Omer Bartov is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. Born in Israel and educated at Tel Aviv University and St. Antony’s College, Oxford, his early research concerned war crimes in World War II, the links between war and genocide and representations of antisemitism in 20th-century cinema. More recently he has focused on interethnic relations, violence and population displacement in Europe and Palestine. His latest books include Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz, Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past and Genocide, The Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis. He is currently writing a book tentatively titled “The Broken Promise: A Personal-Political History of Israel and Palestine,” which is dedicated to investigating the first generation of Jews and Palestinians in Israel, a generation to which he also belongs. His novel, The Butterfly and the Axe, was published in 2023 in the United States and Israel.
This talk was a part of the Rosenbluth Family Charitable Foundation Genocide Awareness Week.
This week-long event seeks to address how we, as a global society, confront violent actions and current and ongoing threats of genocide throughout the world, while also looking to the past for guidance and to honor those affected by genocide.
good evening everyone all those who are with us here in person and people online how many people do we have online 66 all right great good to be with you all I’m kator Samuelson I’m a Origins professor of History I’m also Irving and Miriam low professor of modern Judaism and director of Jewish studies here at ASU it is my pleasure to welcome Professor vov to deliver the keynote address in genocide awareness week of 2024 now not everybody in the room knows about G GW as we call it about genocide awar week so let me tell you a little bit about it and why it is so important and significant initiative started in 2012 um when John Lion of scotdale Community College put it all together and he ran it for 9 years or so and then before his retirement a planned retirement from uh Scottville Community College he came to us to fker and to me suggested that maybe ASU can uh take hold of this project and uh that’s exactly what happened we said yes of course we were glad to do so because we recognize the significance of this quite unique experience so why is it significant first I would say the genocide uh Awareness Week allows us to study all genocides including the Holocaust in a comparative manner we treat it as a historical phenomenon we phenomena we should say it in the plural we understand that it requires interpretation and understanding but we should not mystify those genocides we need to go deeper and really get to the uh heart of the matter uh second genocide Awareness Week carries its analysis is in an interdisciplinary manner by Consulting many academic disciplines including history and sociology and political science religious studies uh comparative literature media studies and the list can go on and on so we are very committed to interdisciplinarity as much as ASU is committed to that ideal third genocide Awareness Week seeks to integrate Cutting Edge scholarship uh with the memory and experiences of living communities who have been impacted by genocides and there are people in this room of course who have been personally impacted by genocides fourth this uh project is a Statewide initiative that involves several institutions so in addition of course to SC scottl Community College we are working very closely with our friends and colleagues in Northern Arizona University and University of Arizona to the South of here Northern Arizona of course is the north of here and we believe that this kind of collaboration between educational institutions is very important for the State of Arizona uh and it’s easier said than done so we are happy that our board of directors from the three institutions really work very well together I’ll thank them in a minute finally genocide awareness week is not just a scholarly project that shares us Cutting Edge scholarship but it’s really a public facing education initiative in which academic institutions collaborate uh with other Civic institutions whether it’s the phic holocost association whether it’s the Arizona historical societ Jewish Historical Society whether it’s the Armenian Center or Syrian Community we really believe in uh public facing scholarship so all of us are engaged precisely in this and before I move to introduce Professor bartov I want to say thank you to a few important people I’ll start with f banker and Timothy Lil these two people are on the board of directors and they are really the co-chairs of genocide awareness week they put together the program all the work that um was necessary to put this together was done by them and thank you very much for the work uh we also uh should mention our people on the board of directors maybe where’s Bjorn Bjorn is here somewhere okay Bjorn from Northern Arizona University who also host Professor BTO last when was it last night yes it was last night all from Sunday actually Sunday and Monday and uh we have also Alex Alvarez Alex here no but he’s also from Northern Arizona University is’s here and our colleague Gil rebok who is also on the board of director we are very uh thankful for all the work that they’ve been doing and really showing how three universities can work together uh a third person I would like to thank is Richard am Asbury here that director of shippers shippers is the entity that uh puts together all the logistics and Becky Tang his assistant is also here and we thank her and her staff for all the work that went into this kind of putting together a whole week of lectures and Exhibits and films and book discussion that’s a lot of work and finally I would like to thank all the students who showed up not just for this lecture but to the lectures that we had this morning and for the next two days so with all that we can now turn to talk a little bit about our keynote speaker so tragically genocides have become rather common during the 20th century often in the context of War nationalist ideologies exclusionary policies organized State violence and technoscience have all come together to wreak havoc on entire populations their social fabric distinctive culture and even the natural environment itself few Scholars are more able to reflect on the Confluence of these deadly forces than Professor Omar BTO who is Samuel PSAR professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University he was born in Israel educated in Tel Aviv University also at St Anthony’s College in Oxford and his early research concerned war crimes in World War II that the links between war and genocide and representations of anti-Semitism in 20th Century Cinema I’ll just give you three books from his early period uh book from 19 1992 Hitler’s Army the subtitle is soldiers Nazis and War in the third right second book is murder in our midst murders in our midst the Holocaust industrial killing and representations that’s from 1996 and a third is mirrors of Destruction War genocide and modern identity so clearly he knows all there is to know about that chapter but in most recent years he shifted his focus a little bit talking more about inter ethnic relations on violence and population displacement in Europe and in Palestine so here are three titles from the more recent work um one title is anatomy of genocide the life and death of town called Bach that’s from 2018 another title is uh Tales from the Borderlands making and unmaking of the Galician past and third is genocide the Holocaust and Israel Palestine first person history in times of Crisis so obviously the focus for tonight’s lecture is going to be more related to this last uh title that I just mentioned and with that I would like to make a point about the Quorum for this conversation this evening uh the lecture will include Reflections on the current events since October 7th 2023 on that horrific day 1,00 Israelis were brutally massacred and over 250 people abducted and taken hostages the horrors were perpetrated by Hamas a terrorist organization whose declared goal is the elimination of the state of Israel in her self-defense Israel declared war on Hamas with a goal of dismantling its military capabilities however because Hamas is embedded Within the gazan population both above ground and below ground using civilians as human shields in hospitals and in schools the war in Gaza has caused massive human human casualties and pervasive suffering of the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza the result Israel is now accused of perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinian people and has been losing Global support this situation is difficult it’s complex and it is aused with Untold suffering and yet I believe at least that on both sides of the Israel Palestine divide most people wish to coexist in peace and with dignity with each other our attempt to understand the complexity of the situation is conducive to this goal in this room I trust and also online people who are listening to this lecture hold very different views and conflicting opinions about the tragic situation in Gaza on behalf of the board of directors of genocide awareness week I urge you to be respectful and civil toward each other and toward our speaker when you POS questions and when you make comments we are here to learn to understand rather than to protest to disrupt or to make political statements so with this in mind let me invite Professor BTO to the podium his lecture is titled uprooting and displacement Reflections on the Holocaust Israel Palestine and the war in Gaza please thank you very much for this uh kind introduction and comprehensive introduction thank you all for being here and thank you for those people on Zoom uh and for organizing this conference what I’ve heard of it uh has been very instructive and interesting and I’m sure it will continue uh uh in this vein in the next couple of days uh what I will try to do today is to um analyze to the best of my ability um both the uh current situation and its immediate and deeper root uh and because I want to be concise and I want to be as precise as I can um I will be reading a text although I may occasionally Wonder uh in other directions uh we’re currently uh living through a period of unprecedented chaos and confusion in the Middle East as some have predicted there are signs that the turmoil is spreading ever wider and of course we just saw what uh was happening between Esra and Iran yet no formulas have yet been proposed as to how to put the genie back in the bottle violence strife and War have a logic of their own and some of you may uh know um um the statement by uh the 19th century philosopher and theoretician of War Claus ofit uh about war that uh he thought that war should be continuation of policy by other means and that if war is not Guided by policy it becomes uh Total War uh it becomes absolute War as he called it an absolute war is just uh an exercise in destruction so without conceptualizing concrete political goals uh Wars will keep expanding feeding on the rage sacrifice and Vengeance they produce until at least one of the part is either exhausted or wiped out we having problem no okay the disarray in which we find ourselves now in the Middle East as I can understand it is just one component of a general sense of bewilderment and uncertainty in the world this confusion is rooted in various factors ranging from economic anxiety distrust of political lead leadership massive displacement of populations the long-term effects of the covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing climate crisis now in the face of such an array of threats and fears when is tempted to Simply withdraw into the private sphere to shut out the news and to engage as best one can with the pleasure or at least the more manageable Affairs of daily life the problem with this choice is that it creates a vacuum which tends to be swiftly filled by extreme voices in other words silence unclarity confusion and paity themselves generate polarization whose outcome is ever more strife and violence this is reflected for instance in the tendency of many to avoid political speech on University campuses for fear of being immediately labeled as supporting one camp or another and obviously I’ve also been exposed to that if you support Israel you support a partite and ethnic cleansing if you support the Palestinians you must be anti-semitic or Holocaust denier so in what follows let me try to bring some order to the chain of events happening in Israel and Gaza this can only be done by examining the immediate as well as the deeper roots of the current crisis it also calls for dispelling some false analogies that have only led to obfuscation by all parties involved once we’ve done that it will be easier to understand how one might emerge from the turmoil to be sure sketching a potential resolution of the crisis in no way assures us that the parties involved will grasp it but it should provide I believe a horizon of Hope an opportunity that disrupts the Grim logic of the current mayam the more immediate cause of the October 7th attack and the war currently underway can be Trace to the attempted judicial overhaul as it was called by the newly instored Israeli government which began in January 2023 led by prime minister Benjamin nany who is under indictment for corruption this government is heavily influenced by powerful ministers such as itamar benir and betal smich who represent the extreme right Jewish supremacist and annexationist wing of the settler movement the goal of the so-called reform was to mortally weaken the Supreme Court which constitutes the last Bastion of democracy and the rule of law in Israel this was to have served as a crucial phase in the absorption of the West Bank and the potential ethnic cleansing or at least total depression of the Palestinian population there now the attempted governmental coup which is what it really was encountered massive opposition from the more liberal sectors of Israeli Society who felt that their own rights and privileges as Jewish Israeli citizens were threatened but by and large the Israeli public refused to acknowledge the link between the so-called form and the brutal occupation of millions of Palestinians that was staring them in the face it wasn’t only necessarily staring them in the face because many of them were turning their back on it um so they staring them in the face is a nice phrase but in some ways it’s the opposite I would say most Israelis in fact bought into the argument made for decades by nany that the Palestinian issue could be managed rather than resolved knowing that its resolution could only be accomplished through territorial compromise the monthlong protest movement which included warnings by fighter pilots and members of elite military units that they would refuse to volunteer to serve to to uh serve tore the country apart and created the impression of growing vulnerability as social cohesion disintegrated the Prime Minister stubbornly ignored the rising security threats bending over backwards to please his extremist Coalition for fear of losing his government and facing time in prison netan allowed them to Stage ever more provocative events in the West Bank these in turn necessitate the transfer ing Security Forces needed to protect civilian settlements bordering the Gaza Strip none of this it appears went unnoticed by the leaders of Hamas in Gaza finally to prove his assertion that the Palestinian issue could be indefinitely swept under the rug on the eve of the Hamas attack nany appeared to be heading toward a comprehensive agreement with Saudi Arabia some of you may remember that arguably the most important Arab State this agreement could have culminated in a peace deal and a far-reaching economic initiative broken by the United States stretching from India to the Mediterranean Hamas leaders watching these developments from across the multi-billion security fence installed by Israel must have thought that this was the last opportunity to disrupt Israeli plans and bring the Palestinian issue back to the four the timing of the attack which had in fact been planned for at least a year and probably longer was likely determined by these factors the fact of the Israeli intelligence the leadership of the IDF and the Prime Minister himself knew about these plans and we now know that but chose to ignore them is proof that for the second time in its short existence Israel fell victim to the same Euphoria of power or hubris that led it to disaster 50 years earlier on October 6th 1973 and I remember that well because I was a soldier at the time and huis as we know is the mother of Nemesis the deeper roots of the current crisis however go back to the very birth of the state of Israel in 1948 the year before the United Nations it proposed petitioning mandatory Palestine the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea into a Jewish State and a Palestinian State while the Zionist leadership agreed to the plan the Palestinian leaders rejected it they did so not least because the partition gave over half of the territory with large Arab populations that would have been transferred from it to the projected Jewish State even though the Jews at the time constituted only a third of the overall population of Palestine and owned only a negligible part of the land this was followed by intensifying clashes between Palestinians and Jews and later by the invasion of Arab armies seeking to help local Palestinians destroy the Jewish State the bitter and costly war and one one has to understand uh just on the Jewish side about 6,000 soldiers died in that war the Jewish population of the time was 600,000 so this was a very costly war and uh my parents fought in that war and for the rest of my life I I would hear about all the friends who were killed that they lost now this war ended with an Israeli Victory but it also resulted in the expulsion of flight of 750,000 Palestinians from what became the state of Israel which by then ruled over a much larger area than had been allotted to it in the partition plan the remaining 150,000 Palestinians who became Israeli citizens were swiftly put under military rule for the next two decades and much of their property and land were expropriated by the state during those 20 years this is how the goal of creating a Jewish majority state which had eluded sanism until then was finally or be it temporarily accomplished in 1967 shortly after military rule over Israel’s Palestinian citizens was lifted so there was a period of a few months in which there was full democracy in the area controlled by Israel Israel won a lightning victory over its Arab neighbors as a result it came to occupy the Golan Heights and the sa Peninsula as well as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip where many of the Palestinian refugees of 1948 were living initially these newly conquered territories were seen as bargaining chips for a peace agreement in the region But as time went by Israelis got used to their much larger country and a trle of settlers initially along the Jordan Valley and later also in the heartland of the West Bank began staking a claim for permanent rule over the land and thereby also over its Arab population The War of 1973 which the IDF barely won it was a very difficult War I can uh be a witness to that showed the limits of Israeli power it forced Israel to hand back the Sinai as a price for a peace agreement with Egypt the most powerful and populous Arab country but this agreement also facilitated holding on to the West Bank and the fiction of giving its Palestinian population eventual autonomy people forget that that was part of the agreement of course that autonomy uh was never actually granted years of growing Jewish settlement land expropriation and policies of repression produced two contradictory processes resistance and negotiations as has always happened in the past Israel considered compromise only Under Pressure the outbreak of the first intifada or Uprising in 1987 revealed that the Fable of Israeli as it was called enlightened occupation and I well remember that this term was actually being used kib was a lie the site of Palestinian youths throwing rocks at heavily armed IDF troops demonstrated the vast asymmetry of power it also showed The Rage of a population subjected to ongoing humiliation and expropriation the Oslo Accords of the 1990s were an attempt to finally address the question of Palestinian statehood this was the result of the realization by Israeli leaders such as isak Rabin and Shimon peris that continuing occupation was too costly both politically and morally but settlement and resistance also caused growing extremism on both sides the settler movement sprouted a new version of Messianic violent Jewish supremacist zealotry that gradually seeped into more and more sectors of Israeli Society eventually infecting also the political and Military Elites the these religious nationalists seek to create a halakic or Theocratic Jewish state from The River To The Sea and to empty it of its Arab population similarly opposition to the compromises made by the Palestinian Liberation Organization the PLO including the recognition of the state of Israel and the ongoing Jewish settlement project trans formed the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas initially a largely peaceful organization dedicated to caring for the poor and the needy and establishing schools it evolved into an extremist militant group determined to replace Israel with an Islamic Palestinian State yeah following the assassination of prime minister Rabin in 1995 and despite some clumsy efforts by prime minister AUD Barak and PLO leader yaser arat the peace process came to a violent end with the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000 the result of the hundreds of Jewish victims of suicide bombings mostly by Hamas militants and the killings of thousands of Palestinians by Israeli Security Forces was a dramatic shift to the right in Israel and growing support of Hamas among Palestinians the lack of peace Pro Prospects produced extremism and violence just as previously hopes for peace had the effect of diminishing militant influence this is why extremists on both sides reject any cause for compromise and why the silence of those who wish to see a better world feeds the radicals this was also how the Zionist goal of creating a Jewish majority state was lost for today 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians live often side by side between the Jordan and the Sea only the Jews live under a democracy and have full rights although not although now even their rights are being increasingly threatened by their own government this is the proper context of the current crisis an ongoing occupation and a political stalemate that exploded in everyone’s face on October 7th followed by an extended violent response by Israel whose political goals remain obscure but while rational politics is on hold the rhetoric surrounding the events of the last six months now has tended to incite ever more violence in Israel political leaders and media Outlets repeatedly refer to Hamas as Nazis thereby evoking Collective memories of the Holocaust this is a continuation of a trend that began in the 1980s whereby the Holocaust has been increasingly instrumentalized to present the conflict with the Palestinians as an existential war of survival it is also intended to ward off any criticism of Israeli policies as anti-semitic the heinous October 7th attack in which hundreds of Israeli civilians including the elderly and the handicapped children and babies were murdered women were raped and mutilated and over 200 persons some of them in their 80s others children and babies were taken hostage has played directly into this Israeli mindset for now most Israelis seem to view the operation in Gaza as a war of Destruction and against people associated with nazil likee evil the sentiment is even more deeply ingrained thanks to a decades Old Colonial perception of Palestinians as inferior and not deserving the same rights as Israeli Jews it is also the product of an internalized fear that Palestinians threaten the very essence of Israel a state whose main justification is as a Haven for Jews who were abandoned to their fate during the Holocaust conversely almost from the very beginning Pro Palestinian sources have described the Israeli response as genocidal rhetoric employed by Israeli leaders which indeed often called for flattening and eradication of Gaza and refer to Hamas us or more generally to the population of Gaza as so-called Human animals was swiftly described as nazil likee indeed it was said to reflect the very nature of Zionism as a form of violent expansionist racism reminiscent of the Nazi Empire of racial Supremacy now as a rule at least my rule analogies with Nazism should be avoided Nazi evil was so extreme the number of its victims was so enormous and the devastation it left behind so unprecedented that the use of Nazism as a measuring rod for other regimes or or ideologies is bound to put Hitler and his gang in the lead but this is also why there is such a temptation to use Nazism as short hand for whichever objectionable regime and policies one wishes to deride or expose the more this term is used without any connection to the historical phenomenon itself the less meaningful it is ending up as nothing more than a propaganda slogan the same goes for the term genocide which all too often is popularly used to describe any kind of mass killing without the slightest effort to examine whether sorry whether such crimes correspond to the United Nations definition of genocide in the 1948 un convention on the prevention and Punishment of the crime of genocide and yet this is the only definition that matters as far as International humanitarian law is concerned we as Scholars can have whatever definition we like but in international law this is the only definition that actually matters of course it has to be interpreted in other words regimes engaged in various types of crimes and oppression are called Nazi and wars in which many civilians are killed are called genocidal this rhetoric is employed largely because it is felt that referring to such regimes as merely criminal not genocidal or dictatorial and depicting conflicts in which war crimes or crimes against humanity are committed as anything but genocidal is insufficient and feeble or even apologetic now this is obviously an unhelpful way to understand reality but an efficient means to stir up rage and self-righteous indignation at times giving a parent license to the same kind of violence against one’s real or alleged enemies that is if we say that they’re committing genocide against us then we have licensed to uh act with uh um Limitless violence against them whoever they are nevertheless are such terms applicable in any way to the current situation in the Middle East now it is true that the Hamas Charter of 1988 borrows whole chunks from the anti-semitic Fabrications such as the protols of the Elders of Zion and that it caus for the destruction of Israel it is also Beyond doubt that the Hamas Massacre of October 7th appears to Merit investigation as a war crime a crime against humanity and if associated with the charter possibly a genocidal act but this does not make Hamas into a Nazi organization Hamas does not follow Nazi ideology it does not want to establish a Nazi state of Aryan Supremacy moreover Hamas represents a Palestinian population that has been besieged by Israel for 17 years and the I conditions of deprivation Despair and humiliation and that has lived for many more decades in fact 57 years under Israeli occupation one can object to Hamas ideology and murderous methods yet support the Palestinian struggle for Liberation similarly the many Israeli governments led by prime minister Benjamin netan have done all in their power to entrench the occupation expand the settlement of Palestinian lands and make life increasingly unbearable for Palestinians there are strong indications that in its assault on Gaza the IDF has committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity at the moment the IDF may be described as engaging in ethnic cleansing of Parts if not most of the Gaza Strip and just to know that there is a debate now whether to allow Palestinians to return to the northern part of the Gaza Strip which has been cut off from the southern part uh so will that remain the case that they cannot come back or not to be sure following the Fiasco of October 7 a colossal intelligence and operation failure that stand the nation the attempt of the IDF to redeem itself in Gaza can now be labored also as a fiasco the IDF has spent six months deploying a modern military equipped with state-of-the-art aircraft artillery and armored vehicles initially with hundreds of thousands of troops against several tens of thousands of lightly armed gorillas yet the two stated goals of the campaign destruction of Hamas and release of the hostages have not been accomplished while about half of the hostages were freed this was only thanks to a temporary ceasefire and an exchange of prisoners several thousand Hamas militants and a certain number of middle ranking commanders have been killed but there’re still now maybe 135 134 hostages in Gaza of whom up to half maybe even more are presumed dead and Hamas leaderships is on hold is still um keeps a hold on Power and its military uh fighting ability has not been dismantled in addition the IDF has been unable to ensure the safety of Israeli citizens both around the Gaza Strip and in the north where hisbah has maintained a daily barrage of rockets tens of thousands of Israeli citizens have been displaced and are unwilling to return to their homes many of which have been destroyed without the assurance that attacks from Gaza and Lebanon will cease and this had been going on now for half a year but is the IDF engaged in genocide under the genocide convention genocide is defined as quote acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national ethnical or religious group as such my sense is that what is unfolded in Gaza can be broken down into several parts first the IDF orchestrated the fourth displacement of about 85% of the population about 1 9 out of 2.3 million people allegedly to remove civilians from areas of military operations second much of the area from which civilians were displaced was destroyed through aial bombardment artillery tank fire bulldozers and demolitions this includes mosques schools universities hospitals and other public buildings as well as residential homes uh the IDF has also created a new Corridor um a separation area between uh the the Israeli side and Gaza within the territory of Gaza and has destroyed all the buildings there as a kind of No Man’s Land and the Gaza Strip is not very wide third military operations have included indiscriminate use of Munitions that’s well documented not least some 2,000 pound aerial bombs causing High numbers of Civilian deaths by now probably over 33,000 of whom 2/3 are civilians half of them children with thousands more at least 7,000 buried under the debris so we’re talking about probably 40,000 there are also indications that civilians were intentionally targeted to incentivize them to flee and their homes were deliberately destroyed to prevent them from returning additional structures were demolished to create that security Zone that I mentioned between Gaza and the Israeli settlements on the other side fourth the displaced population has been congested into a small part of the Southern Gaza Strip lacking the necessary infrastructure supplies of clean water food and medical assistance where the danger of epidemics and malnutrition is growing by the day there signs that this is intentional policy consistent with political rhetoric meant to encourage civilians to leave the Gaza Strip all together another 200 th000 civilians in Northern Gaza are currently suffering from acute shortage of food verging on famine all this serves is evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the IDF additionally Israeli political and military leaders have made numerous statements indicating an intention to destroy the civilian population of Gaza or to remove most of it from the Gaza Strip if this situation is not addressed in the immediate future the IDF and the state of Israel could be charged with the following first with Force displacement now under international law which lacks a specific definition of ethnic cleansing Force displacement is a war crime a crime against humanity and potentially a genocidal action to causing a humanitarian disaster which could come under article 2C of the genocide convention namely quote deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of Life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part three in case large numbers of civilians are forced to entirely leave the territory of the Gaza Strip out of desperation or military threat charges could be brought for carrying out precisely what are described in the genocide Convention as I mentioned as quote acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national ethnical racial or religious group as such in fact this is of course as we know precisely what the international court of justice the icj is currently deliberating following a filing by South Africa and as you know the icj issued um provisional measures uh based on the plausibility of genocide now I think the situation can be reversed although um more and more skeptical but I still hope so but only massive United States and international pressure and a well-designed strategic and political framework can bring this about without such a move Israeli actions on the ground could be described as ethnic cleansing uh now ethnic cleansing was defined by the UN Commission of experts mandated to investigate violations of international law in the territory of the former Yugoslavia so that’s going back to the 1990s defined defined as follows and I’m quoting this definition it’s not still part of this uh uh the the definition of crimes against humanity or war crimes or genocide but the the definition exist in this case uh it’s defined as follows a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and Terror inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographical areas what makes the situation even more urgent is that absent Speedy International intervention the expansion of the conflict is a distinct possibility and we’re seeing more and more signs of that of course as we speak as the engagement of Iran and the yite hthis clearly indicates ongoing settler violence and IDF killings on the West Bank which is under the Rader but about 350 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank since the beginning of this War uh mostly by the IDF some by settlers and not a few of the IDF soldiers there are recruited from the settlers so they’re settlers in uniform um so that sort of ongoing violence of the West Bank May trigger another Uprising there followed by attempts at ethnic cleansing by settlers and allied military units which is probably the goal of this violence this may also lead to intercommunal violence in mixed cities in Israel as happened already in May 2021 there are many mixed cities in Israel with Palestinians and Jews living side by side escalating attacks by hisbah May unleash another IDF ground attack which is likely to bog down as has predictably already happened in Gaza in short the potential for growing Regional chaos and then end L cycle of killing and destruction is very high it should be said that both Jews and Palestinians have used violence from the beginning there’s so there’s nothing new about that but for many decades now Israel has had far greater power than the Palestinians and has not used it either wisely or justly it is up to those who have more power to strive for resolution but Israel has agreed to concessions only under duress this is in no way to condone Hamas but simply to point out that the return of the sin after 1973 the oso Accords um and hopefully any future resolution of the crisis in Gaza were and will be only the result of external pressure what is urgently needed now is an international agreement led by the United States and other major European countries such as the United Kingdom Germany and France and accepted by Israel the Palestinian Authority and such States as Egypt Jordan and Saudi Arabia the agreement will entail a ceasefire by the IDF Return of the hostages in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli prisons removal to Exile of the Hamas leadership and return of the gazan population to their homes which would be rebuilt with International support this would be followed by a temporary takeover of the Gaza Strip by an international force made up of soldiers from other Arab countries and a gradual transition to control by the Palestinian Authority under a revamped political leadership now all of this was actually floated by various elements in the US Administration but all this must be done under the umbrella of a general agreement by the Palestinian Authority and Israel to move to a new political Paradigm of seeking a resolution to the conflict through negotiations and the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip now the chances of any of this happening under the present Israeli government and Hamas leadership are slim to say the least the least but these leaders may be swept away by the political Tides it must be realized that the attempt to manage the Palestinian issue has failed spectacularly Israel has not been as insecure and vulnerable as it is now since 1948 yet the means to reverse the situation are clearly at hand what is called for as a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between the 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians who live between the river and the Sea the leaders who brought their Nations to this point have been deeply discredited hence the need for an alternative way of thinking about the future such rethinking is also bound to bring a change in the immediate situation on the ground that is if you promise people some different fut about the present differently from a desperate effort to restore the balance of Terror between two devastated populations one could imagine a path toward an entirely different future from hairbrained Notions of removing the population of Gaza to sites of Exile across the globe when could imagine developing Gaza into the Dubai of the Middle East as was in fact envisioned all those years ago during the Oslo negotiations from thinking how to protect Israeli settlements along the Gaza Strip with more and more walls and fences and electronics one can think of coexistence with the Palestinians as had in fact been the case in the past to both sides Mutual benefit what would such a scenario a future scenario entail how can this land be shared by two groups with such a long history of conflict and bloodshed now there are many such plans but one of them called a land for all which I um recommended you Google uh just write a land for all and it’ll pop up appears to me to be the most appealing and sort of moderately associated with it most appealing original and feasible and I’ll just say a few words about it the plan which is the result of years of Reflections by a group of Israelis and Palestinians which usually in Israeli plans did not include Palestinians uh this one does entails the establishment of two states along the 1967 lines these two states would be in Confederation with each other each fully independent and Sovereign based on a right of self-determination and a right of return with the common capital in Jerusalem but what makes this plan different from the defunct two-state solution is that the Confederation would make a distinction between rights of citizenship and rights of residence so the Jews and Palestinians could be citizens of one state but reside in another hence settlers who would choose to remain in a Palestinian state would be allowed to do so yet would vote for the Israeli knesset and commit to adhere to the laws of Palestine so they won’t be able to go out and uproot olive trees because they’ll end up in jail and Palestinians living in Nablus or returning from Exile would be allowed to reside in Israel but vote for the Palestinian Parliament and commit to obey the laws of Israel now this is already of course the case in the European Union where French citizen can legally reside in Berlin and vote in French elections and vice versa a German can live in Paris and participate in German elections with a common EU parliament in Brussels to which all members of the EU vote obviously the numbers of foreign residents on both sides would have to be monitored we we wouldn’t have 5 million Frenchmen moving into Germany that would create a crisis but the borders would yeah I mean I think uh but the borders would be open allowing freedom of movement between the states since the entire land is already inextricably connected as far as its Transportation Energy Water cyberspace and either and other infrastructure elements are concerned the confederative institutions would control those links as well as the entities external borders now how all this would function in detail is of course still a work in progress and we cannot anticipate it happening anytime soon but as a horizon of political hope and promise as the path out of Destruction and violence this plan or others like it and there are other plans can change the trajectory of both politics and people’s imagination it can allow the region to set out on a path of reconciliation and coexistence it also depends on massive involvement by the United States first imposing a short-term cessation of hostilities and second by compelling Israel and the Palestinians to sit down to negotiations over the the mutual future there is in fact I believe no other way forward if we are not to accept the Grim logic of the Fanatics and extremists who keep seeking the destruction of of the other even at the price of their own Annihilation at this moment of profound crisis it is time to plan for a different future for generations to come thank you we have a minute to go yeah we’ll just go through them and see I just want to look for overlap this is oh this is new okay okay no Forever War I can I can I can start with this one follow me yeah okay okay I’m um one of the questions came in Hebrew so I will translate it for you uh and try to respond to it so so the question is uh is it possible in the current uh situation to think about U the the limitations of national structures is uh one state solution possible uh additional to that uh is it possible to um imagine a situation of um uh sharing without recognition of the nakba that’s the word for the exposion of the Palestinians the the catastrophe uh in the current situation so yeah this is this is uh these are two very important questions and I say the following um my understanding uh and that’s just you know people have different opinions on this uh I think that most Israeli Jews and most Palestinians want more than anything else two major things they want the right of self-determination and they want the right of return um now uh the Jews have it in Israel right they they created the Jewish State and they have the law of return and so any Jew who wants to come to Israel can easily become an Israeli citizen the Palestinians of course have neither uh and they want the right of return um to be able to return to a Palestinian State and they want the right of self-determination to have one State uh so my view is that a one state or a bational state as some would call it uh would not be acceptable uh to either side because it would be seen as undermining uh either the existence of these two rights or of um implementing them um um it would also create a state in which uh if not numerically certainly economically um the Jews would be f Superior so he would create a state in a sense where the Jews would be the upper crust and Palestinians would be the lower crust um now it is possible I think it’s if we look far into the future if one were to create a a a confederation that over time uh that would change into something else if there were two states with open borders and with populations living on different populations living on both sides either citizens or residents over time that may change and for instance I think that there are uh not a few voices in Israel saying that it would not be a bad idea at some point to give up the law of return uh that’s not something that has not been uh voiced in Israel not necessarily in leftwing circles on the second question I absolutely agree that is I don’t think that there can be reconciliation a true reconciliation without some kind of Truth and Reconciliation um I I I think it would be necessary it’s obviously very difficult right now so it would have to come as part of a larger political process but without Israel as a state uh recognizing what occurred in 1948 and providing the two basic elements of restitution which were invented in the restitution agreement between Israel and Germany that is a an apology and compensation uh it would be very difficult to move forward but if you do that as part of a political scenario that assures the security uh equality and dignity of both sides it becomes much easier to do that the price you pay is a moral price is a some material price which would not be horrendous but it’s not a political price uh and so I think that it would be necessary to do that does that answer I think it was from you that question was it or of someone else oh oh from you sorry oh I’m sorry and I keep looking at that H does it answer your question more or less thank you uh yes can I also direct you to your question online maybe the first one first one uh there seem to be a gap in my narrative for the years 1948 67 when Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan occupied the West Bank would be important to inform your audience about those occupations over Palestinian territories which are often neglected uh yeah uh so what happens uh at the end of uh the the war of 1948 the Jordanian Legion has taken over East Jerusalem and what becomes the West Bank uh and Egypt has it’s not exactly occupi occupying it’s but but it has control uh over the Gaza Strip uh Jordan uh as a country that has large numbers of uh Palestinians in it uh was not um a fan of creating a Palestinian State um and was was happy to try and keep Palestinians under its own control uh but Jordan also uh when has to remember has given Jordanian citizenship to Palestinians uh Egypt for similar reasons uh had a um what was he called a uh some sort of control it was a controlled area for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip they did not become Egyptian citizens um now that situation uh under different conditions could have continued uh and there were uh Israeli leaders uh who thought that it might be best in fact to make Jordan into the future Palestinian state that is to topple the monarchy the the hasite monarchy in Jordan and to make that into the Palestinian State uh but things turned out differently we don’t know what would have happened had the war of 1967 not happened but it did and because it did and Israel took over those territories it actually got back large numbers of those Palestinians that it kicked out so it found itself that’s the to my mind at least the the profound irony it found itself undermining its own stated goal of creating a Jewish majority state it took back uh the refugees those who fled from it or those it expelled but of course it did not give them citizenship because that was seen as impossible and from that moment on on the rhetoric in Israel and that was not right-wing rhetoric that was very much labor party rhetoric was that there was a demographic problem how do we deal with the demographic issue that Palestinians might at some point become the majority population under our control there would be more Palestinians than Jews some of that was resolved because uh the number of Orthodox Jews kept growing and in fact the highest uh fertility rate is among Orthodox Jews not among Palestinians it dropped among Palestinians it Rose Among Orthodox Jews which is why we now have two equal populations and so yes between 48 and 67 there was in some ways uh one issue was resolved the issue of majority uh Jewish population in Israel but Israel never uh and has still not uh defined what it sees as its ultimate borders and so when 67 came uh the the image of the country being bigger of actually taking over all of historic Palestine which is mandatory Palestine uh changed people’s ideas about what is possible um and the problem remained not the borders which appeared quite nice but the people living in them and that is the problem that has never been resolved to this day and that is now I think come to be seen as uh U essential to be resolved if that problem cannot be resolved this ongoing crisis will only grow worse so um yes um oh but I can’t read all of this uh can we I them up oh okay okay uh let’s see okay uh good okay it um this is it it is often said that the US could put an end to this war quickly by ending armed shipments to Israel do you think this is true would netan sit down at the peace table if the US stopped arms shipments it seems overly simplistic given how Jewish supremacist the administration is okay so I I mean I don’t think the administration is Jewish supremacist I think that’s a stretch but I I I would say two things first the us could put an end to this war that is if the US stopped shipping arms to Israel uh the IDF uh would have to stop fighting within at the most three weeks in fact the IDF went to that war knowing that it had reserves only for three weeks now why they had so few reserves while buying a lot of very very expensive f-35s is anybody’s guess uh doesn’t sound to me like very good strategy and they were watching what was happening in Ukraine after all where ukrainians were running out of of artillery shells but the idef was running out of artillery shells and tank shells and they are being supplied on in in an enormous sort of um uh um um airbridge to Israel now why does the US not do it well that’s already a matter of US policy that obviously has to do with domestic uh politics that is that the Administration has to look to its right and to its left um that’s what all administrations do um the there are um uh very conservative very right-wing uh forces uh among Jews in America and there are many Jews in America who are with u uh demon demonstrating for Palestinian Freedom there are those and they are those I think the administration is making a mistake and I think it could be more more forceful with Israel in Israel people say the Palestinians understand only the language of power that may be true but it’s even more true about Israel Israel only understands that kind of language and that’s what happened several times in 1956 or 57 isau said to Boran you have to get out of the sin otherwise you’ll pay and Israel got out of the Sinai the same happened um um under Nixon and Kissinger after the war of 73 um and right now just a few days ago uh Israel was saying it’s doing all it can to uh help with humanitarian help in Gaza and then they killed seven uh humanitarian workers uh Biden put some pressure and they said ah well actually we can open also the the AR opening we can uh open shipments from the ashod port and suddenly it turned out they were not doing everything they could they could do much more but they did it only Under Pressure so I think yes as for nan no Netanyahu has to have the war Netanyahu cannot survive in his mind I don’t know if it’s true but he believes that he cannot survive if the war ends because if the war ends it’ll end uh by some kind of compromise the people around him betes mric and benir do not want that they do not want a compromise they want to use the war to implement their goals their goals are to actually empty Gaza and gradually also take over more and more territory in the West Bank so if he agrees to any compromise that include ceasefire he fears that they would leave the Coalition that means his government would collapse if his government collapses there would be an election if there’s an election all the PO show he’s out of the game and he may go to jail I don’t think he will actually but he thinks he might uh and so no that can’t happen as long as he’s in power uh once he’s out of power um you know who knows um oh yes um so do I believe that the International Holocaust remembers Alliance IRA definition of anti-semitism leaves room for what foris for criticism of Israel no it does not and it’s a really bad definition and I I’ll just say briefly uh the IR definition has been uh accepted by many countries uh including this one but uh here uh it’s not the only definition that is being employed it’s been accepted by Germany very importantly and has uh silenced criticism of Israel and if you read it you you will see that it combines uh uh uh or it it introduces into the definition of anti-semitism criticism of the state of Israel in various forms it’s a bad definition I don’t know if it was intended to do that but that has been the result and the netan government has been pushing it uh to various countries uh there is an alternative definition and I was part of uh trying to formulate that which is a response to that and that’s a Jerusalem Declaration on anti-Semitism and that declaration tries to uh separate between totally legitimate criticism of Israeli policies including criticism of Zionism including being anti-zionist as not being anti- Mythic uh one has to remember there are uh um um um hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews living in uh Jerusalem in neach in New York in in other parts of the world who are anti- Zionist vly anti-zionist but they’re definitely not anti-semitic they see themselves as as the is the the the the the the very essence of what Judaism is so you can can be anti-zionist and not anti-semitic there is there are ways to Define what an anti-semite is I would say very simply if if somebody who is recognized as a Jew because of one reason or another is attacked on the assumption that because they’re Jews they support uh Israeli actions in Gaza without ever asking them what their opinion is that’s an anti-semitic act right um but but if you express criticism of Israel um and and and people disagree with you uh that’s not anti-Semitism so it has to do with attacking people for what they are they are thought to um believe in simply because of who they are that is that can be racist and in the case of Jews it would be anti-semitic um yes to perhaps this question uh hope F hereby yes how would you suggest we can make changes to public discourse on the subject it is difficult in the current climate to have debates and discussions without as you said automatically being immediately labeled and often ostracized for being anti an anti-semite or anti-muslim how can a public conversation be created that allows people to discuss this and thereby communicate their beliefs in a solution to their government so or the US government for example yes I mean it’s hard but I actually think that that’s what we need to do so first of all we need to inform ourselves uh it has to be said and I know it sounds uh as a joke but it’s true that uh there there have been documented cases of people protesting uh Palestine will be free from The River To The Sea and when you asking which river which sea you’re talking about they have no idea so it’s a good idea um I’m I’m very much in favor of protest of political protest I think it’s a very good thing and especially among young people especially among students uh students and young people have been far too sort of involved in themselves and and not sufficiently involved in politics that will determine their own lives in the future but if you want to be involved inform yourself go to the library um it it helps so the first thing to is to become more informed and active uh the second is to understand that there are different opinions and that opinions are not necessarily people have different opinions should not be your enemy there are on the margins people that you cannot talk with I remember years ago having a conversation with the Hamas member and there was no uh it was even a bit scary because uh the man was completely very calm and very nice and very polite and totally a fanatic and you could tell so there are and and I’ve had conversations like that though not many I have to admit with some members of the extreme right in Israel um so there are extremes but between the extremes the majority of people as you were saying I think among Palestinians and among Jews are not on the extremes and we have to find a way to speak with each other we have to do that because if we don’t do that we are leaving the field open to those extremists and they’re actually right now determining what is going on they’re not the majority but they have the power and they have the power because we are silent and as for um the case here um you know um I mentioned it in the past Sam Samantha power wrote this uh really good book years ago uh a problem from Hell uh about the the the case of genocide in the 20th century but what incentivized her was that she was reporting at the time uh from the former Yugoslavia from all the wars and killings and genocide that was going on there and she writes there about the fact that at least if you live in a democracy and this is a democracy uh the idea of of democracy is not only that you vote the idea is that you become involved D in actions that can sway the opinion of your government you can actually have an impact on your government now your government would not listen to you if we are sitting in this room and chatting they’re not listening to us at all but if you show your opinion in demonstrations in petitions in votes to your representatives in letters in emails you can actually sway your own government but but in order to do that you have to form a a a a a critical mass of people and you have to know what you want and you have to try to push in that direction I think it’s possible I think it’s we saw even what happened in Israel as I said there were many limits to the protest movement in Israel but it delayed it didn’t kill but it delayed the government The Very extreme government from actually implementing the judicial coup that he was trying to do people can do it uh and I believe that we should do it and we should act differently in our own democracies we should be much more active and much less passive in our own political conduct um May it sounds polanish maybe but I think that I’ll give you one example um we think about the war of Vietnam and and and the um and the war in Nigeria uh the reason that these governments uh the the French government fighting a very brutal war in Nigeria and the American government fighting a very brutal war in Vietnam uh the reason that these Wars ended was uh domestic uh was because people came out against them now why did people come out against them people came out against them because both the French government and the American government realized that if they want to keep fighting the war they had to conscript people they couldn’t fight it with professional armies conscription meant that okay you as young people as students suddenly were faced with the threat of going and getting killed in the Sahara or getting killed in in in Vietnam and and and the parents of these young people also realized that their sons at that time mostly men uh might get killed that triggered protest and that protest stopped the wars uh so it wasn’t because they were so worried about the the the fln being destroyed or the algerians whether they’d have uh would be liberated or not there were intellectuals who who talked about that but the mass of the people came out because they thought it was in their own interest uh and we should think now what is in our own interest um I think that what is happening in the Middle East now is threatening the stability of the entire region and may um as we saw now with Iran may may have terrible consequences for world peace and this is a time for us to actually protest against it rather than to be afraid of being labeled one way or another uh inform yourself know how to respond to this kind of labeling and and don’t be afraid nothing is going to happen to you believe you me I’ve been talking about this now for five months and I’m alive and well and and I’m not worried about being called a self-hating Jew or unpatriotic or in the pay of Hamas or whatever um various hate mails call me yes uh pi okay uh there’s there’s a question here that says uh what is my metap of choice to communicate the legacy of share trauma is it like radioactive exposure uh or can it be addressed politically look I mean I think if I understand the question correctly um it’s a very important question and and and and a number of people have uh been writing about it there’s a very good collection of essays which came out originally in Hebrew and then in English but with different essays edited by amamos Goldberg who is a professor of the Hebrew University and Bashir bashier who is a Palestinian uh Israeli citizen uh who is a The Institute in Jerusalem on the sh and the nakba on the hoca and the nakba and it opens with an important essay by the two of them speaking precisely about that issue of a share trauma uh and I should say that in the last three months of 2022 uh just before everything happened I spent three months in Israel interviewing uh Jewish Israelis and Palestinians uh who are Israeli citizens uh about their connection to the place I interviewed about 55 people and one thing that was clear oh and members of my generation that is people born in the in the mostly in the 1950s so right after the state was created uh and I was struck by how true that assumption was these were mostly people who grew up in traumatized families uh this is not to say that the Holocaust and the nakba are the same thing they’re not the same thing and there’s no point in comparing them what is important is that there’s a generation of people who grew up in traumatized families and families that lost family members lost homes that were displaced uh and families in which often there was silence uh because people did not know how to express that or did not want to expose their children to the stories of their own uh uh traumatized past uh and when you listen to people talk about that the very Act of listening to them just sitting there and listening to them speak for two 3 hours creates an empathy between you and the people talking about it and that happened to me with quite a few Palestinians that I was sitting with and they were talking about what happened to their families what happened to their parents what happened to their homes what happened to their Villages uh um that kind of uh recognition um of the other side’s traumatic past the other side displacement the vast effort that went into rebuilding yourself rebuilding families rebuilding hope uh the very recognition of that shared path can be a path forward it has often been exactly the opposite you know uh Israelis say uh well I mean you talk about the nakba but we have the Holocaust it’s that’s a much greater catastrophe and Palestinians say yes but the Holocaust was not done by Palestinians it was the Germans who did it but the nakba you did that to us so they keep arguing about that instead of recognizing the fact that you have two very deeply injured populations that if they began to listen to each other they would actually be able to imagine some uh shared future okay yeah okay yeah thank you okay um thank you everyone thank you very much