Statements signed by multiple experts and specialists On 16 October 2023, an open letter signed by around 240 international legal experts argued that the Hamas-led attack on 7 October "most probably" constituted an international crime of
genocide, stating that the acts appeared to have been carried out with
intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected group (Israelis). The letter was endorsed by legal experts from prominent institutions, including
Harvard and
Columbia Law Schools,
King's College London, and the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Dan Eldad, former acting State Attorney of Israel from February to May 2020, played a key role in drafting the letter. The
Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, chaired by former Canadian Justice Minister
Irwin Cotler, also signed the letter. On 31 August 2025, the
International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), the world's biggest academic association of genocide scholars, passed a resolution saying that Israel has committed
genocide in Gaza.
Melanie O'Brien, a professor and president of the IAGS, called the resolution a "definitive statement from experts in the field of
genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in
Gaza is genocide". It is the ninth time since its 1994 founding that the IAGS has passed a resolution recognising an ongoing or historical genocide. Titled "Scholars for Truth About Genocide", the letter was signed by several hundred people, including attorney
Alan Dershowitz, and several
Holocaust educators and survivors' children, and was promoted by pro-Israel figures such as
UK Lawyers for Israel and Israel's
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It argued that the IAGS resolution contained significant errors, such as overlooking the role of Hamas, which the letter argued was the only party in the
Gaza war that had committed genocide. On 17 October 2023, it published a "Genocide Emergency Alert" stating that "Hamas targeted Israelis simply because they were Israelis" and describing the attacks as "crimes against humanity, and war crimes." On 24 October 2023, Genocide Watch issued a follow-up statement noting that scholars of Holocaust and genocide studies, including
Gregory H. Stanton and
Israel Charny asserted that Hamas' actions against Israeli civilians to qualify as genocide and
crimes against humanity. The
Jerusalem Institute of Justice argued in March 2024 that the
Palestinian Authority was complicit in the genocide due to its "
Pay for slay" policy, as well as their endorsement of the attack. In an opinion article for
The Hill, Israeli human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky and
Stanislav Pavlovschi, a former judge at the
European Court of Human Rights, asserted that Ghazi Hamad's statement that Hamas would repeat the October 7 massacre "again and again" Sociologist
Martin Shaw viewed Hamas' attack as "a wave of '
genocidal massacres,' localized mass killings whose victims were defined by their Israeli-Jewish identity", adding that the concept of the genocidal massacre, first proposed by
Leo Kuper, was "a logical extension of the notion in the convention that genocide can include destroying a group 'in part.'"
Stephen D. Smith, a specialist in genocide, also characterized the massacres on October 7 as a genocide.
Adam Jones, author of a textbook on genocide, said Hamas' "wild and indiscriminate killing" qualified as a "genocidal massacre" that should be "acknowledged and condemned as such", but the very restrictive intentionality requirement in the legal definition of genocide was still a "high evidentiary bar to reach". Israeli historian and holocaust specialist
Raz Segal similarly said: "I definitely see intent to kill a significant number of members of the group, to instill unbelievable trauma and terror among members of the group. But I don't see intent to destroy in relation to the Hamas attack that would render it an act of genocide." He suggested that the attack might fall under the category of "subaltern genocide", drawing comparisons to the
mass killing of
pied-noirs in Algeria. He stated that the attacks were consistent with
terrorism and mass violence, but that the taking of
hostages for prisoner exchanges indicated that the intent of the attacks was not genocidal. According to international law expert Raphael van Steenberghe, a lack of evidence that Hamas intended to destroy a substantial part of the
Jewish population is "arguably the only obstacle to qualifying the October 7 attacks as involving a crime of genocide", as Hamas "may well have anticipated that their operations could not extend beyond a limited geographical area". Law researcher Avraham Russell Shalev argues that Hamas's long-standing ideological framework is relevant for assessing genocidal intent. Shalev states that the scale, brutality, and targeting patterns of the October 7 attacks reflect Hamas's aims and that the attack represents not only a genocidal act but the operationalization of a sustained genocidal worldview. Genocide scholars have argued that although there was a clear intention to kill a significant number of members of a group, genocide is more than that - it requires an intent to destroy a group or a substantial part of it, stated that the internal conflict caused by the
2023 Israeli judicial reform was interrupted by "Hamas' genocidal attack on 7 October 2023". He also predicted that the "
Netanyahu government's genocidal reaction to Hamas's genocide" would further endanger internal democracy.
Comparisons to the Holocaust British historian
Niall Ferguson characterized the events of October 7 as indicative of Hamas' intent to re-enact the
Holocaust, and stated that Hamas should be "destroyed" to prevent this.
Gideon Greif, a Holocaust historian, drew parallels between the October 7 attacks and the Holocaust in an article for
Maariv. He highlighted the infliction of extreme suffering, including immolation, mutilation of corpses, alleged rape, and the kidnapping of babies; and the shared antisemitic hatred between
Nazis and Hamas as evident in recorded statements of Hamas operatives proudly announcing the murder of
Jews; and the extreme lack of mercy displayed by the attackers. Philip Spencer, a genocide scholar and author of numerous papers about modern
antisemitism, stated that the violence on October 7 was "deliberately carried out to remind Jews of the extreme violence used by the
Einsatzgruppen". Israeli historian
Havi Dreifuss wrote that "Even though Hamas is unable to replicate the scale of the Holocaust, one cannot ignore the numerous voices that rightly point to experiential elements and ideologies that exhibit similarities", also adding that "These men, women, and children weren't murdered for their actions, but rather, as in the Holocaust, for their very existence." According to German political scientist
Matthias Küntzel: "there are indeed clearly identifiable lines of continuity linking the anti-Jewish terror of the Nazis with that of Hamas." Küntzel described October 7 as the result of widespread
antisemitism in the
Arab world which dated back to the 1930s, claiming that Hamas viewed the Holocaust as "a brilliant achievement that should be repeated". British academic
Omar McDoom wrote in the
Journal of Genocide Research that comparisons between the Holocaust and October 7 are indicative of a pro-Israel bias in sections of the
Holocaust studies community. McDoom argues that the comparison is "problematic" because "the Germans were not an occupied and oppressed people. And
Gaza is not a powerful, expansionary state. To the contrary." Genocide scholar
Omer Bartov called the comparison "false, misleading, and ideologically driven", arguing that unlike the Holocaust, the root cause was not antisemitism but decades of Israeli oppression. Some scholars have cautioned against narratives that frame marginalized groups as existential or genocidal threats, arguing that similar accusations have historically been used to justify repression. The
New York Review of Books published an open letter from 16 scholars of antisemitism and the Holocaust which stated:Israeli leaders and others are using the Holocaust framing to portray Israel's collective punishment of Gaza as a battle for civilization in the face of barbarism, thereby promoting racist narratives about
Palestinians. This rhetoric encourages us to separate this current crisis from the context out of which it has arisen. Seventy-five years of displacement, fifty-six years of occupation, and sixteen years of the
Gaza blockade have generated an ever-deteriorating spiral of violence that can only be arrested by a political solution. There is no military solution in Israel-Palestine, and deploying a Holocaust narrative in which an “evil” must be vanquished by force will only perpetuate an oppressive state of affairs that has already lasted far too long. Writing in the
Journal of Genocide Research, Abdelwahab El-Affendi argued that accusations of genocidal intent have at times been embedded in broader narratives of insecurity and conspiracy, including historical examples in which Jews were portrayed as threats to dominant groups, and suggested that such framing warrants critical scrutiny in contemporary debates. In December 2023 the
International Association of Genocide Scholars published a research brief arguing that the statements of Hamas leadership and the scope and intent of the October 7 attacks aligned with
Hamas' 1988 charter, and shows that the attack was genocidal in nature. In an interview with
Al Jazeera in December 2023, former
ICC prosecutor
Luis Moreno Ocampo said that the attack on October 7 was "...a genocide, because it's an attack seeking to destroy a group, in this case Israelis, in Palestine", something he bases on conversations he had while working in the region, while acknowledging that the
2017 Hamas charter could, after investigation, show that they have adjusted their goals. He also said that
Israel's siege of Gaza "is a
crime against humanity and a form of
genocide", and called for investigations of both parties. == Public discourse ==