Israeli historian Omer Bartov offers sharp criticism of the country’s development and of the direction in which, he believes, Zionism has gone. In his new book „Israel – What Went Wrong?“ he argues that the original idea of a Jewish state has been transformed into increasingly racist ethnonationalism.
Bartov teaches history in the United States and is a Holocaust researcher. He visits Israel in an attempt to understand what is happening in the country following the attack of October 7, 2023, the war in Gaza and the political changes that followed.
„This is a country held captive by its shock and trauma“, Bartov writes, while also speaking of a deep denial of the crimes committed in the name of the Israeli people. In his view, the refusal to engage in a moral reckoning is one of the causes of today’s crisis.
A book about the failure of a political project
The book is 220 pages long. In it, Bartov calls into question not only specific decisions by the Israeli authorities, but also the very development of the project for a Jewish state. From his perspective, this project has failed in its current form.
In his review for „Süddeutsche Zeitung“, Bernd Dörries describes the book as a text containing few things that Bartov considers to have been done well, and many that he finds intolerable. According to the review, the work resembles a final report on a political project that has reached its end.
Bartov does not present the book as an indictment or as a bitter personal vendetta. Rather, it is the result of decades of growing estrangement between the historian and political reality in Israel.
Criticism of Zionism and Israeli policy
Bartov’s main accusation is that the Zionist dream has been distorted into a form of ethnonationalism based on racial distinction. In his view, the idea of a national refuge for Jews has thus moved away from the moral grounds on which it was defended.
The book has barely found a German publisher, further highlighting the sensitivity of the subject in Europe. It is being published at a time when the debate over Israel, the Palestinians, the war in Gaza and the limits of political criticism remains deeply polarised.
Sources: sueddeutsche.de