“Now I use the word ‘genocide’… with immeasurable pain and a broken heart.”
— David Grossman,
Israeli author and peace activist (La Repubblica)
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When a renowned Israeli writer, one who has spent decades advocating for peace and mutual recognition, publicly calls his country’s actions genocide, the world must pay attention. His statement is not meant to shock, but to reveal a grave truth. David Grossman’s moral courage, rooted in Jewish history and peace activism, makes his words undeniable: Israel’s campaign in Gaza, marked by mass starvation, blockade and the erasure of civilian life, constitutes genocide. The act of naming this reality is essential for moral clarity.
Grossman’s use of the word is not rhetorical but diagnostic, born from the horror of images, testimony and sustained policies exposing an entire population to siege, hunger and disposability.
Coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in response to the Nazi extermination, the term “genocide” means the deliberate destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. What is unfolding in Gaza aligns disturbingly with this definition: thousands of children dead, civilian infrastructure obliterated, medical systems dismantled, food and water cut off, a population demonised and punished as collective retribution.
Governments, media and cultural institutions often retreat from moral clarity out of fear of backlash or loss of alliances. Yet the term genocide was created as a preventative alarm. When voices are silenced for reasons of convenience, the killing continues, and the moral responsibility shifts from the perpetrators alone to all who saw and chose not to speak. If any other regime inflicted this on any other people, the world would not hesitate to name it. Why does the global conscience falter when it is Israel?
The Holocaust is not just a Jewish tragedy, it is a universal warning of what happens when a people are dehumanised and destroyed through state power. The unspeakable irony now is that a state founded as a sanctuary for victims of genocide has become an agent of genocidal violence. This does not deny Jewish trauma; it is precisely because of it that Israel’s actions demand unflinching moral scrutiny. The cry of Never Again must not become a selective ethic, valid only when Jews are the victims.
Grossman’s statement reminds us that writers keep a society’s conscience. When other institutions abandon truth, it falls to writers, artists and public intellectuals to uphold it.
Literature cannot stop a war, nor can it shield the innocent. Yet truth, once spoken, demands more than recognition; it requires judgment. Naming liars strips them of their alibis and forces them to reckon. Thus, literature becomes a summons to justice.
To write in such times is to wage an unarmed resistance against the machinery of erasure.
To speak of genocide is not an act of radicalism; it is a commitment to humanity. To denounce mass killing is not an attack on a people; it is an affirmation of human ethics. To critique a state policy that starves children is not terrorism; it is an assertion of moral clarity.
We live in a moment where truth is endangered, human life is weighed by political convenience and moral speech is criminalised in the name of security. To raise one’s voice against genocide—any genocide—is the bare minimum of human decency. Writers and all who bear witness must not wait for permission to tell the truth or seek approval to mourn the powerless. Now is the time to speak, to document and to demand accountability. We must stand together and refuse to be silent, ensuring our voices break through the walls of silence.
Grossman points to a cultural shift in Israel after October 7: the abandonment of moral values under fear, the ease of hatred, the seduction of collective rage. “They no longer needed to think,” he says. This moral laziness must be resisted, not only by citizens, but also by writers.
The urgency of naming and resisting genocide is echoed by PEN International, which has warned that “genocide is the ultimate form of silencing” and condemned the international community’s failure to halt Israel’s assault on Gaza. Calling for an arms embargo and a permanent ceasefire, PEN reports the deadliest period for writers since World War II, with Palestinian authors, journalists and cultural spaces deliberately targeted. Its message is unambiguous: there is no safe place in Gaza, and silence is complicity. As readers and global citizens, we must amplify the call for an arms embargo, demand a permanent ceasefire and support efforts to safeguard free expression and protect those at risk.
David Grossman’s courage in naming genocide is more than a personal act of dissent; it is a reminder of literature’s highest duty: to stand as a bulwark against forgetting. The written word survives the wreckage of cities and the collapse of governments; it carries forward the testimony of the voiceless when all else is destroyed.
To write in such times is to wage an unarmed resistance against the machinery of erasure. It is to defy the amnesia of the powerful and preserve, for the judgment of history, the truth lived and suffered by those who could not save themselves. Writing becomes the ultimate refusal of silence in the face of genocide, the deliberate attempt to erase a people. While the histories of victors may fade, literature, testimony and uncompromising words endure as the lasting record. In naming genocide, writers take up a fundamental obligation: to confront violence with truth and to ensure that memory outlives denial.
The writer is aPakistan-born andAustria-based poet in Urdu and English.He teaches South Asian literature and culture atVienna University