Can a country confront its past without putting its founding ideals into question?
The renowned and controversial historian of the Holocaust Omer Bartov has spent decades studying genocide, war, and the ways societies understand their own histories. In his new book Israel: What Went Wrong, he turns that expertise—and his own experience growing up in Israel in a Zionist family—to one of the most urgent questions facing the country.
Bartov discusses the two faces of Zionism: the promise of refuge for Jews fleeing persecution, and the movement’s impact on Palestinians. He reflects on how Israel’s understanding of the Holocaust has changed, how the events of October 7 and the war in Gaza transformed his own thinking, and why he believes the country must confront difficult truths about its past.
Can a different path still be imagined? Bartov discusses the missed opportunity for a constitution, the possibility of historical reckoning and reconciliation, and the fierce criticism his views have drawn from opposing sides.
A challenging conversation about history, identity, and what it means to take responsibility for the past.
The episode is sponsored by the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA and co-hosted by Prof David N. Myers.
Bartov notes that a kind of sin would have to be placed on one’s children and grandchildren if acknowledging what has been done to Gaza–and, I add, who will pluck out their own eye? Rather, we will not see. Germans did not recognize Holocaust and war aggression from below until the student protests of the 60s; yes, there was elite acknowledgement, but it was shaped by Allied appointment of acceptable Germans as the political class. Russia has yet to officially acknowledge the Gulag, and Stalin has in strong measure been rehabilitated through patriotism. The US accommodated the South after Civil War by honoring its war heroes and ignoring both slavery past and descendants of slaves then present. Japan perhaps went further than Germans for the social/cultural role of the surrendering Emperor, but to this date no government has recognized the South Korean “comfort women” for Japanese soldiers in the Pacific War. Nationalism forces purity for enlarged membership. Israel is being asked to do a huge thing if acknowledging Gaza even with the 7th’s propelling destruction. Biden urged Israel to take lesson from the US in Iraq, but then gave arms ad lithium for that very patriotism. The US could not be true to its diluted “woke” ethic even applied externally to itself. I think Bartov is right on “cure,” but I see no way to get there.
I have long thought the Israeli Declaration of Independence is Israel’s only self-escape. Since the Declaration mandates certain rights with equal protection across race/ethnicity and religion, further stipulating that all rights created must be so treated, it can be a meta-constitutional document, beyond amendment. The High Court could declare it so in cases. Indeed, I think that the Court’s only way out of Knesset Supremacy, which is issue lurking in the soon election. Equal protection of Jewish right through such, um, constitutional declaration of the Declaration, extended in cases to Arab citizens, then Palestinians under occupation is the only way I see out of Jewish Supremacy. But that delays Gaza, and Gaza cannot suffer much more delay. I see an intellectual path out of this horror, but not social/cultural/political enablement. Nor am I certain the Court Justices would have the courage to declare the Declaration unalterably constitutional rather than “informative” as at best now. One brighter side for Zionism is that the Declaration enshrines Refuge as well. So it would be impossible for Israel to, by any means, abort that, even if envisioning some kind of federation later. While I think Refuge now socio-economically impossible, Israel cannot absorb all that many more Jews, this Clause in the Declaration does preserve a good in Zionism; in a way, it allows post-Zionism by not fully disdaining its creation past. European immigration to America destroyed most lived Native civilization over 200 plus years; but we cannot go back. “Woke” should not be condemnation of the past but eye on what the future can be.
Omri Boehm pointed out this past week in Haaretz the problem with elevating the Declaration of Independence to a meta-constitutional document. Here are some main points.
• The Problem with “Absolute” Status: Boehm points out that the 1948 text did not assert unconditional sovereignty over the entire land, but was explicitly bound to the historic reality of the UN Partition Plan (which called for two states—one Jewish, one Arab).
• The Demographic & Existential Reality: He asserts that a constitution cementing a “Jewish and democratic” state without simultaneously cementing the physical borders and conditions under which it operates cannot be considered legitimate. In a region where roughly half the population is Palestinian, granting absolute constitutional authority to the declaration risks turning a foundational text into a tool that legally ignores or overrides the existence and rights of the Palestinian people.
• His Alternative: Rather than elevating the document to the heavens of “eternity,” Boehm argues it must be brought back down to history and reality. He advocates for a constitutional framework that recognizes the deep changes needed for a true, equal Jewish-Palestinian partnership, not one where the rights are primarily vouchsafed on the basis of religio-ethnicity, and then “extended” to Palestinians.
The fact of addressing any issue concerning Israel taking an ideology (Zionism) as a starting-point is in itself a bizarre anomaly. No other country (except, perhaps, the USA) would be analysed in terms of a century-old ideology. Imagine explaining present-day Serbian politics taking as a starting-point nineteenth-century Serbian ideologies. (Some people do, but serious historians would be wary of doing it.) The sooner ‘Zionism’ is dropped as the starting-point for understanding Israel the better.