The initiative, published by Creative Community for Peace under the title "Reject the Lie," launched in early September with more than 5,000 signatories and later passed the 6,000 mark.
The letter was written by author and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi, rabbi and historian Yitz Greenberg, journalist and social activist Rabbi Micha Odenheimer, and Binghamton University professor Jonathan Karp.
The signatories are entering a much wider international debate over the use of the term "genocide" in relation to the Gaza war. Several organizations and investigative bodies have concluded that Israel's conduct amounted to genocide or genocidal acts, conclusions Israel rejects. At the same time, the principal interstate legal case on the issue before the International Court of Justice in The Hague has not reached a final judgment on the merits.
What the Signatories Argue
The letter opens with a forceful rejection of the genocide accusation and describes it as a "blood libel."
Its central legal argument concerns intent. Under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, large-scale deaths or destruction alone are not sufficient to establish genocide. The crime also requires intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.
The signatories argue that Israel's conduct does not demonstrate an intention to destroy Palestinians, but rather an effort to defeat Hamas following the October 7, 2023 attack.
They point, among other things, to Hamas's extensive tunnel network, fighting from civilian areas, booby-trapped structures, Israeli evacuation warnings and the difficulty of distinguishing combatants from civilians in dense urban warfare.
The letter also acknowledges disagreement within the Jewish community about how Israel conducted the war. It argues that criticism of the war's conduct and grief over innocent civilian deaths are not inconsistent with rejecting the genocide characterization.
Who Is Among the More Than 6,000 Signatories
The published list includes academics, lawyers, historians, former political figures and people from culture and entertainment.
Prominent names include Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker; historians Niall Ferguson, Benny Morris, Dina Porat and Simon Sebag Montefiore; Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt; Turing Award laureate Judea Pearl; urban-warfare analyst John Spencer; and former Canadian justice minister and attorney general Irwin Cotler.
Political and public figures include former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, former British chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and former US secretary of veterans affairs Robert Wilkie.
Entertainment and media figures include Debra Messing, Mayim Bialik, Shari Redstone and Sherry Lansing.
The signatures are personal. A signatory's affiliation with a university, company or public body does not mean that institution endorsed the letter.
The campaign website also does not present a clearly complete, independently auditable database of all 6,000-plus signatories, and no public description of its signature-verification process has been identified.
What the International Court of Justice Has Decided
The public debate over the word "genocide" is not the same as the legal status of the case in The Hague.
South Africa filed proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice in December 2023, alleging violations of the Genocide Convention in relation to Palestinians in Gaza.
During 2024, the Court issued several provisional-measures orders requiring Israel to take steps to protect rights asserted under the Convention, prevent acts covered by it and facilitate humanitarian assistance.
However, the Court has not ruled that Israel committed genocide.
The common shorthand that the ICJ already found "genocide plausible" is also imprecise. At the provisional-measures stage, the Court examined whether rights claimed by South Africa under the Convention were plausible and whether there was a risk of irreparable prejudice before a final decision. Whether Israel actually violated the Genocide Convention remains a question for the merits stage.
That stage remains far from complete. In May 2026, the Court set November 2027 as the deadline for South Africa's next reply and May 2029 for Israel's rejoinder.
Other Bodies Have Reached Different Conclusions
The absence of a final ICJ judgment does not mean that no organizations have reached their own conclusions.
Amnesty International concluded in December 2024 that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Human Rights Watch used narrower language, finding that deliberate deprivation of water amounted to extermination as a crime against humanity and "acts of genocide."
In 2025, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel also published reports concluding that Israel was committing genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars adopted a resolution in August 2025 stating that Israeli policies and actions in Gaza met the legal definition of genocide, and a UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry reached a similar conclusion the following month.
Those are assessments by organizations, scholars and investigative bodies. They are not a final judgment by the International Court of Justice.
Israel rejects those conclusions and says its war aims were to dismantle Hamas's military and governing capabilities, secure the release of hostages and prevent another October 7-style attack, not to destroy the Palestinian population.
The Central Dispute: What Can Be Inferred About Intent
This is the core of the legal argument.
Critics of Israel point to the scale of death and destruction, damage to infrastructure, the food crisis and statements by Israeli officials as evidence from which, they argue, an intent to destroy part of the Palestinian population can be inferred.
Israel and experts who reject the genocide accusation point instead to the stated objective of defeating Hamas, evacuations from combat zones, advance warnings and Hamas's use of dense urban terrain and an extensive underground network.
None of these points alone resolves the legal question. The central challenge is whether the totality of decisions, statements and conduct proves the specific intent required by law for genocide.
The more than 6,000 signatories to "Reject the Lie" now represent a large, organized public challenge to the accusation at a time when several international bodies and human-rights organizations have reached the opposite conclusion.
The court tasked with resolving the interstate legal dispute between South Africa and Israel, however, has yet to deliver its final word.
