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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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

When you examine policy you start to see through the propaganda and begin to realize that the US and most of the world is not operating by the will of the people unless those people are wealthy and well connected.

https://www.princeton.edu/~mgilens/idr.pdf

https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba

This is why policy analysis can push back against or sometimes even reinforce feelings and the propaganda that drives people's perceptions.

I like how you say it is not a pendulum and then describe a pendulum. I am getting the feeling you don't like to be pinned down on any one topic. That is okay, but speaking in generalities is not the most useful rhetoric and one that I certainly engage in.

I am not trying to write a thesis on the many topics I have brought up, just bite sized digestible viewpoints that you certainly don't have to agree with. If you would like more context I would be happy to give it to you as I have studied these topics for decades now. I don't claim any authority or expertise though.

You are very much into the face of politics which to me is pure propaganda as I see very different motivations attached to actual policies and I certainly don't think the US has exhibited any leftward motion since its inception. One example of this is welfare. It is primarily designed as social control. So providing food stamps is not really leftist when the reality is it is used to suppress the people.

I would say the founding fathers were very much proto-fascists with our first President well on his way to becoming the world's first billionaire adjusted for inflation. If he had not died his sixties he certainly would have.

Our policies have always been right wing, and as I said before, even things like the civil rights movement was more of an appeasement than an actual change. We can see this in the most recent moves to strip away voting protections for minorities. If the government can strip these rights away so easily what does that say about these rights.

I find your hand waving of modern slavery away a little disheartening. Also, I disagree that calling the War on Drugs a slow burn genocide somehow takes away from the meaning of the word. The US has destroyed millions of minority families at this point. The intentions were clear and the results speak for themselves. The five acts of genocide are below.

Killing members of the group.

Causing them serious bodily or mental harm.

Imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group

Preventing births

Forcibly transferring children out of the group.

This is just one of many genocides the US has participated in. The US is still actively engaging in genocide with the Native Americans by separating children from families to this day with boarding schools. Also, don't forget genocide with the sterilization of Puerto Rico and of course providing the Nazi party with aid in the extermination of the Jews.

Forever chemicals and plastics were invented and proliferated by the US. While other nations are also responsible to some degree you can't deny this truth. What is even worse is the scientists at the time these chemicals were created had misgiving about the technology that industrialists where very aware of, ignored, and suppressed when necessary.

https://www.propublica.org/article/3m-forever-chemicals-pfas-pfos-inside-story

There are countless examples of this including global warming which was predicted at the start of the petro chemical revolution and later buried and denied by the US to such an extreme degree that people now doubt the science that was more or less correct since the 1950s. Your denial of the US hand in this is noted and also a bit confusing for me personally.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/climate-deniers-of-the-119th-congress-and-the-second-trump-administration/

You seem to be offering a lot of counterpoints that reek of denialism. I am not sure if this is just reflexive of you or just a genuine lack of knowledge about what the US has done.

I think your musings about history are pretty spot on. Your examples of technological disruptions are well thought out. While history doesn't inform us about AI it does rhyme as you and others have aptly put it. For instance, the parallels between how artists saw photography and how they view AI currently are eerily similar.

“This industry, by invading the territory of art, has become art’s most mortal enemy.”

-Charles Baudelaire in 1859