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Omer Bartov: Israel
What Went Wrong?
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026
Publisher’s Description:
A leading Israeli American scholar of the Holocaust explores and explains his native country’s intensifying turn toward violence and exclusion.
The distinguished historian Omer Bartov was born on a kibbutz, grew up in Tel Aviv, and served in the Israel Defense Forces during the Yom Kippur War. He went on to become a leading scholar of the German army and the Holocaust, before turning his attention to his native country.
In Israel: What Went Wrong?, Bartov sketches the tragic transformation of Zionism, a movement that sought to emancipate European Jewry from oppression, into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism. How is it possible, he asks, that a state founded in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, an event that gave legitimacy to a national home for the Jews, stands credibly accused of perpetrating large-scale war crimes? How do we come to terms with the fact that Israel’s war of destruction is being conducted with the support, laced with denial and indifference, of so many of its Jewish citizens?
Tracing the roots of the violent events currently unfolding in Israel and the occupied territories, Bartov tracks his country’s moral tribulations and considers the origins of Zionism, the intertwining of Israel’s independence with Palestinian displacement, the politics of the Holocaust, controversies over the term “genocide,” and the uncertain future. The result is a searing and urgent critique that addresses today’s debates over Zionism and the future of Israel with rigor and depth.
Reviews:
“Remarkable . . . Anyone seeking an explanation of Israel’s ‘fall from grace’ will find no better guide than this perceptive, sophisticated, erudite, elegantly written and strikingly fair-minded book.”
Avi Shalim, The Guardian
“Timely . . . a must-read . . . [Bartov’s] explicit tone, factual multi-sectoral analysis, and historically grounded and honest discussion of the most sensitive, but urgently relevant, dimensions of modern Zionism, Judaism, and Israel . . . revolves around how we should understand – and end – Israel’s US-enabled, slow-motion genocide in Palestine. The book’s message is clear from the very beginning.”
Rami G. Khouri, Arab Center Washington DC
“[Bartov’s] understanding of his subject is both historical and intimate . . . Clear, sober, and deliberate. Israel is his attempt to chart what has happened to the country where he was born . . . Bartov uses all the tools at his disposal, weaving together history, personal anecdotes, even some literary criticism . . . One of Bartov’s points in this mournful book is that too many possibilities have been kept off the table.”
Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review
“A clear-eyed work of moral reckoning.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Omer Bartov brings his formidable scholarly skills to offer a deep history of October 7. But Israel: What Went Wrong? is far more than that. It is a fascinating and rich biography, in the first instance, of Zionism, which went from an ideology of salvation to a project of oppression, including to the point of committing what Bartov calls genocide in Gaza. At the same time, this book is so affecting because it is a biography in another sense, of Bartov himself. The author chronicles his own transformation from an Israeli youth and soldier into one of America’s leading scholars of the Shoah. His personal journey affords him a distinctive perch for observing the way in which trauma transformed Jews in Israel from the victimized into the victimizer. Bartov traces this process with poignancy, judiciousness, and moral clarity – modeling the very ‘opening of minds’ that he deems so urgent in our times.”
David N. Myers, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Distinguished Professor of Jewish History at UCLA
“A brilliant, unique, timely, and thought-provoking treatment of how, in being ‘committed to saving the Jews from future existential threats, Zionism created a state that roots its very sense of identity in its assertion of living under precisely this type of threat, resulting in large part from the very policy that was intended to remove it.’ A must-read.”
Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
“Gripping in its moral clarity and sweeping knowledge, this new work by Omer Bartov painfully offers harsh insights into the State of Israel without ignoring nuances and complexities.”
Michael Sfard, Israeli human rights lawyer and author of The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights
“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, author of The World After Gaza
“Born in an Israeli kibbutz, historian Bartov grew up believing in the promise of the Jewish state. More than two years on from the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, his latest book 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. It considers the rhetorical uses of antisemitism and Holocaust remembrance to explore how Israel defines and understands itself, particularly how it navigates (or declines to acknowledge) the tension between being a Jewish state and a democratic one. Bartov argues that the country’s refusal to adopt a formal constitution may be the defining failure that has enabled Israel to maintain decades of inequality and violence against Palestinians. He explores various possible futures for Israel and Palestine while recognizing that Israel is unlikely to change course without pressure from the international community. Israel is bracing in its moral clarity. Its author is well aware of humanitarian law, and he refuses to obfuscate the reality of crimes against humanity, regardless of who perpetrates them. For anyone seeking to understand the tragedies of the last two years, Israel is an essential read.”
Jenny Hamilton, Booklist (starred review)
About the Author:
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.
Supertramp: Give a Little Bit
Live in Munich, 1983. From their album Even in the Quietest Moments (1977).
William D. Hartung & Ben Freeman: The Trillion Dollar War Machine
How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home
Bold Type Books, 2025
Publisher’s Description:
A hard-hitting investigation into how the Pentagon’s runaway spending embroils America in foreign wars, squanders its wealth, and enriches a privileged elite
“A damning indictment of the conflicts of interest running rampant in the defense establishment.”
Publishers Weekly
America spends nearly a trillion dollars a year on its military. This extraordinary spending not only detracts from our ability to address pressing social problems but compels us into foreign wars to justify our vast arsenal. Sold to us in the name of “security,” our military industrial complex actually makes us far less safe.
Top policy experts William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman follow the profits of militarism from traditional Pentagon contractors, which receive more than half of the Pentagon’s budget, to the upstart high-tech firms that shamelessly promote unproven and destabilizing technologies. They unmask the enablers of the war machine – politicians, lobbyists, the media, Hollywood, think tanks, and so many more – whose work enriches a wealthy elite at the expense of everybody else, spreading conflict around the world and embroiling America in endless wars.
A damning tour de force, The Trillion Dollar War Machine shows who is pulling the strings and pushing for war, and offers a blueprint for how we can shut down the war machine and restore American security and prosperity.
Reviews:
“Extremely timely and necessary… [Hartung’s and Freeman’s] diagnosis offers a map of the structural forces that continuously push America toward war. However, do not despair; the authors, as they should, propose a successful path forward.”
Common Dreams
“A corrupt military-industrial complex peddles shoddy weapons that can’t win wars but still wreak havoc around the world, according to this coruscating exposé…It’s a damning indictment of the conflicts of interest running rampant in the defense establishment.”
Publishers Weekly
“A resounding denunciation of a military-industrial complex gone metastatic.”
Kirkus
“This is it: the definitive account of America’s wasteful, corrupt, and astonishingly ineffective military industrial complex. William Hartung and Ben Freeman have done their fellow citizens a great service. Taking their message to heart is a job for the rest of us.”
Andrew Bacevich, cofounder of the Quincy Institute and coeditor of Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars
“Hartung and Freeman tell a tragic story of how the military industrial complex successfully survived President Eisenhower’s dark warning and now shapes the military budget and our escalating rivalry with China. But even more ominous, Silicon Valley has joined the game with promises of AI miracles and lethal systems and gadgets galore. Sobering – and well worth reading.”
Jerry Brown, former governor of California
“Because the book is so well researched and easily readable, I presume many will be moved to want to do something, and Hartung and Freeman offer a foundation for action.”
John Tierney, former member of Congress and the current executive director of the Council for a Livable World
“Hartung and Freeman show that the ecosystem of state-privileged, corporate militarists has become a beast. The result is a war machine that can’t protect us, a foreign policy that flirts with Armageddon, a broken domestic society, and a people who cannot see that the very fabric of our reality is a militarist matrix crafted by lies and sustained by our blood and our souls.”
Scott Horton, director of the Libertarian Institute
About the Authors:
William D. Hartung is a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute, focusing on the arms industry and military spending. He is the author of Prophets of War and resides in New York City.
Ben Freeman, director of democratizing foreign policy at the Quincy Institute, holds a PhD from Texas A&M. He focuses on investigating money in politics, military spending, and foreign influence. He lives in central Florida.
Mystik
Politiska inlägg januari-mars 2025
Kommunism och traditionella värden
Knullande briljant av MWM:s, ACP:s och SIUC:s Garrido.
Are “Traditional Values” Anti-Communist? Must you be Socially Liberal to be a Communist?
Ljudet börjar fungera vid 1.05.
Mckay och försvaret av Israel
Min serie om frågan om försvaret av Israel var tänkt att fortsätta med två inlägg som i endast begränsad utsträckning utvidgades med nya temata och primärt fullföljde och sammanfattade de som introducerats i de två redan publicerade; sammanlagt skulle det då bli fyra delar.
Men nu har jag, i den tredje, kört fast i Mckays extremt konfrontativa vidareutveckling av sin behandling av frågan om huruvida Israel styr USA eller vice versa. Han driver numera en direkt polemisk kampanj mot Max Blumenthal och andra som hävdar den förstnämnda ståndpunkten, och mobiliserar omfattande empiri som ska stödja hans uppfattning av Israel som endast ett atlantimperialismens osänkbara – eller åtminstone tidigare som osänkbart ansedda – hangarfartyg.
Ingen förnekar att Israel är ett imperialismens hangarfartyg. Men detta kan inte dölja det lika viktiga faktum att Israel och dess amerikanska lobby kontrollerar USA i en utsträckning som förmår det att även emot sina egna imperiella intressen agera militärt för Israels expansion och makt i Mellanöstern långt utöver dess funktion av ett dess egna hangarfartyg. Detta är inte minst just nu löjligt uppenbart, och bevisen är överväldigande i sin kvantitet, sin entydighet och sin välkändhet. Men den fulla förståelsen av hur och varför det är möjligt kräver inte bara ett politisk-historiskt utan också, och framför allt, ett djupgående idé-, kultur- och mentalitetshistoriskt perspektiv som tyvärr tycks ligga långt bortom vissa marxisters horisont.
Till denna polemik har Mckay nu också lagt en delvis relaterad, puristisk argumentation mot höger- och nationalistpopulismen, i vilken han vill hänföra användningen av termen globalism uteslutande till en fascistisk och antisemitisk diskurs. Mckays polemiker har tvingat mig att gå avsevärt utöver vad jag ursprungligen tänkt ta upp, vilket redan var ganska mycket givet det bredare och djupare perspektiv jag ansåg nödvändigt för min frågas besvarande.
Just nu ser det ut som om del tre riskerar att vältra över i en teoretisk diskussion om förhållandet mellan ideella och materiella faktorer i den historiska och samhälleliga utvecklingen, med särskild hänsyn till marxismens uppfattning av basen och överbyggnaden.
Och, som en nödvändig följd av detta, som om en långt utförligare argumentation blir nödvändig, även i del fyra, för den religiösa och humanistiska kulturens betydelse för förståelsen och hanteringen av situationen i Mellanöstern än jag från början avsett. Därför kan, befarar jag, de återstående delarna komma att dröja något. Möjligen kan de också bli fler än två.
Rosh Hanikra
Israels nordligaste punkt på Medelhavskusten, med berömda kalkstensklippor med grottor och tunnlar skapade av havet. Vy från Nahariya.
Peter Beinart: Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza
A Reckoning
Knopf, 2025
Publisher’s Description:
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A bold, urgent appeal from the acclaimed columnist and political commentator, addressing one of the most important issues of our time
“In Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, Peter Beinart offers a model for writing a new story when inherited narratives no longer hold…Stylistically restrained and uncompromising, the book stands as a brave and vital contribution to contemporary American intellectual life, challenging readers to reckon with the demands of justice, equity, and accountability in the face of one of the most consequential and divisive issues of our time.” Judges’ Citation, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
In Peter Beinart’s view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew?
Beinart imagines an alternate narrative, which would draw on other nations’ efforts at moral reconstruction and a different reading of Jewish tradition. A story in which Israeli Jews have the right to equality, not supremacy, and in which Jewish and Palestinian safety are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. One that recognizes the danger of venerating states at the expense of human life.
Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is a provocative argument that will expand and inform one of the defining conversations of our time. It is a book that only Peter Beinart could write: a passionate yet measured work that brings together his personal experience, his commanding grasp of history, his keen understanding of political and moral dilemmas, and a clear vision for the future.
Reviews:
“For years, and at great personal cost, Beinart has been one of the most influential Jewish voices for Palestine…He is sympathetic to the Jewish sense of vulnerability – he offers a granular accounting of the Hamas attacks – while nevertheless condemning the Israeli state…The method here is as much scriptural as it is political. Calmly and concisely, Beinart demolishes the usual defenses of Israel with reference to stories from within the Jewish tradition…His goal is to wrestle with the knottiness and ambiguity in our sacred texts and correct for the omissions in the mythology of purity that so many of us were taught as children and that many continue to subscribe to as adults.”
New York Times Book Review
“At this painful moment, Peter Beinart’s voice is more vital than ever. His reach is broad – from the tragedy of today’s Middle East to the South Africa he knows well to events centuries ago – his scholarship is deep, and his heart is big. This book is not just about being Jewish in the shadow of today’s war, but about being a person who cares for justice.”
Adam Hochschild, author of American Midnight and King Leopold’s Ghost
“Uses the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict as well as Beinart’s deep Jewish faith to chart a path forward for peace and safety for both Israelis and Palestinians.”
MSNBC
“This timely book constitutes a reckoning with the vast gulf between the Jewish tradition that Beinart cherishes and what has replaced it in the practice of the state of Israel, and of those who have come to worship that state. It is urgently needed.”
Rashid Kahlidi, New York Times bestselling author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017
“A moving account of [Beinart’s] transformation from a strong supporter of Israel into a staunch critic of Zionism.”
New York Review of Books
“[Beinart] has built a reputation for being an incisive writer and public intellectual, with a knack for admitting when he’s wrong…In Beinart’s latest book, he appeals to his fellow Jews to grapple with the morality of their defense of Israel…He argues for a Jewish tradition that has no use for Jewish supremacy and treats human equality as a core value.”
The Guardian
“Over his lifetime, Peter Beinart went from being a fierce defender of Israel to one of its fiercest critics. In his latest book, the professor of journalism and political science makes an appeal to other American Jews in the wake of the war in Gaza.”
NPR’s Morning Edition
“Invaluable…Beinart’s cogent and caring analysis guides readers toward moral clarity and a sharper understanding of the crisis and its profoundly devastating consequences.”
Booklist
“An urgent, carefully argued and compelling read.”
Rachel Shabi, author of Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism
“Beinart issues an impassioned critique of the American Jewish community’s reaction to the war in Gaza…Urgent and thought-provoking, this is sure to spark debate.”
Publishers Weekly
“Makes an important case.”
The Financial Times
“Rethinks the meaning of Jewishness today…Beinart’s arguments – spanning religious, political, moral, and safety concerns – are delivered with an energetic, almost prophetic conviction…One might expect this intimate tone and narrowly defined audience to make Beinart’s discussion less relevant to secular, non-Jewish people…To the contrary, ideal readers include non-Jewish people…Ultimately, Beinart is using particularist means to talk about universalist, humanist ethics. His calls for justice should be heeded by all.”
Jacobin
“Guided by a deep familiarity with Jewish history and sources, and a piercing awareness of Palestinian realities, Peter Beinart unflinchingly peels away the layers of propagandist misdirection deployed to defend Israel’s actions. This essential book leads us to a universal and Jewish reawakening that is both humane and hopeful.”
Daniel Levy, President of the US-Middle East Project and former Israeli peace negotiator
“A learned, powerful book that asks tough – if contentious – questions.”
Kirkus Reviews
About the Author:
Peter Beinart is professor of journalism and political science at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also editor at large of Jewish Currents, a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times, an MSNBC political commentator, and a nonresident fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He writes the Beinart Notebook newsletter on Substack.com. He lives in New York with his family.
Olle Bengtsson 