> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://otherwise.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Genocide by design - URL: https://otherwise.ghost.io/genocide-by-design-840/ - Published: 2025-08-11T18:28:29.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-17T13:43:52.000Z - Description: Hamas’s October 7th attack and the weaponisation of reverse accusations - Author: Khaled Salih - Tags: Podcast, #Migrated-1792244264359, #Import 2026-10-17 14:38 By Khaled Salih ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d6/2c/d62cdd13-a476-41c5-8f2c-29270c99d95d/content/images/2026/10/f56f4031-5dc6-4757-9da3-a7775664ea21_1182x1280-heic.jpg) > *“This land cannot contain two identities.* > > *It is either us, or us…* > > *\[We are the ones who remain, and they are the passers-by.”\]* > > — Mahmoud Darwish > “\[A\]ccording to international law, the resistance \[Hamas\] should not be blamed for what happened to a prisoner \[hostage\], because international law says that if the enemy imposes a siege on someone who took its soldiers captive, what happens to those soldiers is the responsibility of the besieger. That’s international law.” > > — Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan, August 7, 2025 When the Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008), popularised this maximalist and zero-sum option by rejecting co-existence, he preached “either us our us.” He was not member of Hamas, but an active member of the PLO. The October 7th, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel represents a critical event in modern history, one that Avraham Russell Shalev’s comprehensive legal analysis asserts constitutes genocide under international law. This assertion is supported by a detailed examination of both the physical acts committed (*actus reus*) and the specific intent (*dolus specialis*) inherent in Hamas’s actions, ideology, and stated goals. Furthermore, Shalev’s work highlights the strategic “weaponisation of reverse accusations”—where allegations of genocide are directed against Israel—as a “rhetorical shield” designed to deflect attention from Hamas's own genocidal conduct and manipulate global perception. **Meeting the Legal Threshold for Genocide** Shalev argues that the October 7th attack fulfils the two core elements required by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to classify an act as genocide: On 7 October, thousands of armed Hamas terrorists breached the Gaza security perimeter at over 30 points, using various technologies and tactics, including paragliders. They invaded over 20 Israeli towns and attacked the Nova Music Festival. The goal was to murder as many Jews as possible. The massacre resulted in over 1,200 deaths, including women, children, and the elderly, with at least 37 minors killed (six under the age of five) and 70 elderly individuals. Over 200 people were abducted to Gaza. The brutality of the attack involved widespread torture, mutilation, and systematic sexual violence and rape. Reports from the *Association of Rape Crisis Centres* in Israel and the *UN Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict* confirm systematic sexual assaults, including rape and gang rape, in multiple locations, often in front of family members. Evidence suggests these assaults were premeditated, with captured documents containing Hebrew phrases like “Take your pants off.” Dr. Chen Kugel, head of Israel’s forensics centre, reported signs of torture and execution, including bodies found burned alive or with hands bound before execution. These actions—killing members of the group and causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group—clearly fall under Article II(a) and (b) of the Genocide Convention, targeting Israeli Jews “as such.” The *dolus specialis* is the distinguishing feature of genocide, requiring the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such. This intent can be inferred from direct evidence, systematic policies, and patterns of conduct. Hamas’s foundational ideology is labelled as “eliminationist antisemitism**.”** Hamas’s ideology, rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood (Brotherhood in English literature), is virulently anti-Zionist and antisemitic, predating the formal establishment of Israel. Its 1988 Foundational Covenan**t** explicitly states: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” It also references a tradition about Muslims fighting Jews, where “the stones and trees will say ‘O Moslems, O Abd Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him’.” Robert Wistrich identifies this as “eliminationist” or genocidal antisemitism, akin to Nazism and Communism, viewing the State of Israel as the “collective Jews” to be eradicated and aiming for a “Jew-free Middle East.” Hamas controls Gaza’s education system, introducing new curricula (e.g., in 2013) that promote antisemitic ideology, deny Jewish historical claims, and glorify terrorists. Since 2012, Hamas has run a youth military training programme for high school students, preparing them for the “expulsion of the Zionist occupation.” Reports by UN Watch and IMPACT-se detail incitement to hatred and antisemitism in UNRWA schools in Gaza. Hamas media channels, such as al-Aqsa TV, consistently “incite genocide and murder of Jews,” using epithets like “sons of pigs and monkeys.” Explicit statements by Hamas leaders. Consistent over decades and immediately before/during the attack, Hamas leaders have made explicit calls to kill Jews and destroy Israel. Ghazi Hamad (Nov 2023): “Israel is a country that has no place on our land… We must remove that country… The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.” Mohammed Deif (Oct 7th) issued a call to “kill them wherever you may find them” and “torch the earth under the feet of the plundering occupiers – kill, burn, destroy.” Ismail Haniyeh (Oct 7th) stated the goal was the destruction of Israel and the murder and ethnic cleansing of its people. Yahya Sinwar (April 2018) announced: ”We will take down the border \[with Israel\] and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies.” Other officials like Hussein Qasem, Sheikh Hamad al-Regeb, Wael al-Zard, Jamil Ziyada, Rajaa al-Halabi, Ismail al-Ashqar, Yunis al-Astal, Sheikh Nasser Maarouf, Fathi Hammad, and Dr. Muhammad Suleiman al-Farra have made similar public statements calling for the annihilation of Jews and Israel. Captured documents confirm the massacre was “meticulously and systematically planned in advance and had the goal of killing as many Jews as possible.” Detailed maps of Israeli kibbutzim (e.g., Sa’ad, Be’eri) with instructions to “murder women and children” were found. Notebooks found on terrorists included *Quranic* verses and orders to “kill as many people and take as many hostages as possible.” Hamas leadership was so confident in victory on 7 October that they had divided Israel into governing cantons. The 2021 “Promise of the Hereafter” conference, sponsored by Yahya Sinwar, explicitly discussed Israel’s forthcoming destruction. The scale, indiscriminate nature, brutality, and depravity of the attacks, including systematic torture and sexual violence, demonstrate “Hamas’ successful dehumanisation of Jews in the eyes of its militants.” **Genocide Inversion** A unique feature of the 7 October Hamas genocide is the immediate deployment of reverse accusations against Israel, a tactic known as “genocide inversion.” This strategy serves as a “rhetorical shield” to deflect accountability from Hamas. Accusations of genocide against Israel, exemplified by South Africa’s application to the ICJ within weeks of the attacks, aim to shift global attention away from Hamas's atrocities. These claims seek to appropriate the moral weight of genocide accusations to delegitimise Israel’s military response and exploit or invert Jewish historical trauma by comparing Israeli actions to the Nazi genocide. South Africa’s close ties with Hamas, including meetings in December 2023, suggest a coordinated strategy. ‘Shalev argues that South Africa’s claims against Israel lack sufficient evidence of genocidal intent. South Africa’s legal team notably stated that “genocides are never declared in advance,” a claim that ishistorically false as evidenced by the methodical planning of the Final Solution, Rwandan genocide, and Yugoslav atrocities. And Saddam Hussein’s genocidal attack against the Kurds in Iraq in the mid-1980s, which is not discussed by Shalev. The ICJ’s reliance on statistics about large-scale destruction in Gaza without proving intentional Israeli targeting is critiqued, as military necessity is a reasonable alternative inference for such damage. The application does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in casualty figures and does not account for the challenges of urban warfare or Hamas's use of human shields. Multiple statistical analyses question the reliability of Hamas’s casualty figures. Israeli advance warnings, a humanitarian measure, are “deliberately misconstrued” as mass expulsion. Lawful siege tactics are presented as intent to starve civilians. Statements by Israeli leaders (e.g., Netanyahu, Herzog, Gallant, Katz) are often taken out of context or ambiguously interpreted, when in fact they contradict actual Israeli conduct or affirm adherence to international law. This “genocide inversion” tactic is not new. It was used by Nazi propagandists who claimed Jews planned to annihilate Germans (e.g., Hitler, Goebbels), Serbian propagandists against Bosniaks, and Hutu propagandists against Tutsis (e.g., Leon Mugesera). The charge of genocide against Israel is a “decades-long staple of contemporary antisemitism,” linking current events to Holocaust inversion and historical anti-Jewish tropes, promoted since the 1950s by the Soviet Union. Modern examples include Turkish, Tunisian, and Brazilian presidents comparing Israeli actions to Hitler's methods. **Legal Implications and International Obligations** Properly classifying October 7th as genocide is crucial for deterrence, combating denial, recovery, and shaping social memory. Failure to recognise and punish genocide emboldens future perpetrators, as Adolf Hitler’s dismissive remark about the Armenian genocide illustrates. While international law traditionally focuses on individual criminal responsibility, it acknowledges that “certain international crimes require group action.” The Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE) doctrine (established in *Prosecutor v. Tadić*) is highly applicable to Hamas, particularly JCE I, where all co-perpetrators share a common intent. Hamas’s centralised command and pervasive ideological conditioning ensure that genocidal intent from leaders can be attributed to lower-ranking perpetrators. Recent German court precedents convicting ISIS members of genocide against the Yazidi minority demonstrate that organisational conviction can lead to reparations or asset seizure for victims. Hamas, acting as the de facto governing authority in Gaza since 2007, fits this framework. The Genocide Convention, recognised as customary international law, imposes a duty on states to “prevent and punish genocide.” Israel, as the state where the genocide was committed, has the primary responsibility to prosecute Hamas war criminals under its own Genocide Law. **Universal Jurisdiction.** While not required, prosecution by other states whose nationals were murdered on 7th October or who host Hamas perpetrators would advance universal justice. States hosting Hamas officials (e.g., Qatar, which hosts Khalil al-Hayya and Khaled Mashal) or providing support/funding (e.g., Iran, which reportedly trained 500 Hamas/PIJ militants and coordinated the October 7th attack) may be obligated under customary law to prosecute or extradite Hamas leaders. The ICC Prosecutor applied for an arrest warrant for Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, before his reported killing. The *erga omnes partes* nature of the Genocide Convention obligations means every state party has a vested interest in ensuring compliance, allowing any state party to invoke the responsibility of another for alleged breaches (as seen in *The Gambia v Myanmar* and *Nicaragua v Germany*). States must immediately recognise Hamas as a terrorist organisation and prevent its recruitment, operation, mobilisation, or fundraising on their territory. This includes seizing assets and closing channels or platforms used for incitement on social media, television, radio, and in its education system and mosques. **Conclusion** Shalev’s analysis forcefully concludes that the October 7th, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel was a calculated and ideologically driven act to destroy a national group in whole or in part, unequivocally meeting the legal definition of genocide. The combination of Hamas’s eliminationist antisemitism, systematic indoctrination, explicit calls for annihilation, and meticulously planned mass atrocities fulfils both the physical and mental elements required under international law. Equally critical is the recognition of genocide inversion as a potent weapon. By immediately accusing Israel of the very crime Hamas committed, perpetrators and their allies aim to obscure reality, manipulate global opinion, and evade justice. This sophisticated evolution in propaganda threatens to undermine the Genocide Convention's integrity. The international community faces a clear choice: either uphold rigorous legal standards and act decisively against perpetrators, including non-state actors and their state sponsors, or risk eroding fundamental legal and moral norms. Failure to correctly classify and respond to this genocide would not only betray the victims of 7th October but also set a dangerous precedent for future atrocities. **References** Avraham Russell Shalev, 2025, “Hamas’ October 7th Genocide: Legal Analysis and the Weaponisation of Reverse Accusations – A Study in Modern Genocide Recognition and Denial”, *Israel Law Review*, pages 1-40. MEMRI, “Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan …”, [https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-official-osama-hamdan-gaza-worse-than-auschwitz](https://www.memri.org/tv/hamas-official-osama-hamdan-gaza-worse-than-auschwitz?ref=otherwise.ghost.io) Eng\_Mahmoud Adham, October 7, 2023,