Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, when asked to explain the apparent about-face that led him to advocate the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, quoted a beloved Israeli pop ballad. “What you can see from there, you can’t see from here,” he said, referring to the shift in perspective he had supposedly undergone since coming to power.
Israeli-born Holocaust historian Omer Bartov invoked the same line when he was asked how he had come to view Israel’s ferocious assault on Gaza as a genocide. Living in the US, where he has spent more than three decades, he said, had given him the necessary distance to see the annihilation of Gaza for what it was. “I think it’s very hard to be dispassionate when you’re there,” he said.
Bartov did more than simply apply the word genocide to Israel’s actions: he shouted it from the establishment-media rooftops, making the case in a lengthy July 2025 essay in the New York Times titled: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. (He had addressed some of the arguments in a Guardian essay the year prior.) Bartov’s declaration cost him several close relationships, he told me, even though subsequent events have not only validated his analysis but further demonstrated the lack of concern for Palestinian suffering that has become prevalent in Israeli society.
His new book, Israel: What Went Wrong?, is an attempt to explain that indifference. The book, which was published on Tuesday, is a detailed account of how Israel was transformed from a hopeful nation that in its founding document promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens irrespective of religion, race or sex” into one intent on what he bluntly terms “settler colonialism and ethno-nationalism”.
Israel went wrong before it began. There is no way of displacing a population to create an ethnonationalist colony in a way that could be called “right”.
and the 100 years of terrorism when they started moving back didn’t help
sigh
Zionism was a White Jewish Supremacist ideology from the very start and Israel was a White Jewish Supremacist and Colonialist project from the very start.
It didn’t become so, it was always so and always meant to be so, the only thing that changed was the feeling of impunity to push-back from Western nations as, over time, Israel invested a lot abroad into capturing Politics and the Press, into Kompromat gattering Honeypots such as the one headed by Epstein, and into in Propaganda, especially in Anglo-Saxon nations, thus capturing the political classes there and shifting Western public opinion in favor of Israel. As that feeling of impunity increased, so did they more freely, openly and violently practiced their ethno-Fascist (same variant of Fascism as the Nazis) ultra-racist ideology against those they very openly called “vermin” - Muslims in general, especially Palestinians.
They have and always have had, as they themselves say, “Western Values”, specifically late 19th century white colonialist values and early 20th century white supremacist ones.
PS: And if anybody has any doubt on the White part of their supremacist ideology, just look up the treatment of Black Jews from Ethiopia by the state of Israel, which included amongst other things forced sterilization.
I think the “mistake” started with the formation of Israel. I can understand the founding of their state after WWII, and their desire for a place where they can live without persecution. But, the location was a huge mistake if the goal was “peace”.
Dropping them in the middle of their Holy Land? Automatic war for as long as they are there. Now, many are under the impression that they really are “God’s Chosen People” and all of their desired “Holy Land” righteously belongs to them.
I think what is happening today was the desired outcome of Israel’s foundation. USA and UK were perfectly fine with the Jews and Muslims fighting to the death, no matter who “wins”, whatever is left will be all the easier for them (Christians incidentally) to control.
personally, I am opposed to Christians, Jews, and Muslims, to me there are no “good guys” to be found in the “Holy Land”.
ETA Israel is a nuclear power now, remember that when you propose “solutions”.
1945: A part of Germany should have been disposessed, a jewish state founded on this territory, and this Jewish state given nuclear arms, in case any fuckin Kraut ever had “ideas” again. End of story. Would have saved Jewish people and the Palestinian people a lot of horror. Would have saved me as a German many fuckin bonkers discussions with German bigots who all are so conveniently defending a jewish state (not on their land).
Sorry, but ethno-states are a flat-out bad idea.
Israel didn’t form because of WWII or because of Germany. The big aliyah waves started in the 1800s, and the Holocaust just accelerated what was already in motion. The Soviet Union, the Ottoman Empire, the colonized Arab areas of North Africa were all extremely antisemitic, just as much as Germany. The only difference is that Hitler made mass murder industrial.
Nope, Jews were living peacefully side by side Muslims in Arab countries in pre-Israel times. This is confirmed by Holocaust scholars like Omer Bartov. Antisemitism is historically something deeply European. It has been exported to Arab countries. Most notoriously via Amin al-Husseini. Israel would never have been founded the way it was, i.e. as a jewish ethno-state or maybe would not have been founded at all without the Holocaust.
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it is NOT a European concept and never was.
Yeah sure the nazis was Muslims and not Europeans. Yo are a dimwit
Also, Amin al-Husseini, was NOT antisemitic because of Europe. He was antisemitic because the environment who grew up in was.
Pure bullshit. Amin al-Husseini was pretty irrelevant , he wanted Arabs to fight for the axis but did not succeed most Arabs sided with the allies. 18k Palestinians volunteered . Yes discrimination existed but it is true that arab muslims and arab jews lived generally in good relation
From an israeli source
In 1884 the first Yemenites settled in Silwan and for 45 years lived peacefully and on very good terms with their Arab neighbors. It seemed that the people of Silwan, which was known to be a poor village, found common ground with the poor Jewish Yemenites that lived among them.
Despite the attempt to depict the 1929 Arab Riot as a violent incident against the Jews in Silwan, it is clear that it was not the case. From a letter of gratitude that the Yemenite Jews sent to their Arab neighbors, we can learn about the devotion and benevolence that the Arabs have shown towards the Yemenites by undauntedly protecting them, and also about the amity and good neighborly relations that prevailed between the two communities.
But it did… UK and USA created the state in 1948?
They wanted Israel before WWII, but US/UK/UN formed it, and they did so because of WWII. The Jews always wanted their Holy Land, of course.
Their holy land? It is the holy land of all the Abrahamic religions. They should live together peacefully
Actually, the Palestinian people initially welcomed the Jewish diaspora with open arms and were totally willing to live alongside them. But Zionism is a fascist ideology, so of course the Zionists could not live equally, they had to have domination.
“Actually” what? I didn’t imply otherwise… if every Palestinian moved to Egypt tomorrow, the war would continue… Israel would continue to expand.
See “Greater Israel”.
Your comment sounded like you believe Jewish people couldn’t coexist in the region, which is untrue, the problem is the Israeli state, which exists to be a proxy for western imperialism.
My apologies if I misunderstood.
The mistake is that zionists decided to force a state on the local people instead of living along the locals are a single people
In 1884 the first Yemenites settled in Silwan and for 45 years lived peacefully and on very good terms with their Arab neighbors. It seemed that the people of Silwan, which was known to be a poor village, found common ground with the poor Jewish Yemenites that lived among them.
Despite the attempt to depict the 1929 Arab Riot as a violent incident against the Jews in Silwan, it is clear that it was not the case. From a letter of gratitude that the Yemenite Jews sent to their Arab neighbors, we can learn about the devotion and benevolence that the Arabs have shown towards the Yemenites by undauntedly protecting them, and also about the amity and good neighborly relations that prevailed between the two communities.
There’s definitely no good guys. If you read into the history of the region, you’ll quickly realize that there was never a “rightful” or “righteous” ruler. The ancient Persians, the Romans, the Turks, the Assyrians, the Arabs, the British, and the Israeli Jews have all been horrid. Genocide, oppression, slavery, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, deep seated hatred, and the idea of “if I don’t do fuck them over first then they’ll come after me” is the norm in this cursed region.
thats BS. The turks made peace between a lot of tribes and kept the bloodshed down. Comparing them to Israel and pretending they are the same is way beyond the pale.
The Ottoman Turks? Are you an idiot?
The Ottoman Empire was one of the most violent and brutal empires in human history. They practiced slavery and had one of the largest slave trades in the world. They would go invade their weaker neighbors unprovoked to expand their empire. When they force the people they attacked into submission they’ll take “spoils of war” and distribute them among muslim soldiers and officials as instructed by islam. Therefore, they would steal the land, loot possession, and enslave people and hand them out as rewards for winning the war.
They would specifically kidnap and enslave young women and children either as servants or as sex slaves in harems. Everybody else gets a choice of either converting to islam or becoming a second class citizen under islamic law where you’re forced to have less rights, less freedoms, face more discrimination, and harsher punishments than muslims. Oh, and you have to pay an extra tax that muslims don’t have to pay (jizya) for the privileged of being oppressed.
They also colonize the lands that they conquer. They’ll kidnap and relocate the children elsewhere, they’ll give special benefits for muslims to settle the newly annexed lands, and they’ll forcefully exile or relocate the nonmuslims if they’re in the way of muslims colonizing the land. Oh, and the conquered people have zero representation at any institutional power if they’re not muslims, and they can’t hold a high ranking position if they’re not also Turkish. Therefore these nations were often ruled by muslim rulers who ruled had no interest or obligation for the natives, they were just there to serve and enrich themselves. Because of this, a lot of the conquered nations were subject some pretty horrid treatment.
Turkish rule is so brutal that Ottoman history was filled with conquered nations breaking out in revolts, some lasted centuries because they would rather fight to the death and than be ruled by the Turks. The thing is that the Turkish reaction to revolts is so extreme that it’s infamous in history. Instead of fighting to put down the revolt, the Turks would seek to genocide that society. They want to mass murder them, take their land, erase their culture, and pretend that it was always Turkish land. They did that with the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Jews, and Arab Christians.
The Ottoman genocides are some of the worst in history. The very concept of genocide was literally made to describe what the Turks did to the Armenians. This idea that the Ottoman empire was peaceful golden age is quite literally bullshit propaganda that’s funded by the Turkish government. There’s a reason why that empire collapsed, and there’s a reason why every single ethnic group in southeastern Europe, the Caucuses, and the Middle East despises it with a burning passion.
You would think that this something in the long past, right? But no. The Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides are barely a century old. Turkey today still officially denies these genocides. They’re still trying to genocide the Kurds to this day. Kurdish clothes, names, music, press, and language were outright banned until the 1990s. Even today, you can’t call Kurdish towns by their Kurdish names, they can’t speak Kurdish at any position in government, they don’t true Kurdish media, and Kurdish children can’t learn Kurdish in school. Not only that, but Turkey is also actively burning down entire Kurdish villages, they’re mass arresting Kurdish activists and journalists, they’re helping Azerbaijan invade Armenia, they’re invading and occupying the Assyrian and Kurdish parts of Syria, they’re literally illegally occupying and colonizing Northern Cyprus, they’re trying to steal Greek islands and maritime territory as their own, they’re constantly bombing Kurds in Iraq to keep them down, and the list goes on and on.
They’re the biggest menace in the middle east, and this is all just legacy that was carried over from the Ottoman Empire, who by the way is heavily supported and celebrated in Turkey. Not in some delusional sense where they have a different view from what it actually was, but not Turkish nationalists are actively proud of all the genocides, oppression, and conquering they inflected upon the world and they want to see Turkey do it again.
Thinking that the Ottoman Turks were peace makers is so fucking mind numbingly stupid that it’s painful to think that there are people this ignorant out there in the world.
Oh the long winded “Palestine desnt even really exist” zionist guy wants to spew comments. OK.
Give this a read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ottoman_EmpireAnd you call out the Ottomans empires slavery. They abolished slavery in 1840. England in 1834. The US not till 1865 I think. You going to go after England and the US too then or is it only an issue in selective cases where its convenient for you?
Oh the long winded “Palestine desnt even really exist” zionist guy wants to spew comments. OK.
If that’s what you got from my comment then you really are an idiot.
Give this a read.
The article doesn’t contradict any of the points that I made.
And you call out the Ottomans empires slavery. They abolished slavery in 1840. England in 1834. The US not till 1865 I think. You going to go after England and the US too then or is it only an issue in selective cases where its convenient for you?
The Ottomans practiced slavery for 500 years and had one of the largest slave trades in history. Playing whataboutism doesn’t disprove my point, it just shows that you’re dimwit who’s engaging in bad faith.
Are you an idiot?
then you really are an idiot.
and you are a foul mouthed little bitch. I’m getting pretty sick of your constant ad homs in comment after comment. If you cant engage with words then be quiet. This place has rules for that sort of thing. You will follow them one way or another.
This is liberal whitewashing. There are colonisers and there are the natives who are being exterminated. Its that simple.
That’s precisely the issue though. You’re dismissing important nuance and context for an oversimplified soundbites. That’s just willful ignorance. If you’re not even willing to entertain the idea of being honest then this conversation is not for you.
Where is the nuance in the Nakba? Or the Deir Yassin massacre? or the Gaza Genocide? The Zionists stole the land and are exterminating the native Palestinians, either slowly, through apartheid and land seizures, or quickly, through mass murder and ethnic cleansing.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar
I think you need to reread the original comment you replied to because you don’t seem to understand what my claim even was
Your original comment amounts to “they’re all as bad as each other so why even worry about it”.
Its another version of “its all so complicated” or “both sides are to blame” thats why I called it whitewashing
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“Became”
Israel was an insane ethnostate movement long before they even gained independence. There’s a reason why an overwhelming majority of former colonial states criticized Israel’s existence during its very inception.
Had the Zionist movement never taken off, Mandatory Palestine would probably have just become a regular old state like Lebanon or Jordan, Lebanon even has a pretty hefty Christian population right after Muslims, yet you don’t see them in some constant genocidal warfare campaign against each other.
Even weirder, Judaism itself was against the idea of forming a Jewish state without a Messiah for thousands of years, but at some point the radical branch became the overwhelming majority. Orthodox Jews are completely outnumbered by their Zionist counterparts which have transformed Judaism into a complete ethnic superiority cult akin to the Aryan superiority of the Nazis. You have to be born a Jew, you can’t just join because you want to (unless you dedicate your entire life into it, and still with caveats).
You’ll see thousands of comments like “Anti-Israel is not Antisemitism”, but at some point you need to address the elephant in the room. The current mainstream “Judaism” is very much an ethnic supremacy group by design. You can’t effectively criticize Israel without pointing out that its actions are overwhelmingly supported by their citizens because of their religion. Everything they do in their eyes is completely justified because they view everyone not in their ethnic group as subhuman.
Zionism was literally always a fascist project.
This “what went wrong” line is liberal Zionists trying to launder the reputation of the colony.
Israel was founded on ethnic cleansing and atrocities like the Deir Yassin massacre. Zionists literally spelled out the need to “transfer” the indigenous population of Palestine in the early 20th century.
Zionists could rely on western media, policy makers search engine rankings and moderators to gatekeep and control the narrative and image of their colony. The difference now is that social media reveals everything directly to people.
This was an interesting read.
Especially his speculation that lack of a clear constitution (Basic Law was adopted as late as 1994 and is not a full-fledged constitution) and lack of clear borders contributed to Israel’s fall into the current state.
Too generous US “security assistance” certainly helped. If you can solve a problem with bombing without worrying about getting bombed, you may start thinking of war as a normal thing.
Failure to contain the populist extreme right is another stumbling block. If there had been no Netanyahu (and his corruption scandals, and the court cases awaiting him domestically, filed a considerable time before the ones awaiting abroad), things might be different.
Ultimately, I would say: Israel failed to install brakes, and failed to contain its greed for power and land. It had too much cooperation and still has too much cooperation.
I don’t know if there’s a reasonable way out.
don’t know if there’s a reasonable way out.
the way out need not be reasonable for the zionists. They are not due “reasonableness” at this point. Justice and peace needs to be restorative to the victims, not reasonable in the eyes of the criminals. The dead cant be brought back can they? How are zionists going to find a way out of that, beyond paying with their own blood? We’re all open to their suggestions, but they arent even interested in coming to the table and never have been.
and
If there had been no Netanyahu
Go back and read about ben gurion and the start of Israel. Its never been reasonable, they always knew they were using terorristic means, theft and murder. They used to be more honest about it. Netenyahu is just the latest in 90 years of these violent supremecist murdering thieves.
https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/
How is this any different from the mentality that the Israeli far right uses now? This reads to me like collective punishment. The reality is that Israel is not going anywhere. The country is already established and it has a big distinct population, institutions, and culture. You can’t destroy it. Like what is even the thought process here? To ethnically cleanse 7 million people to counterbalance previous ethnic cleansing? That’s just the classic an eye for an eye mentality. The goal should always be to see Israelis and Palestinians living together in peace with everybody having the same rights and freedoms, not to carry out some weird vendettas for some misguided sense of justice held by westerners.
People often forget that countries evolve with time. No country will remain in its current state forever and no current projection is going to be constant forever. The circumstances around Israel are shifting, but all this means is that the country is set to move in a new direction sooner or later. As the current status quo shifts internationally, Israeli culture and politics will also shift to reflect it. Like most other countries, I think Israel will have a counter wave to the ultra far right. The new anti far right wave will lead to a more left wing government that will seek to undo the damage done by the far right and go after the ones who caused it.
This is a fun fantasy, maybe the US can redeem itself as well… just kidding, they are going to double down just like Israel.
The pendulum will swing! Of course it just keeps swinging to the right and not left. How strange.
It is almost like a powerful group of well insulated people are calling the shots and they are determining societal movements through propaganda.
This is a fun fantasy, maybe the US can redeem itself as well… just kidding, they are going to double down just like Israel.
If you think countries have morals and feelings then you’re a lost cause. Countries have always and will always purely act in their best self interest.
The pendulum will swing! Of course it just keeps swinging to the right and not left. How strange.
History shows otherwise. All societies go through cycles where the ruling party, ideology, or system gets replaced by something fundamentally counters it when it no longer holds up the social contract it promised.
It is almost like a powerful group of well insulated people are calling the shots and they are determining societal movements through propaganda.
Welcome to human history
Gentleman’s bet: US and Israel will not have a leftist resurgence in policy anytime soon.
We will see the wealth gap continue to grow and accelerated environmental degredation.
Propagandist will try to convince people otherwise but the truth will always be in the policies and not the feels.
I think there’s a flaw in your bet. Societies have to be viewed in their relative context, you can’t apply some arbitrary standard that’s based on your subjective whims. Each society has a different overton window and different issues. However, they all have an internal left and right wing.
For example, if the Democrats win in 2028 and they manage to reverse 70% of the major Trump fuckups in policy and pass a few of major policies like universal healthcare, abortion rights, or raising the minimum wage. That’s a pretty substantial policy shift, but that’s still not a communist revolution that’s overthrowing capitalism. Would you call this shift in policy left wing or slightly less right wing? If it’s the former, then I would take you up on your bet because societies do go in cycles of going from one end of their mainstream political spectrum to the other. If it’s the latter, then I can’t take you up on your bet because nothing will ever satisfy your condition. Nothing will be leftist enough.
You believe that societies naturally drift left and right. I believe that policies not perception determine this drift.
The current issue that is dragging the entire world right is accumulation of money. This isn’t changing without a revolution. This is not going to happen.
All the major super powers will continue to pass policies towards authoritarianism. There will be no drift to the left except for propaganda that leftist will eat up while policies will dictate the future not feelings.
Our last best chance was before the Internet got locked down by governments and corporations. The information revolution came and it did not end up benefitting left thought or even policy much at all.
While I am optimistic about people, I believe reality is painting a very different picture than you are seeing in regards to society as a whole. I do hope your are right, but if I was a betting man (I am not, it is a gentleman’s bet) I would have to say there will be no left revolution in policy anytime soon.
I think a fair judgement of this would be seeing a decrease in the wealth gap. I don’t think other measures of temporary rights or entitlements (think abortion or food stamps) are actually a good way to show a leftward policy change. These things are temporary and can be withheld or taken away.
It is kind of like adding a sail to a car that is broken down. Sure you could get it to move if the wind is blowing right, but it is still broken. Universal healthcare has not stopped the rightward drift of Europe, why would it for the US. Isreal has Universal Healthcare and they are about as far from left as you can get.
I believe you are making an ideological assessment, I am not. My assessment is historical. If you look at any society in history, you’ll see that nothing is ever truly static. Societies evolve to their circumstances. There’s always cycles of growth and cycles of contraction. There’s cycles where a society is open, progressive, and tolerant relative to its past and cycles of isolation, conservatism, and exclusion. There’s no reason to think that we live in a time where this is any different.
In the US, for example, political cycles last about 50 or so years before they go through a major transformation. The current cycle started with Ronald Reagan back in the 80s. If you think what politics was like 50 years before then, it was the politics of FDR that started in the 1930s. Before that it was the corrupt Gilded age presidents like Cleveland that started in the 1880s (which is very similar to the politics of today in a lot of ways). Before that it was the Republicans that wanted to end slavery. I think you get the idea. The point is we’re at a time where existing one political cycle and entering another. These are always turbulent times. However, history indicates that the new cycle runs counter to previous one. We’re leaving a political cycle that was centered on gutting regulations, cutting taxes for corporations, free trade, anti unions, pro immigration, and so on. If we follow the pattern, the next cycle should be similar to the one started with FDR in the 1930s. There’s going to be a real push for a lot social programs, raising the minimum wage, massive housing build outs, taxing corporations, and going after things like monopolies.
We’re already starting to see this now with people like Bernie gaining national traction and Mamdani getting elected mayor. There’s still pushback, so the new cycle is not yet calibrated, there some positions that the public doesn’t agree with that need to change. But for the most part? That seems to be the next phase of American politics. MAGA appears to be the final chapter of the Reagan era cycle of politics because nobody wants its continuation, people are eager for the next thing that will come after it.
Haven’t read the book, but the title suggests things could have been different. That something happened to make things bad. If that’s the argument, it is completely wrong. Israel could have turned out no other way. Extermination is the only possible outcome of a colonial ethno-state.
It was a fascist ideology from its inception. We do you mean what went wrong with it?
Thank you, fkn terrorist-colonizers from the start. Churchill used them to terrorize the Irish before WWII and then sent them to Palestine.
Israeli and Holocaust historian Omer Bartov is
a POWERFUL Scholar!Kowledgeable about Jewish history!ANTI SEMETIC!-The BBC!
Better to say “has become”. The genocide is on going. We all just act as we can to try to stop it.
Always was.
Theres open repression even in free speech societies too, that if you talk about this in too strong of terms, they will attack you and the people you love. The more they are allowed to continue, the more they will seek to exert global influence on all of humanity. They need to be stopped.
It is working as expected. Herzl was advocating for displacing the local people to create the state
being vaguely on the right side of one of easiest human rights issues humanity has ever faced and writing a book about it does not make this guy an expert. His looking for causes outside to explain the zionists as victims and not owners and perpetratos is weak sauce.
No one becomes an expert based on their opinions or conclusions. In this case, he became an expert through his Oxford PhD, and subsequent 35 year long (and counting) academic career,
He’s a historian. Looking for causes is kind of his job.
What makes someone an “expert”, what’s the bar? Who do you think qualifies as an expert?
He’s an expert based on his formal education, his extensive academic research, and his long coveted career in the field. He’s very clearly experienced and knowledgeable on the subject, and his words carry a lot more weight than some nobody on Lemmy who’s just mad that some Guardian headline didn’t meet your personal level of confirmation bias.
