“Genocide” Arguments and Counterarguments
In Genocide and Accusations Against Israel in Academic Writing: Arguments and Counterarguments, Comper Center fellow Balazs Berkovits analyzes how accusations of genocide against Israel emerged in academic and intellectual discourse after October 7, 2023, and provides detailed rebuttals.
The document’s purpose is to lay out and examine the arguments used to frame Israel as a genocidal state—such as claims of settler colonialism, dehumanizing rhetoric, premeditated plans to make Gaza uninhabitable, and comparisons between Israeli action in Gaza and the Holocaust.
Alongside a detailed description of each of these arguments, the document offers counterarguments — highlighting logical flaws, selective use of history, or the unwillingness to contend with Hamas’s intentions and actions, among other things. The counterarguments expose the weaknesses in genocide and Holocaust analogies applied to Israel, showing how they often serve political and ideological purposes rather than rigorous academic or legal analysis.