Jewish voices push back on genocide claims: Marika Sboros

Key topics:

• Prominent Jewish figures reject genocide claims against Israel.

• Media misuse of “genocide” fuels misinformation and antisemitism.

• Calls for legal, moral, and linguistic clarity in Gaza discourse.

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By Marika Sboros

So, prominent Jewish figures around the world have signed an open letter calling on the United Nations and world leaders to impose sanctions on Israel for “unconscionable” actions amounting to genocide in Gaza.

Many more prominent Jews globally vehemently disagree with the claim of genocide against Israel in Gaza – or anywhere else.

In the West, there’s a saying that the pen is mightier than the sword. In the East, sages say that the pen and the sword are one. 

Eastern sages win, hands down, because words are not just descriptors. They are powerful weapons, especially when wielded against Israel and Jews. 

Mainstream media globally have been quick to frame Israel’s military response in its war against Hamas in Gaza as genocide. Too often, they do so with little regard for legal and linguistic precision or historical context. 

As the October 10 ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas holds by the thinnest of threads, media are quick to jump on any Jewish voices willing to amplify their framing. 

In a media landscape increasingly driven by populist outrage and optics, the rush to label Israel’s war as genocide reflects moral confusion, not clarity. In that confusion, truth and facts become collateral damage.

Words erase the context of the genuine genocide that Iran-backed terror groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and assorted civilians committed when they invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023. 

Words blur the context of dead hostages still held in Hamas captivity in flagrant first breach of the ceasefire. In headlines, words morph complex military and humanitarian realities into accusations of genocide that do more than mislead. They foment demonisation of Israel and Jews globally.

Below is a list of six prominent Jews whose words reject the genocide claim against Israel. The list is far from exhaustive. Many, if not most, prominent Jews globally stay below the radar for fear of the backlash and violence that often follow public support for Israel.

Among the brave to speak publicly are:

• Sam Harris, US neuroscientist, atheist philosopher 

Harris is not a Zionist.  He openly critiques the many decisions Israel makes in how it wages this war as “certainly debatable”. He calls the genocide claim, “patently false” and “intellectually dishonest”. 

He says that the meaning of term, genocide is clear – the destruction or attempted destruction of a whole people. And if Israel has perpetrated a genocide in Gaza numbers show it to be “the most inept genocide in history”. 

Tellingly, Harris says, allegations of genocide were already circulating globally on October 8, 2023, before Israel had dropped a single bomb in response to the October 7 atrocities. He warns of the “moral lunacy” in conflating Israel’s actions with genocide while ignoring Hamas’s genuinely genocidal intent on the day.

 “When you have a terrorist organisation that explicitly calls for the annihilation of Jews and you respond militarily, that is not genocide. That is survival,” he says.

• Haim Saban, US billionaire media executive and philanthropist

Saban was born in Egypt, raised in Israel and served in the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) before emigrating. He is best known for founding Saban Entertainment and producing global hits, such as Power Rangers. Saban calls himself a “one issue guy” and says that Israel is his issue. 

In September, he was one of 1200 entertainment industry signatories to an open letter opposing the call for a boycott of Israeli films and rejecting the “implicated in genocide” framing of Israeli institutions. The letter begins: “We know the power of film. We know the power of story. That is why we cannot stay silent when a story is turned into a weapon, when lies are dressed up as justice, and when artists are misled into amplifying antisemitic propaganda.” 

Signatories include Jewish actors Liev Schreiber, Debra Messing and Mayim Bialik, who is also a neuroscientist. 

• Adam Louis-Klein, Canadian anthropologist, writer and musician currently completing a PhD at McGill University 

Louis-Klein frequently condemns the pro-Palestinian lobby’s weaponisation of the Holocaust against Jews by invoking the genocide claim. He says that the claim does not merely deny the Holocaust, but rather “reverses it”, turning the “historical victim into the eternal perpetrator”.

He says that anti-Israel lobbyists use “pseudo-consensus” to treat the genocide accusation as morally self-evident, discourage debate and silence dissent. They build this “consensus” on emotional pressure and “relentless repetition of rumour”, not legal rigour or historical context. They aim to “invert the moral narrative and delegitimise Israel’s actions without engaging with the complexities of warfare or international law”.

• Natasha Hausdorff, UK-based international lawyer, barrister and legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust 

With degrees from Oxford University and Tel Aviv University, Hausdorff specialises in international law and the laws of armed conflict.  She has briefed the UK Parliament and legal forums globally on the misuse of legal terminology in Israel’s war against Hamas.

She argues that the specific legal meaning of genocide – requiring intent to destroy a group in whole or in part – is wholly absent in Israel’s actions. These actions are directed at Hamas, a designated terrorist organisation in many countries, not at the Palestinian people, she says. 

Hausdorff has also condemned South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as an example of “lawfare”. It is the “political weaponisation of international courts” and use of the ICJ “to launder propaganda under the guise of law”, she says.

• Prof Adam Mendelsohn – South African historian and director of the University of Cape Town (UCT) Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies, in the Department of Historical Studies. 

Mendelsohn earned his PhD from Brandeis University in the US. He is internationally recognised for scholarship on Jewish migration, identity and diaspora, particularly in American and South African contexts.

In August 2024, he filed a lawsuit against UCT’s Council for passing two anti-Israel resolutions – one on boycotting Israeli academic institutions, the other on boycotting individuals affiliated with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Supporters of the resolutions, who include Jews, framed them as a response to Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza. 

Mendelsohn’s lawsuit is ongoing and implicitly contests the legitimacy of the genocide claim. He argues that the resolutions politicise university governance, violate academic freedom and damage international research collaboration. He challenges the institutionalisation of genocide accusations in UCT’s academic policy. 

• Michal Cotler-Wunsh, dual Israeli-Canadian national, legal scholar and former Knesset (Israel’s parliament) member

Cotler-Wunsh describes Israel as fighting an “unconventional war” for public opinion raging for decades.  After conventional wars failed to destroy the country, she says, its enemies turned to the battlefield of global perception.

They have systematically co-opted and weaponised international institutions, mechanisms, and principles to demonise, delegitimise, and apply double standards to Israel.

She describes the genocide claim as an “Orwellian inversion of fact and of law” and a “modern-day” version of ancient blood libels against the Jewish state.  She sees the genocide claim as part of a pattern of co-opting and weaponising international institutions, mechanisms and principles to demonise, delegitimise and apply double standards to Israel.  

Cotler-Wunsh grew up in Canada in a family that valued principles of ethical, linguistic and legal precision. She is the daughter of Canadian jurist Irwin Cotler, an emeritus professor of law, former Justice Minister and Attorney General (2003–2006), an emeritus professor of law, and founder and Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He is acknowledged for advancing human rights legislation and strengthening Canada’s legal framework against hate crimes and genocide.

He has forcefully rejected the genocide claim against Israel, calling it “false,” “defamatory” and a “libel against the Jewish people.” His words carry weight. He helped draft Canada’s genocide legislation and served as legal counsel to political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela and Andrei Sakharov. He remains a leading voice in international human rights law.

Globally, there is growing recognition that the consequences of reckless invocation of genocide go far beyond Jews and Israel. It corrodes the moral and legal frameworks that safeguard all humanity from genuine genocidal crimes.

By weaponising language rooted in Jewish historical trauma, the genocide claim turns justice into propaganda and undermines efforts to hold true perpetrators of genocide accountable.

It creates a tragic paradox for Jews who speak publicly in support of pro-Palestinian movements. They empower groups that would murder them in an instant. They lend moral cover to forces that seek to annihilate Israel and cleanse the world of Jews entirely. 

Aligning with such lobbies becomes self-sabotage for Jews, not principled dissent. 

When prominent Jews speak up in defence of Israel, they don’t merely defend a country and the right of Jews to live without being cast as perpetrators of the very crimes that have haunted them for centuries. They also defend the sanctity of historical truth. 

As Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel said: “When you hear the word genocide, think about the victims, not the politics.”

That points to a positive path forward: clarity over slogans, law over libel and a shared commitment to truth that protects all people.