By Joseph Marshall
Guinness World Records has confirmed that it is no longer accepting new record submissions from Israel, the West Bank or Gaza, a freeze that began in the weeks following the October 2023 Hamas massacre but was kept out of public view for more than a year. The organization’s timing, coming directly after the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust and the war that followed, is raising pointed questions about how and why the world’s most prominent record-keeping body enacted this change.
The policy surfaced only after Matnat Chaim, Israel’s leading kidney-donation organization, attempted to register a planned gathering of roughly two thousand living kidney donors in Jerusalem. The charity was told that Guinness would not process the request because it was taking place in Israel. That answer revealed an internal rule that had barred Israeli submissions since November 2023, barely a month after Hamas murdered more than twelve hundred people, took hostages and ignited a global wave of antisemitic hostility.
Guinness has offered only a brief statement, saying that “in the current climate” it is “not generally processing record applications” from Israel or the Palestinian territories. It added that the freeze is reviewed monthly and suggested it hopes to resume accepting submissions soon. The organization has not released a detailed explanation, nor has it clarified whether the decision is related to political pressure, security considerations or reputational concerns in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks.
The only exception Guinness has acknowledged involves record attempts held in cooperation with a United Nations humanitarian relief agency. The group has not explained why this narrow exception exists or whether it reflects a new layer of scrutiny unique to this region.
Israeli officials and community leaders reacted immediately. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called the move inexcusable and demanded its reversal. Advocates have questioned how a mass-casualty terror attack against Israelis could lead to a policy that restricts Israelis, especially when the blocked record attempt involved a humanitarian achievement that has saved lives across the country.
The freeze applies only to new submissions; existing Israeli records remain listed. But for more than a year, applicants from Israel had unknowingly been shut out of a global platform Guinness routinely promotes as universal and inclusive. Record attempts planned during that period were quietly declined without any public notification of the policy’s existence.
The fact that Guinness introduced this change in direct proximity to the October 2023 massacre, and kept it undisclosed until a charity exposed it, has intensified scrutiny. Critics say the timing cannot be separated from the surge of international hostility Israel has faced since the attack and the war with Hamas that followed. With no detailed criteria and an undefined UN exception, the organization now faces mounting pressure to explain whether its freeze was driven by safety concerns or by a desire to avoid political controversy at Israel’s expense.
For now, Guinness World Records remains closed to new Israeli submissions, leaving charities, innovators and organizers blocked from participating in the global stage the organization claims to represent. Until the freeze is lifted or fully explained, the decision’s timing, and the silence that followed it, remains impossible to ignore.
