Top genocide scholars unanimous that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza: Dutch investigation

A Palestinian man carries the body of a child killed in Israeli strikes in Jabalia, northern Gaza, on 16 May 2025

Professor Ugur Umit Ungor of the University of Amsterdam and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies said that while
there are certainly researchers who say it is not genocide,
“I don’t know them”.

The Dutch paper reviewed 25 recent academic articles published in the Journal of Genocide Research, the field’s leading journal, and found that
“all eight academics from the field of genocide studies see genocide or at least genocidal violence in Gaza”.

“And that is remarkable for a field in which there is
no clarity about what genocide itself exactly is,” it noted.

A growing number of the world’s leading genocide scholars believe that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, according to an investigation by Dutch newspaper NRC.

The paper interviewed seven renowned genocide and Holocaust researchers* from six countries – including Israel – all of whom described the Israeli campaign in Gaza as genocidal. Many said their peers in the field share this assessment.

“Can I name someone whose work I respect who does not think it is genocide? No, no counterargument takes into account all the evidence,” Israeli researcher Raz Segal told NRC.

Professor Ugur Umit Ungor of the University of Amsterdam and NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies said that while there are certainly researchers who say it is not genocide, “I don’t know them”.

The Dutch paper reviewed 25 recent academic articles published in the Journal of Genocide Research, the field’s leading journal, and found that “all eight academics from the field of genocide studies see genocide or at least genocidal violence in Gaza”. “And that is remarkable for a field in which there is no clarity about what genocide itself exactly is,” it noted.

Leading human rights organisations have also reached the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide. In December 2024, Amnesty International became the first major organisation to conclude that Israel had committed genocide during its war on Gaza, while Human Rights Watch more conservatively concluded that “genocidal acts” had been committed.

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s top expert on Palestine, authored two reports last year suggesting that genocide was taking place in Gaza.

Genocide studies as a discipline does not treat the issue as a binary, the NRC report said. Rather than asking whether genocide has happened or not, scholars see it as a gradual process. Ungor compares it to a “dimmer switch” rather than an on-off light.

“Contrary to public opinion, leading genocide researchers are surprisingly unanimous: the Netanyahu government, they say, is in that process – according to the majority, even in its final stages,” the investigation concluded. “That is why most researchers no longer speak only of ‘genocidal violence’, but of ‘genocide’.”

Since Israel’s devastating onslaught on Gaza in October 2023, at least 53,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 15,000 children.

The World Health Organisation reported this week that 57 children have died of malnutrition since Israel’s total ban on humanitarian aid, in effect since 2 March.

The WHO predicts that nearly 71,000 children under the age of five will suffer acute malnutrition over the next 11 months if the ban on aid continues.

Meanwhile, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global network of UN agencies and humanitarian groups, reported last week that nearly half a million people in Gaza, or 22 percent of the population, are expected to face “catastrophic” hunger from May to September.

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