This article was written and published by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder and CEO of Shurat Hadin – Israel Law Center
It seems that whatever Israel does to help the Palestinians is immediately distorted to serve the genocide narrative.
The Talmud saying, “One judges others through his own failures,” long preceded the modern saying of “the pot calling the kettle black.” Self-criticism of one’s personal failures is heavily rooted in our religion and tradition. Holding an idée fixe, or “cognitive bias,” can lead to a person interpreting all new information as supporting their preconception.
Being caught by an idée fixe is dangerous in work and life. Sometimes, an individual caught in this situation is unaware of it, though others know it when they see it.
Take Omer Bartov, a Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, who wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times blaming Israelis, scholars and world leaders for failing to acknowledge Israeli “genocide” in Gaza due to their preconceptions. Yet, it is he who is guided by preconceptions.
As a Jew and an Israeli, it was not easy for me to read what Bartov wrote. Am I reading the picture wrong? Am I apathetic to human suffering? Is my legal analysis, after years of practicing counterterror law and international law, completely wrong?
So, I decided to read some of his previous publications on the war in Gaza. In an article in Hebrew published almost a year ago, Bartov was already accusing Israel of genocide.
In the piece, he described meeting last year with students who came to protest when he visited Israel. Among them was a young female student who was visibly upset. She spoke of the friends she lost and how she felt they were sacrificing their lives for the safe future of their country.
Since the audience knew of his views on Israeli genocide, Bartov writes, the students “tried hard” to show they are “humans and not murderers.” They pointed out that the destruction of buildings in Gaza is because Hamas is using the civilian population as human shields. They showed him pictures on their phones that they had taken while in Gaza, where they were treating children. Yet Bartov compared the students to “Nazi soldiers” who adopt a “sub-human” perception of their enemies.
Is it just me, but I don’t recall any pictures of Nazi soldiers caring for Jewish children? I can’t remember ever seeing images of Nazi soldiers during World War II who were outraged and even crying over being blamed for committing the genocide of European Jews. Strange, but neither can I recall truckloads of food, medicine and other supplies driving into Auschwitz or the Nazis vaccinating millions of Jews in the ghettos. I also don’t recall the Gestapo warning civilians before attacks.
Can Bartov honestly not see the difference? Can he not see that the students who were standing in front of him care about others? That they know good from evil?
With that, I reread the column, which is flawed on both the factual and legal analysis sides. It is circling the target (“genocide”) and adjusting “facts” to accommodate it. Although Bartov claims that he “resisted as long as I could” to argue that Israel is committing genocide, in actuality, it took him just days after Oct. 7 to “warn” that it might come to this. The writing was on the wall because he wrote that it would happen. No wonder that, for him, everything since then just proves it.
War is a terrible ordeal. It carries destruction and civilian casualties. It is indeed tragic. The whole purpose of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), the laws of war, is to try to mitigate the calamities of war. Yet, even when complying fully with the law, casualties and destruction will occur, and these can be significant. Furthermore, the law imposes duties on both sides. Some of those duties are aimed at one’s own population, such as helping distinguish civilians and civilian objects from combatants and “military objectives”.
There can be no doubt that in this war, Hamas and the other terrorists are bluntly violating almost every single norm of the IHL. Violations of the law are the method of war for them. It is all about taking hostages, hiding within hospitals, mosques and relief centers, using ambulances to transport their members, booby-trapping entire neighborhoods, and, of course, using human shields. If Hamas had not believed that Israel would adhere to the IHL, it would not have done this.
Consider this: If your sworn enemies trust you with their lives and believe that you will act according to law, isn’t it odd that others claim you’re committing the “crime of all crimes?” Regretfully, for Bartov and many others who are obsessed with Israel, this bears no meaning.
Back to the realm of facts. Here, too, the article fails both on what it relies on and what it distorts or omits. For example, the main source for information about casualties remains the “Gaza health ministry,” which is, in fact, Hamas. Whether the numbers are provided directly by the “ministry” or are channeled through the United Nations and other NGOs, the source of the information remains Hamas. It’s easy to prove Hamas’s lies. There are 58,000 casualties, says Hamas, but none are terrorists. For two years, Israel has killed only civilians. Then comes a U.N. source to Hamas’s aid who further echoes this information and even stresses the double standard by citing that Israeli casualties in Gaza are, in fact, soldiers. From there, Hamas propaganda becomes a “fact” for the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and other agencies to rely on.
Other facts are omitted or distorted. For example, many thousands of trucks of humanitarian supplies have entered the Strip during the war. Hamas robs the supplies and uses the aid to control the population and to gain a huge share of money. When this system of control and oppression of the population was bypassed by Israel through the building of distribution centers, Hamas triggered violence to cause casualties at the sites, yet Bartov blames Israel for deliberately limiting the number of these centers.
It seems that whatever Israel does to help Palestinians is immediately distorted to serve the genocide narrative. Even the fact that Hamas, fearing President Donald Trump’s rage, finally agreed to the “hostage deal” is portrayed as an Israeli reluctance. In this regard, the genocide expert casually overlooks the sight of released hostages like Eli Sharabi, who was kidnapped from his home and whose wife and daughters were brutally murdered, who appear, according to Trump, like “Holocaust survivors” surrounded by very fit and well-fed Hamas operatives. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
This also goes to the issue of intent. The ICJ ruled that “for a pattern of conduct to be accepted as evidence of its existence, it would have to be such that it could only point to the existence of such intent.”
Bearing in mind the efforts by Israel to supply humanitarian assistance, the precautions taken by the Israel Defense Forces and further practices such as issuing warnings before any attacks, there is no doubt that such intent does not exist. Also, saying things like the enemy will pay “a huge price” does not qualify as intent. If they did, many American leaders should also be blamed for genocide. Also, as an Israeli, Bartov should have known better than to rely on every statement made by persons with no real authority or power to direct genocidal actions. As the saying goes, wherever there are two Jews, there will be three different opinions.
Lastly, Bartov cites several supporters to the “genocide” narrative, including Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza who has “spewed unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism and open contempt for the United States, Israel and the West” and has been sanctioned for these actions by the United States and Amnesty International, the latter of which holds deep hostility against Israel. When Amnesty’s allegations faced internal criticism from its Israeli branch, it just suspended them.
I guess silencing opposing voices is generally wrong unless you’re a “champion of freedom” and liberal ideas.
Among historians and genocide experts, Bartov acknowledges that he has relatively little support.
I could go on and on with refuting Bartov’s claims of genocide. As a religious Jew who kept the holy day of Simchat Torah on Oct. 7, 2023, I was unaware of the terrible massacre perpetrated by Hamas throughout the day and into the evening hours on that Black Shabbat. When I went online, I was, like all Israelis, mortified and horrified. On that day, we faced further atrocities with thousands of Hezbollah terrorists to the north in Lebanon threatened to “conquer the Galilee” and do the same to hundreds of thousands of Israelis. If there was anything like genocide—or at least an attempted one—in this conflict, this is what it looks like.