Omer Bartov’s recent New York Times op-ed, “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It,” levels a grave accusation: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. As someone committed to the study of international law and the accurate use of language in matters of life and death, I must respond. I know propaganda when I see it, and Bartov’s essay is drenched in it.
Bartov’s argument leans heavily on a selective reading of statements made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials. Yet not a single one of these statements – when placed in proper context – supports his claim that Israel seeks the extermination of Palestinians.
Netanyahu vowed after October 7 that Hamas would pay a “huge price” and that parts of Gaza used by Hamas would be “turned to rubble.” He warned civilians to evacuate because Israel would strike “forcefully everywhere.” These are not genocidal threats; they are statements of military intent against a terrorist enemy embedded within civilian infrastructure – the same enemy that murdered 1,200 Israelis, including entire families, in a single day of atrocities.
Bartov further cites Netanyahu’s biblical reference to Amalek. In Israeli political discourse, “Amalek” symbolizes ultimate evil, not a literal call for genocide. The reference was directed at Hamas, not Gaza’s civilian population. Likewise, phrases like “human animals” and “total annihilation” referred to Hamas’s fighters – those who committed acts of rape, torture, and slaughter – not to Palestinian civilians. No Israeli official has advocated for the extermination of the Palestinian people.
Bartov knows this but chooses to blur the lines between the legitimate rage of a nation and the legal definition of genocide.
Biased sources, corrupted standards
Bartov also leans on the authority of Francesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur, and Amnesty International – two bodies with long, documented histories of hostility toward Israel. Albanese’s public statements routinely minimize Hamas’s crimes and openly question Israel’s right to self-defense. Amnesty’s reports have consistently exaggerated Israeli wrongdoing while downplaying terror. Neither is a neutral, credible legal voice. Neither has direct knowledge of Israeli war aims. Bartov treats them as if they are impartial legal arbiters; they are not.
Most fatally to his argument, Bartov ignores international law itself. Under the Geneva and Hague Conventions, armed forces are required to wear insignia, distinguish themselves from civilians, avoid using civilians as shields, and operate from legitimate military positions.
Hamas violates every one of these principles. It fights from schools, hospitals, mosques, and densely populated neighborhoods. It stores rockets in UN facilities and clinics. Its fighters wear no uniforms.
Under these laws, when a terrorist organization embeds itself within civilian populations, the responsibility for ensuing civilian casualties does not rest solely – or even primarily – on the state responding. Bartov obscures this fundamental legal fact.
If Israel strikes at over 174,000 buildings in Gaza, it is because Hamas has made every one of those sites part of its military network. They are not random or punitive; they are command centers, weapons depots, and rocket launch sites. They are surgically tied to Hamas’s infrastructure, deliberately hidden beneath civilian life. Schools, mosques, and hospitals – these are tragic locations for battle only because Hamas made them so. Bartov calls this genocide. The laws of war call it Hamas’s crime.
Who bears responsibility for Gaza’s suffering?
No modern army has taken greater precautions to minimize civilian casualties than Israel’s. Jerusalem pioneered the “knock on the roof” tactic: firing warning shots on buildings to prompt evacuation. It sends SMS messages, phone calls, and leaflets and coordinates evacuation routes – even as Hamas forcibly blocks civilians from leaving to preserve its human shields.
Israel’s evacuation efforts in Gaza far exceed the conduct of the US in Fallujah, NATO in Belgrade, or any nation engaged in urban warfare. Israel stops combat operations for humanitarian pauses, facilitates aid deliveries, and treats Gazans in its hospitals. These are not the actions of a genocidal state. They are the actions of a military constrained by morality and law, even while fighting an enemy that respects neither.
The tragic civilian toll in Gaza – tens of thousands dead or wounded – is not a consequence of Israeli genocidal intent. It is the direct result of Hamas’s systematic war crimes against both Israelis and Palestinians.
Hamas has turned Gaza into a fortress of terror, embedding its rockets, command centers, and fighters inside apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, and mosques. It fires rockets from playgrounds. It stores weapons beneath clinics. It builds tunnels beneath UN facilities.
This is not accidental. It is a deliberate strategy designed to force Israel into impossible choices and to maximize Palestinian civilian deaths for global headlines. These tactics violate every principle of international law, from the Geneva Conventions to the Hague Regulations.
Under those laws, responsibility for civilian casualties rests with the party that unlawfully uses civilian areas for military purposes. Israel is not targeting civilians; it is targeting Hamas’s infrastructure – placed illegally and immorally amid civilians. Every destroyed building and every tragic death traces back to Hamas’s decision to wage war from among its own people.
Bartov ignores all of this. Instead, he builds his accusation on selective outrage, twisting words spoken about Hamas into supposed evidence of a war against Palestinians. He cites UN officials and NGOs long known for hostility toward Israel while disregarding the actual laws governing warfare. He reduces legal and moral complexity to slogans.
The truth is clear: This war is brutal, but it is not genocide. It is a tragedy born of Hamas’s choices, not Israel’s intentions. Those who care about Palestinian lives should condemn the terrorist regime that sacrifices them, not the democracy that warns them.
Bartov’s abuse of the word “genocide” cheapens it. Genocide is not a synonym for tragedy. It is not a rhetorical weapon to deploy against a democracy defending itself from terror. Redefining it this way erases the unique horror of the Holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia, and other true genocides. It turns international law into a farce.
Israel’s war is not perfect; no war is. Civilians have died. More may die. That is the awful reality of urban combat against a terror group that holds civilians hostage. But Israel’s actions are not motivated by a desire to eliminate a people. They are driven by the need to eliminate a threat.
Bartov may be a scholar of genocide. Yet in this case, he is trafficking in distortion, not scholarship.
I know propaganda when I see it. And this is it.
The writer is an expert in international law and the president of Shurat HaDin, which fights for Israel in the International Criminal Court.