'No great victory'

DW: How has the current escalation in Gaza changed life in Israel?

Yehuda Bauer: It has changed it quite meaningfully, because over two-thirds of the country was under attack by rockets. Although the rockets have not caused a tremendous amount of damage, the whole country was decisively hampered in its economic, social, cultural and other activity.

So the damage was very considerable, not in terms of material damage or of human loss of life but in many other ways. This is quite different from previous occasions.

What about the atmosphere?

Well, I am afraid to say that there has been a polarization of views and attitudes. The vast majority of Israeli Jews, and quite a number of Israeli Arabs as well, identify with the Israeli response in Gaza and that gave rise to the strengthening of far-right attitudes and views.

On the other hand you have the opposition. A part of the opposition has been, and is, opposed to the Israeli response altogether; there were demonstrations and so on.

Are these demonstrators not a tiny minority?

There is an overwhelming support for the Israeli army destroying the tunnels that were obviously and quite explicitly intended to attack the civilian population on the Israeli side of the border. I also think the destruction of the tunnels is very important and I completely support that.

But there is an increasing opposition to going any further than that. I know that the top of the Israeli armed establishment do not want to conquer Gaza.

You said the war will further strengthen far-right attitudes.

There has been a rise on the right without doubt, but that rise is conditional on the situation and the Israeli response. I think when this is finally over, Israel is not going to come out with a great victory.

And there will be a disappointment on the right. Part of the disappointment may strengthen the extreme right because the response will be: "We had the opportunity and we didn't use it and here they are again rebuilding their strength to attack us again." Part of the disappointment can make people turn to the center and say: "Maybe the whole approach was wrong."

Why do you think there will be no victory?

Hamas is going to remain in control of Gaza. Hamas is an ideological movement that is openly violent, genocidal and anti-Semitic. The aim of Hamas is not improving the situation in Gaza, their aim is to destroy Israel and kill all those who will not convert to Islam.

It is absolutely impossible to defeat such a movement by force of arms. This is total nonsense; in fact you strengthen it by attacking it by military means only. I am not against military means, but to concentrate only on that and seeing that as a solution is a historical mistake.

A weakening of those ideological perceptions could be achieved by a more intelligent policy on the part of Israel. I am afraid that in the past the Israeli policies toward Hamas were totally mistaken.

What form would a more intelligent policy take?

First of all Israel should declare today that it is wiling to talk to Hamas. If Israel is prepared to follow it up, it destroys some of the basic ideological perceptions of Hamas. You weaken it ideologically.

Secondly, the closure of Gaza is a total mistake - even though Israel has permitted limited trade with Gaza, including cement, which was used by Hamas to create the tunnels. If you pressurize your opponent through an economic blockade like that you strengthen the radical wings.

The war is causing a terrible humanitarian crisis, as all of us know. The only way, I feel, that this can be addressed is a consortium of major powers, perhaps the US, the EU, Russia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, that will force Palestinians and Israelis to engage in serious negotiations for a compromise that will satisfy no one but will enable them to live together.

Can there be dialogue with Hamas?

There cannot be a dialogue at the moment. But there has to be declared willingness for a dialogue and there has to be propaganda directed against Hamas in Arabic by anti-radical Muslims.

There are plenty of people like that who in their own interest would be willing to use radio, TV, social media and so on in order to attack not only the Hamas' political positions but also their interpretation of Islam. Movements like Hamas or ISIS in Iraq and Syria are dangerous first and foremost for Muslims.

In the West the mood is increasingly turning against the Israeli offensive. Do you think people in the West understand the conflict?

No, they have no idea about it. I follow German, French and British media so I can see it is actually true that the view is changing - and very understandably so. But there is absolutely no understanding of what is actually happening here. People in the West have no idea what Hamas is. They don't understand who the various sides are.

Leaving Hamas aside for a moment, this is basically a confrontation, between two ethnicities, nationalities, cultures, civilizations, each of which has a rightful claim to a small piece of land. And then it becomes a religious and social affair as well. In the Israeli army there are Israeli Arab soldiers. Things are not as clear as people in the West think.

As someone who barely escaped the Nazis and as one of the most distinguished historians of the Holocaust, how do you feel when Germans criticize Israel?

When my friends in Germany criticize Israeli policies they criticize them much less than I do. I don't have any problem with any German or any other European or American criticizing the policies of Israel. I think in fact that helps us.

But when you criticize not order to change certain policies but in order to abolish Israel, if you think that Israel was a mistake - and mistakes have to be corrected - then you become anti-Semitic and genocidal.

You mentioned wrong assumptions in the European media. Wrong assumptions usually lead to wrong conclusions. What would be such wrong conclusions?

Well there are actually no real conclusions except for demands for peace between the two sides. When I read "Die Welt" or "Die Zeit" or the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" or anything like that the only idea that comes forward is "We want peace." That is very nice, you know - unlike the question of how to achieve it. It is a lot of talk. And at my age I have had enough of talking.

Yehuda Bauer is Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and academic adviser to the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem. He has written numerous books on the persecution of Jews. He was born in Prague in 1926.