‘Gaza genocide lie’: Global alliance launches initiative to counter ‘modern blood libel’ against Jewish state

An alliance of 55 organizations this week launched an initiative to counter the “Gaza genocide lie,” the claim that Israel is conducting a genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The alliance described this claim as the “generated and orchestrated genocide lie promoted by anti-Zionists and antisemitic networks in the U.S., Europe and around the world.”

“The ‘Gaza GenoLIE’ is the most dangerous example of a decades-long deliberate and systematic hijacking, redefinition, inversion, and weaponization of facts and law,” said the International Legal Forum, one of the organizations that joined the initiative.

Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism, added: “We’ve watched this lie spread from social media into classrooms, city councils, and even Congress, and it has emboldened people to harass and threaten Jews in broad daylight.”

“The Gaza GenoLIE campaign exposes this libel for what it is: a coordinated disinformation effort, not a legitimate critique. Antisemites don’t get to hide behind a hashtag.”

On its website, “gazagenolie.com,” the initiative highlights eight “puzzle pieces” used to build and support the false claim.

In eight short essays, the website lays out how the facts all lead to one conclusion: “The ‘Gaza Genocide’ is one of the biggest lies of the 21st century.”

“It was generated and promoted by anti-Zionist and antisemitic networks following the October 7 Massacre to prevent Israel from saving its hostages, delegitimize the Jewish state, and fuel global antisemitism.”

Almost immediately after the October 7th attack, the Gaza GenoLie campaign began: pic.twitter.com/TjqtkJ10L8

— CAMERA (@CAMERA4Truth) August 17, 2026

‘Genocide’ claims preceded the Israeli response to Oct 7

It begins by highlighting that the “genocide claim” started long before the Israeli military even entered the Gaza Strip in response to the Oct. 7 invasion and massacre.

“By the next day, the word ‘genocide’ was already being widely used on social media and in the streets, though Israel’s ground operation had not yet started.”

“Put simply, the GenoLIE arrived before any meaningful Israeli response began,” the website notes, listing as examples a Times Square rally that celebrated Hamas’ attack while it was still underway, and an October 13 post by current NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who wrote, “We are on the brink of genocide of Palestinians in Gaza right now.”

Misuse of the term ‘genocide’

Proponents of the genocide claim were forced to significantly change the original meaning of the term in order to wield it against Israel, the initiative noted. By now, it is even being used by activists to describe the military operations in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah.

“Despite its use by the GenoLIE promoters, ‘genocide’ is not a synonym for mass killing, or for a war with heavy civilian losses. It is a specific crime with a specific legal definition, and the gap between its popular use and what it requires in a courtroom is massive.”

The initiative added that the most crucial element of the term’s definition in the 1948 Genocide Convention is the word “intent.”

As Israel “went to extraordinary lengths to minimize civilian casualties, including by sending out numerous warnings before each strike and following strict rules of engagement, even when doing so put its own civilians and soldiers at risk,” the conclusion is that “none of these actions are consistent with genocidal intent.”

Israel said it fights Hamas, not Palestinians

The next piece of the puzzle highlights the clear statements of intent by Israeli leaders, particularly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the Israeli war is targeting Hamas, not the civilian population, despite many claims to the contrary, often citing reckless, out-of-context remarks by junior ministers.

The officially stated war aims marked the return of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas as the main goals: “They refer to an armed terror organization – its fighters, weapons, and rule. A campaign designed to decimate a population does not define victory as the return of its hostages and the fall of a regime which persecutes its own people in addition to Israel’s.”

Alongside more well-known arguments regarding the exceptionally low civilian-to-combatant ratio of casualties, the initiative also highlighted that Israel agreed to “coordinated pauses in its military operations so that the World Health Organization and UN agencies could facilitate a mass vaccination drive” when polio broke out in the enclave in the summer of 2024.

“A state seeking to destroy a people does not suspend its own defensive combat operations to vaccinate that people's children.”

‘Genocide’ claim targets all Jews, not just Israel

The accusation of genocide against Israel is significantly different from similar claims brought against other countries, as it targets not only the Jewish state, but Jews worldwide, who have experienced a historic wave of hatred and violence over the past three years.

“The permanent and reflexive nature of the charge of genocide against Israel diverges from a mere description of events and has become simply a new, anti-Zionist, genocide blood libel to attack and target Jews worldwide,” the initiative noted.

“Part of the GenoLIE narrative holds that Jews worldwide are complicit – as ‘Zionist enablers,’ manipulators of Western governments, or as community leaders said to weaponize accusations of antisemitism to silence critics.”

Previous cases of genocide claims “did not turn Hutus in Belgium or Serbs in in the U.S. into suspects. But a Jew in Paris or Sydney who has never been to Israel is indicted because he is Jewish. That is the racist mechanism of the new blood libel by which a claim about a government’s policy becomes an indictment of a people.”

The ‘journalist assassinations’ hoax

One of the most popular claims advanced to support the genocide lie is that Israel has “intentionally targeted journalists to suppress war coverage.” However, in recent months, investigations and even acknowledgements by the terror groups have repeatedly demonstrated that a large proportion of the alleged “journalists” were, in fact, active terrorists.

“In June 2026, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)… opened a full review of its Gaza database after Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published obituaries identifying some of their own dead fighters – men CPJ had listed as journalists. Analysis of CPJ’s slain journalists database shows that a staggering 72% of the alleged murdered journalists had direct ties to Hamas, PIJ, or other terror groups.”

“Furthermore, even if alleged journalists do die in an active warzone where urban combat with a cynical terror group is taking place, it does not prove there is a deliberate campaign occurring to silence the press,” the initiative noted.

Genocide claims ignore widespread use of human shields

One reason for the high number of civilian victims is Hamas’s constant, systematic and widespread use of civilians to shield military objectives from attack.

“When a party embeds its military operations inside protected civilian sites, it bears primary responsibility for the resulting danger to civilians, and the presence of human shields reshapes how any strike must be judged,” the initiative said.

As media reports and IDF publications repeatedly showed, “Hamas deliberately converted the civilian population into a defensive asset by constructing a subterranean tunnel network exceeding 350 miles under Gazan cities, with entrances intentionally placed under hospitals, schools, mosques, and even children’s bedrooms.”

The ‘starving children’ hoax

Another pillar supporting the viral spread of the genocide claim, which is also responsible for radicalizing many of its believers, is the widespread use of pictures showing sick children while falsely claiming they suffered from malnutrition as a result of Israeli war tactics.

The world’s leading media outlets echoed these claims: “Photographs of emaciated Gazan children became the central evidence for the charge that Israel was deliberately starving Gaza’s population... However, the most prominent of these images did not depict the truth, and the outlet that published it issued a correction reflecting its mistake, even though the allegation of famine was already viral and accepted as fact.“

“Deliberate starvation to decimate a people would require conduct incompatible with Israel’s actions. A state pursuing that end does not maintain border crossings, coordinate with the UN and NGOs, or facilitate large-scale aid deliveries that limit its military operations against.”

Old blood libels in modern form

As the final piece of the puzzle, the initiative noted that while the genocide claim might feel new as it references an ongoing war, it “is simply the latest effort in a decades-long campaign to delegitimize Israel by accusing it of the most heinous of crimes.”

“Although the vocabulary updates with each generation, the goal remains the same: to isolate and remove Israel and the Jews from the community of nations.”

“In isolation, the genocide charge invites a good-faith reader to weigh the evidence war by war. But in a broader context, it reveals itself as part of a campaign that predates the Hamas-Israel war by half a century. Wherever and whenever the IDF operates, the claim of genocide arises. Thus, the consistent feature is not Israeli policy; it is the fixed determination to make up an argument that will render the Jewish state uniquely illegitimate.”