Israel Started Wrong
When the Israeli genocide scholar Omer Bartov published the NY Times July, 2025 OpEd I’m A Genocide Scholar: I Know It When I See It, I quipped on social media that I wished he had looked sooner. After all, another Israeli genocide scholar, Raz Segal, wrote A Textbook Case Of Genocide on October 13th, 2023. Still, for those who needed to hear it from a Jewish person, an Israeli, or the NY Times, this was the trifecta.
So it was weird to hear Bartov, in a recent interview on Democracy Now!, deny that his position is anti-Zionist. On the contrary, in his new book Israel: What Went Wrong, he seems to be implying that the Zionist project had respectable origins but somewhere along the way it went astray.
I haven’t read the book so I’m not here to review or critique it, I just want to talk about that basic point. The same point the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who has been writing criticism of Israel in the Israeli paper Haaretz for 40 years, pushed back on during that same interview segment: the idea that Israel “went wrong” and that the problem with Israel is not intrinsic to Zionism.
As someone who identifies as strongly anti-Zionist I obviously sided with Gideon Levy, but on reflection I understand Bartov’s point. I still disagree with it, but I understand it. I believe he was saying that in the context of significant persecution of Jews in Europe and many other nations seeking to build ethno-states in that era, it was perfectly reasonable for the Jews to want their own ethno-state. A place where their existence wasn’t contingent on a majority group allowing them to live.
I personally believe ethno-states are incompatible with pluralism, democracy, and (somewhat tangentially) secularism, so I disagree with that goal on principle. However I do think it’s fair to distinguish between the aspiration to have a “Jewish state” and how Zionism actually manifested materially, as a settler-colonial project in Palestine. So Bartov is basically saying he’s not opposed to Zionism in principle, but in practice.
It does make me wonder whether his brand of criticism undermines the project for Palestinian liberation though. I am of the view that Israel is irredeemable, and that the Palestinians will not be free until the apartheid state of Israel is dismantled and replaced with actual democracy. Based on the aforementioned interview I think Bartov and Levy would agree with me. So why would anyone with that goal even suggest that the ideology on which Israel was built is redeemable? It makes no sense.
In fact I sometimes wonder if the hyper-focus on the definition and applicability of the word ‘genocide’ to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza is not just a way of distracting from the material impacts of the genocide and the fact that Israel has been conducting a “slow genocide” in Palestine since at least 1948. After all if it took a genocide scholar two years of careful consideration to come to the conclusion that the conditions of genocide had been met, the bar must be way higher than we thought.
That isn’t to say I think Bartov is being deliberately deceptive. Maybe his decision to wait until it was almost completely uncontroversial to identify the genocide as such was an unconscious attempt to dilute the message. But it was absolutely diluted, and his going on a media tour disavowing anti-Zionism isn’t helping solidify it.
So glad you wrote this Tom. Bartov is a ‘liberal’ Zionist — the worst kind in my eyes. Liberal Zionists have always been there — consciously or not — to make Israel appear a ‘reasonable’, self-reflecting country that welcomes internal dissent. In reality, what liberal Zionists have been doing is buy time for Israel to complete its settler-colonial project.
When I saw the big hype about the book whose title suggests that once upon a time Israel was OK and then it went south, I recognised it for what it is. The idea that Israel was OK and then went to the right and became ‘bad’ is the most prevalent position among liberal Zionists in Israel, mostly Ashkenazi, and among those who are now leaving Israel on their second or third passport.
Israel has recently extended the deadline for Israeli citizens to come into the country on their foreign passports. I think they’re hoping to lure back those who are leaving, or at least not alienate them further. Those who leave should not be confused with anti-Zionists. They are Zionists, and will presumably continue to hold on to that identity. They just don’t like life in Israel anymore as it is becoming increasingly uncomfortable to secular, Western-minded people. But they’re not leaving because they object to the Zionist settler-colonial project or feel sorry for the Palestinians. If Israel, heaven forbid, achieved its goals and is still secular and ‘Western’, those people will be back to benefit from the loot.
When I wrote my critique of Avi Shlaim’s interview (https://avigail.substack.com/p/zionism-was-always-genocidal-on-what), I wrote to him as a matter of courtesy to let him know I’m publishing the piece. He responded to the second half of the article saying that he would never mention Judaism in a public talk again. But his response to the first half was that he doesn’t agree that Zionism was always genocidal and that he is ‘going with Omer Bartov’.
I’m still unclear about what he meant by that: that settler-colonialism in general should not be considered genocidal, that he doesn’t agree that Zionism is settler-colonialism, or that Zionism is inherently genocidal. If he ‘follows’ Bartov, it tells me that Shlaim is the Zionist he always was. He had a brief period pretending to go with Ilan Pappé, who is the one to said from the start that Zionism is a settler-colonial project committing an incremental genocide in Palestine. But it seems Shlaim’s loyalty to the tribe is still there, as is Bartov’s. Disgusting.
Oh, and I suspect Bartov is deliberately deceptive. Some people are just self-serving. For Bartov to write a book with this title — I haven’t read it either — speaks volumes to me. And Shlaim is with him. They are both ultimately collaborators who are helping Israel. I’m afraid Gideon Levy is in the same boat. He never mentions settler-colonialism, and his writings are also hijacked by Israel for PR and image-making. It’s why he is allowed to write what he writes in Israel. Everything in israel’s media goes through the military (synonymous with Government) censor before it can be published.
None of these three muppets are helping the Palestinian people. They’re helping their own bank accounts and ultimately Israel. I am with Ilan Pappé who has always called it without fear.
This was the email I sent to Gidon Levy: Dear Mr. Levy,
I cannot thank you enough for putting into words what I consider to be insulting and disingenuous regarding the book by Omer Bartov titled: Israel: What went wrong?
When I received an email invitation to attend a discussion of this book hosted yesterday at 3 PM (UK time) by The Britain Palestine Project, I could not stop myself from replying to them the following:
The premise of 'what went wrong' erroneously and disingenuously suggests that Israel was 'right' from the beginning andthat 'something' happened to make it wrong. This is insulting to those who know very well that all data and historical research have incontestably proven that it was wrong even from its 'given theft' of Palestine by the British government.By the way, the British should be fully responsible for reparations and restitution for 'giving away, in its imperial arrogance,' the historic land of Palestine.
I attended his speech at Harvard University over a year ago, and I was baffled and offended by his embarrassing attempts at 'redeeming' a regime that has proven to the world beyond any reasonable doubt, through video and audio evidence taken and spoken by the perpetrators of human rights crimes. His benign attempt to write a book with such a title should be recognized for what it is: an attempt to perpetuate hasbara and make people forget what they have seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. If in doubt, look at the New York Times article from 2009 documenting the organharvesting of Palestinians by the Zionist regime.
Please cancel this travesty.
Once again, Mr. Levy, your clarity is a gift to the world that should never be silenced.
With my utmost respect and admiration,
Alfedo Roldán-Flores