Jeffery Herp
Times of Israel, July 22, 2025
“The governments expressing concern about the impact of the war on Gazans would help bring about that result by calling on Hamas’ leaders to surrender.”
In an over 3,000-word opinion piece in the New York Times of July 15, Brown University professor Omer Bartov concluded that Israel has committed genocide in the war in Gaza. His arguments are similar to those he has made since November 2023. Since then, together with many other historians of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, I have disputed his claims.
Describing Israel’s wars of self-defense as examples of genocide was a theme of the propaganda of the Soviet Union, and Soviet bloc, the Palestine Liberation Organization during the war in Lebanon in 1982, and recently from the government of South Africa. It has been a frequent theme in the demonstrations and encampments on American campuses after October 7. The contribution of Bartov, and some other historians of the Holocaust, has been to seek to lend academic respectability to what has, for decades, been an effective but false tool of political warfare.
The publication of Bartov’s essay in The New York Times, and at least so far, the absence of an equally long and detailed dissent is troubling. Historians and analysts at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University have provided such a much needed reply in their recently published “Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War (2023-2025).” The study critically examines accusations about starvation, intentional killing of civilians, the credibility of the Hamas Health Ministry figures, and the reliance of journalists on compromised sources.… [To read the full article, click here]