Israeli-born genocide scholar Omer Bartov explains why incitement, displacement and the destruction of civilian life can meet the legal bar for genocide, even without gas chambers or shooting pits.

Israel and Iran have agreed a ceasefire after a twelve day conflict. Meanwhile, Israel strikes in Gaza continue with the humanitarian crisis deepening.

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A leading Holocaust and genocide studies scholar, Professor Omar Bartov, has publicly stated that Israel's actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide as outlined by the United Nations. Bartov, who has personal and professional ties to Israel, reached this conclusion after observing the scale of destruction, displacement, and official rhetoric, particularly following the Israeli military's operations in Rafah and the systematic demolition of infrastructure in Gaza.

Bartov noted that the intent and implementation of these actions go beyond military objectives against Hamas, pointing to a broader pattern aimed at making Gaza uninhabitable for its population. He emphasized that statements by Israeli leaders and the destruction of civilian infrastructure support his assessment that the campaign constitutes genocide under international law.

Holocaust scholar says Israel is committing genocide

It has been 652 days since Hamas's horrifying attacks on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 kidnapped. And the scale of devastation wrought in Gaza since then is staggering. More than 58,000 people have been killed, including 17,000 children, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry. The United Nations estimates that more than 90% of all residential buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. In a New York Times op-ed this week, a leading authority on genocide says the destruction and the intent behind it meets the legal definition of genocide. Professor Omar Bartof is Israeli-born and served in the Israeli army, and says that his conclusion was painful but inescapable. He is the dean's professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. Welcome Professor Bartof. Let me ask you first to tell us a little bit about how difficult it was for you to come to this conclusion. You have deep ties to Israel, you served in the Israeli army. What for you was the conclusive piece of evidence? This was a long process, both because of my own links to Israel, I have family there, I lived there the first half of my life. As you said, I served in the military, I taught at the university there. Many of my best friends lived there. But also because determining whether genocide is happening or not is a difficult thing because the definition of genocide, the only one that really matters, which is the one provided by the UN Convention of 1948, calls to show both an intent to destroy a particular group in whole or in part as such, and the implementation of that intent. It takes a while to determine that. I came to that conclusion around May of 2024, when the IDF moved into Rafah, into the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, where there were at the time about a million Palestinians who had been displaced there by the IDF. And the IDF moved those million people to the beach area, which had no infrastructure whatsoever, and then went into Rafah and demolished it. And by August, the city was gone. And I asked myself, was this in pursuance of what the IDF had said, where its war goes, which was to destroy Hamas and release the hostages? And then looking at the pattern of operations between October 7th, following the Hamas attack, and May, June 2014, I concluded that that was not the main goal of the IDF. What the IDF was actually doing was systematically destroying Gaza, making it uninhabitable for its population. And as we see since, its main goal is to move the population to the south and concentrate it there, with eventually hoping that it would move out of the Gaza Strip, either because it would be completely debilitated by lack of water, sanitation, food, and so forth, or maybe some country would agree to take it in. So in that sense, the statements that were made by Israeli political and military leaders in the immediate aftermath of the massacre by Hamas, which was, we will flatten Gaza, the people there are human animals, they should have no water and no power and so forth, were not simply made in anger in the heat of the moment, but in fact, it turned out, were being implemented during those months and have since, of course, as we know, that implementation has become much worse, as you were saying, most of the buildings in Gaza have been either destroyed or damaged. And that includes not only places of habitation, it includes universities, schools, mosques, museums, anything that would make it possible for a population after a war to try and reconstitute itself. So that appears to be the clear goal of ethnic cleansing, but if you carry out ethnic cleansing without any chance for the population to leave, to go anywhere else, you end up in genocide.

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Holocaust scholar says Israel is committing genocide

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