A genocide is happening in Gaza. We should say so.
Throughout history, atrocities have usually been committed under cover of darkness. The perpetrators know that what they are doing is wrong. They hide it. They deny it. They speak in euphemisms. But what happens when they no longer feel the need to hide? What happens when they say the quiet part out loud?
This is what is happening in Gaza today. The mask has come off.
Ethnic cleansing has become the official policy of Israel. The nation’s leaders are admitting it, without apology. There was barely a pretense before. But now there’s not even that. And these admissions, combined with mass killing on the ground, point to something even more horrific: genocide.
On May 11, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told lawmakers that Israel’s war on Gaza is intended to render large parts of the territory uninhabitable, forcing Palestinians to flee: “We are destroying more and more homes. They have nowhere to return to.” Even the Trump administration — which is, or at least was, about as pro-Israel as you can get — understands what is happening. As President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff recently said, “Israel is not ready to end the war. Israel is prolonging the war, even though we do not see where further progress can be made.”
When the intent becomes so explicit, we are forced to confront our own complicity. For Israel’s defenders, the cognitive dissonance is difficult to bear. I get it. Many Americans have long seen Israel as an ally, a country that shares our values — a Western, liberal outpost in a sea of supposed Arab barbarism. But Israel’s actions in Gaza should shatter that perception.
That a close ally of the United States would declare its intention to displace a population is remarkable. But many Israelis, including senior officials and ministers, have been saying this for a long time. Just one month into the war, Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter said, “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” explicitly referencing the 1948 expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their land. In December 2023, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that “what needs to be done in the Gaza Strip is to encourage emigration” and that having “100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza and not 2 million” would allow the desert to “bloom.” This month, Smotrich offered further clarification. The goal is to leave Gaza “totally destroyed,” he said. These are not opposition figures or fringe elements. These are members of the Israeli cabinet.