Israeli university professor Omer Bartov's accusations of Israeli genocide are untenable - opinion

I still remember, 30 years later, the way he addressed a leading research question every professional army continuously asks: What makes for an excellent fighting unit – ideology or camaraderie? Do fighters face bullets because they believe in the cause, or do they fight tenaciously to back up their friends in the belief that their fellow service members will do the same?

To answer the question, Bartov researched letters sent back home from Wehrmacht units about the devastating Eastern Front and their units’ performance. His answer was unequivocal. The units lost members at such a fast rate that it could not possibly be camaraderie that explained the units’ excellent battle performance. The soldiers’ reverence for the führer, so often expressed in the letters, was by far a superior explanation.

Why so many of the leading liberal media sites should pick up on his pronouncement is obvious. It is not only his Ivy League affiliation, his expertise on the Holocaust, and his Hebrew/Israeli name, but also the fact that he was, in the distant past, a company commander in the IDF. One might add that he is also the son of Hanoch Bartov, a well-known Israeli author.

It is unfortunate not only because this is a devastating accusation leveled at Israel, which no doubt will contribute to fueling antisemitism, but also because it is so unfounded from a scholar who should know better.

The real question is whether Israel can deal with a genocidal movement such as Hamas, so embedded in Gaza’s civilian population, in any other way than the path it has taken during almost two years of war?

Hamas perpetrated a war crime even the Nazis, by and large, refrained from doing – documenting their own war crimes using body cameras as they slaughtered, burned, and, in some cases, raped their victims. They did so obviously to inculcate genocide in their future recruits and to underscore the organization’s commitment to continue their slaughter in future waves.

According to Bertov’s logic, Winston Churchill, in his famous speech making war with Nazi Germany the only option, even when Hitler offered Great Britain a deal short of unconditional surrender, should be accused of genocide.

Churchill was obviously keen on bringing the United States into war, and he well knew, as the war proceeded, that German civilians would be killed in the tens of thousands, as did his American allies. Should Roosevelt and Eisenhower be accused of committing genocide against the German people?

All the more so, should the genocide charge, according to Bertov’s logic, be leveled at Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s successor in the White House, who made the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or were these decisions, some of them disputed, ultimately justified in ushering in the end to these evil powers and shortening a devastating war?

Accusations are cheap and destructive. Bartov would do better to marshal his knowledge to propose how Israel should conduct a justifiable war against the forces of evil in a manner that would reduce civilian collateral damage in a densely urban area like Gaza, in which the enemy is ensconced in hundreds of kilometers of concrete and steel-reinforced tunnels.

A cheap response even worse than the accusation – withdraw from Gaza.

The outcome of such a withdrawal is hardly in doubt: A victorious Hamas will quickly rebuild the 125 km. of tunnel it lost, with equal alacrity build up its capabilities with the money siphoned off from massive amounts of international aid and material, and cow any forces dispatched to Gaza, either from the Palestinian Authority or Arab states, to do their bidding as they plan for the next onslaught against Israel.

All of this is to prove that Churchill’s clarion call is a far better example for Israel despite the pain of an unfounded libel leveled by no less than an expert on the Holocaust.