Omer Bartov

Omer Bartov, an Israeli-American scholar and Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, reviews the definition of genocide as established within the Genocide Convention of 1948 as he analyses the trajectory of events in Gaza from 7 October 2023 to the Spring 2024 when the IDF moved into Rafah and proceeded systematically destroy Gaza with the goal of making it unhinhabitable for its population. Noting that the Knesset used 7 October as an opportunity to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, he observes that Israel’s actions proved unsuccessful since there was no place to push the Palestinians. This is the moment, Bartov observes, when the situation devolved into genocide, resembling many other genocides throughout the 20th century, which began as ethnic cleansing but ended up as the mass killing of populations. Declaring that by July 2025, a consensus had been formed among the majority of genocide scholars and experts in international law, he expresses astonishment at the fact that legacy media have still not begun to employ the term “genocide” to describe what is now an agreed fact by international experts. Historicising how ethnic cleansing often turns into genocide, Bartov offers examples from the Germans’ ethnic cleansing turned genocide of the Herero in what is present-day Namibia, the Armenian genocide by Türkiye, where vast numbers of Armenians were pushed into the Syrian desert and perished, to the coextensive labour and extermination camps of the Nazis during World War II. Addressing the reality that many Israelis and Jews, when they hear the word “genocide,” they think of the Holocaust, Bartov criticises this mentality since the Holocaust has become a central theme within Israeli national identity since the 1980s. He contends that Israelis view the Holocaust as “not only something that happened in the past, it is something that can happen any moment. That we are always under existential threat…And that threat is represented by the Palestinians.” Bartov explains that this genocide is, in part, a reaction to fear within the core of Israeli identity that has resulted in Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians, largely because Israelis view Palestinians as their existential threat. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Haim Bresheeth, filmmaker and historian, discusses the growing trend in Britain and the West to curtail free speech concerning criticisms of Israel and Zionism as he details his arrest in London for protesting against the genocide in Gaza. Declaring that the freedom of expression, ostensibly guaranteed in Western democracies, no longer exists, Bresheeth observes how criticism of Gaza is being silenced through changes in the laws regarding the demonstrations and reporting on the current genocide perpetuated by Israel. He notes the irony in how today it is perfectly acceptable for Israel to commit genocide, killing tens of thousands of children, but it is not acceptable to criticise the crime of genocide as such criticism has been criminalised. Declaiming that there is “nothing Jewish” about genocide, settler colonialism, or killing children, he notes the paradox of how Israel has weaponised the Holocaust and Jewish identity to support its current genocide while besmirching anyone who disagrees with claims of “antisemitism.” Historicising Europe’s role in genocides and colonialism for centuries, Bresheeth compares this genocide to that of the Nazis and considers the role of the 300,000 Israeli citizens who have been drafted in order to carry out this genocide and the social psychosis that enables them to do so. Considering the role Islamophobia plays in the genocide of Palestinians, he discusses the historical importance of the convivencia, when Muslims and Jews co-existed in harmony in Andalusia. Bresheeth observes how Europeans would never have had their Renaissance without the rich cultural, artistic, and scientific heritage of Arabo-Muslim societies which preserved and translated Western literature and scientific texts due to the widespread burning of these texts by Western churches. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Reem Alsalem, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, joins Heather Brunskell-Evans and Julian Vigo to discuss her mission as United Nations Special Rapporteur and the consequences, changing dimensions, and the greater challenges of her role. Responding to the criticism she has received for her views on gender ideology, on the one hand, and criticisms by feminists who view women in hijab as less deserving of human rights protections, Alsalem relates how occupation and colonialism impacts this demographic quite differently as she notes how both the degradation of women in hijab and women who “identify as men” are similarly rendered invisible through the very ideologies that pretend to speak for them. Alsalem tackles the divisive issue of the alleged rapes claimed by the Israeli government and legacy media on 7 October 2023 and the incoherence of Western feminism that parrots the debunked reports while simultaneously egging on a genocide. Analysing the report by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict (SRSG-SVC), Alsalem underscores how the mandate for this report was not investigative noting that a later investigation, undertaken by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry in June 2024, issued a report that clearly states that it “has not been able to independently verify such allegations, due to a lack of access to victims, witnesses and crime sites and the obstruction of its investigations by the Israeli authorities.” Alsalem details how the lie that Israel spun regarding the alleged rapes of Israeli women on 7 October has been completely debunked by an independent body, while noting that the widespread evidence documenting Israel’s pattern of sexual violence towards Palestinian men and women has been completely ignored by Western media and governments.We are reader-supported. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Amit Singh, a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) at the University of Coimbra, discusses Hindutva, a political ideology encompassing the cultural justification of Hindu nationalism and the belief in establishing Hindu hegemony within India, as well as the dangers it poses to religious minorities today. Covering Narendra Modi’s trajectory from Gujarat’s Chief Minister from 2001 to 2014 to the Indian head of state, Singh explains how the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and other far-right Hindutva groups have created conflicts between Hindus and Muslims in order to destabilise communal balance, Singh describes how India’s colonial past has been polarised by far-right Hindu nationalist groups who have aimed at Christian, Muslim and other Indian minority religious groups in order to create division within India on a social level, while Modi and other BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) cohorts have enacted draconian legislation which is aimed at maintaining the Hindutva majority status with the political and bureaucratic plateaus while conterminously creating conflicts throughout the country. Covering the recent history of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the only Indian territory with a Muslim majority, Singh contends that the application of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which divides Kashmir into regions while artificially populating the area with Hindus, is all part of a greater plan by the BJP to further sow sectarian divides politically which nourish the growing social divide between religious minorities and Hindus, while completely abandoning the forty-second Amendment of the Indian Constitution (1976) whereby the Preamble to the Constitution asserts that India is a secular nation. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Ori Goldberg, an independent analyst and specialist in Middle Eastern Studies, analyses the profound militarisation within his country, Israel, that involves the “desensitivisation as to the very existence of Palestinians as human beings” such that Israelis themselves know nothing about Palestinians, resulting in the only permissible history of Israel being that of the Jewish narrative. Covering the deeply ideological and historical “zero-sum game” whereby Israelis are uniquely allowed access to the narrative of victimisation, Goldberg explains the refusal of Israelis to see the humanity of Palestinians, remarking, “If they are acknowledged as full-fledged humans, then there is something wrong with us, there is something that undermines our right to live here.” Observing how the desensitisation of Israelis to Palestinians functions, Goldberg claims that Israelis do not possess the language to describe Palestinians “except as a threat” in the second order; however, Israeli’s first order of understanding the Palestinian is that of “nothingness” where Palestinian deaths “don’t even register.” Assessing the greatest weakness of Israel—that it does not register the reality of Palestinians—Goldberg describes how a member of Knesset stated that the only health risk facing Gazans is “obesity,” noting, “That is not how you want to talk about a people who actively, consciously want to vanquish—it’s how you talk about a people whose existence seems like a fantasy to you to begin with.” The fact that Israel attacks at will and kills indiscriminately, Goldberg asserts, is not significant in terms of its strategic power. To the contrary, Goldberg suggests that Israel’s main weakness, despite its aggression, is that it has alienated even its closest allies while also coming very close to being a failed state. Suggesting that Israel can only be saved through a “strategic implosion” that will ultimately shape its “response and its willingness to accept externally imposed positions,” Goldberg confirms that the light on the horizon is that vast majority of the world’s population no longer cares about Israelis’ feelings or their sense of victimhood, noting that Israel can blame itself for the position in which it has created for itself. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Isla MacGregor, a free speech and whistleblower advocate in Tasmania, Australia, relates the blowback she has experienced by gender-critical feminists for her criticism of the Israeli genocide in Gaza that is reminiscent of the very same type of behaviour enacted by the gender ideologues whom these feminists had heretofore criticised. Observing how the slurs and slogans that have been used by those feminists defending Israel’s genocide of Palestinians are remarkably similar in both form and spirit to the slurs used against women’s rights activists over the past two decades, MacGregor analyses these tactics as part of a wider war propaganda machinery. Summarising how many feminists whose “absolute ignorance of the history of Palestine and the Israeli conflict” functions in oppositional incoherence to these same feminists’ critique of gender ideology, MacGregor discusses how gender ideology’s complete absence of any hard evidence or rigorous peer-reviewed research is eerily similarly to Zionist and pro-genocidal beliefs: many people in these groups do not care about evidence or reality, nor do they care. MacGregor notes the irony in how many feminists who had long fought against the anti-reality, counterfactual discourse of gender ideology are now adopting an anti-factual posture when it comes to Israel as they shut down other women who recognise the reality of the current genocide in Gaza, asking, “What did we learn from the trans rights debate?” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Boaventura de Sousa ​Santos, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra, discusses his professional training from law, to the philosophy of law and then to sociology, covering his time studying in Cold War Berlin, then Yale in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and his eventual involvement with the World Social Forum and his efforts to densify class struggle. Bouncing off his recent article on cancel culture, de Sousa Santos analyses the “narcissism of belongingness” and how identity politics is sabotaging the left, where the connection to the political economy is lost to the language of inclusion. Analysing the weaponisation of victimhood and lies that are used to create narratives that uniquely rely upon the perverse assumption of female innocence and male guilt, de Sousa Santos observes the current social discourse and protofascistic regimes of our times, where the Inquisition of the Dark Ages has returned. Noting the rise of social fascism, which he believes may potentially slide into political fascism, de Sousa Santos argues that the proliferation of victimhood narratives creates the subject as a type of inert res extensa, in Cartesian terms, that simultaneously negates the Spinozean notion of human potentia, something he believes will ultimately kill the feminist movement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Ramzy Baroud, journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle, discusses being born and raised in Gaza while also covering the greater history of Palestine: from British colonialism, the rise of Zionism and the decision that someone made to mythologise Palestine as “a land with no people,” a historical exchange to rewrite, rename, and reinvent the land of Palestine to belong to someone else, except the land indeed had people. Responding to the claims of those who deny the genocide or who have clung to the rape fictions that were created by the state of Israel in tandem with legacy media, which resorted to racist stereotypes of Arabs “as rapists” in order to seamlessly encourage the public acceptance of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Baroud notes how the Western focus on “the treatment of women in Palestine” has become a convenient derail to the larger issue of genocide, to which he recounts the story of his sister, a physician who was assassinated by Israel last year and whose life’s work has left a legacy for both Palestinian men and women. Baroud narrates how the legacy of Palestinian women, including his grandmother, have always been at the centre of their society, observing that Western feminists have simply embraced Orientalist language of old while completely forgetting that it is colonialism and military occupation that oppress women. Baroud also relates how many Palestinian women have given birth at checkpoints, as the IDF blocks their access to hospital care, and he asks: Where were these Western feminists who didn’t say a thing while these women were forced to give birth at checkpoints, during a most intimate moment in their lives and under the gaze of IDF soldiers watch? Where were these Western feminists’ voices when the 17.000 women were butchered and raped by the Israeli army? Baroud goes on to narrate Israel’s direct attacks on the storytellers of Palestine—the journalists, historians, and scholars—many of whom have come under legal attacks and various other forms of intimidation while also addressing the hasbara replete within western media representations of Palestine. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Zahi Zalloua, Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature and Director of Indigeneity, Race, and Ethnicity Studies at Whitman College, discusses the relevance of Edward’s Orientalism in the face of the current genocide in Gaza as he addresses the challenge of our times in “unlearning Zionism in fascist times,” which necessitates an “ontological upheaval.” Zalloua discusses the racial logic at the heart of the Zionist project which is a reproduction of colonialism and European racism which, he argues, not only still has purchase, but which also undergirds the historical horrors of what Europe allowed to happen on its soil, whereby the mass dispossession and subjection of Palestinians became the byproduct of European guilt. Addressing the problems of Western feminists who perpetuate the racist fantasy of the “black rapist” that has plagued feminist communities for decades, noting how, during the height of the MeToo movement, white women were shocked by black women who resisted joining this movement, entirely oblivious to the racist backdrop of Empire and of false rape accusations historically levied against men of colour. Arguing that we need to stop seeing Palestinians merely as victims, as this leads to numerous actors being blamed for their victimhood (eg. Hamas, the extremist politicians in Israel) while eliding the major structure responsible for the situation into which Palestinians were forced in 1948, Zalloua underscores the need to directly address the settler-colonial framework in both its historical inception and current practices. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Thomas Fazi, independent researcher, writer and journalist, discusses the current situation of the war in Ukraine and how the European elite have utilised this conflict to continue waging economic warfare on their own people, which he explains, together with the sanctions imposed, is a tale of self-sabotage. Detailing how Western nations assumed that their sanctions would “cripple the Russian economy,” Fazi elaborates how the precise opposite has occurred: Russia has weathered these sanctions quite steadily because the West and NATO have lost their “blackmail power” to isolate countries. Additionally, Fazi notes the paradox of how Russia’s economy benefited from these sanctions, giving it the drive to focus on its production while western countries were the ones that were harmed most by the blowback of these sanctions, as Europe has driven up poverty rates while industrial nations have been forced to deindustrialise. Analysing the economic devastation that has ravaged Europe as a result, Fazi highlights the collapse of meaning and direction within European culture and society that has cumulatively resulted in significant discontent and anti-immigrant sentiment, while Europe, in supporting the current genocide in Gaza and in having provoked the war in Ukraine, even ensuring its continuation, have fallen into a complete moral vacuum. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe