If you track Benjamin Netanyahu’s speeches following his invasion of the Gaza Strip, he has said to the Israeli people, “You must remember what the Amalekites have done to you” which is in reference to enemies of the Israelites in the Old Testament (National Public Radio Nov 7, 2023):
“Now go and completely destroy the entire Amalekite nation: men, women, children, and babies; cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and donkeys.” (Samuel_1 15:3)
Furthermore, the legal scholar on genocide and war crimes, Philippe Joseph Sands, reported that “There was a piece in Time magazine about five, six years ago—a profile of Benjamin Netanyahu. And the piece included a photograph of him reading ‘East West Street’. (Sands on the Ezra Klein Show, New York Times, Aug. 13, 2025). The book ‘East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity’ written by Sands (2016) is about two Jewish lawyers, Hersch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin, who were central to creating the international laws post-1945 that were used to convict nineteen Nazis of crimes against humanity because of their execution of the Holocaust (see Nuremberg Trials, 1945-1946). This along with graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976 proves that Netanyahu is able to understand international law as it pertains to genocide and war crimes. If Donald Trump, on the other hand, were to be accused of raping pubescent girls, for example, it would be difficult to prove his intention since he does not have the intellectual caliber (nor attention span) to discriminate between right and wrong (see Footnote 1). The same cannot be said of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Footnote 1: If convicted for any crime Trump would instead need to be put into a psychiatric prison. Also see case 1:16-cv-07673-RA.
If we are to believe what he himself says (at the prompting of a lunatic fringe in the Knesset) then unequivocally yes.
He has repeatedly stated he wants to displace the Palestinian population from Gaza, he 100% supports the illegal settlements in the West Bank that have precisely the same ultimate end.
People mistake the meaning of Genocide and think anything less than the Holocaust is not genocide. Here is the legal definition and it can be used to measure the strategy of Israel's government and armed forces in Palestinian territory.
For the purpose of Art 6. of this this Statute, ‘genocide’ means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Take your pick!
By openly stating the policy of depopulating Gaza Netanyahu is also guilty of the Nuremberg Indictment of conspiring the destruction of a national, ethic, racial or religious group.
In the interests of balance we should also bear in mind that both Hamas and Hizbollah could similarly be indicted on that count of conspiracy to commit genocide.
From the legal point of view, the crime of genocide is always intentional. Intent to commit genocide is one of the elements of the crime and, very often, the most difficult one to prove. So, if he is committing genocide, he is committing it intentionally. As per my opinion, whether he is committing genocide or not, I believe he is, although the only ones qualified to give a real answer to this key question are the judges of an international court.
Massimo
Look to his own words to discover intention. Intent as a legal concept is to be found in the precedents.
By them he is intentionally committing genocide.