Israel has shown how to carry out a genocide and get away with it

Palestinian children wait for a meal at a charity kitchen in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on 22 July 2025

It has become clear that horrific atrocities are not a thing of the past; war crimes can be committed by modern armies using AI and other advanced technologies. A case in point is Gaza, where Israel is carrying out genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass destruction, and a campaign of starvation – all without losing its extensive partnerships with Western democracies and “human rights champions”.

And Israel’s accumulated expertise is now available to the world, a practical guide to committing genocide in the 21st century. The essential challenge it addresses is how to make the world coexist with a genocide that is broadcast live to our mobile devices.

Media and propaganda efforts must serve the adopted strategy of aggression, not the other way around. They must help facilitate the execution of genocide in all its horrific stages, by justifying strikes, diverting attention from war crimes, and attempting to obscure facts whenever possible.

The goal is not to “win hearts and minds”, but to distract the public from grasping the ongoing horror, and to discourage sympathy with Palestinian victims.

This strategy of obfuscation requires Israel to manufacture developments. Responding to allegations of genocide and war crimes before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, Israel and its US patron launched a smear campaign, targeting the United Nations and its respected humanitarian agencies in an attempt to silence them.

The incitement campaign against UNRWA is an ideal example of this pattern of counterattacks. It achieved strategic and tactical gains sought by the Israeli occupation, while undermining the foundations of life for the Palestinian people and refugees’ right of return.

Posture of denial

Adopting a posture of denial is central to Israel’s modern guide to genocide. The script might read: “There is no hunger in Gaza. The heartbreaking images and videos the world sees are fabricated. People in Gaza even enjoy luxurious seafood.”

An old restaurant menu from Gaza, or fabricated images of local children, are produced to imply they live in abundance. In response to the horrors of starvation seen via live broadcasts, Israel can thus plant seeds of doubt, claiming that one person’s protruding bones are actually due to “chronic illness”.

Stirring debate around a few select images by questioning their credibility is a more effective strategy than trying to confront the torrent of horrific photos coming from Gaza. This tactic forces those warning against Israel’s policy of starvation of babies and children into a defensive posture.

Indeed, victim-blaming is a central prong of the 21st-century guide to genocide. This can be achieved by asserting that the “enemy” is responsible for what’s unfolding, or by assigning collective blame to the entire targeted population, while absolving the genocidal regime – thus providing a justification for any war crime, no matter how brutal.

The allegation that Hamas uses civilians as “human shields” is a standard pretext for targeting all Palestinians, including non-combatants. Civilian facilities, which have protected status, can be targeted with convenient claims of Hamas “command centres”, accompanied by fabricated diagrams and illustrations to provide a veneer of credibility.

A key prerequisite is to strip the targeted population of their human qualities – suggesting they are not civilians, but more akin to monsters or zombies, thus rendering their mass killing more palatable.

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