Omer Bartov

The descent of Israel, once a refuge for the Holocaust’s surviving victims, into genocidal madness has revealed how little we know about the 'slaughter-bench' of modern history. In Israel: What Went Wrong?, Omer Bartov explores the most horrifying and vexing calamity of our time with a rare combination of painful personal intimacy and impeccable scholarship. Anyone disturbed and frightened by our current moral and intellectual morass should read it

More than two years on from the horrific Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, [Bartov] tries to understand how a nation founded in response to an epoch-defining genocide became a perpetrator of the same terrible crime against Palestinians in Gaza . . . For anyone seeking to understand the tragedies of the last two years, Israel is an essential read

Professor Omer Bartov was born on a kibbutz, grew up in Tel Aviv and served in the Israel Defence Forces during the Yom Kippur War. He went on to become an expert on the German army and the Holocaust, before turning his attention to his native country. 
 
In Israel: What Went Wrong?, Bartov explores the transformation of Zionism from a movement of Jewish emancipation and liberation into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism, exclusion and violent domination of Palestinians. He traces the process whereby Israel – whose establishment received international support in the aftermath of the Holocaust – stands accused of war crimes and genocide. 
 
Less than eight decades after its founding in 1948 – the year in which the UN Genocide Convention was adopted in response to Nazi crimes – Bartov argues that, for the past two years, the Jewish state was engaged in a genocidal undertaking in Gaza. What are the implications of Israel’s near total impunity for the post-1945 regime of international law? And how do we understand the widespread support for these policies by Israel’s Jewish citizens? 
 
Eye-opening and urgent, Israel: What Went Wrong? is a powerful and vital primer for anyone trying to understand this century’s most violent and devastating conflict.

Israel: What Went Wrong?

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Praise for Israel: What Went Wrong?

The descent of Israel, once a refuge for the Holocaust’s surviving victims, into genocidal madness has revealed how little we know about the 'slaughter-bench' of modern history. In Israel: What Went Wrong?, O ...

More than two years on from the horrific Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, [Bartov] tries to understand how a nation founded in response to an epoch-defining genocide became a perpetrator of the same terrible crime a ...

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