No one would deny that Israel has changed in recent years. Since Hamas\u2019s attack on Oct. 7, 2023, the country has become more warlike, less liberal, and more nationalist and religious\u2014and nowhere is that more evident than in its assault on the Gaza Strip that continues to this day.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of Israelis remain, at best, indifferent to the death and destruction that their military has wreaked on Gaza. A significant minority, including some in Israel\u2019s cabinet, actively encouraged the carnage, reveling in it as an act of revenge and\/or a chance to reverse what they see as the historic error of 2005, when Israel uprooted Gaza\u2019s Jewish settlements and handed the enclave to Palestinian control. Today, Omer Bartov, an Israeli who has spent his academic career in the United States, feels like a stranger in his homeland. \u201cIt seems to be a different, strange and threatening place, whose people, including some of my friends, have been transformed perhaps irretrievably,\u201d he writes in his new book, Israel: What Went Wrong?<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n No one would deny that Israel has changed in recent years. Since Hamas\u2019s attack on Oct. 7, 2023, the country has become more warlike, less liberal, and more nationalist and religious\u2014and nowhere is that more evident than in its assault on the Gaza Strip that continues to this day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The vast majority of Israelis remain, at best, indifferent to the death and destruction that their military has wreaked on Gaza. A significant minority, including some in Israel\u2019s cabinet, actively encouraged the carnage, reveling in it as an act of revenge and\/or a chance to reverse what they see as the historic error of 2005, when Israel uprooted Gaza\u2019s Jewish settlements and handed the enclave to Palestinian control. Today, Omer Bartov, an Israeli who has spent his academic career in the United States, feels like a stranger in his homeland. \u201cIt seems to be a different, strange and threatening place, whose people, including some of my friends, have been transformed perhaps irretrievably,\u201d he writes in his new book, Israel: What Went Wrong?<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Bartov\u2019s book arrives at a time when Israel has come under unprecedented criticism for its war in Gaza and growing settler violence in the West Bank. It was published the same month as another new, and more forward-looking, book on Israel-Palestine, The Future Is Peace: A Shared Journey Across the Holy Land<\/em><\/a>, in which Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon make an impassioned appeal to revive the long-neglected peace process. Together, the books serve as a reminder that the only solution to the conflict will be a compromise reached by negotiation.<\/p>\n Bartov, a historian of the Nazi era at Brown University, principally blames Israel\u2019s transformation on two things. The first is how Israelis interpret the Holocaust\u2014no longer as a historical event to be remembered but as a template for an ever-present threat of genocide. Convinced that they are surrounded by enemies bent on their annihilation, Israelis justify the occupation of the West Bank and the war on Gaza as necessary to their survival. Bartov writes, \u201cWhat had been for long the \u2018never again\u2019 syndrome, thus became its exact opposite, the \u2018again and again\u2019 syndrome\u2014an internalized, irrational and misleading terror of another Holocaust, always lurking behind the corner, from which one can liberate oneself only by lashing out, pressing down, breaking in, and blowing up both one\u2019s own doubts and unease and any real or perceived external threat.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel: What Went Wrong?<\/strong><\/em><\/a>, Omer Bartov, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 256 pp., $28, April 2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Bartov acknowledges that Israelis were traumatized by Oct. 7, in which Hamas fighters killed some 1,200 Israelis and took another 250 as hostages. But he wants them to put the attack into perspective\u2014to understand the roots of Palestinian rage, appreciate the fact that international law countenances resistance to oppression and occupation (albeit not unrestrained violence), and, above all, to get over their Holocaust complex.<\/p>\n That is a tall order. Oct. 7 was an atrocity that was filmed live and has been repeatedly re-aired, its horrors reinforced by accounts of survivors and hostages who endured months of suffering. For Israelis, it served as a taste of things to come if they fail to remain vigilant. And, while the Hamas attack was the bloodiest day in Israel\u2019s history, it was not an isolated event: Since 1948, Israel\u2019s existence has been contested through war and terrorism. Bartov is right to decry Israel\u2019s use of the Holocaust to justify unrestrained violence, but it is unfair to dismiss it as a paranoid delusion.<\/p>\n The second thing that went wrong with Israel, according to Bartov, is the absence of a formal constitution. He correctly asserts that Zionism\u2019s progressive values and goal of emancipating the Jewish people have always been in tension with its nationalist ideology and the presence of Palestinians in its designated homeland. Had Israel written a liberal constitution soon after its founding in 1948, Bartov believes, Zionism\u2019s liberal values would have been enshrined, leading Israel to treat its Arab minority more equally. Israel\u2019s 1948 Declaration of Independence, which has become a component of its de facto constitution, does speak of freedom and equality, and a series of quasi-constitutional Basic Laws enacted over the years has cemented rights such as freedom of movement and privacy. But Bartov is highly critical of the way that the declaration was written, with an eye to pleasing the United Nations and international public opinion rather than a deep commitment to democracy and human rights, and of the time it took for the Basic Laws to be enacted. He thus concludes that Israel\u2019s \u201crelationship to democracy is a troubled one.\u201d<\/p>\n Bartov\u2019s assessment fails to recognize that a constitution is only as good as the government that enforces it; history is littered with constitutions that failed to honor their promises. The proof of freedom and democracy is found less in founding documents than in everyday practice and in case law. In that regard, Israel has not fared badly. The Economist Intelligence Unit\u2019s Democracy Index<\/a> puts it firmly in the ranks of liberal democracies, a notch or two below the United States. The index doesn\u2019t take into account Israel\u2019s occupation of the West Bank and its treatment of the Palestinian population, which clearly violates democratic norms and constitutes a deep stain on Israel\u2019s record, but that hasn\u2019t sapped democracy at home so far. Israel is a flawed democracy\u2014and one that is becoming more flawed under its current government\u2014but given the constant pressure of war and terrorism, it is remarkable that it is a democracy at all.<\/p>\n
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