An open letter signed by more than 6,000 academics, legal experts, historians, and political figures was released rejecting as a “blood libel” the accusation that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Organizers launched the letter with over 5,000 signatories before the total surpassed 6,000, arguing that allegations of genocide are contradicted by Israel’s actual conduct during the war and have been weaponized as a pretext to exclude and attack Jews around the world.
Authors and Core Arguments of the Open Letter
The Creative Community for Peace released the letter in partnership with its primary authors: Yossi Klein Halevi, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, Rabbi Micha Odenheimer, and Jonathan Karp, a historian at Binghamton University. Signatories include prominent scholars such as Harvard professor Steven Pinker, historian Niall Ferguson, Israeli historian Benny Morris, Holocaust historian and former U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, and author Simon Sebag Montefiore.
“There is a vigorous debate within the Jewish community over aspects of how this war was fought, and that is a sign of moral health. So is our pain over every innocent life lost. But we must unite in repudiating the lie of genocide,” the letter states. The text highlights what it terms unprecedented combat conditions in Gaza, pointing to hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, thousands of booby-trapped homes, and the conflation of combatants with journalists and human rights workers.
Casualty Ratios and Urban Warfare Tactics
Addressing the civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio, the letter asserts the figure is considered low for asymmetrical urban warfare. Relying on current death toll figures from the Gaza Health Ministry alongside a May estimate from the INSS of more than 23,000 terrorists killed, the letter calculates an implied civilian-to-combatant ratio of roughly 2:1. The document also cites the absence of mass starvation despite repeated claims of imminent catastrophe and points to warnings given to civilians before attacks.
“All these factors were erased in the eagerness to indict Israel for genocide,” the letter argues. Signatories maintain that Israel entered the war following the October 7 attacks to dismantle an Iranian-led siege of terror enclaves along its borders, noting that anti-Zionists were leveling accusations of genocide against Israel as early as the following day.
Global Perspectives and Legal Analysis
The letter draws attention to what it describes as a bitter irony, stating that Israel is the only country to face a sustained war of attempted genocide from its inception in 1948 to the present day. Additional academic signatories include Harvard Law professor Jesse Fried, Case Western Reserve University law professor Anat Alon-Beck, Tel Aviv University professor emerita Dina Porat, UCLA professor Judea Pearl, Brandeis University professor emeritus Jonathan Sarna, and John Spencer, chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point.
Legal and political figures have also added their names to the document. Former Canadian justice minister and attorney general Irwin Cotler stated that the genocide libel is a case study in historical, moral, legal, and normative inversions of fact, law, and history. Other legal signatories include Cornell Law professor Robert Hockett, former U.S. Justice Department Nazi War Crimes Unit prosecutor Jeffrey Mausner, and George Mason University Scalia Law School professor Eugene Kontorovich. Political signatories include former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, former UK cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi, and former U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie.