Urban Warfare Expert John Spencer Joins 5,000 Public Figures Rejecting Gaza Genocide Accusation

More than 5,000 figures from politics, academia, entertainment, business and public life have signed an open letter rejecting accusations that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, bringing together former government leaders, historians, legal experts, academics and prominent cultural figures behind a direct challenge to one of the most serious allegations made against Israel during the war.

Among the signatories are former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, former U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, historians Niall Ferguson, Benny Morris and Simon Sebag Montefiore, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, actress Debra Messing and urban warfare expert John Spencer.

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, and Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, are also among the signatories.

The statement was released by Creative Community for Peace in partnership with author Yossi Klein Halevi, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, Rabbi Micha Odenheimer and historian Jonathan Karp.

The signatories are listed with their professional affiliations, but the organizers specify that they signed as individuals rather than on behalf of their respective organizations.

“We Reject This Accusation”

The letter does not argue that every Israeli decision during the Gaza war was justified or beyond criticism.

Instead, it draws a sharp distinction between criticism of how Israel conducted the war and the specific legal accusation of genocide.

“There is a vigorous debate within the Jewish community over aspects of how this war was fought, and that is a sign of moral health,” the letter states, while also acknowledging the suffering of innocent civilians.

But on the genocide accusation, the signatories are unequivocal.

“We reject this accusation with contempt,” they write.

At the center of their argument is a word that has sometimes been lost in the wider political debate: intent.

Genocide Has a Specific Legal Meaning

Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, genocide is not simply another term for a war in which large numbers of civilians are killed.

The convention defines genocide through specified acts committed with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”

Those acts include killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately imposing conditions calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction, imposing measures intended to prevent births and forcibly transferring children.

That requirement of intent is central to the new letter.

“A crucial difference between war as tragedy and war as genocide is intent,” the signatories argue.

They contend that Israel entered Gaza after the Hamas led October 7 attack with military objectives, including dismantling the threat posed by Hamas and restoring Israeli deterrence, rather than with an objective of destroying Palestinians as a people.

The letter also points to the extraordinary conditions of combat in Gaza, including Hamas’s extensive tunnel network, booby trapped buildings and fighting in densely populated urban areas. It cites Israeli warnings to civilians before attacks and disputes portrayals of the civilian casualty figures as evidence, by themselves, of genocidal intent.

Those claims remain heavily contested. The significance of the letter is that more than 5,000 signatories are publicly arguing that the evidence does not meet the specific legal threshold required to establish genocide.

John Spencer: Evidence Points in the “Opposite Direction”

One of the signatories is John Spencer, a retired U.S. Army officer and prominent specialist in urban warfare who serves as Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Spencer has repeatedly examined the Gaza war through the lens of military operations in dense urban environments.

In a September 4 post on X, he stated his position plainly:

“There is no genocide in Gaza.”

Spencer argued that evidence concerning Israel’s intentions and actions points in the opposite direction from an attempt to destroy Gaza’s population, in whole or in part.

His participation is particularly relevant because several of the letter’s arguments concern the realities of urban warfare rather than simply the political debate surrounding Israel.

Deborah Lipstadt: The Accusation Has Become Widely Accepted

Deborah Lipstadt, the Holocaust historian who previously served as the U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, also signed the statement.

Lipstadt argues that repeated use of the genocide accusation has caused it to become accepted by people who may never have examined the legal standard or evidence behind it.

Speaking separately to JNS about her decision to sign, Lipstadt described the current moment as “an hour of crisis.”

“I don't usually sign joint letters,” she said, explaining that she nevertheless felt it was necessary to participate.

The organizers make a broader argument that goes beyond the battlefield. They contend that portraying Israel as a genocidal state has increasingly contributed to hostility toward Jews outside Israel.

Creative Community for Peace Executive Director Ari Ingel said criticism of Israel and its government is legitimate, but argued that accusing the Jewish state of genocide carries consequences far beyond normal political criticism.

Rabbi David Wolpe expressed the argument more succinctly:

“Lies about Jews lead to persecuting them.”

Who Has Actually Found Israel Guilty of Genocide?

This is where an important distinction in the debate is frequently blurred.

Several influential organizations and expert bodies have concluded that Israel's conduct amounts to genocide.

Amnesty International reached that conclusion in a 2024 report.

In 2025, the International Association of Genocide Scholars passed a resolution stating that Israel's actions in Gaza met the legal definition of genocide. Only 28 percent of the association's roughly 500 members participated in the vote, with 86 percent of participating members voting in favor.

Also in 2025, the UN Human Rights Council's Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces had committed genocidal acts and that genocidal intent could be inferred from the evidence it examined.

These are serious accusations and findings.

But none is a judgment by an international court.

Amnesty International is a nongovernmental organization. The International Association of Genocide Scholars is a professional academic association. The UN Commission of Inquiry is an independent investigative body established by the UN Human Rights Council.

As of September 2026, no international court has issued a final judgment finding Israel responsible for genocide in Gaza.

What the ICJ Actually Ruled

The distinction is particularly important when discussing South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

The ICJ has issued legally binding provisional measures requiring Israel, among other things, to take measures within its power to prevent acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention and to facilitate humanitarian assistance.

But the court has not ruled that Israel committed genocide.

Nor did its January 2024 decision determine that there was a “plausible genocide,” despite that description becoming widespread in political commentary and media coverage.

Joan Donoghue, who was president of the ICJ when the January 2024 order was issued, later publicly corrected that interpretation.

The court found that Palestinians in Gaza had plausible rights to protection from acts of genocide and that South Africa had the right to seek protection of those rights under the Genocide Convention. That preliminary finding allowed the court to impose provisional measures while the case continued.

It was not a finding that genocide had occurred.

The underlying case remains pending, and there has been no final judgment on the merits.

A Public Challenge to an Increasingly Common Accusation

That distinction is at the heart of the new letter.

Its more than 5,000 signatories are not simply arguing that Israel should be immune from criticism. The letter itself acknowledges disagreement over the conduct of the war and the suffering of Palestinian civilians.

Their argument is narrower and more consequential.

Genocide is one of the gravest crimes recognized under international law. It has a specific definition, requires specific intent, and an accusation of that magnitude should not become established fact merely through repetition.

The signatories believe that is precisely what has happened.

And with politicians, historians, academics, military experts and cultural figures now putting their names publicly behind that challenge, the debate over the word “genocide” is no longer simply about who uses the accusation.

It is increasingly also about whether the evidence actually proves it.