recently discovered an Israeli soldier in Prague and immediately filed a complaint under Section 7 of the Czech Criminal Code, which covers genocide. The foundation has demanded an investigation.
We are surrounded, just like the Jews in my parents’ day. We are surrounded by an international web of hatred and a spreading determination to destroy the 80% of world Jewry that constitutes Israel and the Jewish families worldwide who support it.
Everyone talks about doing something. Now, everyone everywhere can take action with their phones and their keyboards.
