Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, when asked to explain the apparent about-face that led him to advocate the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, quoted a beloved Israeli pop ballad. “What you can see from there, you can’t see from here,” he said, referring to the shift in perspective he had supposedly undergone since coming to power.
Israeli-born Holocaust historian Omer Bartov invoked the same line when he was asked how he had come to view Israel’s ferocious assault on Gaza as a genocide. Living in the US, where he has spent more than three decades, he said, had given him the necessary distance to see the annihilation of Gaza for what it was. “I think it’s very hard to be dispassionate when you’re there,” he said.
Bartov did more than simply apply the word genocide to Israel’s actions: he shouted it from the establishment-media rooftops, making the case in a lengthy July 2025 essay in the New York Times titled: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. (He had addressed some of the arguments in a Guardian essay the year prior.) Bartov’s declaration cost him several close relationships, he told me, even though subsequent events have not only validated his analysis but further demonstrated the lack of concern for Palestinian suffering that has become prevalent in Israeli society.
His new book, Israel: What Went Wrong?, is an attempt to explain that indifference. The book, which was published on Tuesday, is a detailed account of how Israel was transformed from a hopeful nation that in its founding document promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens irrespective of religion, race or sex” into one intent on what he bluntly terms “settler colonialism and ethno-nationalism”.
This was an interesting read.
Especially his speculation that lack of a clear constitution (Basic Law was adopted as late as 1994 and is not a full-fledged constitution) and lack of clear borders contributed to Israel’s fall into the current state.
Too generous US “security assistance” certainly helped. If you can solve a problem with bombing without worrying about getting bombed, you may start thinking of war as a normal thing.
Failure to contain the populist extreme right is another stumbling block. If there had been no Netanyahu (and his corruption scandals, and the court cases awaiting him domestically, filed a considerable time before the ones awaiting abroad), things might be different.
Ultimately, I would say: Israel failed to install brakes, and failed to contain its greed for power and land. It had too much cooperation and still has too much cooperation.
I don’t know if there’s a reasonable way out.
People often forget that countries evolve with time. No country will remain in its current state forever and no current projection is going to be constant forever. The circumstances around Israel are shifting, but all this means is that the country is set to move in a new direction sooner or later. As the current status quo shifts internationally, Israeli culture and politics will also shift to reflect it. Like most other countries, I think Israel will have a counter wave to the ultra far right. The new anti far right wave will lead to a more left wing government that will seek to undo the damage done by the far right and go after the ones who caused it.
This is a fun fantasy, maybe the US can redeem itself as well… just kidding, they are going to double down just like Israel.
The pendulum will swing! Of course it just keeps swinging to the right and not left. How strange.
It is almost like a powerful group of well insulated people are calling the shots and they are determining societal movements through propaganda.
This is a fun fantasy, maybe the US can redeem itself as well… just kidding, they are going to double down just like Israel.
If you think countries have morals and feelings then you’re a lost cause. Countries have always and will always purely act in their best self interest.
The pendulum will swing! Of course it just keeps swinging to the right and not left. How strange.
History shows otherwise. All societies go through cycles where the ruling party, ideology, or system gets replaced by something fundamentally counters it when it no longer holds up the social contract it promised.
It is almost like a powerful group of well insulated people are calling the shots and they are determining societal movements through propaganda.
Welcome to human history
Gentleman’s bet: US and Israel will not have a leftist resurgence in policy anytime soon.
We will see the wealth gap continue to grow and accelerated environmental degredation.
Propagandist will try to convince people otherwise but the truth will always be in the policies and not the feels.
I think there’s a flaw in your bet. Societies have to be viewed in their relative context, you can’t apply some arbitrary standard that’s based on your subjective whims. Each society has a different overton window and different issues. However, they all have an internal left and right wing.
For example, if the Democrats win in 2028 and they manage to reverse 70% of the major Trump fuckups in policy and pass a few of major policies like universal healthcare, abortion rights, or raising the minimum wage. That’s a pretty substantial policy shift, but that’s still not a communist revolution that’s overthrowing capitalism. Would you call this shift in policy left wing or slightly less right wing? If it’s the former, then I would take you up on your bet because societies do go in cycles of going from one end of their mainstream political spectrum to the other. If it’s the latter, then I can’t take you up on your bet because nothing will ever satisfy your condition. Nothing will be leftist enough.
You believe that societies naturally drift left and right. I believe that policies not perception determine this drift.
The current issue that is dragging the entire world right is accumulation of money. This isn’t changing without a revolution. This is not going to happen.
All the major super powers will continue to pass policies towards authoritarianism. There will be no drift to the left except for propaganda that leftist will eat up while policies will dictate the future not feelings.
Our last best chance was before the Internet got locked down by governments and corporations. The information revolution came and it did not end up benefitting left thought or even policy much at all.
While I am optimistic about people, I believe reality is painting a very different picture than you are seeing in regards to society as a whole. I do hope your are right, but if I was a betting man (I am not, it is a gentleman’s bet) I would have to say there will be no left revolution in policy anytime soon.
I think a fair judgement of this would be seeing a decrease in the wealth gap. I don’t think other measures of temporary rights or entitlements (think abortion or food stamps) are actually a good way to show a leftward policy change. These things are temporary and can be withheld or taken away.
It is kind of like adding a sail to a car that is broken down. Sure you could get it to move if the wind is blowing right, but it is still broken. Universal healthcare has not stopped the rightward drift of Europe, why would it for the US. Isreal has Universal Healthcare and they are about as far from left as you can get.
I believe you are making an ideological assessment, I am not. My assessment is historical. If you look at any society in history, you’ll see that nothing is ever truly static. Societies evolve to their circumstances. There’s always cycles of growth and cycles of contraction. There’s cycles where a society is open, progressive, and tolerant relative to its past and cycles of isolation, conservatism, and exclusion. There’s no reason to think that we live in a time where this is any different.
In the US, for example, political cycles last about 50 or so years before they go through a major transformation. The current cycle started with Ronald Reagan back in the 80s. If you think what politics was like 50 years before then, it was the politics of FDR that started in the 1930s. Before that it was the corrupt Gilded age presidents like Cleveland that started in the 1880s (which is very similar to the politics of today in a lot of ways). Before that it was the Republicans that wanted to end slavery. I think you get the idea. The point is we’re at a time where existing one political cycle and entering another. These are always turbulent times. However, history indicates that the new cycle runs counter to previous one. We’re leaving a political cycle that was centered on gutting regulations, cutting taxes for corporations, free trade, anti unions, pro immigration, and so on. If we follow the pattern, the next cycle should be similar to the one started with FDR in the 1930s. There’s going to be a real push for a lot social programs, raising the minimum wage, massive housing build outs, taxing corporations, and going after things like monopolies.
We’re already starting to see this now with people like Bernie gaining national traction and Mamdani getting elected mayor. There’s still pushback, so the new cycle is not yet calibrated, there some positions that the public doesn’t agree with that need to change. But for the most part? That seems to be the next phase of American politics. MAGA appears to be the final chapter of the Reagan era cycle of politics because nobody wants its continuation, people are eager for the next thing that will come after it.
I think the “mistake” started with the formation of Israel. I can understand the founding of their state after WWII, and their desire for a place where they can live without persecution. But, the location was a huge mistake if the goal was “peace”.
Dropping them in the middle of their Holy Land? Automatic war for as long as they are there. Now, many are under the impression that they really are “God’s Chosen People” and all of their desired “Holy Land” righteously belongs to them.
I think what is happening today was the desired outcome of Israel’s foundation. USA and UK were perfectly fine with the Jews and Muslims fighting to the death, no matter who “wins”, whatever is left will be all the easier for them (Christians incidentally) to control.
personally, I am opposed to Christians, Jews, and Muslims, to me there are no “good guys” to be found in the “Holy Land”.
ETA Israel is a nuclear power now, remember that when you propose “solutions”.
There’s definitely no good guys. If you read into the history of the region, you’ll quickly realize that there was never a “rightful” or “righteous” ruler. The ancient Persians, the Romans, the Turks, the Assyrians, the Arabs, the British, and the Israeli Jews have all been horrid. Genocide, oppression, slavery, ethnic cleansing, terrorism, deep seated hatred, and the idea of “if I don’t do fuck them over first then they’ll come after me” is the norm in this cursed region.
thats BS. The turks made peace between a lot of tribes and kept the bloodshed down. Comparing them to Israel and pretending they are the same is way beyond the pale.
The Ottoman Turks? Are you an idiot?
The Ottoman Empire was one of the most violent and brutal empires in human history. They practiced slavery and had one of the largest slave trades in the world. They would go invade their weaker neighbors unprovoked to expand their empire. When they force the people they attacked into submission they’ll take “spoils of war” and distribute them among muslim soldiers and officials as instructed by islam. Therefore, they would steal the land, loot possession, and enslave people and hand them out as rewards for winning the war.
They would specifically kidnap and enslave young women and children either as servants or as sex slaves in harems. Everybody else gets a choice of either converting to islam or becoming a second class citizen under islamic law where you’re forced to have less rights, less freedoms, face more discrimination, and harsher punishments than muslims. Oh, and you have to pay an extra tax that muslims don’t have to pay (jizya) for the privileged of being oppressed.
They also colonize the lands that they conquer. They’ll kidnap and relocate the children elsewhere, they’ll give special benefits for muslims to settle the newly annexed lands, and they’ll forcefully exile or relocate the nonmuslims if they’re in the way of muslims colonizing the land. Oh, and the conquered people have zero representation at any institutional power if they’re not muslims, and they can’t hold a high ranking position if they’re not also Turkish. Therefore these nations were often ruled by muslim rulers who ruled had no interest or obligation for the natives, they were just there to serve and enrich themselves. Because of this, a lot of the conquered nations were subject some pretty horrid treatment.
Turkish rule is so brutal that Ottoman history was filled with conquered nations breaking out in revolts, some lasted centuries because they would rather fight to the death and than be ruled by the Turks. The thing is that the Turkish reaction to revolts is so extreme that it’s infamous in history. Instead of fighting to put down the revolt, the Turks would seek to genocide that society. They want to mass murder them, take their land, erase their culture, and pretend that it was always Turkish land. They did that with the Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Jews, and Arab Christians.
The Ottoman genocides are some of the worst in history. The very concept of genocide was literally made to describe what the Turks did to the Armenians. This idea that the Ottoman empire was peaceful golden age is quite literally bullshit propaganda that’s funded by the Turkish government. There’s a reason why that empire collapsed, and there’s a reason why every single ethnic group in southeastern Europe, the Caucuses, and the Middle East despises it with a burning passion.
You would think that this something in the long past, right? But no. The Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian genocides are barely a century old. Turkey today still officially denies these genocides. They’re still trying to genocide the Kurds to this day. Kurdish clothes, names, music, press, and language were outright banned until the 1990s. Even today, you can’t call Kurdish towns by their Kurdish names, they can’t speak Kurdish at any position in government, they don’t true Kurdish media, and Kurdish children can’t learn Kurdish in school. Not only that, but Turkey is also actively burning down entire Kurdish villages, they’re mass arresting Kurdish activists and journalists, they’re helping Azerbaijan invade Armenia, they’re invading and occupying the Assyrian and Kurdish parts of Syria, they’re literally illegally occupying and colonizing Northern Cyprus, they’re trying to steal Greek islands and maritime territory as their own, they’re constantly bombing Kurds in Iraq to keep them down, and the list goes on and on.
They’re the biggest menace in the middle east, and this is all just legacy that was carried over from the Ottoman Empire, who by the way is heavily supported and celebrated in Turkey. Not in some delusional sense where they have a different view from what it actually was, but not Turkish nationalists are actively proud of all the genocides, oppression, and conquering they inflected upon the world and they want to see Turkey do it again.
Thinking that the Ottoman Turks were peace makers is so fucking mind numbingly stupid that it’s painful to think that there are people this ignorant out there in the world.
Oh the long winded “Palestine desnt even really exist” zionist guy wants to spew comments. OK.
Give this a read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Ottoman_EmpireAnd you call out the Ottomans empires slavery. They abolished slavery in 1840. England in 1834. The US not till 1865 I think. You going to go after England and the US too then or is it only an issue in selective cases where its convenient for you?
Oh the long winded “Palestine desnt even really exist” zionist guy wants to spew comments. OK.
If that’s what you got from my comment then you really are an idiot.
Give this a read.
The article doesn’t contradict any of the points that I made.
And you call out the Ottomans empires slavery. They abolished slavery in 1840. England in 1834. The US not till 1865 I think. You going to go after England and the US too then or is it only an issue in selective cases where its convenient for you?
The Ottomans practiced slavery for 500 years and had one of the largest slave trades in history. Playing whataboutism doesn’t disprove my point, it just shows that you’re dimwit who’s engaging in bad faith.
This is liberal whitewashing. There are colonisers and there are the natives who are being exterminated. Its that simple.
That’s precisely the issue though. You’re dismissing important nuance and context for an oversimplified soundbites. That’s just willful ignorance. If you’re not even willing to entertain the idea of being honest then this conversation is not for you.
This is my proposal to end the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Egypt will be given the West Bank enlarged by land equivalent to the Gaza Strip. In return, Israel will be given the Gaza Strip and land at least 3 times larger than the West Bank in the Sinai Peninsula. Some of the land will be adjacent to water so Israel can build desalination plants. The Sinai is inhospitable, and Egypt doesn’t have the technology to develop it, but Israel does. With its new land, Egypt can give it to the Palestinians, make it a state within Egypt, or whatever it wants.
Israel wants land. This is a way of giving it land without harming the Palestinians.
How arrogant. That land isn’t ours to give.
No, it’s up to Egypt and Israel.
No, fascist. It’s up to Palestine. The country that existed before the 1930s. The country where people of multiple religions, Muslim, Christian and Jewish peacefully lived together until Churchill and the brits decided (under pressure from political groups) to sell land they didn’t own to a group with no claim to it.
It’s not up to the people killing civilians, it’s not up to Europe, its not up to the US, it is and has always been Palestine.
This is idiotic on multiple levels.
First of all, it’s NOT up to Palestine. This is not some ideological statement, this is just reality. The geopolitics works by de facto control, not by some idealized notion of righteous ownership. If that was the case the native Americans would be decided US foreign policy, but that’s not how it works now is it? The cold hard reality is that Israel is the true sovereign of the land, and neither Palestine nor any country can do anything substantial without Israeli approval. Therefore, they’re the ones who actually have the deciding power. Whether you agree with it or not doesn’t mean anything, that’s just the way it currently is.
Second of all, Palestine did NOT exist before the 1930s. There has never been sovereign Palestinian state in history. The modern Palestinian national identity was formed in the 1920s as a reaction to Jews getting serious about establishing Israel. Before that point, there was no such thing as a Palestinian identity. The Arabs in the region were indistinguishable from the other Levantese Arabs. The Arabs in what is now Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Palestine have the same exact history, dialect, culture, food, religion, and so on. They’re called both today and historically as Bilad Al Sham which means the Levant nation in Arabic.
What we think of modern Israel and Palestine are both inventions of the British. The borders, for example, like with the other countries in the region are nonsensical and drawn randomly. The Arabs there did not see themselves as Palestinians back then, but as Arabs that were a part of the Arab nation (ummah al arribiyah). If it were up to the Palestinian Arabs back then, there wouldn’t be any borders because these borders were dividing a bigger nation. The British promised both the Jews and the Arabs a state, and this annoyed both which caused them to start segregating and fighting each other trying to make sure that the other one doesn’t get a state. This eventually led to the 1948 war when Israel did end up declaring independence.
Finally, Christians, Jews, and muslims most certainly did NOT live in peace. This delusional idea is only held by ignorant Westerns who have no understanding of the region’s history. No matter how far back in history you go, there’s always a strong presence of revolts, wars, and ethnic cleansing in the region because whichever religious group ruled the region oppressed the others. For example, when the Turks ruled. They applied islamic law which treats non muslim monotheistic believers (polytheism is punishable by death) as second class citizens. Non muslims are forced to pay a tax that muslims don’t have to pay, they’re forced to observe islamic holidays, and they’re saddled with a lot of restrictions that muslims don’t have.
This already makes everyday life very hard, but the exclusively muslim ruling class would made sure to keep minorities down at every turn. For example, whenever the Ottomans had war, they would force entire towns near the frontlines to evacuate, but they only allow muslims to return afterwards. The property and wealth that was left behind would be possessed and distributed among muslim soldiers and officials as spoils of war. The same goes for the places that got conquered, except the non muslim women and children there would also get ensalved. This type of treatment is the reason why the Greeks, Serbs, Armenians, Assyrians, and so many other minorities revolted against the Ottomans and ended up getting genocided as a result. But it’s not just the Ottomans, the Malmuks before them as well as the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Crusaders, and so on all engaged in similar behavior. You would be hard pressed to find any sustained period of time in this region’s history that didn’t have oppression, war, or violence.
“Palestine did not exist before the 1930s”
1917 In November (October on the Julian calendar), the Bolsheviks seize power and Russia makes preparations to withdraw from the war. That same month, Britain issues the Balfour Declaration. In December, the British Army led by General Allenby marches victoriously into Jerusalem. Palestine is placed under British military occupation (1917–20). It then had a population of 688,957 Arabs (including Christians, Muslims and other non-Jewish minorities) and a population of 58,728 Jews.
1922 The Council of the League of Nations agrees to the text of the British Mandate of Palestine. The Palestine Order-in-Council of 1 September separates Palestine from the Emirate of Transjordan, which is established to the east of the River Jordan. The Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, in a statement on British policy rejects the claim that Palestine was to become ‘as Jewish as England is English’. He declares: ‘His Majesty’s Government regard any such expectation as impracticable and have no such aim in view.’ He adds that: ‘the status of all citizens of Palestine in the eye of the law shall be Palestinian, and it has never been intended that they, or any section of them, should possess any other juridical status. In an exchange of correspondence with the Palestine Arab delegation, Churchill recognizes ‘the people of Palestine’, specifically referring to Palestine’s Arab community.
1948 Civil war breaks out on a wider scale in Palestine. In March, the US concludes that partition is unworkable and reverses its policy. It declares itself in favor of a UN Trusteeship for Palestine in a single unitary state. A UN Trusteeship Agreement is subsequently drafted. The Jewish Agency condemns it, goes on the offensive and avows to proclaim a Hebrew Republic on 16 May. In April, the Haganah (Jewish paramilitary), implements the Plan Dalet. Thirteen military operations follow, eight of which are beyond the boundaries set out for the Arab state in the UN Partition Plan. On 11 April, a massacre is perpetrated by the Irgun with the support of the Haganah in the Palestinian Arab village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem. By May, the Zionists have conquered Jaffa (which was supposed to be part of the Arab state as envisaged in the UN Partition Plan) and Haifa, causing their Arab populations to flee to secure ground. At midnight on 14/15 May the last British High Commissioner in Palestine terminates the Mandate and departs Haifa. The Yishuv concomitantly proclaims the establishment of the state of Israel. By this time, over 350,000 Palestinian Arabs have been evicted from their homes. The Arab Legion, commanded by British officers, enters Palestine on the pretext that it is defending the population of Palestine from further attacks by the Haganah and the Irgun (Zionist paramilitary). It is supported by troops from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Iraq. The fighting escalates. In July, the Haganah captures Lydda, Ramle and Nazareth expelling its Arab populations. By the time hostilities come to an end some 750,000 Palestinian Arabs and 17,000 Jews are displaced by the fighting. In December, the UN General Assembly passes a resolution providing that: ‘the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.
This doesn’t disprove what I said whatsoever. All this shows is that the term “Palestine” exists, and it does. Palestine has been the colloquial term for the region that roughly covers the Abrahamic religion’s holy land since it was coined by the Romans. However, what this does not show is Palestine being an independent sovereign state at any point in history. This region did not have any sort of sovereignty for thousands of years. It was always controlled by external empires. The two modern states are literally the first ones since ancient times to rule the land independently from within. This idea that there was a Palestinian country historically that has always existed before Israel is simply not true. The ethnic cleansing and fighting is real, but Palestine before the modern state was never a country at any point in the past.
Why Egypt and not Jordan? Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, and Palestine are exactly the same. They’re the same people with the same culture, that were only divided by colonial borders drawn by the French and British. The idea of a Palestinian ethnicity is a new phenomenon, it didn’t exist before the 1920s. They’re Levantese Arabs. Egyptians are pretty distinct from Levantese Arabs. They have their own cuisine, history, dialect, ideas about religion, and so on. Your proposal doesn’t make sense on that front alone.
In my proposal, Egypt gives up part of the Sinai to Israel in exchange for Egypt getting the West Bank enlarged by land equivalent to the Gaza Strip which would go to Israel. What land would Jordan give to Israel?
Egypt cannot possibly govern the West Bank, it is too far from the Egyptian heartland and it is also physically separated from the rest of country. Egypt has already tried governing Gaza before and that went horribly wrong.
Jordan and the West Bank are physically connected and they’re the same culturally, therefore it makes sense for them to be together in that sense, but with that being said, Jordan also tried to rule the West Bank before and that went pretty poorly.
The biggest hurdle here is why would Egypt or Jordan participate? What would they get out of it. They would be getting a big headache in exchange for a lot of strategic land (Egypt giving the Sinai also means giving up one side of the Suez Canal and that’s a big no no in geopolitics). Not to mention, that the West Bank already has well over 700,000 settlers. Even if we exclude East Jerusalem, that’s still over 500k settlers. That’s a loooot of people, and they’re also some of most unhinged zealots you’ll find anywhere in the world. That’s even bigger headache than the Palestinians that they’ll have to take on. I just don’t see this as a realistic proposal.
Egypt would be giving up some up the Sinai not all of it. The US governs Alaska and Hawaii despite not being physically connected. Egypt will get peace at its borders. Also, fighting in Gaza and the West Bank could push Palestinian refugees into Egypt.
It’s not the same. The US has unrestricted air and ocean access to both Alaska and Hawaii, Egypt won’t have that. Not to mention, Egypt gains nothing from this deal. The Sinai is more strategically important to them
As part of the deal, Egypt could be given permission to access its new land through a specific land corridor. Egypt would gain peace on its borders. Continual fighting between Israel and Palestinian could cause a flood of migrants into Egypt.
Egypt already has peace with Israel and they’re already blocking any potential wave of Palestinian migrants and have been for decades now. Egypt doesn’t benefit from such a deal
