cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/33219979
by Caitlin Johnstone Jul 15, 2025
The New York Times has published an op-ed by a genocide scholar who says that he resisted acknowledging the truth of what Israel is doing in Gaza for as long as he could, but can no longer deny the obvious.
It’s an admission that may as well have come from The New York Times itself.
In an article titled “I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”, a Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies named Omer Bartov argues that “Israel is literally trying to wipe out Palestinian existence in Gaza,” and denounces his fellow Holocaust scholars for failing to acknowledge reality.
As advanced as we have become, we still fail at objectively “scoring” atrocities quickly enough to stop unreasonable loss of life.
This manner of thinking is painfully naive if not downright disingenous. They knew it was a genocide, they have known it’s a genocide since mid 20th century, but chose to cover it up because of their material interests.
Not exactly.
The ruling class gets to decide the score. They didn’t fail to recognize the atrocity quickly enough, they supported it.
I don’t think that’s where we’re failing.
It became very obvious, a couple of weeks into Israel’s retaliation, that this wasn’t ever about the Hamas attacks but about wiping out every single Palestinian from Gaza.
But the EU is still searching for a spine, the US condones it, and the rest of the world doesn’t really care enough.
And here we are, with dozens and dozens of innocent people being massacred every single day. It makes me sick to my stomach…
EU isn’t “searching for a spine” they condone it as well.
It depends on the country.
Germany “unwaveringly supports” it (it’s tradition for them to support large scale extreme Racist Genocides, I guess) as does Italy (though there it seems more of a “brotherhood of Fascists” thing between their ruling coalition and the Zionists), whilst Spain and the Republic Of Ireland
condonecondemn it, and a bunch of others like The Netherlands and France make some noises of discomfort about it but still keep on selling weapons to Israel.There really is no EU-wide agreement on this, though most of its member countries are slowly shifting against Israel.
Please stop this garbage, the entire EU materially supports Israel, their rhetoric doesn’t fucking matter if they send weapons to Israel.
Idk about Ireland, I could believe they are actually against it due to their history. But while the people of Spain strongly condemn it, and Spain thus puts out statements opposed, the government still supports it materially. Every so often they claim to stop buying/selling weapons from them, but continue to do so.
Unless I’ve missed something recently which is entirely possible I guess.
And as for other countries making noise of discontent but continuing support, that’s still support. Joe Biden publicly claimed to call for ceasefire all the time, but continued to send weapons and never actually seriously demanded a ceasefire. It’s rhetoric to subdues the populace on a topic they strongly disagree with the government.
Exactly, i hate how people think Spain “condemns” Israel because Pedro Sánchez pays some lip service to satisfy it’s voting base, but in actual reality they support Israel. Every single time that Pedeo Sánchez has states that they are no longer doing business with Israel, it’s proven that they indeed continue doing business with Israel.
People only caring about fucking rhetoric and not reality drives me insane.
Hey you’re the person who inspired me to look into Spains record on this like a week ago! I was passively accepting Spains rhetoric and you calling them out in a comment reply to someone else inspired me research deeper. Each one, teach one.
Glad that it didn’t fall on deaf ears! I understand that many people fall for the rhetoric since most of the media unveiling the hypocrisy is in spanish, not english.
Either you meant to say condemn, or I have seriously misread the situation.
Oops!
Thanks, corrected it now.