Satellite images from the Gaza Strip went viral last week, as Palestinian defenders tried to use the images, updated by Google this past June, and mapped this past February, as proof of a “genocide” committed by Israel in Gaza, after the Hamas terror attacks in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The mapping can be viewed with Google Earth’s satellite tool by anyone with a web browser. Users can even enable a 3D view of the ground. Defenders of Hamas and the Palestinians are focusing their attention on the Gaza Strip city of Rafah. Rafah was not merely a civilian population center. It’s also a major Hamas military and logistical stronghold with large caches of weapons, rocket infrastructure, and an extensive tunnel network.
Other parts of Al Qarara and Khan Yunis appear to be destroyed, as well as areas southwest of Jabalia. Google Earth even caught images of dark plumes of smoke.
However what the satellite imagery of Gaza doesn’t reveal is an all-out genocide.
Large areas of Gaza appear intact, including the coastline along the Mediterranean Sea.
That didn’t stop defenders of Hamas from running with the narrative that Gaza experienced a civilian genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Al Jazeera did a slide style comparison of the before and after military campaign, putting in a tweet, “Google Maps just updated its satellite imagery of Gaza ... exposing the utter devastation left behind by Israel’s genocide."
Podcaster and Commentator Dave Smith talked about the imagery on Piers Morgan where he has spent the better part of three years replacing his comedy act with his Hamas advocacy.
The same people who have been screaming about a genocide did with Google Maps the same thing they’ve been doing for years — cherry picking photographs and using them as a cudgel to prove an all-out genocide committed by Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel. But the images simply don’t show that.
This is why they pro-Hamas activists are shifting their stance on what they believe constitutes a genocide — building destruction.
As author and researcher Salo Aizenberg noted on X that 99 percent of the civilian population was evacuated and survived. That can still be devastating, but population displacement also does not constitute the genocide claim.
The civilian population in Rafah and Gaza was evacuated prior to Israel’s ground campaign and survived. This is problematic evidence for the genocide crowd. As Digital Strategist Kristin Reid noted on X, “If over 70% of the structures in Gaza are destroyed but 97% of the population is alive, either the IDF can’t hit a target or they’re going above and beyond to avoid civilian casualties.”
This is the reason why pro-Hamas activists in media and on social media have now shifted to “infrastructure is genocide.” Another inconvenient fact is not only did 97 percent of the civilian population in Gaza survive, but also it’s growing.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry’s own data on population in 2025:
“There were 50,227 births in 2025, this gives a natural population growth of 25,577 or 1.2% in Gaza in 2025, which is higher population growth than most countries in the world and more than the world average. There are currently ~6,000 births/month in Gaza, per GMH. Assuming a similar number of non-violent deaths in Gaza in 2026 as in 2025, that means there are currently 12x more births than deaths in Gaza, and that Gaza is now experiencing one of the highest population growths in the world. the Gaza population is growing. Per their own health and population data.”
The Google Maps imagery is fascinating in how it reveals where Israel focused its air and ground operations, and the technology works as modern-day warfare documentation, much like what Dresden looked like after Germany also started a war it didn’t win, and that is the lesson that is extremely inconvenient for the “Stop the Genocide” crowd.