Israeli scholar Omer Bartov accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza

Israeli genocide scholar Omer Bartov has accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip following previous warnings he made in November that Israel was on the path to committing genocide.

Bartov, a professor at Brown University in the US and a leading scholar on the Holocaust, made the accusation in a piece published by The Guardian on Tuesday.

The op-ed piece, which drew on his reflections following a two-week visit to Israel in June, saw Barov draw comparisons between the mentality of the Israeli army in Gaza and the German army in the Soviet Union during the Second World War.

Those comparisons came following a lecture at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev which was protested by right-wing Israeli reservists who had been deployed to Gaza in the war.

He said the soldiers internalised the rhetoric of Israel's political leaders dehumanising Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and ascribed the destruction brought about by them on Gaza to the Palestinians, arguing the same mentality was exhibited by German soldiers.

He further observed that much of Israeli society also had internalised the political rhetoric following Hamas's 7 October attacks, with many lacking empathy for Gaza and seeking security at any cost.

In a November op-ed in the New York Times, Bartov warned that although not a genocide, Israel's military conduct in Gaza could easily become one and issued a warning to stop Israel's actions from becoming genocidal.

He has since revised that opinion, writing that by the time of Israel's assault on Rafah "it was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal action".

"The rhetoric spouted by Israeli leaders since 7 October was now being translated into reality" he added.

Israel's war on Gaza has killed 39,929 people and wounded a further 92,240, leaving much of the enclave in rubble and causing a humanitarian catastrophe with infectious disease rife in the enclave and many suffering from malnutrition.