BOOM: Top Israeli Holocaust Expert Says Israel Is Commiting Genocide

That's obvious but Omer Bartov is THE EXPERT

After months of carnage in Gaza, one of the world’s leading Holocaust and genocide scholars has reached a devastating conclusion: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

In a searing op-ed published by The New York Times, Professor Omer Bartov—Israeli-born, IDF veteran, and renowned expert on genocide and the Holocaust—writes plainly: “My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.”

This is no casual accusation. Bartov has spent a quarter century teaching and researching the mechanics of genocide. He grew up in a Zionist home, served as a soldier and officer in the Israeli military, and has dedicated his academic career to the study of war crimes. “This was a painful conclusion to reach,” he admits, “and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I can recognize one when I see one.”

Bartov initially believed Israel’s response to the October 7 Hamas attacks, while brutal, stopped short of genocide. But by May 2024, after Israel ordered over a million displaced Palestinians into the open-air death trap of al-Mawasi—only to destroy Rafah behind them—it was no longer possible to deny what was happening.

“The pattern of IDF operations,” Bartov writes, “was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders.” He cites Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call to remember “what Amalek did to you”—a biblical allusion to exterminating an entire enemy population, including “infants and sucklings.” Other top officials labeled Palestinians “human animals” and openly called for “total annihilation.” One deputy speaker of the Knesset even demanded Gaza be “erased from the face of the earth.”

Bartov states plainly that these aren’t just words. “Israel’s actions could be understood only as the implementation of the expressed intent to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population.” He believes the goal has been either to force Palestinians out of Gaza entirely—or, since they have nowhere to go, to render life impossible through starvation, disease, and bombardment.

“This is genocide,” he writes—not just his judgment, but one now shared by leading scholars of genocide studies, international law experts, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on Gaza, and Amnesty International. South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice charges Israel with precisely that crime.

Bartov’s words carry special weight because of who he is and what he represents: not an outsider, not an enemy of the Jewish people, but someone shaped by Zionism, shaped by Israel, and committed to preserving the moral clarity that should come with that history.

His message to the world is as blunt as it is damning: “I can recognize [a genocide] when I see one.”

And now, so can everyone else.

Anyone who still supports this “war” is complicit.