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US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. deleted a post from his X account late on October 7 in which he rejected claims that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and attributed the accusations to a global propaganda campaign funded by Qatar and driven by the Muslim Brotherhood, The Jerusalem Post reported. The post, which amassed roughly 336,000 views before its removal, compared the alleged effort to the work of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Kennedy wrote that the genocide charge was laughable on its face yet served as an effective permission structure for antisemitism. He further argued that antisemitism functions as a tool for totalitarian systems including Islamism to mobilize populations and build power. The Jerusalem Post noted that neither Kennedy nor the Department of Health and Human Services offered any explanation for the deletion.
According to The Jerusalem Post, speculation has centered on a possible complaint from Qatar to its allies in the White House as the reason for the post’s removal although no official confirmation has emerged from any party. Kennedy has not issued a retraction or alternative statement addressing the content. The episode occurs against a backdrop of heightened sensitivity around the Israel-Hamas war now in its fourth year since the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas that killed approximately 1,200 people in Israel. Qatari officials have repeatedly denied involvement in propaganda campaigns while maintaining their role as mediators in hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas. The Health and Human Services Department has declined to comment on the matter.
A separate open letter organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and released on October 7 rejected the genocide allegations against Israel with signatures from more than 75 retired US military leaders and legal experts, The Jerusalem Post reported in a related article. The signatories argued that civilian casualties do not meet the legal threshold for genocide without proven specific intent to destroy a group. They drew on operational experience to assert that Israel has taken measures inconsistent with genocidal aims including warnings to civilians before strikes. JINSA President Michael Makovsky described the accusation as obscene and a distortion of facts and law. The timing of the letter overlapped with Kennedy’s now-deleted post.
The Jerusalem Post covered an earlier open letter from September 2026 that gathered more than 6,000 signatures from scholars, historians and legal experts similarly repudiating the genocide charge as a blood libel. That document highlighted Israel’s efforts to minimize civilian harm and noted the civilian-to-combatant death ratio appeared lower than many urban conflicts. Signatories pointed to the absence of mass starvation despite warnings and the provision of aid corridors as evidence against genocidal intent. The letter framed the accusation as part of a pattern weaponizing legal terms against the Jewish state. Historians among the group traced such rhetoric to longstanding efforts to delegitimize Israel since 1948.
Qatar has faced repeated accusations from Israeli officials of financing anti-Israel narratives through media outlets and educational institutions, a theme echoed in a September 24 address to the United Nations General Assembly by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu described Qatar’s support for Hamas and its role in hosting the group’s leaders while spending billions on initiatives that he said brainwashed youth against Israel and the West. The country has rejected these characterizations and pointed to its facilitation of cease-fire talks and humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza. Kennedy’s deleted post aligned with this critique by naming the Muslim Brotherhood as a beneficiary of Qatari funding for the alleged campaign. Regional analysts have tracked Qatari financial flows to various Islamist organizations over decades.
Kennedy has rejected similar accusations in previous remarks, telling Fox News in a July 2026 interview that if Israel sought to commit genocide against Palestinians it could do so quickly yet the Palestinian population had instead grown from 150,000 in 1948 to nearly 2 million within Israel today, according to Israel National News. He contrasted that growth with the near disappearance of Jewish communities in neighboring countries and an 80 percent decline in Gaza’s Christian population over the past decade. Kennedy described events in surrounding nations rather than Israel as the real genocide in the region. His stance has remained consistent since the early months after the October 7, 2023 attacks when he visited Israel and voiced support for its defensive operations. A report by Wisevoter noted that Kennedy characterized many critics of Israel as useful idiots falling for a psyops campaign that equally targets the United States.
