What Went Wrong in Israel? A Genocide Scholar Examines ‘What Zionism Became’: In his new book, Omer Bartov tracks how a liberatory strand of Zionism transformed into an extremist ideology that he sees as responsible for genocide in Gaza (Aaron Gell, 4/21/26, The Guardian)
Much of What Went Wrong? focuses on what Bartov frames as the original sin of Israel’s founding, the resistance to granting meaningful legal weight to the lofty words contained in the nation’s declaration of independence, coupled with the founders’ subsequent failure to adopt a national constitution and bill of rights. Had Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, pushed for either approach, Bartov argues, the nascent state might well have grown into the kind of liberal democracy it has, however speciously, long proclaimed itself to be.
Despite his condemnation of present-day Israeli society, Bartov does see a narrow path toward the nation’s peaceful coexistence with its neighbors. A section of the book is devoted to the confederation plan championed by a group of Israeli and Palestinian intellectuals called A Land for All – a version of which was originally considered by the United Nations in 1947. Under this scheme, sovereign and independent Palestinian and Jewish states would exist side by side, divided roughly along pre-1967 borders. Citizens of both entities would be allowed to live and travel freely throughout the combined territory, but would vote only in their own national elections – not unlike the way an Italian, for example, can live and work anywhere in the EU while voting in Italy.
Bartov acknowledged that the idea seems far-fetched as corpses are still being dug from the rubble of Gaza and Israel is prosecuting yet another bloody war. But what he sees as the nation’s preference for military confrontation over diplomacy depends entirely on American support, he pointed out, and that patronage is now being tested as never before. As a result of the Gaza genocide, a clear majority of Democratic voters now have a negative view of Israel. More recently, the ill-conceived US-Israeli aggression against Iran has significantly eroded GOP support. “Maga is becoming anti-Israel,” Bartov said, due to “Netanyahu completely leading Trump by the nose into a completely idiotic war”.
Despite some alarming strains of ethnic bias underlying the perception of wealthy and powerful Jewish interests manipulating the US government, pointing out antisemitism has lost effectiveness, in part because the influence of pro-Israel donors on US politics – and Israel’s campaign to convince the US to wage war on Iran – is undeniable. Additionally, the charge of antisemitism has grown hollow, Bartov said, due to its flagrant “weaponization” as “a tool to shut people up” as the state wreaks destruction on its neighbors. “Having claimed to be the definitive answer to antisemitism,” he writes in What Went Wrong?, “Israel is now the best excuse for antisemites everywhere, a nation whose addiction to violence and oppression, reliance on great powers and financial clout, and constant harping on the horrors of the Holocaust as an excuse for untethered violence against Palestinians are making even some of its erstwhile supporters shrink from it in discomfort, or horror and disgust.”
As a result, America’s indulgence of its longstanding Middle East ally may at last be reaching its limits. Should the United States withhold military support – as is advocated by growing numbers of Democratic policymakers – “Israel will have to go through a process of coming to terms with itself,” Bartov predicted. Under such circumstances, the country would have no choice but to pursue diplomacy. Ironically, that might be the so-called Jewish state’s best hope for a peaceful and prosperous future.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed