Holocaust

We've surpassed a horrifying moment when the word 'genocide' is not enough to describe the Israeli government's atrocities upon the Palestinian people

I woke up to yet another gut-wrenching horror: Israeli airstrikes killed at least 52 people in Gaza Monday night—including 36 Palestinians who were taking refuge in a school-turned-shelter. Most of them were women and children. Killed while they slept, their belongings—and their bodies—incinerated in the night.

This wasn’t a battlefield. This was a school. A shelter. A place people fled to escape death, only to be immolated by it. The Israeli military burned children alive while they slept. Let me repeat, Netanyahu ordered the burning of babies as they slept.

This is not “just” genocide anymore. This is a full blown holocaust. Let’s Address This.

The harrowing escape of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl named Ward Al Sheikh Khalil as an Israeli strike incinerated those around her

It Is Time To Recognize We Are Witnessing A Holocaust

Leading scholars of genocide, including Israeli scholars, are unanimous in recognizing Israel’s actions against Palestinians as genocide. For example, world renowned Israeli scholar Shmuel Lederman of Open University of Israel wrote just this month:

…the cumulative effect of what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocidal in every sense. I think the second half of 2024 is the point at which a consensus emerged among genocide researchers (as well as the human rights community) that this was genocide. Those who may have still had doubts—I estimate that they have dissipated following Israel's actions since the cease-fire was broken.

Those who continue to deny this genocide for what it is are denying the reality and gravity of the situation. And it is that same reality and gravity that moves us to now consider whether this is also a holocaust? While I accept some might object to using the term holocaust, I ask only that you look at the facts before drawing a conclusion. And when we analyze this from a definitional and factual perspective, the conclusion seems undeniable that what we are witnessing is in fact a holocaust.

Let’s start with the definition. The Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines holocaust as “a thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life, especially caused by fire.”

Thus, this definition gives us three elements to consider:

1. A thorough destruction

2. Involving extensive loss of life

3. Especially through fire

Now, let us apply that rubric to the ground reality in Gaza.

1. Has Gaza faced a “thorough destruction?”

Here’s what the facts tell us. Just this week a UN survey concluded that more than 95% of land in Gaza is now unusable for agriculture. Another report by Doctors Without Borders in January 2025 concluded that more than 92% of homes and more than 70% of all buildings in Gaza are destroyed, damaged, or unusable. Yet another UN report from last September concluded that nearly 70% of all infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed or damaged. Finally, simply compare the visual destruction in Gaza from October 12, 2023 to January 11, 2025.

By April of 2024 Gaza had already suffered more than 70,000 tonnes of bombing. To put that in perspective, that is more than the combined bomb tonnage dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London in World War II. Now more than a year later, that bombing has only increased. It is no surprise, therefore, that UN Humanitarian Chief Martin Griffiths declared Gaza “uninhabitable” due to the bombing, destruction, blockades, and subsequent famines. Given all of the above data, it is factually accurate to conclude that Gaza has been “thoroughly destroyed.”

2. Has that destruction involved “extensive loss of life?”

The Lancet estimated last summer that Israel’s genocide upon Gaza had already killed up to 186,000 people, conservatively. The analysis concluded:

In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death⁹ to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza.

The current ‘official’ death toll in Gaza is approximately 56,000 people. That alone should suffice any metric to mean “extensive loss of life.” But applying The Lancet’s conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death lands us at a staggering 224,000 people killed. In fact, over the last 20 months, Israeli bombing has killed more children in Gaza than children killed in all global conflicts combined. While the latest data is far worse, even 1 year into Israel’s siege on Gaza, OxFam reported this horrifying fact:

More women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades.

Without question Gaza has suffered “extensive loss of life,” one that absolutely and tragically meets the second criteria of the textbook definition of a holocaust.

3. Has that destruction and loss of life especially been through fire?

While the first two definitional elements of holocaust can also be applied to genocide, the dictionary differentiates a holocaust with the third element of “killing by fire”

Again, let us look at the facts.

Ward escapes the fire that killed five of her siblings.

This week, Israeli bombing burned alive at least 36 Palestinians, including women and children, while they slept in a school designated as a shelter. And this is not a one-off event. It is part of a repeated, sustained pattern in which the Israeli military incinerates entire Palestinian families and family lines. And sadly is not new. Back in December, 2023, the New York Times reported:

Israel claims it protects civilians, but a New York Times investigation found that at least 200 times Israel dropped its most destructive bombs in areas it designated as safe for civilians in Gaza.

Another investigation by NBC reached the same conclusion, that Israel repeatedly forced Palestinian civilians into what they called “safe zones,” then bombed those very safe zone, killing by fire and explosives the very people they forced into those trapped locations. How is this in any way different than rounding up civilians into camps, and then killing people in those camps?

And these reports were only from the first two months of bombing Gaza. The atrocities that have unfolded since further add to this death toll and mass killing by fire. And then there are the countless horrific stories like of Dr. Alaa al-Najjar, who as reported, “left her ten children at home when she went to work in the emergency room at the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza. Hours later, the bodies of seven children arrived - most of them badly burned.” In total, the Israeli military killed nine of her 10 children by targeting them at home and burning them to death.

Let’s be clear. Hundreds, if not thousands, of bombings on locations Israel designated as safe zones, and forced people to move to under threat of death, before bombing them to death in those safe zones is not an accident—it is intentional policy. This is one reason why ICC prosecutor Karim Khan charged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with war crimes. And we see these blazes live streamed right before our eyes. Consider the horrifying images of young Ward Al Sheikh Khalil.

Ward describes how she survived, while 2 of her brothers and her 3 sisters were killed. [Credit: Channel 4 News]

Content warning as below I show the video of a young girl named Ward Al Sheikh Khalil escaping the fires ignited by Israeli night raids. Bombings and fires that crushed and incinerated her loved ones. Ward miraculously survived, while her mother, two brothers, and three sisters did not.

We see tragic example after tragic example of the Israeli military killing Palestinians by burning them to death. In schools, in hospitals, while they sleep, and while they sit in what is left of their homes. Any fair minded person can see these hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of the Israeli military killing Palestinians by fire and acknowledge that it meets the third definitional criteria of a holocaust.

Conclusion

Let’s recap this painful discussion. The textbook definition of holocaust is a “thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life especially through fire.” Applying this definition to the facts at hand, the Israeli military has:

• Destroyed more than 90% of Gaza

• Killed more than 224,000 Palestinians

• Incinerated Palestinians by fire and explosives with thousands of targeted, deliberate bombings, including in designated safe zones

Based on these documented and irrefutable facts, what other conclusion can we draw but recognize this as the literal dictionary definition of holocaust?

And still, no consequences for Netanyahu. Still, the world’s most powerful nations—including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada—continue to fund this horror, in opposition to the unanimous consensus of genocide scholars that this is genocide, in opposition to their own government reports that Netanyahu is committing war crimes. In my younger years I used to wonder how the world could watch the Holocaust unfold and do nothing? How governments could witness mass extermination and justify their silence with “complicated geopolitics.” But now we don’t have to wonder. We are living through it. We are watching a genocide unfold on our phones in real time.

A holocaust, live-streamed.

And our elected leaders not only look away—they bankroll it with our tax dollars. The daunting words of comedian and commentator Sammy Obeid come to mind.

For now, if you’re reading this, please know this: your voice matters. Your advocacy matters. As Ms. Rachel beautifully said recently, “You may pay a price for defending Palestinian children. Let it be paid! Their lives are worth more!” The corporate media has largely turned away, and you won’t hear them have the courage to call this what it is—a genocide and a holocaust. But you can be sure that as a human rights lawyer beholden to justice and humanity above all else, I will not hesitate to speak truth to power. I do so for the sake and safety of all humanity—Muslims and Jews alike, people of all faiths and people of no faith alike. I am grateful for your trust, partnership, and support as we navigate these extremely difficult and trying times. Let us keep raising awareness. Keep organizing. Keep calling our members of Congress. Keep shouting the truth until they cannot ignore this genocide and holocaust, and finally end it.

Keep speaking up. Because silence is complicity. And this is not a moment for silence.