Brown University professor Omer Bartov is a historian of the Holocaust and one of the leading authorities on genocide. He also grew up in Israel and served in the Israeli Defense Force. Bartov will speak Monday night at the University of New Mexico campus. He told KUNM’s Megan Kamerick why a recent visit to Israel was so disturbing, especially discussions with young Israeli soldiers returning from the war in Gaza. He wrote about this in an article in The Guardian.
OMER BARTOV: It was disturbing on various levels. They were initially protesting very vehemently, you know, banging on the doors and all that. But when they came in, I was disturbed by various things. I mean, they felt that they were completely right in what they were doing. They were saying to me, “Why are you saying that we are carrying out genocide? We are not murderers.” So it's very important for them to say that they're decent human beings. And they showed me, they shared pictures of children that they had fed, claiming that they were not hungry because they fed them, which was a kind of contradiction in terms, but it was important to them, as it is for most human beings, to show that they're decent, that they're decent human beings. And at the same time, they spoke about the destruction that they were perceiving better than most people in Israel, because they had just come back from there. They were actually there, but not only perceiving, actually perpetrating, as completely justified. They both were denying that they were doing what they were doing and at the same time justifying it.
And they appeared, to me, to at least some of them, to be suffering from PTSD. They were very worked up, and I had a sense from them that they did not get a chance to talk with anyone, that they had not received any treatment, even just as human beings, young men and women coming back from a war zone. It didn't appear to me that they received any psychological help, either. And I think they felt that nobody is talking to them so curiously, although they came to stop me from talking, eventually we sat down and I talked to them, and I listened to them, and they were angry, but they also wanted to talk, and it was not violent. It was a discussion.Tthat itself was curious. But of course, the other thing is that although these young men and women are members of a sort of extreme right-wing organizations, much of what they were saying was what is common currency now in Israel, and that too was disturbing.
KUNM: Are regular Israelis cognizant of how many 1000s of civilian deaths there are in Gaza? Do they get news reports?
BARTOV: Look, I mean, they know the numbers, but they also say, “Oh, well, this is just Hamas reporting. You can't trust Hamas.” The numbers are probably much higher than what is reported, because what we have now is over 40,000 but there's thousands buried under debris, and there's sort of long-term repercussions. So they know, and they don't know. You can watch Al Jazeera the way I do on an app on your phone. It's not a problem. But they don't, they don't want to. They don't want to see it. And if it filters into the media, and occasionally it comes in as foreign propaganda, or it comes in,
KUNM: You they’re labeling it as foreign propaganda?
BARTOV: Yes, the media does, and people do, just normal people, or as “This can be used against us to limit our operations, it's not good, because it can set some restrictions on us.” What people don't say is it's a horror that you're killing so many civilians. That doesn't come up. The mainstream Israeli media has entirely abandoned any sense of moral outrage at the killing of children. Has completely disappeared from the public discourse.
KUNM: You were born and raised there. You have still have family there, just on a personal level this, it must be very difficult.
BARTOV: I feel committed to doing this because I feel that there are not enough people speaking critically, but reasonably about what's going on. It's a lot of noise in the system, and most of it is shrill and uninformed or very propagandistic. And I'm trying not to do that, and I'm hoping that more people engage. I'm not against the existence of the State of Israel. I think it's a society in dire need of reform, of substantial, deep reform. And it pains me to see, I think, right now, more than anything else, the kind of moral callousness that has taken over the country, because it is a country that has, to this day, many extraordinary people, very creative, very loving, very open, very human and humane. And to see the country going through this process is painful. And I hope somehow, if I could help it to recover -- I don't really expect to see that in my lifetime, but maybe
Omer Bartov speaks Monday at 7 p.m. in Room 163 of the Anthropology Building, 500 University Blvd. NE. This event is co-sponsored by the UNM Office of the Provost, the UNM Department of History, the UNM International Studies Institute, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the UNM Department of Anthropology.
