Israel, Omer Bartov
Israel, Omer Bartov
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Israel
What Went Wrong?

Author: Omer Bartov

Narrator: James McNaughton

Unabridged: 8 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/21/2026

Synopsis

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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About Omer Bartov

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rosemary on October 15, 2025

This is a tough book which deals with the sensitive issue of Israel's actions in Gaza since 7 October 2023. I was curious to read an academic perspective as I often find myself unsure and confused by the information relayed by the media and by the actions of other governments who clearly have politi......more

Goodreads review by Mark on September 30, 2025

Israeli-born American Holocaust and genocide scholar Omer Bartov has reluctantly and methodically come to the conclusion that the Israeli war on Gaza is a genocide. This book is about the journey to his conclusion - which in many ways reminds me of the more conservative climate scientists who saw th......more

Goodreads review by Kris on April 10, 2026

The first thing I do when I see an interesting non-fiction book is do a quick Google search on the author to make sure that they have some viable standing as far as being an authority on the subject and man is this one *the* expert!! Born in Israel to parents from Palestine, Bartov was in the Israel......more

Goodreads review by Sydney on April 08, 2026

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the eARC in exchange for my honest review. This is such a timely book. The tracing of Zionism from a protective belief to a weaponized belief was so interesting. This is a deep read, so don't plan on breezing through it. I appreciated the way Bar......more

Goodreads review by Margaret on November 11, 2025

Reviewed for Library Journal. My professional review is unrelated to my Goodreads rating.......more

Quotes

Praise for Israel: What Went Wrong?:

"A clear-eyed work of moral reckoning."
—Publisher's 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

"Born in an Israeli kibbutz, historian Bartov (Anatomy of a Genocide, 2018) 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)

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