Gaza’s Health Ministry has confirmed that close to 46,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s ongoing assault, but Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah estimates the true number is closer to 300,000. “This is literally and mathematically a genocidal project,” says Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who worked in Gaza for over a month treating patients at both Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals. Israel continues to attack what remains of the besieged territory’s medical infrastructure. On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the upper floor of al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least seven people and wounded several others. On Friday, Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, northern Gaza’s last major functioning hospital, and set the facility on fire. Many staff and patients were reportedly forced to go outside and strip in winter weather. The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, was arrested, and his whereabouts remain unknown. “It’s been obvious from the beginning that Israel has been wiping out a whole generation of health professionals in Gaza as a way of increasing the genocidal death toll but also of permanently making Gaza uninhabitable,” says Abu-Sittah. “On the 7th of October, the Israelis crossed that genocidal Rubicon that settler-colonial projects cross.” “A Genocidal Project”: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah on Israel’s Destruction of Gaza Health System | Democracy Now! NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where a sixth baby has died from severe cold as the death toll tops 45,500 and Israel’s assault on medical infrastructure continues in the besieged territory. On Sunday, an Israeli attack on the upper floor of al-Wafa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least seven people and wounded several others. On Friday, Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan Hospital, northern Gaza’s last major functioning hospital. The director of Kamal Adwan, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, was arrested, and his whereabouts remain unknown. Many staff and patients were reportedly forced to go outside and strip in winter weather. This is nurse Waleed al-Boudi describing Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s arrest.
WALEED AL-BOUDI: [translated] Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was arrested from Al-Fakhoura School after he had stayed with us and refused to leave. Even though they told him to and that he was free to go, he told them that he won’t leave his medical staff. He took all of us and wanted to get us out at night. But they yelled at him and arrested him, a man of great humanity. We appeal to the entire world, all of the world, all the human rights organizations to stand by Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the great man, the man who planted, within us and within our hearts, patience so we can persevere in our steadfast north. I swear we wouldn’t have left, but by force. We cried blood on the doors of Kamal Adwan Hospital when we were forced out by the occupation army. NERMEEN SHAIKH: A person who was with Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya shared testimony that, quote, “The Israeli forces whipped Dr. Hussam using an electrical wire found in the street after forcing him and others from the medical staff to remove their clothes,” unquote. This is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya in one of his final interviews before being detained, produced by Sotouries. DR. HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA: [translated] I always say the situation requires one to stand by our people’s side and not run away from it. Gaza is our homeland, our mother, our beloved and everything to us. Gaza deserves all of this steadfastness and deserves all of the sacrifices. It is not just about Gaza, but we deserve to be a people that deserves freedom just like every other people on Earth. I think the occupation wants us to get out and for us to ask them to get us out, so they can publicly say that the healthcare system is the one asking to leave and that it wasn’t them who asked us to, but we are aware of that. But we will not leave, God willing, from this place, as I said, for as long as there are humanitarian services to be provided to our people in the northern Gaza Strip. NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya in one of his last interviews before Israeli forces arrested him Friday in a raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital along with at least 240 others in a raid which left the hospital nonoperational. Israel’s military alleged that Hamas militants were using Kamal Adwan Hospital. The World Health Organization is calling on Israel to end its attacks on Gaza hospitals. Earlier today, the World Health Organization’s chief, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, said, quote, “People in Gaza need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid. Ceasefire!” Last week, World Health Organization spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris was asked on Channel 4 News whether there is any evidence of the Israeli claim that the hospital is a Hamas stronghold. DR. MARGARET HARRIS: So, whenever we send a mission, we go and we look at the health situation. Now, I’ve not had at any point our healthcare teams come back and say that they’ve got any concerns beyond the healthcare, but I should say that what we do is look at what the health situation is and what needs to be done. But all we’ve ever seen going on in that hospital is healthcare. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, for more, we go to Cairo, Egypt. AMY GOODMAN: Nermeen, thanks so much. I am here with a man who knew Dr. Abu Safiya well and is in constant contact with people on the ground in Gaza, particularly the medical professionals. Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah is with us here, British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon. He worked last year in Gaza for almost — for over a month with MSF, Médecins Sans Frontières — that’s Doctors Without Borders — in two hospitals. He worked at Al-Shifa, the main hospital in Gaza, as well as Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. Welcome to Democracy Now! You’ve been in touch with family of Dr. Abu Safiya. If you can talk about where he is right now, believed to have been arrested by the Israeli military, and then the crisis just right now on the ground with the closing of Kamal Adwan and more? DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, unfortunately, the family is afraid that he has been moved to the infamous Sde Teiman torture camp, an internment camp where, before him, Dr. Adnan al-Bursh was tortured, and tortured to death, Dr. Iyad Rantisi was tortured to death, where there is documented evidence of not just Israeli guards taking part in torture, but even Israeli doctors taking part in the torture of Palestinians. And so, that is the fear that not just the family has, but all of us have. And what we’ve seen in this process, in this destruction, systematic destruction of the health system, with the total destruction of all of the hospitals in the north, so not just Kamal Adwan, before that, the Indonesian Hospital and Al-Awda Hospital, and, immediately after, the targeting of al-Wafa Hospital and then the targeting again of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, which was the first hospital the Israelis targeted on the 17th of October. The targeting of al-Wafa Hospital was intended to kill medical students from Gaza’s Islamic University who were sitting in exam in that hospital. And luckily for them, the Israelis got the wrong floor. And then the targeting of Al-Ahli Hospital, which is now the last hospital functioning in that whole arbitrarily created northern part of Gaza, is a sign that the Israelis will now move towards the Ahli Hospital for destruction. I just want to highlight there is research that is about to be published that shows that the chances of being killed as a nurse or a doctor in Gaza during this genocidal war is three-and-a-half times that of the general population. So it’s been obvious from the beginning that Israel has been wiping out a whole generation of health professionals in Gaza as a way of increasing the genocidal death toll but also of permanently making Gaza uninhabitable. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, you, of course, as we mentioned, as Amy mentioned in the introduction, you have worked in two Gaza hospitals. You’ve just talked a little bit about what’s recently — the recent Israeli attacks on medical infrastructure in Gaza, but if you could explain, just to give a sense of what’s happened overall since October 7th, 2023, if you could say the scale of the destruction of medical infrastructure, as well as the systematic attacks on medical personnel, as you said, this new research that’s coming out that shows that they’re three to four times more likely to be killed than the general population? So, if you could just say, begin from October 2023 to now? DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, what happened on October the 12th is that the Israeli army started to call by phone medical directors of all of the hospitals, telling them that unless they evacuated the hospitals, the blood of the patients would be on their hands. And I remember that day I was with Dr. Ahmed Muhanna from Al-Awda Hospital, who’s still been arrested now for over a year, an anesthetist and a medical director, and he received a phone call from the Israeli army to tell him to evacuate Al-Awda Hospital. Of course, we realized at that point that the destruction of the health system was going to be a prerequisite for the kind of ethnic cleansing that the Israelis wanted in Gaza. I was in Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on the day of the 17th of October, when the Israelis bombed that hospital, killing over 480 patients. And then we had the whole narrative about Shifa Hospital, the siege of Shifa Hospital, the destruction of three pediatric hospitals in the north, and then the first attack on Shifa Hospital. And then, after that, 36 hospitals in Gaza have now been reduced to the three partially working hospitals in the south and only a remnant of Al-Ahli Hospital in the north. We have had over a thousand health workers — doctors, nurses, health professionals — killed, over 400 imprisoned, and then the destruction of the health infrastructure, the destruction of water and sewage, the use of water as a tool of collective punishment in order to create the public health catastrophe that exists in Gaza in terms of infectious diseases, and the intentional famine. And so, at the moment, we have in Gaza what the doctors are referring to as the triad of death: hypothermia because of the winter, wounding because of the injuries, and malnutrition. And with the three, what happens is that people die of — at higher temperatures, people die of lesser injuries, because the coexistence of these three conditions means that the body is depleted of any physiological reserve. And so, that’s why we’re watching over seven kids in the last week die of hypothermia, an adult nurse die of hypothermia, not because the temperatures are subzero — the temperatures are just hovering above zero — but because they’re so malnourished and they’re injured and a lot of them have infectious diseases, and so they’re dying at the same time. Israel has created a genocidal machine that takes Palestinian lives beyond the injury, beyond the bombs, beyond the shrapnel. And so people are dying of infectious diseases. People are dying because of the health system has collapsed, and so their chronic diseases become medical emergencies. And people are dying from the famine and the malnutrition. NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, in light of that, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, if you could comment on the fact that so many people now, an increasing number of people, are questioning this death toll of 45,500, over that number who have been killed in Gaza since or who have died in Gaza since October 2023? People are saying that is a vast undercount. From what you’re saying, that seems almost certain. If you could comment as a medical professional? You know, what do you think might be a more accurate figure? DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, 45,000 are people whose bodies were taken to a Ministry of Health hospital, and they were taken by people who witnessed or who recognized them, and a death certificate was issued. This 45,000 excludes the tens of thousands who are still under the rubble, more so in the north, where the emergency services were targeted by the Israelis and so are now completely unable to function. And so, we see pictures of dogs eating bodies of those killed in the streets. And so, not only people under the rubble, people who have been killed and not reported, or their bodies have not been retrieved. When you drop 2,000-pound bombs, there’s very little of the human body that is left. And so there are people who literally pulverized by these bombs. Then you have those whose chronic illnesses, once untreated, became deadly, so the kidney dialysis patients, the heart disease patients, the diabetics, who were no longer able to get treatment. It doesn’t take into account the women who are dying from maternal care, from obstetric injuries during delivery, because they’re delivering in makeshift hospitals, they’re delivering in the tents, and they’re malnourished when they give birth, and so them and their babies have a higher rate of maternal mortality, of infant mortality. And then you have those who are dying of infectious diseases, of the thousands who have hepatitis at the moment, of the polio, and those who are dying not immediately from their injuries but from the wounds that do not have access to healthcare to stop the infection setting in, and then, eventually, the infection becoming sepsis and killing them. The number is closer to 300,000. This is around 10 to 12% of Gaza’s population. France, at the end of the Second World War, 4% of its population were killed. This is literally and mathematically a genocidal project. This is not a political term. This is a literal and mathematical term, where you want to eliminate the population and to ensure that whoever is left is incapable of becoming part of a society, because they’re tending to their wounds or they’ve been so severely debilitated by the injuries and the neglected injuries. AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Abu-Sittah, you have asked, “How can a live-streamed genocide continue unhindered?” What is your response to that question right now? DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Right now with the arrest of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, where is the British Medical Association? Where is the American Medical Association? Where are the royal colleges? Where are the French Medical Association? Western medical institutions, their moral bankruptcy has become so astounding during this genocide. For them to become part of a genocidal enablement apparatus, for their silence and, in a lot of times, their collusion to silence those who speak out against the genocide, for me, as a health professional, you’re shocked at how completely empty of any moral value these medical associations have become, when they have become complicit in a televised genocide which targets doctors. AMY GOODMAN: You know, I’m speaking to you here in Cairo. In May, Germany did not allow you in to speak. You are a British Palestinian doctor. Since you were in Gaza last year, you’ve been speaking out about what’s happening. Explain exactly what happened. I mean, Human Rights Watch and other groups were demanding that this ban be lifted. They banned you from where? DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: So, I was invited to speak at a conference in Germany. I was stopped at Berlin Airport and was told that I’m banned from going into Germany for a month, and I was deported at the end of that day back to the U.K. A few months later, I had an invitation from the French Senate. When I arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I discovered that the Germans, a few days after they deported me, had put in a ban for the whole of the Schengen — and Schengen is the EU plus Norway, plus Sweden, plus Switzerland — using an administrative law so that they wouldn’t have to put it in front of the judge. We then were able to challenge that and have it overturned. But at the same time, pro-Israel groups, like UK Lawyers for Israel, submitted multiple complaints against me with the General Medical Council to have my medical license removed, submitted complaints against me with the Charity Commission in the U.K. to have me banned for life from ever holding office in a U.K. registered charity. This is what — this is why this genocide has continued unhindered and unchallenged for over 14 months. There are apparatus of genocide enablement that exists in the West, either through collusion or by actively targeting. Over 60 doctors in the U.K. have had complaints against them with the General Medical Council to have their medical licenses removed as a result of their support of the Palestinians during the genocide. AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Dr. Abu-Sittah, Jimmy Carter died yesterday at the age of 100. He wrote the book in the 2000s, which is quite amazing, but after he was president, Palestine: Peace [Not] Apartheid. I’m going to rejoin Nermeen for the end of the show, an interview I did with him on that issue. But your thoughts on President Carter? DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: The logic of the relationship between the Zionist colonialist movement and the Palestinian Indigenous population has always been that of elimination. At a certain point — and that’s unfortunately now behind us since the 7th of October — apartheid separation was the chosen method of elimination of the Palestinians. On the 7th of October, the Israelis crossed that genocidal Rubicon that settler-colonial projects cross. And once the genocidal Rubicon is crossed, the elimination of the Indigenous population by the settler-colonial project then purely becomes genocidal. Israel, even at the end of this genocidal war in Gaza, will not be able to deal with the Palestinians in a nongenocidal way. Once the settler-colonial project becomes genocidal, it cannot undo itself. We’ve seen that in North America with the killing of the children in Canada. We’ve seen that in Australia. We’ve seen that everywhere. AMY GOODMAN: And Carter, again, as we just have 30 seconds, writing the book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid? DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: Well, Carter had a historic opportunity to change the course of this struggle, had he insisted that part of the Camp David Accords was the creation of a Palestinian state. And no amount of recantation will ever change that missed opportunity. He could have forced on the Israeli government, and the first right-wing Israeli government at that point, under Begin — he could have forced the creation of a Palestinian state, but he failed to do that. NERMEEN SHAIKH: And finally, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, we just have 30 seconds. You just said that a genocidal settler-colonial project cannot undo itself. How do you see this ending, then? DR. GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: You see, the world has a choice, because surplus populations like the Palestinians, like refugees crossing the Mediterranean, like the poor people in the favelas and in the inner-city slums, these will either be dealt with through a genocidal project, as Israel has dealt with the Palestinians in Gaza — and this kind of response or this kind of template will become part of the military doctrine that is taught to armies across the world in dealing with these surplus populations. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, thank you so much for joining us, a British Palestinian reconstructive surgeon who worked in Gaza as a volunteer with Doctors without Borders treating patients at both Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital. Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s onslaught in Gaza has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians and injured more than 108,000. At the same time, Gaza officials continue to accuse Israel of deliberately blocking aid deliveries. Human rights organizations are condemning Israel for attacking Palestinian lifesaving infrastructure, including Gaza’s water supply and medical system. All of this has led to the world’s leading specialist on the subject of genocide to declare Israel is carrying out a combination of “genocidal actions, ethnic cleansing and annexation of the Gaza Strip.” Omer Bartov, an Israeli American professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, describes why he believes Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza right now. “There was actually a systematic attempt to make Gaza uninhabitable, as well as to destroy all institutions that make it possible for a group to sustain itself, not only physically but also culturally,” says Bartov, who warns impunity for Israel would endanger the entire edifice of international law. “This is a total moral, ethical failure by the very countries that claim to be the main protectors of civil rights, democracy, human rights around the world.” “Total Moral, Ethical Failure”: Holocaust Scholar Omer Bartov on Israel’s Genocide in Gaza | Democracy Now! NERMEEN SHAIKH: As 2024 winds down, new details from Gaza’s Health Ministry confirm more than 108,000 Palestinians have been injured in Israel’s onslaught since October 7th, 2023, and more than 45,500 killed — though the true toll is thought to be far higher. Meanwhile, Gaza’s officials continue to accuse Israel of deliberately blocking aid deliveries, and UNRWA has warned of a, quote, “approaching famine” in Gaza where residents face severe food insecurity. This comes as thousands of Israelis protested against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government Saturday, demanding an end to the war in Gaza and a ceasefire that would bring home the hostages still held by Hamas. Our next guest says Israel is carrying out a combination of, quote, “genocidal actions, ethnic cleansing and annexation of the Gaza Strip.” Omer Bartov is professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. He’s an Israeli American scholar who’s been described by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as one of the world’s leading specialists on the subject of genocide. He was recently in Israel and just returned earlier this month. Professor Bartov, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you could begin by explaining why you think now a genocide is occurring in Gaza? OMER BARTOV: Yeah. Thank you for having me again. I just want to start by saying that I was listening to the interview with Dr. Abu-Sittah, and I’d just like to express my appreciation for all the work that he’s been doing and everything that he was saying in the previous segment. I started, as you may know, already in November 2023, I published an op-ed in The New York Times where I wrote that I thought the IDF was carrying out what appeared to be war crimes and crimes against humanity, but I was not yet convinced that we had enough evidence that this was genocidal action. And my view changed really around May of 2024 with the decision of the IDF, despite opposition from the United States, to invade Rafah, the last area of the Gaza Strip that had not been taken over. There were about a million Palestinians there who had already been displaced several times, and the IDF displaced them one more time to the beach area, the Mawasi area, without any proper infrastructure at all, into tent cities along the beach, and then proceeded to demolish much of Rafah. And it was at that point that I started looking back at the entire operation, starting with statements made at the very beginning, in October 7th, 8th, 9th, by Israeli leaders, political and military leaders with executive authority, who were saying that they wanted to flatten Gaza, destroy it, that there were no people who were uninvolved, and so forth. And it appeared at that point that there was actually a systematic attempt to make Gaza uninhabitable, as well as to destroy all institutions that make it possible for a group to sustain itself, not only physically but also culturally, its identity, its collective memory, which meant a systematic destruction of universities, of schools, of mosques, of museums and, of course, of housing and infrastructure. So, what you could see by then was that there was what we would call an urbicide, an attempt to destroy the urban centers, physically destroy them, a scholasticide — that is, killing of the members of the educational institutions, of schools, professors at universities, and so forth — so that the population, having been displaced many times and, as you heard before, vast numbers of them being killed, wounded and debilitated, would never be able to reconstitute itself as a group in that area. That’s the general drift of it. Now, as of early October this year — that is, a year after the war began — the IDF started an operation in the northern part of Gaza, north of the so-called Netzarim Corridor, which is now not really a corridor — it’s like a box about five miles wide and five miles long — emptying that area north of that corridor entirely of its population. And this was a plan that was being sold by a retired Israeli general, Giora Eiland, on Israeli TV for months before. And the idea is to force the entire population out through military action and through starvation, through depriving the population of food and water. And much of the population has indeed been removed. This last attack on the hospital you were discussing earlier is one additional phase in this attempt to make this entire area empty of its population. This has been called by the former Israeli chief of staff and minister of defense, who is himself a political hawk, on the Israeli media an operation of ethnic cleansing. But ethnic cleansing means that you move people from a place where you don’t want them, a particular ethnic group, to another place where they can be at least secure of those attacks. But, of course, in Gaza, when you move people from one place to another, to so-called safe zones, they are not safe there, and they do come increasingly and constantly again under attack. So, that’s what makes this so-called ethnic cleansing actually a part of a genocidal operation. As for annexation, what we hear a lot now on the Israeli media is that as this northern third of Gaza is being flattened and emptied of its population, there are in fact settler groups waiting in the wings just across the fence to move in and to start settling that area, with an eye to occupying it entirely. And I don’t see — if they do that, once the army lets them in, I don’t see any mechanism in Israel itself or, frankly, internationally that would remove them from there. So, that would be the beginning of a creeping annexation and resettlement of Gaza as it is being emptied of its Palestinian population. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Professor Bartov, I want to ask about the enablers of this, as you say, genocide. In a Guardian piece last week headlined “A consensus is emerging: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Where is the action?” columnist Nesrine Malik condemns Western complicity in what’s occurring in Gaza, writing, quote, “The danger now is that Palestinians die twice, once in physical reality and second in a moral one where the powerful diminish the very standards that shape the world as we know it. By refusing even to accept the designations of genocide and ethnic cleansing, let alone act upon them, Israel’s allies force an adaptation on to the world after which it simply becomes accepted that rights are not bestowed by humanity, but by the parties who decide who is human.” So, that’s Nesrine Malik writing in The Guardian. Professor Bartov, could you respond to that? And in particular, a genocide, as you say, is occurring in Gaza. The genocide would not be possible without the complicity and direct involvement of Western powers, in particular the United States. So, in that sense, is the U.S. also, by association, guilty of committing genocide? OMER BARTOV: Yes, look, I mean, I would begin by saying that, first and foremost, the population that is most responsible for what Israel is doing right now is the population of Israel and that there is a deep complicity of the Israeli population, including not only the government but opposition parties in Israel which are supporting the operation in Gaza. So, we can talk about that. But, of course, Israel cannot and would not be able to continue its actions in Gaza without complete support, especially from the United States, also from European countries, Germany foremost, but also in many ways France and the U.K. The U.S. administration, under Biden, could have ended this war as early as November or December 2023, because Israel cannot conduct such operations on such a scale without constant assistance from the United States, first of all, by the vast amount of munitions that are going to Israel on a daily basis, tank and artillery shells, interceptor rockets. All of this is coming on a vast scale from the United States to the tune now of about $20 billion being paid by the American taxpayer. Had an American administration said to Netanyahu in December 2023, “You have to wrap this up, or you’re on your own,” he would have had to stop, because it would have simply been impossible. But instead, this was not done. And the result of that is, obviously, first of all, the massive destruction of Gaza. Second, it means that the entire edifice of international law that was put into place in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust in order to prevent genocide ever happening again, through the Nuremberg tribunal, through the Genocide Convention of 1948, the Geneva Accords of 1949 and so forth, and now the Rome Statute more recently — all this apparatus has been shown as meaningless if a country like Israel, supported by its Western allies, can act with impunity. And the result of this is that all other rogue states in the world could now say, “Well, if Israel can get away with it, why should we not?” And so, in that sense, this is a total moral, ethical failure by the very countries that claim to be the main protectors of the civil rights, democracy, human rights around the world. And apart from the regional catastrophe that is happening right now, this has much larger ramifications for what we will see in the future. NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Professor Bartov, so you just mentioned, of course, you were in Israel just earlier this month. You spoke to a large number of people there. What is their — what is your sense of how Gaza is being perceived? You know, is there criticism now, much wider and broader criticism, of Israel’s actions in Gaza than there was, say, earlier this year, in the summer, when you were there, or last year? OMER BARTOV: So, yeah, I was in Israel in June 2024. And at the time, when I spoke with people and even mentioned what was going on in Gaza — and most of the people I speak with are mainstream liberal, left-leaning — there was huge reluctance to even speak about it. People were completely caught up with the sense of trauma and pain following the October 7th Hamas attack, which killed about 900 civilians, as well as several hundred soldiers. When I was visiting Israel this time, just earlier this month, I had a sense that more people were aware of what was happening in Gaza — not because of Israeli TV, which is still entirely blocking out, voluntarily, any real reports from Gaza. All these reports are filtered through what the army — the information given them by the army. But there have been newspaper reports. There have been a lot of social media reports. So, more people, I think, are aware now of what is happening there. But how are they responding to that? My sense is that there’s a growing sense of resignation, of despair, of hopelessness in those circles, that one would hope would be the main opposition to the policies of an extreme right-wing government. NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Bartov, I’m so sorry that we’re out of time. We’re going to have to end it there. Professor Bartov, Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. 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