Simply Unbelievable: Omar Bartov Comparing IDF soldiers to Hitler’s Wehrmacht

I have to admit, I was shocked when I saw Dr. Bartov’s two interviews with tabloid operations, Democracy Now and Busboys and Poets, wherein he took off the gloves and declared Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This was the man who had taken on genocide scholar Dr. Martin Shaw in a legendary email debate, later published in The Journal of Genocide Research in 2010, wherein Dr. Bartov defended Israel against the absurd accusation it had committed genocide in 1948.

However, Dr. Bartov, now asserting that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a war in which there is a 99% Gazan civilian survival rate, is minor when compared to his article published The Guardian in August of 2024 wherein he portrayed the men and women of the IDF as being the same, ideologically, as the men of Hitler’s army preparing to invade the Soviet Union, betraying the non-aggression pact Nazi Germany signed with the USSR that would eventually result in the deaths of 20-30 million Soviets and the murder of over a million Soviet prisoners of war.

Dr. Bartov wrote: “Having internalised certain views of the enemy – the Bolsheviks as Untermenschen; Hamas as human animals – and of the wider population as less than human and undeserving of rights, soldiers observing or perpetrating atrocities tend to ascribe them not to their own military, or to themselves, but to the enemy.” He also quoted a German Nazi soldier writing home, “The German people owe a great debt to our Führer, for had these beasts, who are our enemies here, come to Germany, such murders would have taken place that the world has never seen before.” This is the soldier Dr. Bartov said was like soldiers of the IDF after being fed “propaganda” and “incitement” By Israel’s political and military leadership. It gets worse.

Dr. Bartov continued, “Look at what happened to us in 1918, German soldiers said in 1942, recalling the propagandistic “stab-in-the-back” myth, which attributed Germany’s catastrophic defeat in the first world war to Jewish and communist treason. Look at what happened to us in the Holocaust, when we trusted that others would come to our rescue, IDF troops say in 2024, thereby giving themselves license for indiscriminate destruction based on a false analogy between Hamas and the Nazis.” Is there really a false analogy between Hamas and Nazis other than the German Nazis’ concern for the safety and well being of its German citizens? Did Dr. Bartov really indicate he thinks the Holocaust was a “propagandistic ‘stab-in-the-back’ myth?” equivalent to just one of the ways the Nazis stoked antisemitism to a fever pitch?

Ilan Pappe made a similar comment in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine regarding the nascent Israeli government’s need to use propaganda in 1948 in that “the attempt to portray Palestinians, and Arabs in general, as Nazis was a deliberate public relations ploy to ensure that, three years after the Holocaust, Jewish soldiers would not lose heart when ordered to cleanse, kill and destroy other human beings.” Despite Pappe’s compliment of the delicate nature of Jewish soldiers, three short years after the Holocaust, two short years after the subsequent Polish pogroms, and immediately following the “displaced persons” environment in German and Polish concentration camps and British Cyprus, is ridiculous. The Jews had no problem fighting for their freedom, the freedom and safety of their families, and believing the Arab leaders that threatened genocide should the Jews lose.

Ilan Pappe, a longtime critic of Israel, whose critique often borders on antisemitism, has a reputation that makes his criticism expected. On the other hand, Dr. Bartov’s accusations seem ludicrous and traitorous, as unlike Pappe, he is not an Israeli expatriate, nor does he routinely condemn Israel. However, his recent activity in print and in podcasts and Youtube comparing Israeli soldiers to German Nazis and accusing Israel of committing genocide with the flimsiest of evidence is simply unbelievable.

Apologies to Robert Palmer

How can it be permissible
He’s compromised the principle
That kind of hate is mythical
He’s anything but typical
He’s a craze some endorse, he’s a powerful force
obliged to conform when there’s no other course
Bartov used to look good to me, but now I find him:

Simply unbelievable