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"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.
"My rejoinder as a historian is to focus instead on the conceptual problem in the genocide accusation, whether from Bartov and others, namely, the disappearance and repression of the agency and responsibility of Hamas for launching a war of extermination, and then for fighting the resulting war with a strategy intended to maximize death and suffering in Gaza. As a result, Bartov et al. attributed genocidal intent where it does not exist and ignores it where it does. The clearly articulated consensus of the Israeli government is to wage war to defeat Hamas and other affiliated terrorist organizations, but not to wage war against the people of Gaza. Bartov does not mention Israel’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties while also pursuing the military goal of defeating a terrorist organization fighting from a massive underground fortress which cynically uses civilian shields to foster the accusation of genocide against Israel.
"In citing figures of death and injury in Gaza, Bartov cites “Gazan health authorities.” That is a euphemism. The figures come from the Hamas-run Health Ministry. A historian should not consider those figures reliable. They make no distinction between military deaths and casualties and those of non-combatants. Further, none of those casualties would have occurred had Hamas surrendered long ago. If Hamas were to surrender, the war, and suffering would end immediately. Here as well, repressing the agency and actions of Hamas is central to Bartov’s argument and the genocide accusation.
"These silences are inseparable from the central conceptual flaw in Bartov’s argument, namely his refusal to give any causal significance to the ideology, agency, and responsibility of Hamas for launching a war of aggression and extermination. He is that most unusual historian who writes about a war as if there is only one actor involved, namely the state of Israel, and as if the strategic interaction between Israel and a terrorist organization with a massive, complex underground fortress was not a matter worth discussing. Hamas, both in its 1988 founding charter and in numerous statements by its leaders over many years has proudly expressed its intent to destroy the state of Israel and kill its citizens by force of arms. Bartov does not mention these crucial pieces of evidence.
"There is another element of Hamas’ agency that receives little or no mention in discussions of the genocide accusation, namely its refusal to surrender in the face of clear military defeat. Were Hamas to surrender, its leaders would be forced into exile or taken prisoner. The result would not be a genocide, nor ethnic cleansing or expulsion, but rather the end of the war, end of the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza, and beginning of planning for postwar reconstruction, both physically, economically, and politically, and perhaps, once Hamas was out of the picture, gradually over time, a move toward peaceful coexistence and compromise. 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.
"Bartov’s dismissal of link between the history of the Holocaust and Israel’s determination to defend itself reverses logic and moral argument. Hamas and the attack of October 7, not to mention the genocidal threats made by the Islamic Republic of Iran, are not figments of the imagination of Israeli officials who supposedly and cynically use the memory of the Holocaust to wage unnecessary wars against non-existent threats. The threats exist. Any government of Israel committed to the defense of the lives of its citizens would have to fight a war to defeat Hamas and ensure that it did not return to power in Gaza. Indeed, no decent government on the planet could tolerate the existence of a terrorist dictatorship on its borders that was sworn to its destruction.
"The issues of how to defeat Hamas, free the hostages, end the war, and ensure a postwar order of peace and stability are matters of constant debate within Israel. The debates are not between those who favor a “war of extermination” or those who do not. They are not between those who favor a policy of genocide and those who do not. They are, instead, about how Israel can defend itself against an organization whose genocidal intent is a matter of public record, and which makes the deaths of its own citizens part of its strategy to survive and win a war of global public opinion. The genocide accusation, by obscuring its responsibility for the war and its losses, objectively serves to enhance the possibility that Hamas could survive the war and, yet again, to destroy the hopes for a compromise peace.
"Netanyahu should articulate a clear policy for some kind of Palestinian governing structure in a post-Hamas Gaza. It should not entail a permanent Israeli occupation. Yet no government or organization in world politics has offered a plausible plan for establishment of a government body in Gaza that is able to prevent a return of Hamas, and to form a government willing to coexist in peace with Israel. The deradicalization of the Gaza strip after the sixteen years of Hamas rule before 2023 will require some kind of armed presence that is willing and able to prevent a Hamas return to power. Israelis across the political spectrum have every right to be skeptical about the willingness and capacity of the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations, or any other government or organization to accomplish that task. In expressing that skepticism they are not supporting a genocide or denying Palestinian self-governance in Gaza but are asking the practical questions of how such governance can be made compatible with peaceful coexistence.
"In rejecting the genocide accusation against Israel, we historians do not accuse its advocates of being themselves antisemites, though in the case of Hamas, hatred of the Jews is a point of pride, not embarrassment. Rather, we have argued that the arguments they make–the attribution of total responsibility to Israel and complete innocence to Hamas–represent a contemporary version of ancient libels against the Jews deeply embedded in Christian anti-Judaism, in Islamist visions of Jewish hostility to Islam, and in the secular antisemitic conspiracy theories of modern history. The genocide accusation resonates in world politics, in part, because it evokes these much older, religious fictions, and secular hatreds that resonate with hundreds of millions of people around the globe. It is the structure of the argument and its cultural themes, not necessarily the personal views of its advocates about Jews, that we have in mind.
"Historians of Nazi Germany, World War II and the Holocaust have published works that document ideological affinities between the Nazi regime and Islamists during World War II, and of the aftereffects of their collaboration in the efforts by the Muslim Brotherhood and its Hamas offshoot to destroy the Jewish state. Ignoring that historical scholarship has led to an absence of discussion about the reactionary and virulent Jew-hatred of Hamas. Of course, we historians of the Holocaust hope that our work will serve as a warning to prevent its repetition. That is why we take the ideology and intent of both Hamas and its sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran, very seriously. Where there are continuities between the Jew-hatred of the 1940s and Hamas’ attacks on Israel, it is the historian’s responsibility to present that evidence, not to write as if those lineages did not exist."
About the Author: Jeffrey Herf is Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus in the
Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA.
He has published extensively on modern German and European history, and
its intersection with the Middle East. His recent publications include
Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left, and Islamist (Routledge,
2024), and “Free Palestine Terrorism,” The Free Press, (June 1, 2025).
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