"Total Moral, Ethical Failure": Holocaust Scholar Omer Bartov on Israel's Genocide in Gaza

Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s onslaught in Gaza has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians and injured more than 108,000. At the same time, Gaza officials continue to accuse Israel of deliberately blocking aid deliveries. Human rights organizations are condemning Israel for attacking Palestinian lifesaving infrastructure, including Gaza’s water supply and medical system. All of this has led to the world’s leading specialist on the subject of genocide to declare Israel is carrying out a combination of “genocidal actions, ethnic cleansing and annexation of the Gaza Strip.” Omer Bartov, an Israeli American professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, describes why he believes Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza right now. “There was actually a systematic attempt to make Gaza uninhabitable, as well as to destroy all institutions that make it possible for a group to sustain itself, not only physically but also culturally,” says Bartov, who warns impunity for Israel would endanger the entire edifice of international law. “This is a total moral, ethical failure by the very countries that claim to be the main protectors of civil rights, democracy, human rights around the world.”