Some "genocide scholars" are anti-Israel propagandists

Humanitarian aid dropped over Gaza (AFP/Getty Images)

Some “genocide scholars” are anti-Israel propagandists

By Hendrik van der Breggen

 

A recent resolution of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) claims Israel is committing genocide. But the resolution is anti-Israel propaganda—and truth-seeking people should not be fooled by it.

Serious doubt can be cast onto the credibility of the IAGS's members (at least some of them), its decision-making process, and its resolution.

Apparently, the membership of IAGS is open to people who are not genocide scholars, which is odd, to say the least. And this casts doubt onto the association of alleged “genocide scholars.” In fact, earlier today a reporter for i24NEWS who is admittedly not a genocide scholar was able to purchase a membership to the IAGS for a mere $30.00!!! (See link below.) Go figure.

Also, of the 500 members of the IAGS, only 129 participated in the resolution vote and 86% of those participants voted in favour of the resolution. If we do our math properly, that’s about 22% of the total IAGS membership. So it’s not at all clear that a whole lot of genocide scholars agree with the resolution.

This lack of clarity, however, did not stop The Guardian from posting this news headline on September 1, 2025: “Israel committing genocide in Gaza, world’s top scholars on the crime say: International Association of Genocide Scholars resolution backed by 86% of members who voted.” But the headline (and article) fails to mention that only about a mere quarter of the whole IAGS membership voted at all. So it’s a big stretch—i.e., propaganda—to say “world’s top scholars on the crime say….”

Moreover, according to Sara E. Brown, PhD, an actual genocide scholar and member of IAGS (who does not agree with the IAGS resolution), there was no critical discussion among members prior to the passing of the resolution. This is odd, too. And casts more doubt onto the legitimacy of the resolution.

If this isn’t disturbing enough, it turns out that the IAGS resolution itself has several problems—problems anyone who thinks critically and cares about truth can discern. I will examine three of those problems here. (I strongly suspect there are more problems, but I’ll leave that examination for another time.)

First, the resolution fails to notice that attacks on civilian infrastructure (hospitals, homes, mosques, etc.) are legitimate military targets, according to international rules of war (i.e., Geneva Conventions), when such infrastructure has been co-opted for war purposes (e.g., for hiding terror tunnels, tunnel shafts, weapons storage, etc.). This is the case in Gaza, but the IAGS resolution ignores this.

Second, the resolution fails to notice that, according to international rules of war, genocide requires intent (that is, “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” per Geneva Convention; italics added for emphasis). As it turns out, Israel’s intent is not to destroy Gazan civilians. Rather, Israel’s intent is to destroy Hamas. This distinction concerning intent renders the genocide charge false. 

Yes, civilian casualties are tragic and, sadly, to be expected in war (as collateral damage), but, again, their destruction is not intended by Israel. In fact, blame for Gazan civilian deaths should be put on Hamas and its supporters. Hamas—the initiator of the war—intentionally placed and places Gazan civilians in harm’s way by embedding fighters among civilians and storing weapons in civilian homes and other civilian infrastructure, rendering them legitimate military targets. Thereby, by Hamas’s design, Israel would unintentionally kill Gazan civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure as it rightly seeks to stop Hamas from killing Israeli citizens (at present and in the future, if Hamas is allowed to regroup). So, again, Hamas and its Gazan supporters, not Israel, are to blame for the deaths and destruction in Gaza. Intent to destroy civilians—Gazan civilians—rests with Hamas and its supporters, not Israel.

And, yes, some Israeli politicians have made angry genocidal remarks, but—significantly—this does not constitute Israeli policy. Israeli policy, as demonstrated repeatedly in the war, has been to minimize civilian casualties. The fact is that before and during the war with Hamas, Israel engaged in extraordinary efforts to protect Gazan civilians from potential harm. How? By warning them of Israel’s invasion by dropping millions of leaflets, sending millions of text and voice messages, and “knocking” (hitting a building’s roof with an low-yield but noisy “bomb” to warn residents that the next bomb will be more dangerous). And Israel has provided humanitarian corridors and safe zones (often made unsafe by Hamas). And Israel has provided tons and tons of food (often stolen by Hamas). These are not characteristics of genocidal intent.

Third, the IAGS resolution makes dubious claims about casualties. It states that there have been “more than 59,000 adults and children” killed in Gaza. Yes, if true, that’s a lot—and it’s horrible. But, significantly, the resolution fails to distinguish between civilians and combatants in its body count. It turns out that a very large portion of the casualty number consists of Hamas combatants, not just civilians. The Times of Israel reports that the fatality proportion of women and children is 51%, so the remaining 49% consists of male adults, many of whom are Hamas fighters.

The loss of civilians, especially children, is of course tragic. Horrible, in fact. Nevertheless, perspective is needed for getting at truth. When compared to other  recent urban wars, in the Israel-Gaza conflict fewer civilians have been destroyed per destroyed combatant. And this comparatively lower number of Gazan civilian casualties in the Israel-Gaza conflict is the case even though Hamas has, unlike the other cases of urban warfare, spent years not only embedding itself among civilians in Gaza but also fortifying its underground war machine (tunnels, weapons stores and manufacturing, booby-trapped buildings, etc.) without providing protection for civilians. Add to this the fact that the misfiring of many Hamas and Islamic Jihad rockets has caused many Gazan casualties, too. Indeed, according to New York Times, about 10 to 20 percent of Hamas’s thousands upon thousands of rockets fail and many fall into Gaza. That’s a lot of self-inflicted damage—and would no doubt also be a significant cause of the rubble and civilian casualties in Gaza. Moreover, the resolution fails to make explicit the fact that many of the “children” in the casualty count are teens who are child soldiers, taught from an early age by their parents and school teachers to hate and kill Jews. Surely, Gazan parents and teachers, not Israel, should be blamed for this evil exploitation—abuse—of their own children! 

So, yes, and sadly, many people, including children, have been killed in Gaza, but many of those deaths—especially the civilian deaths—are not intended by Israel, contrary to what the IAGS would make it seem.

Clearly, then, the resolution of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, which claims Israel is committing genocide, is a piece of anti-Israel propaganda.

Again, truth-seeking people should not be fooled.

 

For additional thought

Joe Brown, “Want to be a renowned genocide scholar? Pay 30$,” i24NEWS, September 3, 2025 (3 minute video).

Sara Brown, “Genocide scholars: Israel rebuke passed without debate,” i24NEWS, September 2, 2025 (8 minute video).

Olivia Flasch, “Rebutting Allegations of Genocide Against Israel,” EJIL: Talk! Blog of European Journal of International Law, January 10, 2024.

International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) Resolution on the Situation in Gaza.

Jeremy Sharon, “Hamas fatality figures for Gaza war are ‘clear disinformation,’ according to newstudy,” The Times of Israel, May 6, 2025.

Luke Tress, “Member of genocide association says group’s leadership pushed through Israel condemnation without discussion,” The Times of Israel, September 2, 2025.

Hendrik van der Breggen, “Gaza is a war machine,” APOLOGIA, March 24, 2025.

Hendrik van der Breggen, “Settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing: Two false assumptions about Israel’s inception,” APOLOGIA, October 8, 2024.

 

I noticed the following Free Press article just after I published my above article (it’s a good read, though the headline should not suggest we don’t trust all experts, because some experts are trustworthy and have genuine expertise; we need to think critically to sort out the trustworthy experts from those who are not trustworthy, to avoid throwing out the baby with the dirty bathwater): 

The editors, “Another Reason Not to Trust the ‘Experts,’” The Free Press, September 3, 2025.

Here are a few more thoughts about experts, from my friend and former colleague Patrick Franklin, PhD, Associate Professor of Theology, Tyndale University (Facebook, September 3, 2025): 

Genuine, legitimate experts are important in helping us to understand complex fields and issues. We need experts. However, in a culture increasingly duped by propagandist ‘authority’ pieces, we need to dig into the details a bit when someone or some publication says “experts say.” Which experts? What proportion of them within the total population of their field? What are their credentials? Are their very specific areas of expert knowledge actually related to the topic at hand? Do they have any conflicts of interest that are relevant? 

Also, experts should be able to communicate the logic of their conclusions and point people toward the evidence. They should not seek to silence or suppress dissenting views, but welcome them as opportunities to demonstrate the truth more clearly. (On the flip side, it is rational to trust experts when they are speaking within their expertise and communicate with clear logic and reliable evidence, even if we don't fully understand all the details ourselves). 

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Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosophy professor (formerly at Providence University College, Canada) and author of A Defence of Israel: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War (paperback can be purchased at Amazon or pdf can be downloaded for free here). 

Gaza is a war machine

 

A Hamas jihadist in a tunnel under Gaza. “Hamas” is an acronym for the Arabic words Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya which in English mean Islamic Resistance Movement. Gaza is 25 miles long and its width varies from about 4 to 8 miles, yet the length of the military-grade tunnel network under Gaza has been estimated to be between 350 and 450 miles. (Photo credit: Ashraf Amra, a pro-Hamas Gazan.)

 

Gaza is a war machine

By Hendrik van der Breggen

 

Gaza is tiny, but it’s dangerous. From my personal research over the past year and a half (as I’ve been following the Israel-Gaza war during my retirement), I have come to the conclusion that Gaza is, for lack of a better description, a war machine.

Gaza is 25 miles long and its width varies from about 4 to 8 miles. Yet the length of the terror tunnel network under Gaza has been estimated to be between 350 and 450 miles. Since Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, many tunnels have been destroyed by Israel, but many remain.

Moreover, there are (were) an estimated 5,700 tunnel shafts coming out into Gazan homes, schools, hospitals, mosques, chicken coops, and fields. And there are (were) huge stockpiles of rockets and other weapons distributed throughout the underground landscape. Much has been destroyed by Israel, but much remains.

Led by Hamas, Gaza has been building its tunnels for almost two decades (reminder: Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas was elected by Gazans in 2006). In fact, many Gazan tunnels were built through the 1990s and 2000s prior to Gazans voting in Hamas. Some tunnels were built between Egypt and Gaza for smuggling purposes (weapons, soldiers, and other supplies were smuggled into Gaza), and some were built as attack tunnels into Israel (used in the early 2000s and in 2014). Many—most—of the tunnels were built within (under) Gaza in recent years and are a part of a war effort. The tunnels facilitate troop movements throughout Gaza, provide access to rocket-launching sites, serve as command centres, protect troops and leaders, provide weapons building areas, facilitate easy access to weapons caches distributed throughout Gaza, store supplies, and imprison hostages. Connected by a web of hundreds of miles of tunnels, Gaza’s towns and cities have been tooled for war—war against Israel.[1]

Not only has the land of Gaza been tooled for war, but also Gaza’s people have been tooled for war. Gazan children (now young adults) have been indoctrinated over the past two decades (or more) to serve not only as fighters but also as human shields—martyrs—in Gaza’s Islamist jihad against Israel. (An Islamist martyr is one who is killed or dies for the cause of Allah, typically via jihad/war, and thus skips Allah’s judgment and gains immediate entrance into paradise/ heaven, which is filled with sensual delights.) The parents and grandparents of Gazan young people also drank heavily at the well of Islamist jihadist doctrine. It should be remembered that many of the older Gazans were original so-called Palestinian refugees who moved to Gaza in 1947–48 and did so to facilitate the (failed) war on Israel by Islamist neighbours bent on wiping out Jews.[2]

This means that Israel’s fight in Gaza is not similar to the urban warfare as in, say, Mosul (when US-backed Iraqis fought to liberate Mosul from the Islamic State in 2016-17). That is, the war in Gaza is not merely a fight that happens, unfortunately, to occur in towns and cities. It’s not due to mere happenstance. Rather, it is due to deliberate decisions by Gazans and years of preparation by Gazans.[3]

This should be emphasized and remembered: The choice for tunnel warfare was made by Gazans years prior to its Hamas-led invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023. Reminder: In that invasion 1,200 Israelis were brutally murdered and 240 hostages taken into Gaza. Over the at least two decades prior to October 7, 2023, Gazans spent billions of dollars (repurposed internationally-supplied aid funds) building terror tunnels, stockpiling caches of weapons, and teaching (indoctrinating) its people to hate and murder Jews. By its massacre of Israelis and then taking hostages into Gaza—a land outfitted for war—it is clear that Gaza’s goal was to have a war against Israel inside Gaza.

In other words, leading up to October 7, 2023, Gaza made itself into a WAR MACHINE. This war machine includes not only its terror-tunnel-infested land abundantly seeded with rockets, grenades, and booby traps, but also its blood-thirsty Jew-hating jihadist soldiers, mostly young men, and jihadist martyr-minded civilians, whether children, mothers, or elderly, willing to die as martyrs—human shields—for the fighters.

Apparently (if my most recent news sources are correct), Hamas has been using the most recent ceasefire to re-group, re-arm, and prepare for yet another October 7-style massacre in Israel.

Yes, many civilian deaths have occurred in Gaza. This is horrible, to be sure. Nevertheless, the number of civilian deaths relative to combatant deaths is low in the Israel-Gaza conflict when compared to urban warfare ratios in Mosul and elsewhere. This is a tribute to the Israeli Defence Forces.[4]

And, yes, among Gazan’s civilians, many Gazan children and women have been killed. This is a tragedy. But keep in mind that for Gaza (led by Hamas), it’s a strategy. And keep in mind that in Gaza the line between civilian and non-civilian is blurry. 

With its many miles of military-grade attack tunnels coupled with the Islamist jihadist mindset of many of its people, Gaza remains a war machine, not a peace-seeking nation.

Westerners in general and Israelis in particular should remember this.[5]

 

NOTES

1. The news agency Reuters published an informative and visually impressive report on the Gazan tunnels about a year ago. See Adolfo Arranz, Jonathan Saul, Stephen Farrell, Simon Scarr, and Clare Trainor, “Inside the tunnels of Gaza: The scale, and the sophistication, of Hamas’ tunnel network,” Reuters, December 31, 2023.

2. For more on this topic, see Hendrik van der Breggen, “Settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing: Two false assumptions about Israel’s inception,” APOLOGIA, October 8, 2024 (see especially reason 3 of part 1 and the whole of part 2).

3. The innocence of large numbers of Gaza’s civilians is dubious. In fact, it very much seems that large numbers of Gaza’s civilians are either terrorists or supporters of terrorists. There is much evidence to support this view. Consider the following:

 

• (a) Evidence of many Gazan civilians cheering when dead Israelis were paraded in Gaza shortly after the Hamas October 7 attack.
• (b) Evidence that many Gazans (including children) were involved in the looting during the October 7 attack.
• (c) Evidence that many Gazan young people have been for years indoctrinated with a murderous anti-Jewish/anti-Israel ideology (in UN schools) and have helped Hamas terrorists by carrying messages and munitions.
• (d) Evidence of 560 to 700 kilometres (350 to 450 miles!) of cement tunnels that were built in Gaza over the past 16 years—so surely many Gazan civilians were aware of this.
• (e) Evidence of 5,700 tunnel shafts being hosted by (i.e., coming out of) homes, schools, mosques, and hospitals all across tiny Gaza—and again, surely, many Gazan civilians were aware of this. And surely many Gazan civilians were aware that the tunnels’ purpose was for war against Israel and to wipe out Jews (per the Hamas charter), yet Gazans did not protest.
• (f) Evidence of hostages being held in civilian homes.

 

For some references concerning the above evidence, see notes for Reply 4 of “Israel’s response to Hamas is not proportional?” which is chapter 12 of my book Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War; link here.

Also, for additional evidence for thinking the people of Gaza are not innocent, see Einat Wilf, “Einat Wilf Answers 18 Questions on Gaza, Anti-Zionism, and the Israel-Hamas War,” 18Forty, December 4, 2024 (80 minute video). Einat Wilf has a BA from Harvard, an MBA from INSEAD in France, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cambridge. Wilf served as an intelligence officer with the Israeli Defense Forces, is a former member of the Israeli parliament, and works presently with the Israeli Citizen Spokespersons’ Office. Also, Einat Wilf is co-author of the book The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (St. Martin’s, 2020), which I highly recommend.

Many Gazans—especially children—are innocent, of course. And some adult Gazans no longer support Hamas. The following recent report from Gatestone Institute is relevant. “Although many Palestinians continue to support Hamas and the ‘resistance’ against Israel, a growing number are speaking out against the terror group.” “If the Palestinians living in Gaza want to end the war, they must revolt against Hamas and provide Israel with information about the whereabouts of the hostages. Sadly, most Palestinians seem unwilling to do so, either out of fear of Hamas or because they simply identify with the terror group and its goal of destroying Israel.” Khaled Abu Toameh, “Palestinians: ‘We Are Dying Because of Hamas,’” Gatestone Institute International Policy Council, March 20, 2025.

4. Yes, we should keep in mind the fact that the civilian-combatant death ratio in Gaza is low when it is compared to other cases of urban warfare in recent history. That is, the other cases of urban warfare by Western democracies have more civilian deaths per combatant death than is the case in Israel’s war against Hamas (even though Hamas has, unlike the other cases, spent years not only embedding itself among civilians in Gaza but also fortifying its underground war machine). And add to this the fact that the misfiring of many Hamas rockets caused many Gazan casualties.

It also is important to keep in mind that before and during the war with Hamas, Israel engaged in extraordinary efforts to protect Gazan civilians from potential harm. How? By warning them of Israel’s invasion by dropping millions of leaflets, sending millions of text and voice messages, and “knocking” (hitting a building’s roof with an unexploding “bomb” to warn residents that the next bomb will explode). And Israel has provided humanitarian corridors and safe zones (often made unsafe by Hamas).

5. And we should remember that the Gazans, led by Hamas, started the war with Israel, a war in which it was foreseeable and planned by Gazans, led by Hamas, that Israel’s military response would appear to Western observers to be lacking proportionality and thus be deemed unjust. How so? By using Western moral qualms (which Hamas does not have) against Westerners. Reminder: Hamas/Gazan terrorists embedded themselves among Gazan civilians (of whom many have aided and abetted the terrorists; see evidence in note 1 above), knowing there would be huge numbers of civilian casualties which constitute, for Hamas, a military strategy, not a moral tragedy. Moreover, the foreseeable-to-Hamas vividness of the horrors of dead civilians, especially children—vividness provided by the terrorists themselves to the world in abundance via photos and video on the internet—is intended by Hamas to play on the oft-emotion-based moral reasoning of Western observers. For many Westerners, bloodshed of civilians is repulsive, full stop, and no further moral reasoning is done to discern who is actually responsible. This is sometimes called “the CNN effect.” The byline of ethicist Shlomo Brody’s article “Israel and the CNN Effect” is helpful here: “Images of bloodshed in Gaza should upset anyone with a healthy moral sense. But they don’t help determine whether the actions that brought these scenes about were ethical.” (Shlomo Brody, “Israel and the CNN Effect,” Mosaic, January 4, 2024.) Brody adds: “We might be saddened by these deaths, but our moral analysis must remain sober. Good reasoning must overcome our instinctive revulsion to bloodshed. We cannot fixate on body counts or CNN coverage. Instead, we must determine with whom culpability lies.” Sober-minded moral reasoning based on evidence shows that the culpability lies with Hamas-led Gaza, but Gaza hides its culpability (along with its fighters) behind the broken and bloody bodies of its Gazan human shields, children included. Thereby Gaza, led by Hamas, gains world sympathy and Israel loses it. The alleged lack of proportionality and alleged injustice, then, are more apparent than real—and more by Hamas design than by Israeli intent—due to Hamas’s wicked machinations coupled with Gazan civilian help and Western gullibility.

 

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Hendrik van der Breggen, PhD, is a retired philosophy professor who lives in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada. Hendrik is author of the book Untangling Popular Anti-Israel Arguments: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War.