A renowned professor of Holocaust and genocide studies has called Israel’s war on Gaza an “inescapable” case of genocide, joining a chorus of prominent Israeli and Jewish scholars coming to the same conclusion about Israel’s 21-month war on the besieged enclave.
Omer Bartov, a professor at Brown University and a former Israeli army soldier, wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday that after deliberating and examining Israel’s war, his “inescapable conclusion… [is] 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 [Israel Defence Forces] 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,” he wrote.
“But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one,” he added.
Bartov is considered one of the world’s leading scholars of the WWII Holocaust and an expert on genocide. One of his most well-known books is Anatomy of a Genocide.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on
Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
Bartov’s article comes on the heels of a report by Dutch newspaper NRC, which interviewed seven renowned genocide and Holocaust researchers from six countries – including Israel – all of whom described the Israeli campaign in Gaza as genocidal.
Leading human rights organisations have also reached the conclusion that Israel is committing genocide.
In December 2024, Amnesty International became the first major organisation to conclude that Israel had committed genocide during its war on Gaza, while Human Rights Watch more conservatively concluded that “genocidal acts” had been committed.
UN rapporteur: Tech firms and corporations profiting from Israeli ‘economy of genocide’
Read More »
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s top expert on Palestine, authored two reports last year suggesting that genocide was taking place in Gaza.
Other prominent Israeli academics, including the historian Avi Shlaim, have argued that Israel’s war on Gaza constitutes a genocide.
Bartov said his decision was based on identifying the intent of Israeli officials to conduct genocide and action on the ground.
“In Israel’s case, that intent has been publicly expressed by numerous officials and leaders. But intent can also be derived from a pattern of operations on the ground, and this pattern became clear by May 2024 – and has since become ever clearer – as the IDF has systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip,” he said.
Bartov noted that Israel denies all allegations that it is conducting a genocide in the Gaza Strip, but he said that “the systematic destruction in Gaza not only of housing but also of other infrastructure – government buildings, hospitals, universities, schools, mosques, cultural heritage sites, water treatment plants, agriculture areas, and parks – reflects a policy aimed at making the revival of Palestinian life in the territory highly unlikely”.
At least 58,479 Palestinians – mainly women and children – have been killed by Israel’s offensive on Gaza in response to the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel.
In June, a UN Commission of Inquiry found that Israeli air strikes, shelling, burning and controlled demolitions had damaged or destroyed more than 90 percent of schools and university buildings across the Gaza Strip.
A study earlier this year found that 80 percent of Gaza’s water and sanitation infrastructure had been destroyed.
Bartov also criticised some historians who have called critics of Israel’s war on Gaza “antisemitic”. He said he was concerned about the broader ramifications of this rift “between genocide scholars and Holocaust historians”.
“What I fear is that in the aftermath of the Gaza genocide, it will no longer be possible to continue teaching and researching the Holocaust in the same manner we did before,” he wrote.
“Because the Holocaust has been so relentlessly invoked by the State of Israel and its defenders as a cover-up for the crimes of the IDF, the study and remembrance of the Holocaust could lose its claim to be concerned with universal justice and retreat into the same ethnic ghetto in which it began its life at the end of World War II,” he added.
