Human Rights

“I know it when I see it”

The New York Times published a piece by Brown University Professor Omer Bartov, titled, “I’m a Scholar of Genocide. I Know It When I See It.”

At the risk of this being labelled an antisemite, I repeat words of journalist Gideon Levy published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Now that the genocide has run its course and the Strip has been destroyed almost completely, Israel is advancing confidently toward the next phase of the plan: making the entire population of Gaza permanently disabled, injured, sick, hungry, homeless and unemployed.

Once Gaza’s population is reduced to a disparate mass without an organized society, without basic services, essential institutions and, of course, without leadership, the complete disintegration of the social fabric will make it easier for Israel to move to the next phase, which it has never relinquished, the phase of expulsion. Only then will the Gaza problem be finally resolved. Only in this manner.

…Israeli propaganda can continue to scream that Gaza equals Hamas and that Hamas equals terrorists. That’s a lie, of course. Not only is everyone in Gaza not Hamas, but not everyone defined as Hamas is a terrorist. Israel knows full well that tens of thousands of teachers, doctors, police officers and government officials whose salaries come from the Hamas government aren’t terrorists. Defining them as such allowed Israel to kill thousands of them, under the label of “terrorists.” Traffic cops, accountants and teachers aren’t terrorists and cannot be marked for death. Their killing was, and is, a war crime. So, too, journalists carrying Hamas-issued press cards are not terrorists. They might be propagandists, as are many Israeli journalists, but they are not terrorists.

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