New York Magazine Editors Decide To Use "Genocide" As Term To Describe Israel's Murders In Gaza
/
Mothers Against Genocide has reported that New York Magazine editors have decided to call Israel’s murders of people in Gaza, Palestine, a genocide. The in their Letters section for the week of August 24, 2026, editors state they have been “allowing” the term “genocide” in their pages for some time, since before the August 10-23rd issue was published to celebrate New York’s diaspora of Palestinians, Iranians, Yemenis, and their neighbors became controversial.
The article stated: “The feature prompted a strong reaction, from celebration to condemnation, across social media, newsletters, and local and international news outlets. Copies of the issue sold out online, and multiple city newsstands placed reorders; at the same time, some longtime readers canceled their subscriptions in protest of material they found antisemitic.”
Read the full article here, but excerpts of this moment are below:
“Some objected to the magazine’s use of the term genocide to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza. Close readers will recognize that this was not a decision specific to this series. This past fall, after an extensive review of genocide scholarship and interviews with multiple experts in the field of genocide studies, the magazine’s editors decided the term was an accurate description of the atrocities in Gaza, that accusations of antisemitic intent were in fact obfuscating an overwhelming scholarly consensus, and that its use would be allowed in our pages.”
“Jasmine El-Gamal argued that ‘the meltdown’ over the ‘series is very telling, and underscores just how much some people want us, as SW Asian/Middle Eastern/North African communities who make up the beautiful melting pot that is America, to exist quietly, invisibly, obediently … We’re proud of our cultures, and we’re proud to be American, and both of those statements can be true at the same time, habibi.’”
“The Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid called Zaina Arafat’s introductory essay ‘a wonderful piece on how NYC met its Muslim moment,’ and the Lebanon-based L’Orient–Le Jour wrote that the issue “symbolizes the emergence of a new era’ and argued that the “most striking symbol of this media breakthrough is the cover, entrusted for the first time to a Palestinian artist and photographer, Dean Majd.’ One commenter, a Palestinian American raised on the Upper East Side, wrote, ‘honestly never thought I’d see the day NYMag put the word ‘Palestine’ on its cover without a giant, de-humanizing asterisk underneath it.’”
