Talking to the Delusion
Talking to the Delusion: A Systematic Breakdown of Genocide Denial and Gaslighting Tactics
A word from Sahra on white supremacy:
To stay silent and not fight back is how delusion takes hold—gripping societies, shaping nations, and manufacturing a consensus of normalized compliance. I’m not here to tell you who to be or what you’re capable of. But I will say this: feeding the delusion will make you sick, too. It creeps in quietly, working its way through your life until you no longer recognize it. It is a benign cancer that thrives in subtlety. And remember, we are all swimming in the same waters. Gaza may be soaked in blood, but our waters are not clean either.
During colonial rule in Algeria, the French employed psychological torture on scientists and academics, while unleashing brutal physical violence on working-class people. Why? Because it was psychological warfare. And today, I would argue that the narrative warfare surrounding this genocide, flattened into Instagram Reels instead of examined in traditional journalism, is another form of psychological warfare. A war for our minds, as much as for their lives.
Whether our shortened attention spans lead to silence or delusion is almost beside the point because distraction itself is a strategy. It reminds us that the mind is not to be wasted. The mind is a weapon, and it must be fed truth and reason. Today, we are witnessing a rise in apathy and anti-intellectualism. The consumer market has hijacked our attention spans, conditioning our brains to favor anxiety over meaningful solutions. This is not accidental. A distracted mind cannot focus, cannot act, and certainly cannot liberate, especially when intention is missing. And intention requires awareness.
Still, these competing narratives aren’t the point. There is only truth and it is evident. No ornate language or academic thesis is necessary. I believe deeply in the mind’s ability to discern, to cut through noise, and to uncover what matters. That belief is why I do this work in education consulting. And I will continue to use my mind in service of truth, reason, and liberation. As I always say: liberation is a collective effort. I’m grateful to the voices before me, and the ones I learn from today. We are going far, together. Join us.
Peace,
Sahra Ali
A dissection of how genocide denial operates in real time, using documented examples of deflection, dehumanization, and systematic erasure from LinkedIn conversation thread.
Case Study: Live Documentation of Genocide Denial in Real Time
Exhibit A: The Initial Deflection
Context:
An Israeli man systematically deconstructed a Palestinian blogger's firsthand account of surviving bombardment in Gaza, dismissing his documentation as "blame-shifting" and claiming "there is no genocide."
His initial response:
"Its interesting—scrolling through his blog, all I see is blame-shifting. There's a lot of outrage, but almost no accountability.
Yes, it's absolutely fair to speak up for innocent Palestinians—many of whom are victims of failed leadership and have been used as cannon fodder by regimes that want to wipe them from existence. But what's missing is any real acknowledgment of who is responsible for the atrocities.
When someone is trying to kill you, you have a right to defend yourself.
And yet, unlike almost every other conflict in the world, the people of Gaza aren't allowed to leave. Why? Because Hamas and Egypt won't let them. That's not just a strategic decision. That's a war crime. That's the root of so much of the suffering.
Yes, there is death in Gaza. But let's be clear: there is no genocide. If Israel were trying to exterminate Palestinians, we wouldn't be seeing 500,000 Palestinian in Hebron area actively rejecting Hamas and the PA and calling for peace and cooperation with Israelis. That only happens when people believe peace is still possible.
So ask yourself: if this were truly a massacre, why would anyone be calling for better relations with the so-called aggressor?"
Exhibit B: My Challenge to His Deflection
My response:
"Are you referring to Refaat's blog? Can you clarify what you mean by no accountability and how the televised ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is not a genocide? I am not interested in semantics.
I am trying to understand how you came up with this assessment by reading the blog of a Palestinian man who is bringing his voice to an unimaginable experience shared by many that so many onlookers feel helpless about.
What are your legible expectations of people who are trying to escape murder on their own land?"
Exhibit C: The Gaslighting
His response:
"Are you actually open to hearing an opposing view?
Because based on the way you've framed your comment—with terms like "ethnic cleansing," "genocide," and "no accountability," while dismissing definitions as "semantics"—it doesn't seem like you're inviting conversation. It seems like you've already decided what's true, and now you're testing whether others agree with you or not.
I'm all for hard, honest dialogue. But dialogue only works if both sides are willing to hear what makes them uncomfortable. Are you?"
The Pattern You Are Witnessing
When asked direct questions about a Palestinian man's survival testimony, he completely avoided all substance and instead:
Questioned my worthiness for dialogue rather than addressing Palestinian suffering
Reframed genocide documentation as an "opposing view"
Tone-policed my use of accurate legal terminology
Made himself the victim seeking "hard, honest dialogue"
Positioned genocide denial as intellectual courage
This exchange provides a perfect real-time example of every tactic analyzed in the comprehensive breakdown that follows. He has unwittingly demonstrated the very patterns of deflection, dehumanization, and gaslighting that enable genocide to continue while maintaining plausible deniability.
What makes this particularly instructive: This isn't theoretical; it is how genocide denial operates in practice, complete with the psychological mechanisms that allow ordinary people to dismiss ethnic cleansing as merely a difference of opinion while positioning themselves as the reasonable party seeking dialogue. A Palestinian is not afforded their own narrative, let alone the luxury of nuance.
The analysis that follows uses this exchange as Exhibit A for recognizing these patterns when they appear in other contexts, other conflicts, and other attempts to normalize the unthinkable.
I. The Anatomy of Deflection: When "Dialogue" Becomes Silencing
A. The Meta-Conversation Trap
When confronted with direct questions about Palestinian suffering, a predictable pattern emerges: the shift from substance to tone policing. This is not accidental. it's a calculated maneuver to avoid accountability while appearing reasonable.
The meta-conversation trap works by reframing legitimate concerns about human rights violations as questions about the questioner's worthiness to engage. Instead of addressing whether televised ethnic cleansing constitutes genocide, the conversation becomes about whether the person documenting it is "open to dialogue." This deflection serves multiple functions. It positions the deflector as the reasonable party seeking "balanced" discussion, while simultaneously suggesting that those raising concerns about genocide are somehow closed-minded or biased. Right here is where the irrationality of the Palestinian is inserted subtlety. If the Palestinian is irrational then any sympathetic to their cause is also labeled irrational.
South Africa's case at the International Court of Justice specifically cited Israeli rhetoric as evidence of genocidal intent, noting how "Words lead to deeds" and that inflammatory language has been "left unchecked, inciting violence and dehumanizing Palestinians." Yet when this documented pattern is raised, the response is often to question whether the person raising it is worthy of conversation.
B. Semantic Warfare and the "Opposing View" Fallacy
The weaponization of language reaches its peak when genocide documentation is dismissed as merely an "opposing view." This represents a fundamental category error—the difference between documented violations of international law and matters of opinion.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese concluded in March 2024 that there were "reasonable grounds to believe that Israel had committed acts of genocide" based on legal analysis of evidence. When legal experts applying international frameworks reach these conclusions, dismissing them as "opposing views" reveals either profound ignorance of how international law works or deliberate obfuscation.
The semantic warfare extends to the dismissal of terms like "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" as "semantics." The New York Times internal memo instructed journalists to "avoid" using these terms, demonstrating how even news organizations participate in this linguistic sanitization. But these are not semantic choices; they are legal definitions with specific meanings under international law.
II. The Amalek Doctrine: Dehumanization as State Policy
A. Historical Context of Amalek References
The invocation of Amalek represents one of the most chilling examples of genocidal rhetoric being mainstreamed in contemporary discourse. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited the Bible in a televised address: "You must remember what Amalek has done to you," referencing a biblical commandment that calls for total destruction.
The biblical passage frequently invoked reads: "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." This language has been historically used by Israeli far-right figures to justify killing Palestinians.
The psychological conditioning required to make such language acceptable to ordinary citizens represents a systematic process of dehumanization. As documented in recent scholarship, even the exit banner at Offer Prison near Ramallah displayed different messages in different languages—with the Arabic version reading "I will extinct them," evoking the Amalek narrative.
B. The Brainwashing Infrastructure
The normalization of genocidal rhetoric didn't emerge overnight. It represents the culmination of decades of state-sponsored dehumanization through education, media, and military training. Israeli infantry units require routine training in simulators and war games that recreate sites often serving as realistic representations of Palestinian areas.
This has created what historian Lawrence Davidson calls a "closed information environment" that has tightened further during the current war, with Israel's parliament amending counter-terrorism laws to criminalize even passive social media consumption of posts from Gaza.
The result is a population psychologically prepared to accept narratives that would otherwise be recognized as obviously false or morally abhorrent. This explains the proliferation of videos on social media of Israelis reenacting the massacre and torture of Palestinian civilians in "carnival mode," including soldiers and civilians filming themselves imitating blindfolded Palestinian detainees.
III. Francesca Albanese and the Legal Framework
A. UN Special Rapporteur's Findings
Francesca Albanese's "Anatomy of a Genocide" report concluded there are "reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide has been met" by Israel in Gaza. Her analysis identified three specific genocidal acts under international law:
Specifically, "causing seriously serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group."
Human Rights Watch's 179-page report found that "Israeli authorities have intentionally deprived Palestinians in Gaza of access to safe water for drinking and sanitation needed for basic human survival," constituting "the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide."
B. The Evidence They Can't Dismiss
The documentation of genocidal intent has reached unprecedented levels. Amnesty International reviewed 102 statements by Israeli officials between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024 that "dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts," with 22 statements from senior officials providing "direct evidence of genocidal intent."
Amnesty International's research found that "Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza." The organization interviewed 212 people and analyzed extensive visual and digital evidence, including satellite imagery.
The UN Special Committee found that by early 2024, "over 25,000 tons of explosives, equivalent to two nuclear bombs, had been dropped on Gaza, causing massive destruction and the collapse of water and sanitation systems."
IV. The Inhumane Theft: Denying Palestinians Their Own Voice
A. The Refaat Case Study
The specific case that triggered the exchange being analyzed represents a microcosm of how Palestinian voices are systematically delegitimized. When a Palestinian man documents his experience of surviving bombs and ethnic cleansing, the response is not empathy or even neutral acknowledgment but a systematic deconstruction of his right to name his own reality.
As Palestinian-American writer Hala Alyan observed: "The real problem with dehumanization is it delegitimizes the dehumanized from being able to speak on their own experience. We are no longer considered legitimate sources of information. We're not considered legitimate sources even of our dead or our suffering."
This represents a monumental theft disguised as systematic denial of a people's right to their own humanity and their own narrative. When Palestinian testimonies of survival are dismissed as "blame-shifting," it reveals the profound moral bankruptcy of the ideology that requires such dismissal.
B. The Pattern of Erasure
The pattern extends far beyond individual interactions. Studies have documented "terminology bias" as a recurrent feature of coverage, with language manipulation playing an important role in efforts to win over international public opinion.
Linguists note that Western outlets "repeatedly describe Palestinians in the passive voice, dehumanizing victims by taking away their autonomy," while "Israel is typically described in the active voice, which infers to Western readers that they can get behind the Israeli clause."
Analysis of BBC coverage found that references to "murder" and "mass murder" were used regularly for Israeli deaths but not Palestinian ones, while emotive language about victims was "far more likely to be used in relation to Israeli, rather than Palestinian, deaths."
V. Dissecting the Specific Delusions
A. "There is no genocide" - Reality vs. Denial
The flat denial of genocide in the face of overwhelming evidence represents perhaps the most brazen aspect of the gaslighting campaign. Organizations like the American Jewish Committee argue that "few claims are more offensive and blatantly wrong" than accusations of genocide against Israel.
Yet the evidence is overwhelming. Satellite imagery analyzed by Amnesty International shows systematic destruction, including the complete razing of towns like Khuza'a, where an Israeli colonel declared they had "eliminated the terrorist nest" and that "Khuza'a no longer exists."
The UN Special Rapporteur's latest report reveals that "Israel's genocide against Palestinians is being sustained by a system of exploitative occupation and profit," with the Tel Aviv stock exchange soaring 213 percent while "85,000 tons of bombs—six times the amount of Hiroshima—were unleashed on Gaza."
B. "Hamas won't let them leave" - Victim-Blaming Mechanics
One of the most perverse aspects of genocide denial is the inversion of responsibility, where those implementing the siege become the victims and those under siege become responsible for their own captivity.
The reality is that "Israeli authorities cut off all water and blocked fuel, food, and humanitarian aid from entering the strip" and "continue to restrict the entry of water, fuel, food, and aid into Gaza and to cut Gaza's electricity."
This represents a classic example of what genocide scholars call "perpetrator inversion"—the psychological mechanism by which those committing atrocities reframe themselves as victims and their victims as aggressors.
C. "500,000 Palestinians calling for peace" - Manufactured Evidence
The claim that Palestinians in Hebron are "calling for peace and cooperation with Israelis" as evidence against genocide represents a particularly cruel manipulation of survival tactics. When people are under systematic oppression, their expressions of desire for peace often represent desperate attempts at survival rather than endorsement of their oppressors
As Hala Alyan notes: "When someone is trying to kill you, you have a right to defend yourself" becomes twisted when applied to Palestinians, where even their survival strategies are used against them as evidence of consent to their own oppression.
VI. The Gaslighting Playbook Revealed
A. Questioning the Questioner
The response pattern follows a predictable playbook: when confronted with evidence of genocide, shift focus to the person presenting the evidence. Are they "open to dialogue"? Are they using "inflammatory language"? Have they already "decided what's true"?
This represents what psychologists call "DARVO"—Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. The person documenting genocide becomes the problem, while those committing genocide become the reasonable parties seeking dialogue.
B. The Comfort of Delusion
Israeli hasbara (propaganda) represents "a reactive and event-driven approach" that "seeks to explain actions, whether or not they are justified." The goal is not truth but the maintenance of a narrative that allows supporters to feel comfortable with the uncomfortable.
During the Gaza war, "the Israeli government and Israeli cyber companies have deployed artificial intelligence tools and bot farms to spread disinformation and graphic, emotionally charged and false propaganda to dehumanize Palestinians."
VII. The Israeli Media Ecosystem: Language as Weapon
A. Hebrew Language Dehumanization
Research into Israeli Hebrew-language media reveals a systematic pattern of dehumanizing language that rarely makes it into English translations. Academic analysis of metaphorical expressions used by Israeli officials shows consistent use of animal metaphors to dehumanize Palestinians, including references to "human animals," drawing from a long tradition of using such language to justify genocide.
The strategic use of euphemisms includes describing the West Bank wall as a "security fence" in English while it's called "the apartheid wall" in Arabic, and Israeli broadcasting authorities instructing staff to replace "settlers" with "residents."
Even seemingly innocuous terms are weaponized—the Hebrew term "hasbara" roughly translates to "explanation" but has become synonymous with Israel's global propaganda efforts.
B. The Closed Information Environment
Israeli social media has been used to "garner support for military actions, with the government running ads portraying Hamas negatively" while "some Israeli influencers and content creators have mocked and dehumanized Palestinians, leading to widespread criticism."
The Israeli prosecutor's office sent over 8,000 removal requests to Meta and TikTok for content related to the war, resulting in 94% of requests being removed, while Meta reportedly allowed Hebrew and Arabic-language ads calling for a "holocaust for the Palestinians."
VIII. Why We Need to Speak Up: The Stakes of Silence
A. The Historical Pattern
As Edward Said documented, "Facts do not all speak for themselves, but require a socially acceptable narrative to absorb, sustain and circulate them." The systematic construction of narratives that deny genocide represents a continuation of historical patterns that enabled previous genocides.
Research shows that genocide throughout history has been incited by metaphor: "Holocaust Jews as 'parasites,' Iraqis as 'rapists,' Rwandan Tutsis as 'cockroaches,' Bosnians as 'Islamic fundamentalists.'" The animal metaphors being applied to Palestinians follow this exact pattern.
B. The Urgency of Truth-Telling
As one Palestinian survivor described their conditions: "You feel like you are subhuman here," living under bombardment without clean water, toilets, or basic necessities. When people are experiencing genocide in real time, the luxury of "balanced dialogue" about whether it's really happening becomes a form of complicity.
Over 1,500 journalists from dozens of U.S. news organizations signed an open letter condemning Western media's coverage, accusing newsrooms of using "dehumanizing rhetoric that has served to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians."
The choice facing the international community is stark: continue enabling genocide through silence and "dialogue" about whether it's really happening, or interrupt the machinery of death through acknowledgment and action.
IX. Conclusion: Why We Don't Argue with Delusion
A. The Futility of Convincing the Convinced
There comes a point where engaging with systematic genocide denial becomes counterproductive. When someone responds to documented evidence of ethnic cleansing by questioning whether you're "open to dialogue," they have revealed that dialogue was never their goal.
As Hala Alyan observes: "There's a question mark. There's a turning away. Wanting the humanization of my people isn't a zero-sum thing. It doesn't mean that I want to take that humanization away from anyone."
The systematic nature of the delusion evidenced by the coordinated language, the institutional support, and the complete inability to acknowledge Palestinian humanity—suggests we are not dealing with individuals who can be reasoned with but with representatives of an ideological system that requires Palestinian dehumanization for its own survival.
B. Speaking to Those Who Can Still Hear
The real audience for genocide documentation is not those committed to denying it but those still capable of moral response. As the UN Special Rapporteur concluded: "Palestine is a mirror held up to the world's moral and political failures."
Francesca Albanese emphasizes that "the destruction which we see in Palestine is exactly and precisely what settler colonialism does"—and recognizing this requires us to move beyond the comfortable fiction that this is a complex conflict with two equal sides.
The systematic breakdown of genocide denial reveals its function is to maintain the comfort of those who benefit from or are complicit in genocide while Palestinians are systematically erased. Understanding this function means recognizing when engagement becomes enabling and when our energy is better spent on interrupting the machinery of death rather than debating its existence with those operating it.
When someone reduces Palestinian survival to an "opposing view," they have told us everything we need to know about their relationship to Palestinian humanity. Our response should not be to prove our worthiness for dialogue but to ensure their delusion does not shape the conversation for those still capable of seeing genocide for what it is.
This analysis serves as both documentation of genocide denial patterns and a call to recognize when such patterns represent not genuine confusion but systematic deflection designed to enable continued atrocities. The choice between complicity and resistance often comes down to our willingness to name what we're seeing without requiring permission from those who benefit from our silence. This means that people, individually, get to decide which side of his history they wish to be on by way of narrative and silence.
These are tactics of deflection born from the dangerous delusion that ethnocentric states can justify genocide through the language of “ethnic cleansing.” The term genocide, as the gravest crime one can be accused of, deserves both reverence and truth-telling. It must be acknowledged—not minimized—because the people, especially the children, who have been killed are not martyrs or victims. They are not collateral damage, nor are they merely “an opposing view,” as one Israeli genocide apologist grotesquely claimed.
When people’s humanity is denied, they become reduced to abstractions or “viewpoints,” stripped of life-affirming recognition. To justify genocide, one must embrace a separatist worldview—a logic so irrational and deluded that it mirrors the same twisted mindset that saw enslaved people as animals, devoid of emotion, pain, or humanity.
Sources:
UN and International Organizations
Amnesty International - "You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel's Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza" (December 5, 2024)
Human Rights Watch - "Extermination and Acts of Genocide: Israel Deliberately Depriving Palestinians in Gaza of Water" (December 19, 2024)
UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights - UN Special Committee finds Israel's warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide (November 2024)
UN News - Rights expert finds 'reasonable grounds' genocide is being committed in Gaza (March 28, 2024)
Francesca Albanese Reports:
"Genocide as colonial erasure" (October 1, 2024): https://www.un.org/unispal/document/genocide-as-colonial-erasure-report-francesca-albanese-01oct24/
"Anatomy of a Genocide" (March 2024): https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/anatomy-genocide-report-special-rapporteur-situation-human-rights-palestinian-territories-occupied-1967-francesca-albanese-ahrc5573-advance-unedited-version
OHCHR - Corporate complicity report (July 2025):
Academic and Research Institutions
Boston University School of Law - International Human Rights Clinic genocide report (January 2, 2025)
ResearchGate - "Metaphors They Kill by: Dehumanization of Palestinians by Israeli Officials and Sympathizers" (June 24, 2024)
Taylor & Francis Online - "Turning Palestine into a Terra Nullius: On Amalek and 'Miracles'" (2025)
News and Media Analysis
The Intercept - Leaked NYT Gaza Memo (April 15, 2024)
AP News - ICJ genocide case: Israeli rhetoric central to South Africa's case (January 18, 2024)
The Nation - "The Uses and Abuses of Language in Israel's War on Palestinians" (December 22, 2023)
Middle East Eye - "War on Gaza: How language used by media outlets downplays Palestinian suffering" (December 28, 2023)
New Lines Magazine - "Language Is a Powerful Weapon in the Israel-Palestine Conflict" (November 27, 2023)
Al Jazeera Media Institute - "The Sharp Contrast: How Israeli and Western Media Cover the War on Gaza"
Al Jazeera - UN report lists companies complicit in Israel's 'genocide' (July 1, 2025)
Daily Star - "Dehumanising Palestinians: Israel's Rhetoric of Genocide" (October 31, 2023)
NPR - Palestinian writer discusses dangers of dehumanizing Palestinians (December 12, 2023)
Democracy Now! - "Genocide as Colonial Erasure": U.N. Expert Francesca Albanese (October 31, 2024)
Jacobin - "Francesca Albanese: This Is Genocide" (November 2024)
Media Monitoring and Analysis
Counterfire - "Gaza: The language behind the media bias"
Stop the War - "Gaza: The Language Behind the Media Bias"
CSIS - "Gaza Through Whose Lens?"
Wikipedia Sources (for general reference)
Wikipedia - Media coverage of the Gaza war
Wikipedia - Misinformation in the Gaza war
Wikipedia - Palestinian genocide accusation
Wikipedia - Media coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Wikipedia - Francesca Albanese
Other Sources
AJC - "5 Reasons Why the Events in Gaza Are Not 'Genocide'" (May 12, 2025)
IIUM Today - "The Language of power: How the Israeli rhetoric has justified genocide in Gaza" (September 15, 2024)
