Highest-ranking Democrat in Congress now says Gaza war is a genocide

Liesel Nygard
Sat, August 16, 2025 


U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark, D-5th District, of Revere, the second-ranking House Democrat, called Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” during an event she held in Cambridge Thursday.

Clark’s comment makes her the highest-ranking congressional Democrat to use that word to describe the situation in Gaza, according to Axios.

“We each have to continue to have an open heart about how we do this, how we do it effectively, and how we take action in time to make a difference, whether that is stopping the starvation and genocide and destruction of Gaza, or whether that means we are working together to stop the redistricting that is going on, taking away the vote from people in order to retain power,” Clark said in a video posted on X, Aug. 14 by the editor of The Grayzone, an independent news website.

Clark made the remark when confronted by pro-Palestinian protests at the event hosted by Quaker group Friends Meeting at Cambridge. Joy Lee, a spokesperson for her office, told The Boston Globe that Clark’s position on the war has not changed.

“The Israeli and Palestinian people deserve security and peace. It can only be achieved through a permanent cease-fire, the immediate return of the remaining hostages, and a surge of humanitarian aid to Gaza,” Lee told the Globe. “It should not be controversial to say that Israeli children did not deserve to be kidnapped and murdered by Hamas, nor should it be controversial to say that Palestinian children, who bear no responsibility for Hamas’s atrocities, do not deserve to be killed by war or starvation.”

Clark has become the highest-ranking House Democrat to use the term “genocide” to describe the ongoing crisis in Gaza. She joins other lawmakers who have made the same remarks including, U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

The comment comes after the death toll in the war, which began after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, exceeded 60,000 people, Gaza health officials reported.

The United Nations defines “genocide” as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

These acts include:

Killing members of the group


Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group


Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part


Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group


Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Clark’s office could not be immediately reached for comment Saturday.