Israel faces ‘dire future’ unless it addresses past crimes, says leading genocide scholar

Omer Bartov calls for acknowledgment of the past and a truth and reconciliation-style process to break the cycle of denial

Israel will become increasingly violent and repressive as long as it denies the crimes it has committed in Gaza and other parts of Palestine since 1948, a leading genocide scholar has told The National.

“In many ways, a dire future that I see for Israel right now is very much part of its inability to face up to this past,” Omer Bartov, Dean's Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University in the US, said in an interview.

Israel will remain trapped with “ghosts and demons” unless it can face up to its history, said Mr Bartov.

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“I would say that it won't be able to do that, which will mean that it will become increasingly repressive, increasingly isolated and increasingly violent, until it's confronted with the limits of its own power. And it hasn't been confronted with them.”

An articulate and erudite expert on genocide, Mr Bartov has written extensively on Nazi indoctrination of the Third Reich’s army, Eastern European Jewry and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

He has faced widespread criticism for his characterisation of the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza as genocide, which he believes has been the case since at least the invasion of the southern city of Rafah in May 2024.

An Israeli-American citizen, Mr Bartov challenges mainstream narratives that he says dehumanise Palestinians and keep Israel trapped in denial.

Israel's refusal to fully examine its past goes back to the 1940s, when the country was created, he said. The Arab-Israeli war of 1948 included the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Known in Israel as the War of Independence, it is described in Arabic as the Nakba – “the catastrophe”.

Map of the UN's partition plan for Israel and Palestine, approved by the General Assembly in November 1947. Roy Cooper / The National

“I would say that the inability of Israel, including during the Oslo Accords, to come to terms with what happened in 1948 is what sustains the conflict,” he said, referring to the set of agreements from the 1990s that laid the foundations for a two-state solution.

“That's at the root of it. You can't reverse history – that doesn't work – but you have to acknowledge it, and you have to, to the best of your ability, redress the wrongs that you carried out.”

Israel's inability to come to terms with what happened in 1948 is what sustains the conflict

Omer Bartov

Israel is widely accused of breaching international law not only in Gaza, but also in its occupation and settlement of land in the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights. It denies breaching international law and says it fully upholds its obligations.

Cost of denial

The destruction that has taken place in Gaza is “completely unprecedented”, said Mr Bartov. The UN said earlier this month that reconstruction costs for the strip stand at around $70 billion and “far too little aid” continues to reach Palestinians living there.

A drone view shows the destruction in a residential neighbourhood in Gaza city. Reuters

Societies that commit genocide without going through a process of recognition of and recompense for their actions remain in a long-term state of denial, said Mr Bartov. “As long as these societies don't come to terms with what they did, which means acknowledge it first of all, and acknowledge the wrongs that they perpetrated, they remain abnormal societies.”

He added that Israel’s allies could pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government into realising that denial of the past is isolating and deforming Israeli society, but seem unwilling to do so.

“There will have to be major pressure on Israel – political pressure, economic pressure or military pressure – for it to acknowledge, or come face to face, with the limits of its power, and to realise that in order to readjust itself to that reality, it also has to face up to the genocide,” he said.

US President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza is “very vague”, according to Mr Bartov. But he believes it is better than nothing in providing a first step towards ending the bloodshed, and pushes Israel from a trajectory of force to one of politics. Still, he doubts it will fully succeed, predicting that Gaza may instead come to resemble the West Bank, which Israel controls militarily.

A later point in Mr Trump’s plan outlining a pathway to Palestinian statehood cannot happen without “talking about what Israel did to Palestinians”, said Mr Bartov.

A Palestinian child peers through a hole in a curtain inside the Imam al Shafii Mosque in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza city. AFP

Faint hope for change

For the political process to succeed, he proposes an equivalent of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up in South Africa to address the violence and human rights abuses that occurred during apartheid.

It investigated gross violations, held public hearings where victims and perpetrators could tell their stories and offered amnesty to those who fully disclosed politically motivated crimes. Its goal was to uncover the truth, promote national healing and foster reconciliation.

Mr Bartov says such a mechanism should address not only Gaza but also crimes committed since 1948.

“It has to go back to the Nakba, not because you can return everybody – but because if you don't speak about it, you're just keeping all these skeletons in the closet,” he said. “They pile up and the whole thing collapses.”

There's a complete indifference to Palestinian life, not least children. I don't think that is going to change any time soon

Omer Bartov

That will be difficult in part because of the long-term dehumanisation of Palestinians in Israeli society, he said.

Alongside the release of living and dead hostages from Gaza as part of the ceasefire agreement’s first stage, there is little space for sympathy with ordinary Palestinians.

More than 68,000 Gazans have been killed since Israel began military operations in the strip following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage.

“I have to admit that it's sort of frightening when you listen to Israelis,” he said, describing the lack of pity and sorrow over Palestinians’ deaths, and the loss of their homes and livelihoods.

He last visited the country in 2024 and is unsure when he will return. “There's a complete indifference to Palestinian life, not least children,” he said. “I don't think that is going to change any time soon.”

He said the only glimmer of hope may come if Mr Netanyahu's government – among the most conservative in Israel's history – is one day replaced by a new leadership. A new government that allows a Palestinian Authority to take control of Gaza and work alongside Israel may create the conditions for the public at large to reassess its views on Palestinians, he added.

“Let's say all of that happens. Then in the long run, I think there will be some ability in the public to start rethinking about Palestinians as human beings,” Mr Bartov said. “But it's very far off in many ways.”

He has lost friends over his stance on Gaza. “I've probably lost more than I know,” he said. But he has received more support from people, in a way that has propelled him to keep speaking out.

“I'm really trying to understand and then explain to others as clearly as I can what I think we must know, and not doing it in a way that is interested just in laying blame,” he said. “But also in understanding, and trying to maybe propose some kind of way forward.”