FRANÇOIS VADROT The Netanyahu Scale of Massacres

When the media grades horror the way we mesure earthquakes

François Vadrot, 16/9/2025

Preamble

It all started with the front page of the French Newspaper of Record on the morning of September 16, 2025. It reported that the “Palestinian civil defense” (a carefully chosen formula to avoid the word Hamas) “fears a major massacre” in Gaza, while an Israeli minister rejoiced that “Gaza is burning.” 

The dissonance was striking: on one side a civilian institution fearing a massacre, on the other a political leader celebrating it. But the most disturbing point lay elsewhere: the very idea of a “major massacre.” As if there existed an implicit taxonomy, a bureaucratic classification of killings. Would a “minor” massacre then be acceptable, dissolvable into the routine of daily war tolls?

 From this arose the idea of a Netanyahu scale of massacres: a satire of media language, a graduated accounting of horror, where the word “massacre” only appears once an arbitrary threshold is reached, and where indignation is calculated to the decimal point.

The Netanyahu Scale

Level 0 — Insignificant incidents
Snipers, drones: isolated deaths do not enter the accounting.

Level 1 — Micro-massacre
Fewer than ten dead. Called an “incident” or a “targeted strike.” No photo, just a lost line in a live update.

Level 2 — Moderate blunder
10 to 20 dead. The word “massacre” is forbidden: instead, “an uncertain toll” is evoked.

Level 3 — Minor massacre
20 to 49 dead. Newsrooms admit the term, but in the conditional: “fears of a massacre.”

Level 4 — Major massacre
50 dead or more. A live news feed is opened. The word “massacre” is allowed, but with the adjective: yes, a massacre, but a “major” one.

Level 5 — Catastrophe
100 dead and more. The word “horror” appears, but voiced through an NGO or a historian.

Level 6 — Apocalypse
Several hundred dead in an instant (camp, school, hospital). Described as a “turning point in the conflict,” immediately erased by the next one.

Level 7 — The unspeakable
An editorial is rolled out on the “failure of the international community,” without ever naming the criminal.

Conclusion

On the Richter scale, we measure the strength of earthquakes. On the Netanyahu scale, we measure the media’s tolerance for horror.