Omer Bartov

Omer Bartov is a Brown University (Brown) professor who blamed Israel for Hamas terrorist war crimes and engaged in anti-Israel activism in 2023.

Bartov blamed Israel for Hamas war crimes following a series of atrocities and against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings, which were executed on October 7, 2023.

The Hamas terror attacks left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron,” which was going on when he wrote a series of anti-Israel articles.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Canada, European Union, Israel and other countries. Founded in 1987, it has killed thousands of Israeli civilians through mass shootings and suicide bombings. Hamas has also kidnapped children, families and the elderly and held them hostage in Gaza. It has desecrated [slide 7] dead bodies and launched numerous rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

As of December 2023, Bartov was listed as a Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies in the Department of History at Brown.

Bartov received a PhD in history from Oxford University in 1983.

Bartov has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2005.

On November 29, 2023, Bartov wrote an opinion article in The Guardian titled: “A political stalemate led to the bloodshed in the Middle East. Only a political settlement can truly end it.”

In the article, Bartov wrote about the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, 2023: “This was an event waiting to happen. If you keep over 2 million people under siege for 16 years, cramped in a narrow strip of land… you cannot but expect outbreaks of ever more desperate and brutal violence, inexcusable as those atrocities were.”

The United Nations approved [pp. 39–41] the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza in 2011 as a security measure to stop Hamas from acquiring sophisticated rockets. Multiple flotillas have attempted to breach the blockade, with at least one initiating a violent confrontation with Israeli forces.

Following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the Israeli military discovered that Hamas went around the blockade by smuggling weaponry through tunnels under the Philadelphi corridor separating Gaza from Egypt.

Bartov also wrote about relations between Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority: “That political stalemate, enforced by Israel, ultimately led to this violence.”

On November 10, 2023, Bartov wrote an opinion guest essay published in the New York Times titled: “What I Believe as a Historian of Genocide.”

In the essay, Bartov wrote: “What we had warned about — that it would be impossible to ignore the occupation and oppression of millions [of Palestinians] for 56 years, and the siege of Gaza for 16 years, without consequences — exploded in our faces on Oct. 7.”

The True Face of Anti-Israel Activism

Blaming Israel for Hamas Terror War Crimes

Anti-Israel Activism

Social Media and Weblinks