Israel’s actions in Gaza are not genocide, says UK’s chief rabbi

Sir Ephraim Mirvis speaking during a vigil for the victims and hostages of Hamas attacks outside Downing Street in October 2023. Photograph: Lucy North/PA

The chief rabbi has said using the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza is an “increasingly frequent, disingenuous misappropriation of the term”.

Sir Ephraim Mirvis said the use of the term was a “moral inversion, which undermines the memory of the worst crimes in human history” and was designed to “tear open the still gaping wound of the Holocaust”.