Gaza Genocide deniers are no different from Holocaust deniers, except that their denial abets the genocide itself

One of the most shocking and appalling aspects of the Nazi Holocaust was the way the Nazis documented their crimes. Survivors, of course, often told their stories of the atrocities they experienced, but for the sheer scope and scale of the crime, the world—and the Nuremberg trials—were able to rely on evidence amassed by the perpetrators themselves. 

Despite that documentation, Holocaust denial has persisted over the years and is seen as one of the most heinous expressions of anti-Jewish hate.

I grew up around numerous Holocaust survivors, and, despite many of them being able to rebuild some kind of life, that number tattooed on their arms and the everlasting memory of what had happened to them and their loved ones was indelible.

And so, I am doubly outraged at the rampant denial of the genocide in Gaza, a denial that, unlike Holocaust denial, is having a profound impact on policy and is being used to accelerate the very genocide it denies.

On Friday, we saw an utterly appalling example of it from its leading purveyor, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

After the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) finally confirmed that famine had gripped the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu called it a “baseless lie” and accused the IPC of a “modern blood libel,” appropriating an old antisemitic canard that caused the deaths of untold numbers of Jews in its day to defend his own willful employment of starvation as a tool, not of war, but of genocide.  

It was only the latest in what has become a bizarre trend in Israel and among its supporters of literally telling people not to believe their lying eyes when they see emaciated or even dead babies, much less when they hear Israeli officials confirm that they have never had any evidence of Hamas allegedly “stealing aid” just to make Israel look bad. 

Nearly two years on, the denial persists

We’ve seen the shameful denial of starvation in Gaza, a denial that has been present all over mainstream media. Both the New York Times and the so-called “Free Press” (an outlet started by the notorious racist, Bari Weiss) have argued that the cases of starving babies that the whole world saw were actually children that had “pre-existing conditions,” as if such children would not be the very first to be killed or devastated by Israel’s campaign of starvation. 

This barbaric argument is just one way that Gaza genocide denial manifests.

Another is to argue that Israel is “trying to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza”, a blatantly false claim often made by Israel and its supporters. 

Israel tries to bolster this claim by arguing that a high percentage of Palestinians killed by direct violence were “militants.” That was always a clear lie, but it was exposed as never before on Thursday, when a joint report from +972 Magazine and The Guardian revealed that the IDF’s own database showed that 83% of the deaths Israel recorded were not among those Israel itself listed as members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, a list which included 47,653 names. 

Considering that the office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence stated in February 2025 that “Hamas had 20,000 to 30,000 fighters before October 2023. Israeli press estimates that 16,000 to 18,000 fighters remain,” and that Islamic Jihad’s fighting force is well known to be far smaller than Hamas’, it is clear that the Israeli list reported in The Guardian is at least close to comprehensive. 

Far from the 1:1 ratio or sometimes 2:1 that Israel claimed as civilian to militant casualties, this figure of nearly 5 to 1 would be extremely high by the standards of modern warfare. And that’s before we even account for the fact that Israel has a very broad definition of “militant” that often includes civil servants, or just men of fighting age, in addition to people being on their lists under false or very loose pretenses.

A more pedestrian form of genocide denial has recently risen to the top of Netanyahu’s list of favorite talking points. As he told a far-right podcaster earlier this week, “If we wanted to commit genocide, we would have done it in one afternoon.”

This sickening argument relies on the notion that Israel could have unleashed even more firepower on the civilian population of Gaza. 

Step back and examine this argument. Can you imagine Adolf Eichmann, at his trial, arguing that if the Nazis had wanted to kill all the Jews, why did they put any of them into concentration and work camps rather than simply eliminating them? Why take more than three years after the decision to implement the Final Solution to kill all those Jews they had already confined? 

That is exactly, and without exaggeration, the argument Netanyahu is making. And he’s far from the only one. Anyone with a Twitter, Reddit, or other major social media account has seen pro-Israel troglodytes making the same case.

It’s an argument that is easily belied by the fact that no genocide ever has been so explicitly declared as such by the perpetrator as Israel’s genocide in Gaza. From the very start of Israel’s operations in October 2023 when Yoav Gallant brazenly declared that “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly,” there have been repeated statements by Israeli leaders declaring their genocidal intent, which is usually the hardest element of the crime of genocide to establish. 

Israel Katz, currently Israel’s foreign minister, said, “I ordered to immediately cut off the water supply from Israel to Gaza. Electricity and fuel were cut off yesterday. What was will not be.” There are many more examples. 

Yet denial persists. In the media, in the words of pro-Israel pseudo-progressive as well as far-right politicians, the denial of genocide remains ubiquitous. And it has real-world effects.

Clearly, the persistence of genocide denial in Gaza helps to fuel the ongoing refusal by most countries that have any influence over Israel to act in any way beyond empty rhetoric and performative stunts that have no effect on Israel’s behavior, such as the declaration of intent to recognize a Palestinian state.

Denial of the genocide also exhausts those of us trying to stop it, diverting some of our energy to arguing that the genocide is real. On top of these effects, the denial by so many of the world’s leaders and some pockets of popular forces is a moral obscenity which, given the massive documentation in real time of the genocide, is even worse than the “see no evil, hear no evil” of so many Germans in World War II. 

Serving the truth

Politics, from the local neighborhood to the global stage, is not a forum for honesty. Even the noblest actors use tools of communication to cleanse their own side and paint their opposition in the most negative light. It’s an inevitable aspect of public communications in a political arena. 

But the denial of something as directly and monumentally awful as genocide goes far beyond the normal tactics of political dissembling and into the realm of moral abomination. 

For Jews, especially those of us who have known Holocaust survivors all our lives, denial of the Holocaust provokes rage, disgust, and despair for the human condition. It is doubtless the same for the descendants of victims of the slave trade, the genocide of First Nations across the world, the Armenians, and a sadly long list of other examples.

For the many people of all ethnicities who have a conscience and can acknowledge the reality in Gaza, the denial of this genocide that is happening not only right now but right before our eyes is an obscenity of the highest order. 

“Never Again” has been exposed as a sham slogan, not only to be used for some people but not others, but even to be employed to justify and perpetuate a modern-day Holocaust in Gaza. If it is ever to have any real meaning, if it is ever to be applied universally and equally, we must be able to speak the truth. And the ultimate test of our ability to do that is speaking out when we see crimes committed by our own people, our own nation, even our own family. 

We also need to be able to put each event in context, especially if we want to prevent them in the future. There is a reason we strive for an unattainable goal like truly blind justice. The better we do in that endeavor, the more likely horrors like Gaza and the still-widespread support for that genocide can become a dark relic of history.