this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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What went wrong in Israel? A genocide scholar examines ‘what Zionism became’ (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 5 days ago by HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to c/world@lemmy.world
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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”.

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[–] mlg@lemmy.world 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.