General Discussion

partial transcript, full transcript at link.


"2:29
Well, there's perhaps no greater crime
2:31
than genocide. Our next guest, Domer
2:34
Bart, is professor of Holocaust and
2:37
genocide studies at Brown University. He
2:40
is an Israeli American scholar who's
2:43
been described as the US Holocaust
2:45
Memorial Museum as one of the world's
2:48
leading specialists on the subject of
2:50
genocide. And he's just written an op-ed
2:53
for the New York Times headlined, I'm a
2:56
genocide scholar. I know it when I see
2:59
it. Professor Bartoff joins us from
3:03
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Well, why
3:05
don't you, Professor Bartoff, and thanks
3:07
for joining us again. Lay out your case.
3:14
Well, thanks for having me again. Um,
3:17
the case that I made in the article and
3:20
that I've been making for a while is
3:23
that at the beginning immediately after
3:26
October 7th, the Hamas attack on October
3:29
7th, uh, Israeli political and military
3:33
leaders made a series of pronouncements
3:37
which could be interpreted as calling
3:39
for genocide. Um, but there was still no
3:43
at that point there was no evidence that
3:45
this was being implemented. Over time,
3:50
uh, and I would say by May of 2024, it
3:53
became apparent that these statements
3:56
were not only made in the heat of the
3:58
moment following the massacre by Hamas,
4:01
but were actually being implemented in a
4:04
manner that would make it impossible for
4:07
people to live in Gaza, make the entire
4:10
Gaza Strip uninhabitable, and make life
4:13
there impossible, as well as destroy all
4:17
the institutions there would be uh there
4:20
for that group to reconstitute itself as
4:23
a social, cultural, political group once
4:26
the violence was over. Of course, it's
4:28
not over yet. Um I started thinking that
4:32
in May in August that year, I wrote an
4:36
article that explained that. The
4:38
violence has only continued and the
4:41
attempt as you just reported to destroy
4:43
Gaza entirely has continued since and it
4:47
is now clear that Israel is trying to
4:50
concentrate the population of Gaza in
4:53
the southernmost parts of the strip to
4:56
enclose them and to enforce eventually
4:59
either that they would just die out
5:01
there or that they would be removed from
5:03
the Gaza Strip altogether........."