DURING his address to the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that accusing Israel of genocide “is the greatest lie of the century”. These so-called ‘liars’ include Israeli Holocaust and genocide scholars Amos Goldberg, Omer Bartov, Daniel Blatman, Raz Segal and Shmuel Lederman, all of whom have identified Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. Other genocide scholars, including Martin Shaw, author of the book What is Genocide?, and Dirk Moses, senior editor of the Journal of Genocide Research, have reached the same conclusion.

The same has been done by Physicians for Human Rights Israel and the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem. In its report, titled ‘Our Genocide’, B’Tselem concludes that Israel is making a clear and explicit attempt to destroy Palestinian society in Gaza and create catastrophic living conditions that prevent the continued existence of this society in Gaza. That is precisely the definition of genocide.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty Inter-national and Doctors Without Borders can be added to that list of ‘liars’. Moreover, the Quaker-founded organisation, American Friends Service Committee, asserts: “We believe with moral clarity, and in line with the denition of the crime of genocide, that the current actions in Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli government, constitute genocide.”

Netanyahu’s statement was not only outrageous; it was a grotesque inversion of truth. To dismiss the voices of these scholars, physicians and human-rights advocates is to abandon moral responsi-bility. The United States and other governments must stop supplying weapons and providing political cover for policies that have only resulted in catastrophes.

Terry Hansen
Grafton, USA

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2026