Israel: What Went Wrong?

byOmer Bartov

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A leading genocide scholar explores the history of Zionism, Israel’s lurch towards extreme oppression and violence, and why it stands accused of crimes against humanity

In Israel: What Went Wrong?, Professor Omer 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 the Jewish state is 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.

© Omer Bartov 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

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

Pankaj Mishra

About Omer Bartov

Omer Bartov is the Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University and the author of many books, including Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz, which won the National Jewish Book Award, Tales from the Borderlands: Making and Unmaking the Galician Past and Genocide, the Holocaust, and Israel–Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis.
Details
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • ISBN: 9781529991239
  • Price: £14.00
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