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W6nnews.com ==== وطن === تاريخ النشر – 2026-05-13 10:05:00
An Israeli historian now residing in the United States concludes, in a new book, that Israel has committed and is committing the genocide of people in Gaza, and explains why it must rush to abandon the Zionist idea quickly and before it is too late. In his new book published in English, entitled “Israel: What Went Wrong,” Israeli historian Professor Omer Bartuf explains that he is a researcher into crimes of genocide, noting that he notes that Israel is exterminating a people inside the Gaza Strip. It is noteworthy that Bartov concluded, in May 2024, that the events in the Gaza Strip, according to the United Nations Charter of 1948, fall under the definition of “genocide,” thus causing an uproar not only in academic circles, but also in the Jewish communities in America and Israel. On the occasion of the publication of his book, Bartov said, in an extensive interview with the Hebrew newspaper “Haaretz” supplement, that he was born in 1954 in an Israeli cooperative town called “Ein Hahoresh.” Bartuf, the son of writer Hanoch Bartuf, winner of the “Israel Prize,” participated in the 1973 war, and after completing his studies at Tel Aviv and Oxford universities, he moved to the United States in 1989. Since 2000, Bartuf has taught at Brown University in the United States, holds the position of professor responsible for the chair of Holocaust and genocide studies, and is considered one of the most cited Holocaust scholars in the world. Bartuf: Zionism as an ideology has exhausted itself, and it is ironic and tragic that a movement that began as an attempt to liberate Jews from persecution ends as a racist and violent movement. Bartuf explains his motives, saying that he is not against the existence of Israel, but Zionism as an ideology has exhausted itself, and it is ironic and tragic that a movement that began as an attempt to liberate Jews from persecution ends as a racist and violent movement. Will the book be translated into Hebrew? Bartov was asked, and he revealed the difficulty of publishing it in the Israeli language and the difficulties he faces there. He said: “The book will be published in eight languages, even Chinese. In Israel, I contacted many of my acquaintances who introduced me to publishing houses, including those who are considered “leftists.” One of them wrote to me: “I do not think this is the right time,” and others said: “Yes, we will look at it, we will read it,” and then they disappeared.” Two left-wing publishers wrote that the book was interesting, but they did not agree with everything it contained, and one of them suggested publishing it with another book, which would add balance.” After the war in Gaza, voices are being raised, especially on the anti-Zionist left, that the Zionist project was fundamentally corrupt. Is this the conclusion you have reached? “I am not anti-Zionist. I grew up in a Zionist household, and it was self-evident to me that Israel was my place. I do not oppose the existence of Israel, but Zionism as an ideology has not only exhausted itself, but has turned into something I do not recognize. It became the state ideology. It has become not only militaristic and expansionist, but also racist, extremistly violent, and ultimately an ideology that is deeply harmful to both the individual and the group. Such ideology has no place. “It is ironic and tragic that a movement that began as an attempt to liberate Jews from persecution, to give them a place of their own – a process of liberation and human aspiration – ends its way as a racist and violent movement.” Do you think this was inevitable? “I don’t believe in this kind of history, where in the end we say: ‘We always knew it would end like this.’” There may have been some prophets who said this from the first moment, but I do not think this was inevitable. The largest chapter in the book deals with Israel’s lost constitution. It is not that in 1948 things were heading in only one direction, but it is becoming increasingly clear that without a constitution that protects the rights of everyone, Zionism – once it had become a state ideology – would abandon the possibility of becoming a natural state for its citizens. In response to this question, the Israeli historian believes that this now leaves Zionism facing an existential dilemma, and says that Israel cannot exist as a normal state under the Zionist ideology that must disappear. He adds: “The state will remain. You won’t go anywhere. The question is which country it will be. It must change fundamentally. Under Zionist ideology it cannot do that. If it does not abandon this ideology and transform into something else, it will be a complete apartheid state, an illiberal democracy at best, very violent, and it will eventually lose a large portion of its educated elite. Most residents will stay because residents always stay. But it will turn into a pariah and isolated state. It will lose the support of its most important allies, the countries of Europe and the United States, which increasingly see it as a threat to themselves rather than a shield.” Bartov: “It is becoming increasingly clear that without a constitution that protects the rights of all, Zionism – once it has become a state ideology – will give up the possibility of becoming a natural state for its citizens.” According to Bartov, Zionism began long before the Holocaust, but the Holocaust was retroactively imposed on it as the strongest justification for its existence. To establish Israel, he notes that the pretext was that if there had been a state, more Jews would have survived, and he continues: “This is most likely true.” From the Eichmann trial onwards, and especially from the end of the 1970s and 1980s, the Holocaust gradually became the glue that united Israeli society. A historical event has been politicized as an immediate existential threat: not something that happened in the past, but something that is always on the doorstep. There will be another Holocaust if we do not respond to every threat with full force and annihilate it from the roots.” “After October 7, these two things merged.” Regarding the anti-Semitic statement, he said that if Zionism was capable of leading to genocide in Gaza, it cannot survive anymore as an ideology, reminding that other ideologies in history that justified genocide have no place. He refutes prevailing Israeli allegations, saying: “The response to the Holocaust cannot be genocide.” Other collective. When we talk about Israel becoming a pariah state, this is not a product of anti-Semitism. This is a product of Israel’s actions. These actions stripped the ground from under the existential arguments it had.” Regarding the pretext of October 7, Bartov adds: “What Hamas did on October 7 was a war crime. It can easily be defined as a crime against humanity. I would have preferred to see Hamas leaders arrested and tried alongside some Israeli leaders – it would have been a trial worth watching. Instead, Israel did what it did and killed them.” The Israeli historian believes that resistance to the occupation, the siege, and resistance to the attempt to control a people trying to achieve national self-determination is legitimate, recalling that the Haganah, Etzel, and Lehi organizations did that, as well as the French resistance, the resistance inside Germany, the revolutionaries, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He adds: “Armed resistance is completely legitimate, even under international law, but it does not grant the right to commit massacres.” Do you think this was Hamas’ goal? Resistance to the occupation? “Hamas leaders died, but what they wanted to achieve succeeded. Israel destroyed Gaza, but it did not eliminate Hamas. What the Hamas leadership wanted was to break the siege of the framework in which Netanyahu managed the conflict and no one cared – not the Arab countries, not the international community, not Israel’s electoral systems. Hamas turned it into a regional conflict. This year, Israel fought in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Gaza, and the West Bank. From the point of view of the extremist wing of Hamas, strikingly similar to the thinking of Smotrich and Ben Gvir, they achieved their goal. They knew that the price would be terrible, but for messianic actors, the price is acceptable.” Between the war of extermination and the Nakba, Bartuf launches his criticism of the United States on the subject of the occupation’s crimes in Gaza, saying: “President Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken did nothing. They could have easily ended it. They could have said to Netanyahu: You have two weeks to close the event, or you are on your own. It would have stopped within hours.” Bartuf says that in May 2024, it was already clear that the practice in the field was the systematic destruction of Gaza, and its logic was ethnic cleansing. Within his approach between the war of extermination and the Nakba, Bartuf says that in May 2024, it was already clear that the practice in the field was the systematic destruction of Gaza, and its logic was ethnic cleansing. But unlike 1948, the cleansing was not “Ethnic is possible because the people of Gaza had nowhere to flee, as in many cases in the past, including the Holocaust, when an attempt to remove an ethnic group from an area under your control fails because it has nowhere to go, the solution becomes to kill it. This is genocide.” In response to a question about the occupation’s allegations, the Israeli historian asserts that even if there were ten times more Hamas fighters under every hospital, that would not have justified the genocide in Gaza. He also says that Hamas is an extremist movement that used brutal means not only against Israel but also against the Gazan population itself, and the real question is how do we fight that – do we do what the Russians did in Chechnya and level everything to the ground? This is what the Israeli army did, and it is in fact contrary to the spirit of the Israeli army itself. He continues: “The war in Gaza will be recorded as a miserable failure, along with the failure of October 7. Military-wise, the campaign in Gaza was lousy. They entered from the north and pushed people south, hoping that Egypt would allow them to leave, or that Eritrea, Indonesia, or Somaliland would receive them. This was crazy. The result was systematic destruction.” He goes on to refute the occupation’s claims by saying that “it was already clear that the goal was not to destroy Hamas and free the kidnapped, but rather to systematically transform Gaza into an unfit place. If the conflict could not be managed, it could be ended.” When did you first feel that Israel was going to a place from which it could not return? “I started thinking about this in political terms during the first intifada. I finished my doctorate in 1983, published a book about the German army in 1985, and in 1987 the intifada broke out. I was a reserve officer, and Rabin told us to break their hands and legs. I wrote to Rabin, saying that I saw in the Israeli army behavior that I recognized from my research on the Wehrmacht. To my surprise, he responded. He became angry at the comparison between IDF soldiers and German soldiers.” This, in his opinion, is also being repeated in Gaza: “The reports I saw from Gaza describe what appear to be militias within the army – units operating in the spirit of a local commander who gives them messianic orders. They pray before battle, and the prayers are not particularly humane. Israeli society has seen deep religious extremism. The same pattern has infiltrated the Shin Bet, and certainly into the police. Nazism and fascism had complex relationships with institutional religion. They wanted to monopolize power and did not want to share it with the Pope or with the churches.” Protestantism. But they turned into political religions themselves, with the Duce or Führer at its head. In Israel, something parallel happened: a radical transformation of Judaism into a political religion, woven into a certain interpretation of Zionism, but rather a Jewish messianic ideology whose roots go back to Rabbi Kook. The legitimacy of genocide. He says that he does not like to call what is happening in Israel fascism, and sees it as something else, just as what happened in Hungary, Poland, Turkey or Russia is not exactly fascism. He adds: “Israel has divine or rabbinical legitimacy for genocide. This creates a deep and growing rift with the Jews of the world, especially with the Jews of America, who cannot accept this. It is not possible to be a liberal Jewish minority in America and at the same time support what Israel is doing.” How do you see the change in the concept of anti-Semitism? He responds to this question by saying: “There are two processes moving in opposite directions. The first began long before October 7, and was the attempt by Israel and its supporters around the world to define all criticism of the state as anti-Semitism. After October 7, it was used to frame the anti-war protests as anti-Semitism. Of course there were anti-Semitic expressions in these protests, but they were not the motivation of most of the participants. Part of the framing was fundamentally absurd, such as the claim that ‘From the River to the Sea’ is a call to action.” Palestinian to exterminate the Jews. “From the river to the sea” is originally a Jewish slogan – “Two banks for Jordan, this one is ours, and this one too,” the revisionists sang. However, the effect was real: the silencing of students, lecturers and administrators. This trend is silencing critical voices, and not just with regard to Israel. The opposite process, he argues, is that turning anti-Semitism into a political weapon serves as the best cover for real anti-Semitism. He adds: “Ideological anti-Semitism has always been on the right, not on the left. The mass murder of Jews, by the Nazis or before that in Ukraine, was carried out by conservative, racist and nationalist forces.” Commenting on the profound transformations in America today, the Israeli historian comes to a surprising conclusion: “Israel, in its claim to be the authentic representative of world Jewry, is turning itself into the best pretext for this resurgence, and this may have far-reaching repercussions. Trump is a racist, but whoever comes after him may be truly hostile to Israel, severing the close relationship between the two countries.”
