November 2026

He has litigated before the United States Supreme Court and written extensively on the intersection of civil liberties and national security. When Oxford Union President Gareth Lim Yefeng pressed him on Gaza, Dershowitz answered with the precision that has defined his career: “Anyone who accuses Israel of genocide is a liar or a fool, including the most recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.”

The Hall of Sworn Enemy Oxford Union

On 13 October 2026, Alan M. Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School, faced students at the Oxford Union. For more than fifty years, he has taught constitutional law, criminal procedure, and the laws of war.

The students who challenged him offered historical analogies and appeals to emotion. They did not rebut the legal elements of the crime of genocide. They could not, because the accusation fails the settled tests of international law.

The Ancient Blood Libel and Its Modern Form

Dershowitz has long identified the genocide charge as the latest version of the blood libel. In a 15th-century European pamphlet, a bearded Jew is shown extracting the blood of a Christian child. The accompanying text claims that Jewish law requires Passover matzah to be baked with that blood. The claim was repeated for centuries.

It produced trials, executions, and pogroms. It was always false. Jewish law, rooted in the Torah (Leviticus 17:10–14), explicitly forbids the consumption of blood in any form. The prohibition is among the most rigorously observed practices in Jewish life. No evidence of the alleged practice has ever been produced. The accusation survived because it served a purpose: to dehumanize Jews.

The Same Old Lie

The same pattern is visible today. The claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is advanced despite the absence of the required dolus specialis—the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such.

Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the crime as one of the listed acts (killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, etc.) committed with that special intent. Moreover, the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the International Court of Justice have consistently held that this is a purpose-based, high-threshold mental element.

Circumstantial evidence of civilian deaths in urban warfare, however tragic, does not establish it. Hamas embeds its military infrastructure among civilians, uses tunnels under hospitals and schools, and stores weapons in civilian buildings. Israel’s stated and demonstrated objective is the destruction of Hamas’s military capacity after the deliberate massacre, rape, and kidnapping of more than 1,200 civilians on 7 October 2023. That is not genocidal intent.

International Law and Historical Precedent

Dershowitz invoked the Allied campaigns of the Second World War not as moral equivalence but as legal comparison. Eisenhower’s D-Day decision, Churchill’s area bombing of German cities, and Truman’s atomic strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced massive civilian casualties.

None of those campaigns was characterized as genocide by contemporary or subsequent legal authorities. The laws of armed conflict, codified in the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, require distinction between combatants and civilians and proportionality: the expected incidental civilian harm must not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

Calling Your Enemy

Israel issues advance warnings (roof-knocking, phone calls, leaflet drops), creates evacuation corridors, and delivers large quantities of humanitarian aid. Gaza’s population has continued to grow. These facts are incompatible with an intent to destroy the group as such.

Hamas’s own founding documents and public statements call for the elimination of Jews and the destruction of Israel. That is the language of genocidal intent. In contrast, Israel’s response is the language of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The International Court of Justice, in its provisional measures orders, has not found that Israel is committing genocide; it has ordered measures to prevent harm and ensure humanitarian access.

Accusations that ignore the dolus specialis requirement and the human-shield doctrine recycle the blood libel in contemporary vocabulary.

Children of Abraham and the Persistence of the Libel

I write as one who discovered, with my wife, that we are Jewish—descendants of crypto-Jews whose heritage was hidden for generations. In 2001, my mother revealed the family secret. By 2015, we understood that a Jew cannot practice Christianity. My life changed again in 2005 with the unilateral disengagement from Gaza. It changed once more on 7 October 2023.

A daughter who is Jewish has repeated the world’s charge of genocide. The accusations she has heard are the same ones that have been leveled against Jews for centuries: we use the blood of the innocent; we are uniquely cruel; our self-defense is itself a crime.

Professor Dershowitz and I stand on opposite sides of certain political questions. He has long supported a two-state outcome. I hold that the land was given by Hashem and that the 2005 withdrawal demonstrated the futility of trading land for peace when the other side seeks destruction rather than coexistence.

The New Language Is Still Old

Neither of us is required to agree on every policy to recognize a false accusation when it appears. The Torah forbids the consumption of blood. International law requires specific genocidal intent. Both standards are unmet by the charge against Israel. The Oxford students who confronted Dershowitz could not meet those standards either. They offered the same old libels in a new language.

The world has been wrong about the children of Abraham for a very long time. The evidence, the texts, and the law have not changed. Those who insist on the genocide accusation after fifty years of Dershowitz’s teaching, after the clear text of the Genocide Convention, and after the documented conduct of both parties since 7 October 2023, are repeating a libel that has never required evidence and has never been true.

Hazan Gavriel ben David

Sources drawn from Dershowitz’s public statements and writings: Oxford Union event (13 October 2026, reported by The Oxford Student and Oxford Chronicle); Dershowitz, “Accusing Israel of ‘Genocide’ Is the New Blood Libel” (Daily Caller, 19 December 2023); Dershowitz, “Blood Libel against Jews: Back with a Vengeance” (JNS / Gatestone, October 2023); Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), Art. II; ICTY/ICTR jurisprudence on dolus specialis (e.g., Prosecutor v. Akayesu); Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (1977), Arts. 51, 57.

Key Takeaways

Alan Dershowitz addressed the Oxford Union on 13 October 2026, defending Israel against accusations of genocide in Gaza.
He argues that such accusations reflect a modern form of the ancient blood libel, lacking the necessary legal intent.
Dershowitz cites international law and historical precedent, stating that civilian casualties do not equal genocidal intent.
He contrasts Israel’s actions with Hamas’s documented genocidal language, emphasizing a lack of intent to destroy a group.
The charges against Israel fail to meet legal standards, and Dershowitz notes historical patterns of false accusations against Jews.