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When Everything is Genocide: How the American Public Has Diluted the Meaning of the Term
(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Irwin J. Mansdorf, Ph.D. and Charles Jacobs - Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war following Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack, accusations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza have become increasingly common in political discourse, media coverage, and international institutions. Although the legal definition of genocide requires proof of a specific intent to destroy a protected national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, public debate increasingly appears to apply the term more broadly to armed conflicts involving large-scale civilian casualties. A nationally representative sample of American adults evaluated whether the term genocide applied to Israel's military campaign in Gaza, the Holocaust, the treatment of Native Americans, the Allied bombing of Germany during World War II, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and Islamist violence against Black Christians in Africa. The findings indicate that many respondents apply the term genocide well beyond its accepted legal meaning. While the Holocaust remained the clearest and most universally recognized example of genocide, substantial numbers of respondents also characterized numerous military campaigns involving large-scale civilian casualties as genocide, including conflicts in which the U.S. was a participant. Younger respondents and those identifying as Democrats were significantly more likely than older respondents and Republicans to characterize both Israel's actions and other military conflicts as genocide. These differences extended beyond attitudes toward Israel, suggesting broader generational and political differences in how the concept itself is understood. The findings suggest that the public meaning of genocide has undergone a process of conceptual expansion that effectively downgrades its legal and historical distinctiveness. Increasingly, the term appears to function as a general expression of moral condemnation for wars involving extensive civilian casualties rather than as the legally defined crime requiring proof of specific intent. We can more accurately term this process of conceptual expansion as "conceptual dilution": a situation in which a concept with a precise legal or professional definition expands within public discourse to encompass situations not included in its original meaning. This is what appears to have happened with the term genocide. Dr. Irwin J. Mansdorf is a clinical psychologist and a fellow at the Jerusalem Center, specializing in political psychology. Charles Jacobs is founder of the International Freedom Coalition.