20 Gaza genocide denial, trivialization, and minimization techniques:

1. Avoidance of genocide terminology —Avoidance of words such as “genocide,” “massacre,” or “ethnic cleansing,” in favor of generic war terminology like “strikes,” “escalations,” or “clashes.” 2. Gross undercounting of victims —Grossly undercounting victims (e.g., omitting the minimum 5:1 direct to indirect death ratio established by modern epidemiology). 3. Omission of Israeli agency in headlines —Omitting Israel in headlines e.g. “Hundreds die in an explosion at a Gaza hospital,” or using the passive voice “At least 27 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded by Israeli fire near a food distribution site in the southern Gaza Strip” while more directly mentioning or using the active voice with Hamas “Hamas fires rockets…” 4. Erasing Palestinian identity —Omitting the qualifier “Palestinian” in media coverage, which erases the link between the people and their collective history or rights claims—depicting them instead as numbers e.g. “hundreds killed in Gaza” or as categories other than Palestinian e.g. “residents” “civilians” “people” “Gazans” or “Hamas terrorists” without the “Palestinian” context or qualifier. This is important, since genocide requires recognition of a group against whom the genocide is being committed. 5. Framing genocide as collateral damage —Depicting the Gaza genocide as collateral damage from a “war” with Palestinian armed groups who committed atrocities, or an attempt to retrieve hostages— as opposed to Israel’s intentional targeting of the Palestinian population in Gaza for extermination. 6. Denial of ethnic cleansing links —Denying or downplaying Israel’s simultaneous attempts at ethnic cleansing of Gaza, or the historical association between ethnic cleansing and genocide. 7. Denial of coexisting motivations —Denying the possibility of coexistence of the Gaza genocide with various other Israeli motivations (killing Palestinian armed groups, defeating Iran, expanding settlements, ethnic cleansing, placating international criticism, maintaining US support, etc). 8. Portraying Palestinians as initiators —Lending credence to the “war” as opposed to genocide narrative by almost invariably depicting Palestinian armed groups as the initiators of violence and Israel as those retaliating. 9. Trivialization through false equivalence —Equating modern conflicts or wars to the Gaza genocide, especially with expressions like “All war is hell, civilians die” or “Only the dead have seen the end of war”— designed to “keep the lid on emotions while evoking regretful and philosophical generalities on the omnipresence of violence and the inherent tragedy of human life”. This is in contrast with the “gory details and quoted expressions of outrage and demands for justice” we see in relation to the Israeli victims of October 7. A worthy versus unworthy victim framing. 10. Blaming Arab states —Blaming the Gaza genocide on the failure of Egypt or other Arab countries to allow in Palestinians from Gaza. 11. Scapegoating “extremist” elements —Blaming the Gaza genocide on “extremist” right wing elements in Israel (Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir etc.) rather than the entirety of what B’Tselem termed a decades-long Israeli settler colonial apartheid “regime of Jewish supremacy”. 12. Denial of international constraints —Denying the pressure of international criticism and other external constraints on the speed and modalities of the Gaza genocide e.g. “if we wanted to commit genocide we could’ve nuked Gaza”, “If we are committing genocide, we are really bad at it”. 13. Denial of US complicity —Denying or downplaying US complicity; not just material and diplomatic support for Israel, but the very denial or minimization of the genocide by the political class, corporate media and pro-Israel lobby in the US. A denial of denial. 14. Token concern for Palestinians —Token or partial concern for aspects of Palestinian victimhood (discrimination or hate crimes in the US, West Bank settler violence) in order to deny or even enable the Gaza genocide. 15. Appeals to Israeli democracy —Overemphasizing democratic aspects of Israeli society (e.g. LGBTQ+ rights) in order to falsely imply that a society with some internal freedoms couldn’t commit genocide. There is no historical correlation between the internal freedom of a country and it’s external violence. 16. Deflection via “Howaboutism” —Howaboutism: pointing to atrocities or genocides elsewhere not only (or at all) as expressions of genuine concern but as attempts at deflection from the Gaza genocide (e.g. How about Sudan, why are you singling out Israel?). 17. Weaponized Holocaust comparisons —Using Gaza genocide-denying comparisons with the Nazi Holocaust while denouncing Gaza genocide-confirming comparisons with the Nazi Holocaust. E.g. deny the viability of Gaza genocide’s occurrence mechanisms (bombs, bullets, starvation, disease under the cover of war), by implying that only the more overt execution style mechanisms used in the Nazi Holocaust (e.g. Gas chambers, mass shootings) can truly constitute genocide. Simultaneously, denounce Holocaust comparisons (e.g. death rate at Auschwitz vs. Gaza, Israeli vs. German supremacist ideology & dehumanization) by claiming they constitute Holocaust denial or minimization. 18. Victim-perpetrator inversion —Portraying the October 7 attacks as “the real genocide” (inversion). 19. Alleging antisemitic “blood libel” —Alleging the Gaza genocide is an antisemitic continuation of an ancient form of “blood libel” against Jews. 20. Conflating protest with antisemitism —Denouncing protests (and sometimes even acts of violence) motivated by the revulsion to the Gaza genocide as being merely an expression of antisemitism.