ISTANBUL

John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said that "the Israelis are executing a genocide in Gaza," adding that the US is "complicit in that genocide."

What is happening in Gaza is a systematic effort by Israel to dismantle the Palestinian national identity, Mearsheimer said in an interview with media personality Tucker Carlson published on Wednesday.

He added that Israel is targeting Palestinians specifically as a group, aiming not only to kill large numbers but also to erase their identity as a people.

Mearsheimer believed that the Israelis have long aimed to expel the Palestinian population from what they consider "Greater Israel."

"If you look at Greater Israel, this includes the Israel that was created in 1948 and the occupied territories. This is the West Bank, Gaza, and what we call the Green Line Israel. That’s Greater Israel," the scholar said.

"October 7th happens, and what the Israelis see is an excellent opportunity for ethnic cleansing. And they make this clear.

"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.

Israel also carried out large-scale ethnic cleansings in the region in 1948 and 1967, and Mearsheimer described the latest campaign in Gaza as "the third attempt at a massive ethnic cleansing."

The Israeli army, rejecting international calls for a ceasefire, has pursued a brutal offensive on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 60,000 Palestinians. The relentless bombardment has devastated the enclave and led to food shortages.

- Israel wants to ensure that its neighbors are 'weak'

One of Israel's goals is also to ensure that its neighbors are "weak," said Mearsheimer, noting that "that means breaking them apart, if you can, and keeping them broken."

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 prominent Zionist leaders are fully aware that achieving their goals would require doing "horrible things" to the Palestinians, he said.

The scholar highlighted that those Zionist leaders acknowledged this and even stated openly that they did not blame the Palestinians at all for resisting the actions planned by Jews arriving from Europe.

"They fully understood that they were stealing their land. And they fully understood that it made perfect sense for the Palestinians to resist, which of course they did," Mearsheimer noted.

"They (Israel) start with the goal of ethnic cleansing. I don’t believe they want to murder all of the Palestinians in Gaza.

"They simply want to drive them out. But the problem is they don’t leave. And then the question is, what do you do? And what they do is they continue to up the attacks, increase the attacks, (and) kill more and more people in the hope that they will drive them out," he added.

- Israel lobby in US

Mearsheimer stressed that when a major power like the US 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 the Middle East clearly reflects this, with plenty of evidence to support it, the scholar underscored.

Mearsheimer, who is also the co-author of the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, said that the reason for this is due to the Israel lobby in the US.

"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 US foreign policy in the Middle East. And indeed, it affects foreign policy outside of the Middle East.

"But 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," he added.