Israel What went wrong?

American-Israeli Holocaust scholar Bartov (Anatomy of a Genocide) offers a powerful meditation on his birth country's turn toward violence. Bartov chronicles the "tragic transformation of Zionism" from a movement that "sought to emancipate European Jewry from oppression" into "a state ideology of ethno-nationalism." Lamenting the "bitter cunning of history," Bartov confronts the awful resonances between his academic work about the Holocaust and Israel's treatment of Palestinians. He reflects impactfully on growing up in Tel Aviv neighborhoods "built... over the remnants of Palestinian villages," and on his IDF service, when he was wounded in a training accident that was subsequently covered up, which he pegs as an early glimpse of his government's compromised ethics. Concluding that Israel's extremism is at least partly an "inevitable consequence of... settler colonialism," Bartov finds some hope for reconciliation in the idea of drawing connections between the Holocaust and the 1948 Nakba, the forced displacement of Palestinians, asserting that "reflecting jointly on these two crucial events can have a transformative effect on Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian mutual understanding." Nevertheless, he remains a realist, recognizing that equality for Palestinians would have to be essentially forced upon the Israeli political class and could "only happen under firm and determined American leadership." It's a clear-eyed work of moral reckoning. (Apr.)

Straight talk and solemn accusations. Bartov, a Brown University professor of Holocaust and genocide studies, offers a frank, sure-to-be-controversial analysis of Israel's past and present, arguing that the country has "engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity,and genocidal actions" in Gaza in response to Hamas' brutal Oct. 7, 2023, attack. The native Israeli and Israel Defense Force veteran's conclusions arise from historical research, personal observation, and scrutiny of international law. His years in the IDF had him question the role he and other soldiers were playing in Gaza. "I saw firsthand the poverty and hopelessness of Palestinian refugees eking out a living in congested, decrepit neighborhoods," he writes. "For the first time, I understood what it meant to occupy another people." Visiting in June 2024, he notes "the utter inability of Israeli society to feel any empathy for the population of Gaza." He links this to Israel's earliest days. Had the nation adopted a constitution and "a bill of rights for all human beings," he writes, "the creeping racism of Israeli society might have been tempered." He asserts that the country has "abused" its "status as a unique state rooted in a unique Holocaust," which frees it "from the constraints imposed on all other nations." Bartov, worried that "the exclusion and violent domination of Palestinians" will trigger Israel's "implosion," means to "contribute to an opening of minds." Most explosively, he claims Israel has become "the best excuse for antisemites everywhere," its "addiction to violence and oppression, reliance on great powers and financial clout, and constant harping on the horrors of the Holocaust as an excuse for untethered violence against Palestinians" provoking "horror and disgust." Bartov writes that Israel, is, "in multiple senses, my home and my homeland." Poignantly, however, he now feels "increasingly estranged from it. It seems to be a different, strange, and threatening place, whose people, including some of my friends, have been transformed, perhaps irretrievably." A scholar forcefully alleges that Israel has committed the gravest of crimes. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.