California State Sen. Scott Weiner. Photo: Screenshot

California State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat seeking to succeed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the US Congress, announced on Sunday that he believes Israel’s military campaign in Gaza meets the definition of “genocide,” a sharp reversal from a recent debate in which he declined to use the term.

Wiener’s declaration came after a contentious candidate forum last week in San Francisco, during which he declined to answer a direct question about whether he believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. That hesitation was met with jeers from the audience.

In a video posted Sunday on the X social media platform, Wiener, who is Jewish, said he had “stopped short of calling it genocide, but I can’t anymore,” citing the “devastation and catastrophic death toll” in Gaza as justification for using the term. Wiener also accused Israeli officials of making “genocidal” statements while justifying their military operations against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza and claimed that Israel schemed to “destroy Gaza and push Palestinians out.”

The state senator also acknowledged the emotional weight the word holds for many Jews, given its origins in describing the Holocaust.

For years, I’ve condemned Netanyahu and his extremist government and the devastation they’ve inflicted on Gaza. It’s why I’ve been clear I won’t support U.S. funding for the destruction of Palestinian communities. I’ve stopped short of calling it genocide, but I can’t anymore. pic.twitter.com/71nIt6K527

— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) January 11, 2026

Denying accusations of genocide, Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.

Another challenge for Israel is Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

Wiener’s accusation of genocide marks a complete reversal not only from his recent debate answer but also from a new profile of him published in The Atlantic, in which he denied accusations of genocide lobbed at Israel and decried the weaponization of the war in Gaza as a “purity test.” He compared such ideological mandates to medieval attempts to divide the Jewish community between “good Jews” and “bad Jews.” Wiener also argued that Jewish liberals are being pushed out of progressive spaces if they don’t demonstrate sufficient hatred for Israel.

“If part of your Jewishness is, you know, that you support the homeland of the Jews and the home of one-half of all Jews on the planet, then that makes you a bad Jew,” Wiener said. “If you’re not willing to use the exact language that we want you to use, then you’re a bad Jew.”

The article came out on Sunday, the same day of his social media post accusing Israel of genocide.

Wiener has been a frequent target of anti-Israel demonstrators. In October, a group of agitators confronted the state lawmaker and accused him of supporting “genocide.”

Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Michigan, similarly lamented that accusations of “genocide” against Israel are becoming a “purity test” within Democratic primaries. She argued in a new interview with Detroit Public Radio that there exists a “broadly shared goal among most Michiganders, that this violence needs to stop, that a temporary cease fire needs to become a permanent cease fire, that Palestinians deserve long term peace and security, that Israelis deserve long term peace and security.”

However, the candidate argued, “I also feel like we are getting lost in this conversation, and it feels like a political purity test on a word — a word that, by the way, to people who lost family members in the Holocaust, does mean something very different and very visceral.”

McMorrow, who has previously claimed she agrees that Israel committed a so-called “genocide” in Gaza, suggested that some candidates in the race are “using this as a political weapon and fundraising off of it.” Abdul El-Sayeed, a progressive Democrat in the Senate race, has condemned Israel for committing “genocide” and has called for an arms embargo on the Jewish state.