WASHINGTON (Dispatches) — John Mearsheimer, an international relations scholar and professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said in an interview with U.S. media personality Tucker Carlson that the Israeli regime, with the complicity of the U.S. administration, is committing genocide against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Mearsheimer said what is unfolding in Gaza is a systematic effort by Israel to dismantle the Palestinian national identity, adding that the occupying entity is targeting Palestinians specifically as a group, aiming not only to kill large numbers but also to erase their identity as a people.
“The Israelis are executing genocide in Gaza,” he said, adding that the U.S. is “complicit in that genocide.”
Mearsheimer underlined that the Israelis have long aimed to expel the Palestinian population from what they consider “Greater Israel,” which “includes the Israel that was created in 1948 and the occupied territories.”
The American political expert said the Israeli occupation pounced on Palestinian retaliatory attacks on October 7, 2023 as an “excellent opportunity for ethnic cleansing” in the besieged territory.
“In other words, it’s an excellent opportunity to go to war in Gaza and drive the Palestinians out of Gaza and solve that demographic problem that they face,” he added.
Stressing that Israel also carried out large-scale ethnic cleansings in the region in 1948 and 1967, Mearsheimer described the latest campaign in Gaza as “the third attempt at a massive ethnic cleansing.”
He said the ethnic cleansing is a topic “that the Zionists talked about from the get-go, and they talked about extensively because there is no way they could create a Greater Israel without doing massive ethnic cleansing.”
David Ben Gurion, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and other Israeli-Zionist leaders are fully aware that achieving their goals would require doing “horrible things” to the Palestinians, Mearsheimer added.
Mearsheimer stressed that when a major power like the U.S. has conflicting interests with another country, it prioritizes its own, following an “America first” approach. However, regarding Israel, it’s the opposite — it is “Israel first,” he stated.
Washington’s policy in West Asia clearly reflects this, with plenty of evidence to support it, the scholar underscored.
Pointing to the Israel lobby in the U.S., Mearsheimer said, “I think the lobby is an incredibly powerful interest group, and I’m choosing my words carefully. It has awesome power, and it basically is in a position where it can profoundly influence U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East… when it comes to the Middle East, and again, the Palestinian issue in particular, it has awesome power. And there’s no president who is willing to buck the lobby.”
The Israeli regime has ravaged the besieged Gaza Strip since Operation al-Aqsa Flood in October 7, 2023, killing more than 60,000 Palestinians thus. far. Most of the victims are women and children, as indiscriminate Israeli attacks target schools, mosques, and even tents that shelter displaced Palestinians.
Israel’s relentless bombardment campaign has devastated the enclave and led to food shortages, famine and acute starvation.