Raz Segal: Challenging Genocide Denial

The war in Gaza has sparked an intense and deeply contested debate over whether Israel’s conduct meets the legal definition of genocide. Genocide scholars, human rights organizations, and legal experts have advanced arguments supporting that characterization, while Israel and its supporters strongly reject it. At the same time, scholars, journalists, students, and others who have criticized Israel’s actions have faced contentious debates—and, in some cases, disciplinary, professional, and institutional pressure. On this episode of Arab Talk, we are joined by Raz Segal, a prominent scholar of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. In his widely discussed 2023 Jewish Currents essay, “A Textbook Case of Genocide,” Segal argued that Israeli officials’ rhetoric and actions in Gaza met several criteria established by the 1948 Genocide Convention.