Genocide in Gaza a ‘luxury belief: Niall Ferguson departs the ranks of serious historians
Sir Niall Ferguson, knighted not long ago by King Charles and someone who has advised Kemi Badenoch is a right-wing historian, lecturing mostly in the US. Right-wing he may be but Ferguson is a serious historian whose work deserves to be taken seriously.
That is until recently. He has become a fan of Donald Trump a US President who has at best a cavalier attitude to the truth and indeed to history.
Ferguson appears to be on a Trump related journey in respect of Gaza. He believes a genocide is taking place in Ukraine but not Gaza. A broadly held perspective might be that war crimes have been committed by both Russia and Ukraine, allowing that the former was the aggressor, but the latter is backed and armed primarily by the US. However it stacks up ordinary people, lots of them, are dying.
Ferguson writes in a double page essay in the Times (2nd August) that those who believe a genocide is taking place in Gaza are indulging in ‘luxury beliefs’ He seems to quote US holocaust scholar Omer Bartov to the effect that Israel ‘has delivered more humanitarian aid to Gaza than any military in history’. Ferguson provides no citation for this which reads like a Tel Aviv media release.
By contrast we can find the views, as of August 2025, of Omer Bartov to the effect that he thinks a genocide is indeed taking place in Gaza.
So, farewell then Sir Niall Ferguson as a serious historian
Leave a Reply