The government of Israel – a land I love – is guilty of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Until recently, I was reluctant to invoke the term “genocide.” I was uncertain if the disproportionate attacks that the Israeli government has been perpetrating against the Palestinians of Gaza qualified for that designation that is rightfully dubbed “the crime of crimes.” I had no difficulty whatsoever in using the words “ethnic cleansing” and “vengeance” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza in response to the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7th, 2023, and the ongoing and unimaginable hostage crisis, against which I have publiclydemonstrated and shall continue to raise my voice. I similarly felt no compunction in publicly condemning Israel’s blatant violation of international humanitarian law in its preemptive strike against Iran.
When it came to “genocide,” however, it was only after careful consideration of the conclusions of the majority of genocide scholars, including renowned Israeli academics Omer Bartov and Shmuel Lederman, that I came to realize my error in not applying this term more expeditiously to describe the massacre in Gaza. Specifically, as Bartov has concluded and explained in detail, by May 2024, “it appeared no longer possible to deny that the pattern of [Israel Defense Forces] operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders in the days after the Hamas attack.” As of this writing in July 2025, it is morally indefensible not to do so.
The claim that some have put forth that Israel is taking actions necessary for any nation at war is an inherently false argument. To call the horrors of Gaza “war” is a misnomer. Bartov has properly concluded: “For the last year, the I.D.F. has not been fighting an organized military body. The version of Hamas that planned and carried out the attacks on Oct. 7 has been destroyed, though the weakened group continues to fight Israeli forces and retains control over the population in areas not held by the Israeli Army.” The current reality cannot, by any reasonable measure, justify the Israeli government’s choice to continue to starve an entire population, decimate infrastructure, and kill tens of thousands of civilians.
It is imperative to state clearly that genocide takes many forms. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum explains that “the legal term ‘genocide’ refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” Some historical and ongoing examples include the Holocaust, mass killings in Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Cambodian “Killing Fields,” Japan’s Rape of Nanking and Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution in China, the Holodomor, Armenian, Guatemalan, East Timor (Timor-Leste), and Herero and Namaqua genocides, the decimation of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, the targeting of Native Americans and indigenous communities across North America and the transatlantic slave trade, among others. Labelling the Israeli government’s policy in Gaza a genocide does not imply that its actions are on the same scale as those of the Nazis against the Jewish people and others during the Holocaust, or any of the above examples. Still, the fact remains that the life of one innocent Palestinian infant buried under the rubble in Gaza is of no less value than that of a Jewish baby killed in Hitler’s gas chambers.
As a dedicated death penalty abolitionist and co-founder of “L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty,” I am regularly reminded of these similarities and distinctions. The fundamental human rights violation that is the death penalty is not the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, even though the United States routinely uses Nazi killing methods of lethal injection and gassing for state-sponsored murder. Members of “L’chaim” like me, whodirectly descend from Holocaust victims and survivors, know this viscerally. Likewise, the genocide of Israel’s systematic starvation and attempted annihilation of the Palestinians of Gaza is not of the same scope as the Shoah, during which the Nazi regime employed an unparalleled machinery of death in an unprecedented extermination campaign.
As an ordained Jewish cantor and progressive Zionist who celebrates my Jewish identity and the people and land of Israel, I feel it is my responsibility to confess that I was wrong not to use the word “genocide” earlier to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza. My fear of losing colleagues, friends, and loved ones, who undoubtedly will rebuke and dismiss me for sharing this unpopular view, prevented me from fully opening my eyes to this reality. I also did not want to believe the commission of genocide was possible by Israel, which is close enough to my heart and soul to haveprevented me from an objective ethical evaluation. (By comparison, though a United States citizen, I found it relatively easy to recognize my native country’s gradual descent into authoritarianism after the tyrannical felon Donald Trump’s second nomination in 2024.) Finally, I worried that employing the term genocide might empower those eager to engage in antisemitic rhetoric and violence, which is indeed a very legitimate concern. Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, helped to remind me, though, that one can and should be able to criticize the Israeli government without fomenting antisemitism. While none of these factors excuses my reticence to employ the word “genocide” sooner, they do perhaps explain it. Regardless, as someone whoclaimed to put the value of human rights first at all times, I feel I must now make T’shuvah/repentance for my reluctance – and I believe I am not alone in the Jewish world.
While a genocide scholar I am not, my role as a cantor allows me to lead a congregation annually in a prayer that calls for just such a public acknowledgement of imperfections. This intention takes place on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, in the form of the Ashamnu, an antiphonal liturgical piece from the Confessional (Vidui) of that holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Ashamnu uses a Hebrew acrostic to outline a litany of transgressions that “we” – the members of the community gathered for prayer – have committed. This year, when intoning that devotion and symbolically beating my chest, I will most certainly be invoking the moral shortcomings of myself and many others who will be responding to that prayer, in not acknowledging the genocide in Gaza. Like me, many of these individuals also will have understandably resisted accepting the reality of the increasingly ominous signs of genocide unfolding before our eyes in the land we love.
This prayerful act will call to mind my recitations in recent years of the Aramaic Kol Nidrei text from the same Yom Kippur liturgy in front of the United States Supreme Court. I chanted that invocation as part of the annual Fast and Vigil to Abolish the Death Penalty to ask forgiveness for the collective national sin of capital punishment. That yearly ritual also served to help expiate my guilt for having once supported the death penalty. I hope that this year’s Ashamnu chanting, along with public acknowledgments like this one, as well as action and advocacy to end the slaughter in Gaza and finally bring home the hostages, will provide a similar path toward healing. While it will not right all of these wrongs, it may help send a message to my children and their descendants to learn from my mistakes, and those of my contemporaries, as we collectively continue the work of tikkun olam, “repairing the world,” starting with ourselves.
It was one of the greatest honors of my life when T’ruah presented me this past year with its Rabbinic Human Rights Hero Award for my death penalty abolition work. My delayed timing in coming to terms, literally, with the Gaza genocide renders me far short of a “hero.” Now, many in the Jewish world are likely to label me a “villain” for doing just that. Still, if my change of heart and T’shuvah can serve as a model for any others to do the same, the ridicule sure to come will be well worth the sacrifice to ensure no more genocidal actions occur in our names.
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