Israel: What Went Wrong? by Omer Bartov argues that Zionism evolved from a movement of Jewish emancipation into an exclusionary ethno-nationalist project, and that this trajectory helped produce Israel’s current moral and political crisis. Bartov links that crisis to the founding of Israel, Palestinian displacement, the politics of the Holocaust, and Israel’s war in Gaza, which he says has led to credible accusations of war crimes and genocide.politics.ox+1
Bartov’s central claim is that the disaster was not inevitable: Israel could have developed in a more humane direction after 1948, but instead increasingly embraced violent domination and exclusion. He presents the post-1967 occupation and the normalization of hardline nationalism as key turning points.penguin+2
He pays special attention to how Holocaust memory, Zionist self-understanding, and the language of self-defense became intertwined with policies that devastated Palestinians. He also argues that U.S. backing has given Israel near-total impunity, weakening international law and enabling the escalation in Gaza.newyorker+2
The book is meant as a harsh but historically grounded critique of Israel’s direction, not a detached overview. It is likely to be read as both a history of Zionism and a direct intervention in current debates over genocide, occupation, and the future of the Israeli state.books.google+1