Israel - by Omer Bartov (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A leading Israeli American scholar of the Holocaust explores and explains his native country's intensifying turn toward violence and exclusion.

Omer Bartov was born in a kibbutz, grew up in Tel Aviv, and served in the Israel Defense Forces during the Yom Kippur War. He went on to become a leading scholar of the Holocaust before turning his attention to his native country. In a series of widely read essays, he has argued rigorously and passionately against Israel's war in Gaza and the steady erosion of its democratic norms. His early warning that Israel might be at risk of conducting genocide in Gaza and his later judgment that a genocide was under way became topics of international debate.

In Israel: What Went Wrong?, Bartov sketches the transformation of Zionism from a movement that sought to emancipate European Jewry from oppression into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism. How is it possible, he asks, that a state founded in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, which brought a Jewish national home widespread approval, stands credibly accused of perpetrating large-scale war crimes? How do we come to terms with the fact that Israel's war of destruction in Gaza was conducted with the support, laced with denial and indifference, of so many of its Jewish citizens?

Drawing from several decades of thinking and writing, Bartov explores the present crisis and the urgent questions it has raised. He tracks the origins of Zionism, the intertwining of Israel's independence with Palestinian displacement, the politics of the Holocaust and antisemitism, and a number of new ideas for how Jews and Arabs alike can achieve peace and security. Then, in an essay titled "The Missing Constitution," he discusses Israel's failure to draft a binding national compact, and the escalating consequences of this lost opportunity. The result is a searing critique that assesses the meaning of Zionism and the future of Israel with lucidity and depth.

Review Quotes

"Remarkable . . . Anyone seeking an explanation of Israel's 'fall from grace' will find no better guide than this perceptive, sophisticated, erudite, elegantly written and strikingly fair-minded book."
--Avi Shalim, The Guardian

"Timely . . . a must-read . . . [Bartov's] explicit tone, factual multi-sectoral analysis, and historically grounded and honest discussion of the most sensitive, but urgently relevant, dimensions of modern Zionism, Judaism, and Israel . . . revolves around how we should understand--and end--Israel's US-enabled, slow-motion genocide in Palestine. The book's message is clear from the very beginning."
--Rami G. Khouri, Arab Center Washington DC

"[Bartov's] understanding of his subject is both historical and intimate . . . Clear, sober, and deliberate. Israel is his attempt to chart what has happened to the country where he was born. . . Bartov uses all the tools at his disposal, weaving together history, personal anecdotes, even some literary criticism . . . One of Bartov's points in this mournful book is that too many possibilities have been kept off the table."
--Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review

"A clear-eyed work of moral reckoning."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Omer Bartov brings his formidable scholarly skills to offer a deep history of October 7. But Israel: What Went Wrong? is far more than that. It is a fascinating and rich biography, in the first instance, of Zionism, which went from an ideology of salvation to a project of oppression, including to the point of committing what Bartov calls genocide in Gaza. At the same time, this book is so affecting because it is a biography in another sense, of Bartov himself. The author chronicles his own transformation from an Israeli youth and soldier into one of America's leading scholars of the Shoah. His personal journey affords him a distinctive perch for observing the way in which trauma transformed Jews in Israel from the victimized into the victimizer. Bartov traces this process with poignancy, judiciousness, and moral clarity--modeling the very 'opening of minds' that he deems so urgent in our times."
--David N. Myers, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Distinguished Professor of Jewish History at UCLA

"A brilliant, unique, timely, and thought-provoking treatment of how, in being 'committed to saving the Jews from future existential threats, Zionism created a state that roots its very sense of identity in its assertion of living under precisely this type of threat, resulting in large part from the very policy that was intended to remove it.' A must-read."
--Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution

"Gripping in its moral clarity and sweeping knowledge, this new work by Omer Bartov painfully offers harsh insights into the State of Israel without ignoring nuances and complexities."
--Michael Sfard, Israeli human rights lawyer and author of The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights

"The descent of Israel, once a refuge for the Holocaust's surviving victims, into genocidal madness has revealed how little we know about the 'slaughter-bench' of modern history. In Israel: What Went Wrong?, Omer Bartov explores the most horrifying and vexing calamity of our time with a rare combination of painful personal intimacy and impeccable scholarship. Anyone disturbed and frightened by our current moral and intellectual morass should read it."
―Pankaj Mishra, author of The World After Gaza

"Born in an Israeli kibbutz, historian Bartov grew up believing in the promise of the Jewish state. More than two years on from the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, his latest book tries to understand how a nation founded in response to an epoch-defining genocide became a perpetrator of the same terrible crime against Palestinians in Gaza. It considers the rhetorical uses of antisemitism and Holocaust remembrance to explore how Israel defines and understands itself, particularly how it navigates (or declines to acknowledge) the tension between being a Jewish state and a democratic one. Bartov argues that the country's refusal to adopt a formal constitution may be the defining failure that has enabled Israel to maintain decades of inequality and violence against Palestinians. He explores various possible futures for Israel and Palestine while recognizing that Israel is unlikely to change course without pressure from the international community. Israel is bracing in its moral clarity. Its author is well aware of humanitarian law, and he refuses to obfuscate the reality of crimes against humanity, regardless of who perpetrates them. For anyone seeking to understand the tragedies of the last two years, Israel is an essential read."
--Jenny Hamilton, Booklist (starred review)

About the Author