Leading Holocaust, Genocide Scholar Says Israel ‘is Committing Genocide’ in Gaza

July 15, 2025 News
A report in the New York Times analyzes the genocide in Gaza. (Photo: screen grab)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people … I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”

A leading scholar in the Holocaust and genocide studies, Professor Omer Bartov, has come to the “inescapable conclusion” that Israel “is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.”

In a 3,500 word op-ed in the New York Times published on Tuesday, Prof Bartov said that a month after Hamas’ operation on October 7, 2023, he “believed there was evidence that the Israeli military had committed war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity in its counterattack on Gaza.”

“But contrary to the cries of Israel’s fiercest critics, the evidence did not seem to me to rise to the crime of genocide,” Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University in the US, wrote.

He goes on to list actions taken by the Israeli army such as ordering “about one million Palestinians” in Rafah to move to the al-Mawasi beach area “where was little to no shelter,” and then proceeded to destroy much of the southern city by August 2024.

‘Genocidal Intent’

“At that point it appeared no longer possible to deny that the pattern of I.D.F. operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders in the days after the Hamas attack,” the professor wrote.

This included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging Israelis “to remember to remember ‘what Amalek did to you,’ a quote many interpreted as a reference to the demand in a biblical passage calling for the Israelites to ‘kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings’ of their ancient enemy.” He also cited government and military officials touting statements such as fighting “human animals,” “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth,” and calling for “total annihilation.”

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Bartov said he believed Israel’s goal was “and remains today” to force the Palestinian population to leave the enclave altogether.

He continued “or, considering that it has nowhere to go, to debilitate the enclave through bombings and severe deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation and medical aid to such an extent that it is impossible for Palestinians in Gaza to maintain or reconstitute their existence as a group.”

‘Painful Conclusion’

Bartov, who said he grew up “in a Zionist home” and lived “the first half of my life in Israel,” as well as served in the Israeli army as a soldier and officer, “and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust,” reached what he described as “a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could.”

“My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” Bartov stated. Later adding, “I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”

Francesca Albanese, Palestine Action, and the End of International Law

It was not just his conclusion, he said, citing a “growing number of experts in genocide studies and international law” who “have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza can only be defined as genocide.”

Bartov said so has Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, as well as Amnesty International, further noting South Africa’s case of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

‘Unmitigated Damage’

He stressed that the “continued denial of this designation by states, international organizations and legal and scholarly experts will cause unmitigated damage not just to the people of Gaza and Israel but also to the system of international law established in the wake of the horrors of the Holocaust, designed to prevent such atrocities from happening ever again.”

“It is a threat to the very foundations of the moral order on which we all depend,” he stated.

Pointing out that both intent to commit genocide as well as proving that it has been carried out must be established, Bartov said that in Israel’s case, “that intent has been publicly expressed by numerous officials and leaders.”

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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,” he explained as the Israeli army “has systematically destroyed the Gaza Strip.”

He said some might describe Israel’s campaign in Gaza “as ethnic cleansing, not genocide.”

“But there is a link between the crimes. When an ethnic group has nowhere to go and is constantly displaced from one so-called safe zone to another, relentlessly bombed and starved, ethnic cleansing can morph into genocide,” he wrote.

Bartov went on to cite several well-known genocides of the 20th century, such as that of the Herero and Nama in German South West Africa, now Namibia, the Armenians in World War I; and, “indeed, even in the Holocaust, which began with the German attempt to expel the Jews and ended up with their murder.”

‘Political, Legal, Moral Ramifications’

The professor pointed out that the designation of genocide “has major political, legal and moral ramifications.”

“Nations, politicians and military personnel suspected of, indicted on a charge of or found guilty of genocide are seen as beyond the pale of humanity and may compromise or lose their right to remain members of the international community,” he wrote. An ICJ finding “that a particular state is engaged in genocide, especially if enforced by the U.N. Security Council, can lead to severe sanctions,” Bartov added.

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Politicians or generals indicted on a charge of or found guilty of genocide or other breaches of international humanitarian law by the International Criminal Court “can face arrest outside of their country,” he stated.

“And a society that condones and is complicit in genocide, whatever the stand of its individual citizens may be, will carry this mark of Cain long after the fires of hatred and violence are put out,” Bartov wrote.

Ongoing Genocidal Assault

Since Israel’s reneging on the ceasefire on March 18, it has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians throughout the Gaza Strip through a bloody and ongoing aerial bombardment.

On October 7, 2023, following a Palestinian Resistance operation in southern Israel, the Israeli military launched a genocidal war against the Palestinians, killing over 57,000, wounding more than 137,000, with over 14,000 still missing.

Despite habitual condemnation by many countries around the world of the Israeli genocide, little has been done to hold Israel accountable.

Israel is currently under investigation for the crime of genocide by the International Court of Justice, while accused war criminals — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — are now officially wanted by the International Criminal Court.

The Israeli genocide has been largely defended, supported, and financed by Washington and a few other Western powers.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

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