U.S. Genocide Scholar Says He Knows Genocide When He Sees It
July 18—Dr. Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, has concluded that what Israel is doing in Gaza is indeed genocide. Bartov wrote in an op-ed published in the New York Times July 15. Bartov’s 3,600 word column is a milestone for stating the truth not just among U.S. holocaust scholars, and also for so called establishment media like the New York Times. The paper has of late taken aim at the Butcher of Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, with a lengthy "authoritative" report documenting his manipulation of the Gaza war for his own political purposes. Sources say that his shift is coming from a faction that wants to remove "Bibi" as a destabilizing force in the region, so as the U.S. might more properly focus on their preferred geo-political adversaries, Russia and China.
Bartov said that at first, he saw war crimes by Israel in their retaliation after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack, but then it worsened. "By May 2024, the Israel Defense Forces had ordered about 1 million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah—the southernmost and last remaining relatively undamaged city of the Gaza Strip—to move to the beach area of the Mawasi, where there was little to no shelter. The army then proceeded to destroy much of Rafah, a feat mostly accomplished by August.
“At that point it appeared no longer possible to deny that the pattern of IDF operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders in the days after the Hamas attack.”
Bartov cites numerous statements of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli ministers—such as Netanyahu’s invoking of “what Amalek did to you,” showcasing their genocidal intent.
“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the IDF as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”
Bartov believes that the founding of the state of Israel was an answer to the Holocaust. He deals extensively with not only the implications of Israel’s genocide in Gaza for international law but also for Holocaust studies and for genocide studies in general.
“Perhaps the only light at the end of this very dark tunnel is the possibility that a new generation of Israelis will face their future without sheltering in the shadow of the Holocaust, even as they will have to bear the stain of the genocide in Gaza perpetrated in their name…. But an Israel liberated from the overwhelming burden of the Holocaust may finally come to terms with the inescapable need for its 7 million Jewish citizens to share the land with the 7 million Palestinians living in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank in peace, equality and dignity. That will be the only just reckoning.”