Confronting the Genocide Libel

Recently, the press gave much coverage to a declaration by the International Association of Genocide Scholars—an organization that anyone can join by paying a $30 fee, as evidenced by fake accounts created under the names of Adolf Hitler and a sci-fi villain—that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Norman J.W. Goda, an actual historian of the Holocaust who has stood up against mob pressure to endorse this canard, recently gave an interview on the subject to the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner. There is no reason to suspect Chotiner of bad faith, only ignorance of the nature of warfare and of genocide, and of having absorbed much propaganda about the war in Gaza.