How has Israel been able to conduct a campaign of genocide in Gaza that has lasted almost two years? In Israel, two distinct but complementary narratives offer answers to this question. One denies the genocide altogether, urging the world to ignore Israel’s criminal conduct in Gaza. The “war” is one of “self-defense” against “terrorists.” The other concedes that crimes against humanity are being committed, or that the war “has gone too far,” but places the blame squarely on Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist right-wing coalition partners.

It is almost banal to state that both narratives are false; Israel is committing war crimes that meet the definition of genocide, and its military campaign is supported by a coalition much broader than Netanyahu’s relatively narrow parliamentary majority. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continues to rely heavily on reservists from across the political spectrum to carry out its onslaught. And while polls consistently show that most Israelis support ending the war in exchange for the release of hostages, they also consistently reveal a society gripped by genocidal mania — willingly ignoring Palestinian death and sufferings and openly endorsing, at the very least, ethnic cleansing.

This profound detachment from reality within Israel has fostered — though not caused — the emergence of an alternative explanation: “This is simply what Israel is.” Accepting this premise implies that Israel’s exclusionary politics, its existence as an apartheid ethno-state, led inevitably to genocide. According to this view, Israelis support the genocide because they are racist and because doing so advances the interests of nationalists whose sole aim is eradicating Palestinians, making the genocide the true aim of the war. The October 7 Hamas attack, according to this perspective, merely exposed Israel’s “true face,” shaped by its unchangeable colonial origins. Here, I believe, Israel’s critics conflate condemnation — or even an accurate description — of the outcomes of a political process with an actual explanation of its causes.