Israel W. Charny

Charny worked at the intersection of psychology and genocide studies. His institutional roles included executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem and chairman of the Institute of Holocaust & Genocide Studies.[1][2] In November 2002, he spoke at the Second Herbert Berman Memorial Symposium on New and Recurring Trends in Contemporary Anti-Semitism.[2]

The National Library of Israel's catalog credits him with 21 articles, 15 books, and 4 archive items.[6] His editorial output was substantial: he edited Toward the Understanding and Prevention of Genocide (1984) and the two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide (1999), and co-edited — with Samuel Totten and William S. Parsons — Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts (1995) and Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views (1997).[3] Earlier monographs include Genocide: The Human Cancer (1982) and The Widening Circle of Genocide (1994), as well as the theoretical essay "Toward a Generic Definition of Genocide" (1994).[3]

A recurring theme across his work was the effort to broaden genocide studies beyond the narrower legal definition codified in the UN Genocide Convention, advocating instead for a framework broad enough to "subsume the full range of mass-destructive practices into a wider matrix."[3] His 2016 book The Genocide Contagion — originally published in Hebrew in 2011 — examined how people participate in genocide both directly through violence and indirectly through passivity, drawing on examples from the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide and addressing subjects such as dehumanization, conformity, denial, and individual and collective responsibility.[7]

Charny was also a vocal advocate for recognition of the Armenian genocide. He called on Israel to formally recognize it and other genocides, and wrote a book arguing that Turkish diplomatic pressure had influenced Israeli policy on the matter — including alleged pressure to exclude Armenians from genocide conferences and claims, which he characterized as fabrications, that Turkish Jews faced threats as leverage.[8] He noted that the Knesset Education Committee voted in 2016 to recognize the Armenian genocide but that the measure was subsequently vetoed by the government, a decision he linked to Israel's interest in its relationship with Turkey.[9]

In February 2024, months before his death, Charny stated that Israel should end the war in Gaza at the earliest possible time while insisting on the prior release of Israeli hostages, whose kidnappings he described as crimes against humanity.[4] He had also, by mid-2024, publicly revised his longstanding approach to defining genocide: in a June 2024 statement, he acknowledged having previously treated situations resulting in large numbers of civilian deaths as genocide without sufficiently examining intentionality, writing, "I am now prepared to acknowledge that I was wrong – not in decrying all mass murder but in failing to keep a penetrating focus on intentional genocide."[1] Applying this revised framework, he concluded that Israel's conduct in Gaza lacked genocidal intent and did not constitute genocide.[1]

One of Charny's sustained scholarly concerns was the psychology and sociology of genocide denial. His 2000 article "Innocent Denials of Known Genocides," published in Human Rights Review (vol. 1, no. 3), examined denial that occurs unconsciously as well as malevolently, proposed a theory of "unconscious bigots," and compared denial with bystander behavior — with specific reference to Holocaust denial.[6]

He also engaged sharply with what he saw as subtler forms of distortion in academic writing. A BESA Center paper quotes him warning that "in the academic world an alternative has developed to the classic 'sloppy' denials of the Holocaust" — a newer tendency, in his view, to present Jews as one among several minorities persecuted by the Nazis rather than as a people targeted specifically because they were Jewish.[10] He directed particular criticism at articles published in the Journal of Genocide Research, arguing that some pieces minimized or de-Judaized the Holocaust, including one that treated the Wannsee Conference as a policy concerning European minorities generally rather than a conference specifically directed against Jews.[10]

To test his assessment, Charny submitted eight of the articles he criticized to 76 genocide scholars and Holocaust students; a majority of those surveyed supported his argument that the articles distorted the Holocaust, and many respondents described the articles as anti-Israeli, with a substantial minority characterizing them as antisemitic.[11] He argued that presenting the Holocaust as merely one among several Nazi genocides diminishes its singular significance.[10] Representative James P. McGovern cited his work during a 2004 Armenian Genocide commemoration in Worcester, Massachusetts, quoting Charny as saying: "To deny the countless deaths of a known event of genocide is to celebrate those deaths and to send a signal that the power that brought about this destruction is still in force and can be used again when opportunity permits."[12]

Charny was repeatedly described as a leading genocide scholar.[10][11] His editorial and theoretical legacy centered on comparative genocide studies, the psychology of denial, and debates over the boundaries of genocide as a concept. His works included the two-volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, Genocide: The Human Cancer, The Widening Circle of Genocide, and "Toward a Generic Definition of Genocide."[3][3]

Yad Vashem Studies, volume 53:2, included an item titled "Israel W. Charny (1931–2024): In Memoriam."[5] Across his scholarship and public advocacy, Charny repeatedly connected genocide prevention with recognition of past atrocities and confrontation of denial, an emphasis reflected in his work on Holocaust denial, Armenian genocide recognition, and individual and collective responsibility.[6][7]

Charny's criticism of the Journal of Genocide Research generated significant debate within genocide studies. His characterization of specific articles as de-Judaizing the Holocaust, and his organized polling of scholars to build a case against them, was an unusual and contested intervention in an academic dispute. The claims he advanced — about which articles distorted the Holocaust and how respondents assessed them — are his attributed positions and those of the scholars he surveyed, and do not represent an independent or consensus verdict on the articles in question.[10][11]

Some of his public statements also drew notice for their pointed language. At the 2002 antisemitism symposium, he characterized Berkeley as "the capital of the Western world's anti-Semitism as of 2002" — a rhetorically sharp claim presented as his own assessment.[13] His arguments about Turkish pressure on Israeli policy regarding Armenian genocide recognition, including his account of alleged fabrications used to induce Israeli compliance, are likewise claims advanced in his own writing and should be read as such rather than as settled historical findings.[8]