Tertius News is an AI-native newsroom: an AI model reads the source articles linked below — on this story, all of them from one outlet — and extracts what that outlet reported, claim by claim. How this works →

My Word: 'Wholocide' is 'libelocide' - opinion

The Arab League's Permanent Arab Committee for Human Rights has proposed a new term, 'Wholocide,' arguing that 'genocide' is insufficient to describe Israel's actions. The proposal has sparked debate, with some commentators seeing it as an attempt to create a historical concept parallel to the Holocaust, while others frame it as part of a broader narrative shift.

By Tertius News AI Desk 1 outlet · 2 articles Version 1 Coverage Jul 23–31, 2026 Published Aug 14

Lead

The Arab League's Permanent Arab Committee for Human Rights has called for the adoption of a new word, "Wholocide," to describe Israel's actions against Palestinians, arguing that the term "genocide" is no longer strong enough. The proposal, reported by the Jerusalem Post, has ignited a debate over the language used to characterize the conflict, with some commentators viewing it as an escalation in the war of words.

Coverage Comparison

Two articles from the Jerusalem Post, one by Mathilda Heller and another by Liat Collins, provide contrasting perspectives on the new terminology. Heller's piece, published July 23, 2026, focuses on the committee's announcement and its broader context, framing the adoption of "Wholocide" as part of "broader Arab efforts to establish a shared collective memory, document the crime, safeguard victims' rights to justice, redress, and remembrance, support legal efforts to prosecute those responsible, and prevent them from escaping accountability."

Collins' commentary, published July 31, 2026, takes a more critical stance, arguing that the new word is part of an attempt to create an internationally recognized historical concept parallel to the Holocaust. Collins writes that "the message is: Israelis are not the new Nazis; they're worse than the Nazis," and describes the effort as part of a broader campaign to delegitimize Israel.

The two articles diverge in their interpretation of the term's significance. Heller emphasizes the committee's stated goals of justice and remembrance, while Collins focuses on what she sees as the term's Holocaust-evocative imagery and its potential to "erase the Jewish state's right to exist."

Key Claims

The Permanent Arab Committee for Human Rights, a body of the Arab League, called for the adoption of the word "Wholocide" to describe Israel's actions, stating that "genocide" is no longer adequate, as reported by the Jerusalem Post.
The committee's proposal is linked to an initiative to designate October 17 each year as a day to commemorate victims of the genocide in the Gaza Strip, according to Palestine's Permanent Representative to the Arab League, Ambassador Al-Aklouk, as quoted by Heller.
Ambassador Al-Aklouk said the term "Wholocide" was inspired by "genocide victims themselves who described what they endured as being like 'the horrors of the Day of Judgment.'" He called on human rights organizations, educational institutions, and media outlets to adopt the term, as reported by the Jerusalem Post.
Itamar Marcus, founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch, noted that the new term includes the Arabic word "ahwal," meaning "horrors," and that the attempt is to create an internationally recognized historical concept parallel to the Holocaust, as quoted by Collins.
Heller's article observes that the word "genocide" has only relatively recently entered the Palestinian narrative, having previously been considered "the crime among crimes," higher than war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or persecution.
Collins argues that the "Hamas-led assault on Israel and Iran's missiles, drones, and terrorist proxies are the real genocide," and that "the childhoods of millions, in Israel and in Gaza, have been stolen - by Hamas and other terrorist organizations."
Collins also introduces the term "libelocide," describing it as "an attempt to erase the Jewish state's right to exist through repetition of the 'genocide' blood libel."

Perspectives

Arab League Committee

The Permanent Arab Committee for Human Rights views the adoption of "Wholocide" as a necessary step to document what it calls genocide in Gaza, establish a shared collective memory, and support legal efforts to prosecute those responsible. The committee's representative, Ambassador Al-Aklouk, frames the term as inspired by victims' descriptions of their suffering.

Commentator Liat Collins

Collins, writing in the Jerusalem Post, rejects the term, characterizing it as part of a campaign to delegitimize Israel and draw a parallel to the Holocaust. She contends that the real genocide is the "Hamas-led assault on Israel" and Iran's actions, and that the new terminology amounts to a "libelocide" against the Jewish state.

Commentator Mathilda Heller

Heller's reporting notes the linguistic escalation from "occupation" to "apartheid" to "ethnic cleansing" to "genocide" to "wholocide," suggesting that each term carries a stronger moral and legal charge. While she does not adopt Collins' polemical tone, she highlights the attempt to institutionalize the new narrative internationally.

How this outlet told it

Jerusalem Post as of Jul 23, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

Framing: Palestinians attempt to redefine the conflict through increasingly expansive moral and historical language — Analytical and informative

Facts Included:

The Permanent Arab Committee for Human Rights called for the adoption of a new word - Wholocide - to describe Israel's actions against Palestinians
The committee argued that Israel's actions are so extreme that the word 'genocide' is no longer strong enough
The term 'Wholocide' was inspired by the 'genocide victims themselves who described what they endured as being like 'the horrors of the Day of Judgment'
The word 'genocide' was not used by the Palestinian narrative until relatively recently
The linguistic progression is not merely semantic, each successive term carries a stronger moral and legal charge

Read the source article →

Jerusalem Post as of Jul 31, 2026, 9:30 AM UTC

Framing: The war of words has grown deadlier with the Palestinians' new narrative — Critical and opinionated

Facts Included:

The Arab League's Permanent Arab Committee for Human Rights called for the adoption of a new word - Wholocide - to describe Israel's actions against Palestinians
The term 'Wholocide' is an attempt to create an internationally recognized historical concept parallel to the Holocaust
The Palestinians and their supporters claim that there wasn't a Holocaust and yet use Holocaust-evocative imagery against the Jews
The Hamas-led assault on Israel and Iran's missiles, drones, and terrorist proxies are the real genocide
The childhoods of millions, in Israel and in Gaza, have been stolen - by Hamas and other terrorist organizations

Read the source article →

What was claimed, and who backed it

Each row is one claim, attributed to the outlet whose wording states it most clearly. Confidence rates how directly the source text states the claim — explicit and unhedged rates high; hedged, pieced-together, or internally inconsistent statements rate lower. It does not measure whether the claim is true. Status counts the distinct outlets we found asserting it — so a single-source claim can still show high confidence, and a multi-source claim can show medium. Every one of those outlets is named beside the status, so you can check the count against the list. For claims extracted before we began storing that list, the row says so: it names the outlet the claim is quoted from and states that we have not recorded which outlets backed it. Outlets wrote at different times, so a figure that evolves — a casualty count, for example — can legitimately differ between rows; check the "as of" time next to each claim's source.

Claim	Confidence	Status
ClaimThe Permanent Arab Committee for Human Rights called for the adoption of a new word - Wholocide - to describe Israel's actions against Palestinians. The committee argued that Israel's actions are so extreme that the word 'genocide' is no longer strong enough.	ConfidenceHigh	StatusSingle-source via Jerusalem Post as of Jul 23, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC
ClaimThe term 'Wholocide' was inspired by the 'genocide victims themselves who described what they endured as being like 'the horrors of the Day of Judgment'.	ConfidenceHigh	StatusSingle-source via Jerusalem Post as of Jul 23, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC
ClaimThe word 'genocide' was not used by the Palestinian narrative until relatively recently.	ConfidenceHigh	StatusSingle-source via Jerusalem Post as of Jul 23, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC
ClaimThe linguistic progression is not merely semantic, each successive term carries a stronger moral and legal charge, moving from a description of territorial control ('occupation') to allegations of discriminatory governance ('apartheid'), forced demographic shifts ('ethnic cleansing'), the most severe crime under international law ('genocide'), and now a newly coined term ('wholocide') intended to signify a crime exceeding even genocide.	ConfidenceHigh	StatusSingle-source via Jerusalem Post as of Jul 23, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC
ClaimThe Hamas-led assault on Israel and Iran's missiles, drones, and terrorist proxies are the real genocide.	ConfidenceHigh	StatusContested via Jerusalem Post as of Jul 31, 2026, 9:30 AM UTC
ClaimThe childhoods of millions, in Israel and in Gaza, have been stolen - by Hamas and other terrorist organizations.	ConfidenceHigh	StatusSingle-source via Jerusalem Post as of Jul 31, 2026, 9:30 AM UTC
ClaimThe term 'Wholocide' is an attempt to create an internationally recognized historical concept parallel to the Holocaust.	ConfidenceHigh	StatusSingle-source via Jerusalem Post as of Jul 23, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

Transparency & Audit Trail

1 outlet · 2 articles consulted: Jerusalem Post 7 claims extracted Version 1 Written 2026-08-14