The New Yorker:

Omer Bartov on his experience speaking with right-wing students who had just returned from military service in Gaza.

By Isaac Chotiner

Omer Bartov is one of the preëminent historians of the Third Reich. In the course of his four-decade career, he has written numerous books and articles examining Hitler’s regime, with a specific focus on how Nazi ideology functioned in institutions such as the German Army. Bartov was born in Israel, and served in the military during the country’s war in 1973, against several of its neighbors, including Egypt and Syria. He currently teaches at Brown University.

After the Hamas attacks of October 7th, Israel began its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, where more than thirty-eight thousand Palestinians have been killed. Bartov quickly became a vocal critic of the war: he accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity and raised the question of whether its conduct constituted genocide. I recently called Bartov, because I heard that he had visited Ben-Gurion University, in Beersheba, and met with a number of right-wing students who had returned from military service in Gaza. I wanted to learn about what exactly had occurred, and what he took away from the experience. Our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, is below. In it, we also talk about how he thinks Israeli society is refusing to face up to what’s happening in Gaza, and what he learned talking to former soldiers in the German Army after the Second World War.

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