It is precisely at this decisive point that the accusation against Israel fails. The stated war aims, the actual chains of command, the military protective measures and the extensive humanitarian coordination do not present a picture of a campaign of annihilation. They show a war against Hamas, which deliberately built its military structures amid the civilian population.
The American military scholar John Spencer put this contradiction unmistakably into words in July 2025. Spencer has studied urban and subterranean warfare for years. Since the attack of October 7, 2023, he says he traveled into the combat zone several times with Israeli forces, spoke with political and military decision-makers, examined operational procedures and observed the selection of military targets.
His finding is clear: Nothing about the warfare he observed corresponded to a military campaign aimed at destroying the Palestinian population. What he saw was an army fighting an opponent deeply embedded in civilian areas while using considerable means to limit harm to civilians.
Genocide Is a Legal Term, Not Another Word for War
The United Nations Genocide Convention lists several possible acts, including killing members of a group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting living conditions calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction.
These acts alone, however, are not sufficient. There must also be the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such. In international law, this special intent to destroy is known as dolus specialis .
📘 The Decisive Standard
High casualty figures, destroyed buildings or severe humanitarian consequences do not in themselves prove genocide. What must be proven is the specific intent to physically destroy a protected group precisely because of its membership in that group.
A war can be brutal, destructive and full of human tragedies without being genocide. Even possible mistakes by individual soldiers, disproportionate attacks or other violations of international humanitarian law would not automatically fulfill the specific legal definition of genocide.
This distinction is not a legal technicality. It prevents every major war from subsequently being declared genocide. Anyone who detaches the term from the necessary intent to destroy turns the gravest crime under international law into a political accusation that can be used arbitrarily.
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The International Court of Justice Has Not Found Genocide
One of the most persistent false claims is that the International Court of Justice has already ruled that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. No such judgment exists to date.
In 2024, the Court ordered provisional measures. These were intended to protect possible rights under the Genocide Convention, prevent irreparable harm and secure humanitarian assistance. Provisional measures do not, however, decide the merits and do not constitute a conviction of Israel.
The South Africa v. Israel case is still ongoing. Israel filed its Counter-Memorial on time in March 2026 (Counter-Memorial). The Court then set new deadlines: South Africa’s Reply is due on November 22, 2027, and Israel’s Rejoinder must be filed by May 22, 2029. The subsequent procedural steps remain reserved for a later decision.
⚠️ What The Hague Has Not Decided
The International Court of Justice has so far neither found that Israel is committing genocide nor conclusively examined the genocide accusation on the merits. Anyone who turns provisional protective measures into a final judgment is spreading a legally false account.
The pending proceedings prove neither guilt nor innocence. They do show, however, how unserious it is to spread an accusation that has not yet been clarified as an established fact. The legal examination will take years. In large parts of the public sphere, however, Israel’s political condemnation had already been completed before all the written submissions had even been filed.
Israel’s War Aim Is to Dismantle Hamas
The war did not begin with an Israeli plan to destroy Gaza’s population. It began with the attack by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7, 2023. According to official Israeli figures , more than 1,200 people were murdered and 251 people were abducted to the Gaza Strip as hostages.
Israel’s stated war aims were to dismantle Hamas’s military and political structures, free the hostages and prevent another attack on this scale. The target was an armed organization, not the Palestinian population as an ethnic or national group.
Supporters of the genocide accusation frequently attempt to replace the missing military intent to destroy with individual statements by Israeli politicians. Statements by Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant or members of the right-wing political fringe are particularly often removed from their specific context and presented as an alleged overall order from the Israeli army.
Political rhetoric and operational command, however, are not the same thing. John Spencer points out that politicians such as Bezalel Smotrich or Nissim Vaturi do not command troops and do not make tactical targeting decisions. What matters are the army’s actual orders, rules of engagement and target reviews.
Netanyahu’s reference to Amalek was also declared alleged proof of a plan of annihilation. Spencer points out that the memory of Amalek is also used in Jewish commemorative contexts as a warning against existential threats. A historical or religious allusion does not become a military order to murder a population.
Spencer reports from his own observations of operations that were delayed or aborted because children or other civilians were near a military target. He describes soldiers who came under fire and nevertheless were not immediately allowed to return fire because doing so could have endangered bystanders.
Israel used text messages, phone calls, leaflets, radio announcements, evacuation maps and direct warnings. Published IDF data document millions of messages, leaflets and voice recordings sent, as well as tens of thousands of direct phone calls. The army also established escape routes, published numbered area maps and temporarily halted operations so that civilians could leave combat zones.
An army tasked with destroying a population would not call off its attacks because civilians were nearby. It would not send warnings, open evacuation routes or limit its own tactical advantages in order to avoid civilian harm.
None of these measures automatically makes every attack free of error. They do, however, contradict the claim that the fundamental objective of Israeli warfare is the physical destruction of Gaza’s population.
Humanitarian Aid Is Not a Side Detail in the Evidence
The contradiction in the genocide accusation becomes particularly clear in the humanitarian measures. Israel enabled the entry of large quantities of food, water, medicine, medical equipment, fuel and shelter during the war.
According to Israeli government figures , a total of 112,000 trucks carrying aid had reached Gaza by early 2026. According to Israel, it coordinated 16 field hospitals, the entry of 55,000 tons of medical equipment and medicines, and the departure of 42,000 people for medical treatment or other approved reasons.
The water supply was not simply cut off either. Three pipelines from Israel supplied millions of liters of water daily. A desalination plant in southern Gaza was connected to the Israeli power grid, allowing its daily output, according to Israel, to increase from approximately 2,000 to more than 15,000 cubic meters. Fuel deliveries for pumping stations and additional desalination plants were also coordinated.
A particularly strong counterargument to the alleged intent to destroy is the polio vaccination campaigns. After the virus was detected in Gaza again in 2024 following decades of absence, Israel, the World Health Organization, UNICEF and other partners coordinated regional humanitarian pauses, the transport of vaccines and the necessary cold chain.
According to the World Health Organization , exactly 558,963 children were vaccinated in the first round. In the second round, 556,774 children received another dose. In February 2025, an additional campaign reached nearly 603,000 children.
Such measures are incompatible with a policy whose aim is the physical destruction of that same population. Regional humanitarian pauses for vaccination campaigns, the electricity supply to a desalination plant, field hospitals and medical evacuations contradict the alleged intent to destroy.
Hamas Deliberately Moved the Battlefield into the Civilian Population
The Gaza war is not taking place on a clearly demarcated military training ground. For years, Hamas has built a military system within and beneath densely populated residential areas. Tunnels, weapons depots, command centers and launch sites were established in or near residential buildings, schools, mosques and hospitals.
This practice is not merely an Israeli claim. The U.S. Department of Defense stated as early as November 2023 that its own findings confirmed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad had used some hospitals to support military operations, store weapons and hold hostages.
The Israeli armed forces documented tunnel entrances, weapons, communications equipment and militarily used rooms in several hospital complexes. Later operations also targeted command centers that, according to Israel, were operated inside or immediately adjacent to medical facilities.
Hospitals and schools enjoy special protection in war. However, this protection does not amount to military immunity if an armed organization misuses such facilities for combat operations, weapons storage, or command centers.
This does not absolve Israel of its duty to distinguish, act proportionately, and take precautions. But it does explain why an attack on a militarily used part of a civilian building does not automatically constitute an attack on the population as such.
Hamas did not seek proximity to civilians despite the danger, but precisely because of its military and propagandistic advantages. Israel must either refrain from the attack or be held responsible for the consequences of a method of warfare that Hamas itself chose in every counterstrike.
The resulting images are subsequently stripped of their military context and disseminated as evidence of an Israeli intent to annihilate. In this way, Israel’s duty to protect is turned against Israel itself.
Casualty figures do not prove an intent to annihilate
The number of dead and injured in Gaza is appalling. Yet even a very high casualty figure does not answer the legal question of whether Israel intended to destroy the Palestinian population as a group.
The figures regularly cited come primarily from Gaza’s Ministry of Health, which operates under Hamas rule. The published totals do not reliably distinguish between civilians and combatants. Nor does the category “child” fundamentally mean anything other than every person under the age of 18, and it says nothing about whether an older adolescent was recruited by an armed group or directly involved in hostilities.
Nor does a civilian occupation automatically prove exclusively civilian status. John Spencer points to cases in which individuals were initially portrayed solely as journalists or medical workers and were later honored in publications by Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad as their own fighters or commanders.
Each individual case must be examined. Unverified occupational labels, age groups, and totals must not be assembled into an apparent case for a deliberate policy of annihilation.
Even if every published casualty figure were accepted without qualification, this still would not establish genocidal intent. Casualty figures can be important for investigating individual attacks, questions of proportionality, and humanitarian assessment. But they do not replace proof of the specific intent to annihilate.
Every serious war suddenly becomes a genocide
Spencer identifies a development that extends far beyond Gaza. The term genocide is increasingly used for practically every war that is particularly destructive, causes many civilian casualties, or produces emotionally charged images.
By this standard, numerous major battles and military operations of past decades would subsequently have to be labeled genocide. The fight against the so-called Islamic State destroyed large parts of Mosul and Raqqa. The wars in Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan caused enormous civilian casualties. Yet destruction and casualty figures alone were not used to infer an intent to annihilate the respective populations.
Only in Israel’s case does the war itself already seem to count as proof of criminal intent. The Jewish state is theoretically supposed to possess a right to self-defense after a massacre, but in practice is not allowed to wage a war that looks like a real war against an enemy in a densely built-up area.
This double standard is not accidental. It becomes antisemitic when the definition of genocide is expanded exclusively against Israel, thereby delegitimizing the state’s right to exist, and every Israeli soldier is categorically declared a perpetrator of a campaign of annihilation.
This does not mean that every criticism of Israel is antisemitic. But anyone who imposes the same impossible requirements on no other state, denies only Israel the right to military self-defense, and ignores all countervailing information is no longer engaging in neutral human-rights criticism.
The genocide accusation does not withstand reality
The people of Gaza have suffered terribly in this war. That is a human tragedy and not an aside. But human suffering must not be used to strip legal terms of their meaning.
Israel waged war against an armed organization that carried out a massacre, abducted hostages, built its military infrastructure among the civilian population, and incorporated the deaths of its own population into its political and propaganda strategy.
At the same time, Israel warned civilians, opened evacuation routes, postponed attacks, coordinated aid deliveries, operated water pipelines and desalination plants, enabled medical treatment, and supported vaccination campaigns for hundreds of thousands of children.
These facts are incompatible with a campaign whose objective is said to be the destruction of the Palestinian population. They are consistent with an extremely difficult urban war in which a regular army is fighting an adversary that has deliberately embedded itself in civilian spaces.
✔️ In summary
Genocide requires prohibited acts and demonstrable intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or in part, as such. No such intent to annihilate has been established for Israel’s war against Hamas. Israel’s stated war aims, military protective measures, evacuations, aid deliveries, water supply, medical coordination, and vaccination campaigns weigh against a plan of annihilation. The International Court of Justice has not so far found genocide. High casualty figures and severe destruction make a war tragic, but do not automatically make it genocide.
Anyone who ignores all these facts and nevertheless presents the genocide accusation as established truth is no longer arguing on the basis of international law. They are using international law as a political weapon against Israel.
ℹ️ Factual basis and primary sources for the article 📑
▶️ John Spencer:
I’m a war scholar. There is no genocide in Gaza
Spencer’s military and legal argument against the genocide accusation, his observations of IDF practice, and his assessment of casualty data and dual roles, published on 24 July 2025.
▶️ Urban Warfare Institute:
John Spencer
Biographical information on Spencer’s military career, research, and work in the field of urban warfare.
▶️ United Nations:
Definitions of Genocide and Related Crimes
Official definition of genocide and explanation of the physical and mental elements of the crime.
▶️ International Court of Justice:
South Africa v. Israel, official case page
Official overview of the main proceedings, which are still pending.
▶️ International Court of Justice, new deadlines:
Order on fixing of time-limits: Reply and Rejoinder
Order of 21 May 2026 setting the deadlines for South Africa’s Reply by 22 November 2027 and Israel’s Rejoinder by 22 May 2029.
▶️ Terrorist attack of 7 October 2023:
IDF: More than 1,200 murdered and 251 hostages abducted
Official Israeli summary of the casualty and hostage figures from the attack of 7 October 2023.
▶️ Israel’s war aims:
Israel’s Objectives and Current Operation
Official summary of the three stated objectives: dismantling Hamas’s military and political capabilities, returning the hostages, and preventing another threat from Gaza.
▶️ Evacuations and warning measures:
Data Regarding Evacuation of Civilian Population Within Gaza
Documentation of phone calls, text messages, voice recordings, and leaflets used to warn and evacuate civilians.
▶️ Numbered evacuation maps:
Area numbers for evacuating high-risk areas
Documentation of the numbered area maps and information on evacuation routes.
▶️ World Health Organization and UNICEF:
Around 560,000 children vaccinated in first round
Documentation of the first polio vaccination round, with 558,963 children vaccinated and regional humanitarian pauses of nine hours per day.
▶️ Second polio vaccination round:
Second round of polio campaign completed
Documentation of the second vaccination round, with 556,774 children vaccinated.
▶️ Additional polio vaccination campaign:
Polio campaign reaches around 603,000 children
Documentation of the additional vaccination campaign in February 2025.
▶️ Humanitarian supplies:
Humanitarian aid to Gaza, updated figures
Israeli figures on aid trucks, medical deliveries, field hospitals, vaccinations, and approved departures.
▶️ Water infrastructure and supply:
Humanitarian Aid to Gaza Since the Ceasefire
Israeli figures on aid deliveries, water pipelines, desalination plants, and medical care.
▶️ U.S. Department of Defense:
Pentagon press briefing on Hamas use of hospitals
U.S. intelligence assessment of the military use of some hospitals, tunnels, and command facilities by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
▶️ Israeli forces:
Hamas operations in hospitals
Documentation on weapons, tunnels, command centers, and military infrastructure in or near medical facilities.
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