https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/09/08/the-slow-death-of-the-genocide-lie/
Now we know: Gaza must be a genocide because Adolf Hitler says it is. And that man knows a thing or two about genocide. His name crops up in the list of experts behind the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), which last week decreed that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. He seems to have moved, though: he’s now ‘Adolf Hitler of Gaza City’ rather than of Berlin. Yet there he is, alongside Emperor Palpatine and the Cookie Monster, proudly aligning himself with this organisation whose latest ‘resolution’ says Israel has engaged in ‘systematic and widespread crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide’.
It’s not actually Hitler. He’s been dead for 80 years. It’s not even some Nazi fanboy in Gaza City who’s taken his favourite murderer’s name. No, it’s an online wag who wants the world to know that the IAGS is not all it’s cracked up to be. For a start, any chump can become a member for $30. Hence why, for a period of time last week, this esteemed gathering of human-rights boffins included not only the usual tenured worthies who think their word counts for more than everyone else’s, but also the Cookie Monster, sporting a fetching, Hamas-style bandana.
When future historians look back on the Israelophobic delirium of the post-7 October moment, last week might strike them as the week the genocide lie finally died. For it started with media outlets across Christendom reporting with naked glee that ‘the experts’ have ruled that Israel really is the genocidal loon of world affairs. And it ended with those experts looking damn foolish, not to mention partisan, opportunistic and cynical. As the Free Press put it, the lesson is that when you see the phrase ‘experts say’ in a headline, it’s a sign to think twice and for yourself’.
The closer one looks at the IAGS and its resolution, the more it smacks of a self-appointed kangaroo court of academic smartarses desperate to pin the sickest of crimes on the Jewish State. First, there’s the make-up of the IAGS. Salo Aizenberg of HonestReporting, which challenges media prejudice against Israel, found not only that fictional baddies from Star Wars have joined the IAGS, but also that 80 of its 500 members are based at universities in Iraq. Is Iraq well known for its genocide scholarship, so much so that its professors account for nearly 20 per cent of a global association of genocide oracles?
Then there’s the tiny numbers involved. Israelophobic hotheads spent last week crowing that ‘86 per cent’ of the world’s ‘leading genocide scholars’ now say Gaza is a genocide. If you deny this is a genocide, then you’re ‘as much in denial of reality as a climate denier’, said Owen Jones – only ‘far more depraved’.
But it isn’t true that ‘86 per cent of genocide scholars’ backed this resolution. In fact, it was 86 per cent of those who could be arsed to vote.