Genocide - I know it when I see it: Omer Bartov / NYTimes

Shared by Tom McDermott 

Beyond the op-ed itself and the credentials of the author, this article is significant in that the NYTimes has published it, despite their frequent reluctance to apply the word 'genocide' to Gaza. Tom

Click here for the article

Summary
Omer Bartov, a leading Holocaust and genocide scholar, declares that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza — a painful conclusion he resisted until the pattern of IDF operations and repeated genocidal rhetoric by Israeli leaders made denial impossible. 

Drawing on his lifelong study of mass atrocity and his personal background as an Israeli soldier and scholar, Bartov argues that what began as war has become a systematic effort to render Gaza uninhabitable and destroy Palestinian existence as a group. He warns that this reality, if unacknowledged, undermines the very system of international law built after the Holocaust. The silence of many Holocaust historians, contrasted with the growing chorus of genocide scholars, marks what Bartov sees as a profound moral and intellectual crisis in both fields.

Quotes

• “My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.”
• “Intent can also be derived from a pattern of operations on the ground, and this pattern became clear by May 2024.”
• “More than 58,000 people have been killed… including more than 17,000 children.”
• “This is also being facilitated by a plan that provides — intermittently — limited aid supplies... drawing people to the south.”
• “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.”
• “Israel will have to learn to live without falling back on the Holocaust as justification for inhumanity.”