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Faculty of Humanities and Theology

Public Lecturer: Gaza and the Question of Genocide

Invitation to a lecture in the "Gaza in focus" series on Gaza and the Question of Genocide on January 20, held by Prof Omer Bartov (Brown University). The lecture will be held in English.

Gaza and the Question of Genocide

Where? TU Dortmund, EF 50, HS1 (Hörsaal1)

When? 20 January 2025, 18.15-19.45

In a November 2023 op-ed for the New York Times, Omer Bartov wrote that while the IDF appeared to be committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, he was not convinced that there was sufficient evidence to claim that genocide was taking place. But in an essay published in The Guardian in August, 2024, he stated that he had become convinced that Israel was undertaking a genocidal campaign against the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip. His talk will examine the immediate causes and deeper roots of the current conflict, assess the nature of events in Gaza and the West Bank and the political and ideological dynamics driving them, and attempt to outline possible future scenarios in the region.

Omer Bartov is Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. He has written widely on war crimes, genocide, and antisemitism. His recent books include Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018), which won the National Jewish Book Award; Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past (2022), also published in German; and Genocide, The Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis (2023), forthcoming in a German translation. Bartov has contributed many articles and interviews on the current crisis and on his own changing perspectives, most recently in The Guardian: “As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel” and “We are witnessing the final stage of genocide in Gaza.”

He is currently writing two new books tentatively titled “Israel: What Went Wrong?” and “The Broken Promise: A Personal-Political History of Israel and Palestine.”

The lecture series was developed at the suggestion of students and aims to provide scientifically based information on the Middle East conflict. It covers topics such as culture, nature, media and reporting, international law and much more.

© Sara Kipfer