A Genocide Scholar on the Case Against Israel
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The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Daniel J. Wakin: I'm Dan Wakin, an international editor for New York Times Opinion.
The historian Omer Bartov grew up in Israel in a Zionist home. He spent his career researching and writing about the Holocaust and genocide, and last week he published an essay in Times Opinion, describing Israel's actions in Gaza as just that: a genocide.
We received a huge response to the piece — both positive and negative — because this issue is deeply fraught for many. So I wanted to talk to Bartov about what moved him to write this essay now, and to ask him to respond to some of the criticism we've received. And because Bartov is a historian, I wanted to know what using this word means for how we talk about the past and for the way we think about and study the Holocaust.
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