Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said in a Tuesday interview on CNN’s “The Story Is” that while he does not believe Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide, he considers the conduct “certainly ethnic cleansing” and believes it warrants formal investigation.
Host Elex Michaelson pressed Schiff on divisions within his own party, noting that many Democrats view Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal and Israel as an apartheid state waging genocide with U.S. weapons.
Schiff said he has already acted on those concerns in concrete ways. “I voted against the last two arms requests of the administration for Israel, for a variety of reasons,” he said, citing what he called excessive force in Gaza and the widening conflict with Iran in Lebanon, which he said serves neither Israel’s interests nor regional peace.
He also pointed to a letter he led that drew support from more than 40 Democratic colleagues condemning settler violence in the West Bank, and said he is “vehemently opposed” to a proposed new settlement block that he argued would effectively foreclose the possibility of a Palestinian state.
“I do think Israel has a right to exist and exist as a Jewish state. I think it has a right to defend itself. But that right doesn’t go further to using excessive force to ethnically cleanse or destroy whole blocks of neighborhoods in Gaza or elsewhere.”
Asked directly whether he would say Israel has committed genocide, Schiff was unequivocal in declining the term. “I would not, because genocide has a very specific legal meaning. I don’t think this meets the definition of genocide, but I think it’s certainly ethnic cleansing,” he said. “And there should be investigations, because there may very well have been war crimes committed as well.”
Schiff’s remarks place him in a middle position between the Biden-era Democratic establishment’s traditional backing of Israel and a growing faction of progressive lawmakers who have used the terms genocide and apartheid state to describe Israel’s campaign in Gaza and the broader occupation.
