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ZIONISM DIDN’T GO WRONG, IT WAS ALWAYS BUILT THIS WAY  
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Gideon Levy
May 6, 2026
Haaretz
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_ Zionism, at its base, is the belief in Jewish supremacy between the
Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and just like any other
ideology that subscribes to racial, national or religious supremacy,
it is illegitimate. _

Omer Bartov at the launch of his new book, "Israel: What Went Wrong?"
on April 21 near Boston., Photo credit: Arthur Mansavage / Haaretz

 

It's not easy being Israeli and anti-Zionist. It's almost impossible.
That combination is perceived in Israel as treason, heresy, lacking
any legitimacy. This has been the case since the good, old Mapai-era
Israel, long before the dark days of Benjamin Netanyahu and Itamar
Ben-Gvir.

Not since the Soviet Union has there been another state with such an
exclusionary and rapacious ideology, an ideology that prohibited any
doubts or denial, like the Zionist State of Israel. Even being an
anti-Zionist exile is not easy, especially for a prince of the Zionist
aristocracy.

Omer Bartov is a renowned Israeli American historian, a genocide
researcher and an expert on the Holocaust who teaches at Brown
University, in Providence, Rhode Island. After deliberating for two
years, Bartov reached the conclusion that Israel did in fact
perpetrate a genocide in the Gaza Strip.

He published two op-eds that reflected the process he went through
regarding the label of genocide
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in The New York Times, evoking reactions across the globe. One of the
books written by his author and journalist father, Hanoch Bartov, is
called "Ligdol Ulikhtov Be'Eretz Yisrael" ("To grow up in and to write
in the Land of Israel"). Omer Bartov's most recent book is "Israel:
What Went Wrong?" – the entire journey, in a nutshell.

On the occasion of the book's release, Bartov gave an interview to
Haaretz
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in which he hastened to declare that he is not anti-Zionist, so
painful and difficult is such an admission. "I grew up in a Zionist
home. It was self-evident to me that Israel was my place," he said, by
way of explaining why he is not "anti." But he left this home decades
ago, and his statements make one wonder about his concerns, or perhaps
his shame, over admitting that he is anti-Zionist, which ostensibly
still lacks legitimacy.

 
Mother of a 15-year-old Palestinian who was killed by Israeli
security forces during a military raid carries her son's body during
his funeral, in the al-Dheisheh refugee camp near the occupied West
Bank city of Bethlehem, in March.  (Photo credit: Hazem Bader/Agence
France-Presse (AFP)  //  Haaretz)
 

Bartov says that Zionism is bound to disappear, that Israel cannot
exist as a normal state under this ideology and that if Zionism could
lead to genocide in Gaza
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it can no longer hold as an ideology. It is difficult to come up with
any assertions that are more courageous and correct – or more
anti-Zionist – than these.

If so, why is Bartov reluctant to call himself anti-Zionist? There is
no better evidence than this for the indoctrination embedded deep in
the hearts of every Jew that has grown up here. An expatriate Israeli
intellectual, a critical and sharp one, does not dare define himself
as anti-Zionist even though his arguments attest that he is one.

It's imperative to break this prohibition. An Israeli, even an Israeli
exile, is permitted to be anti-Zionist
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and still be legitimate. Zionism is an ideology that can be
questioned, like any other ideology. At its base is the belief in
Jewish supremacy between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea,
and just like any other ideology that subscribes to racial, national
or religious supremacy, it is illegitimate.

Bartov's approach is different than the anti-Zionist trends now
flourishing around the world. He is convinced that something went
wrong in the pure and innocent country that used to be his, and that
something got twisted in its pure Zionist ideology. There was an
ideology that led to the establishment of a highly moral state, and
suddenly, something went wrong. This statement may perhaps ease the
agonies of Bartov's painful farewell to Zionism, but it's doubtful
that it is the truth.

Bartov says he's not a believer in the kind of history where, in the
end, you say, "We always knew it would turn out this way." But it
began this way, after all. The continuation was not inevitable, but
for it to be different, there had to be a correction, and that never
happened.

Zionism turned its back on the indigenous population that lived in
Palestine from its early days – ever since the days of "the conquest
of labor," calling for Jews to work in agriculture and industry –
the first Zionist dispossession. Long before the Arab riots of 1929
and the Holocaust, the movement sought to dispossess and expel the
local population.

Then, as now; Yigal Allon, as Bezalel Smotrich. That was the
beginning, and it was tainted. Bartov, Zionism did not become
something else; it was always like that. I wish it had become
something different. Perhaps it is not yet too late.

_[__GIDEON LEVY_
[[link removed]]_ is a Haaretz
columnist and a member of the newspaper's editorial board. Levy joined
Haaretz in 1982, and spent four years as the newspaper's deputy
editor. He was the recipient of the Euro-Med Journalist Prize for
2008; the Leipzig Freedom Prize in 2001; the Israeli Journalists’
Union Prize in 1997; and The Association of Human Rights in Israel
Award for 1996. His new book, __The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a
Catastrophe_
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just been published by Verso.] _

* zionism
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* Anti-Zionism
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* Zionists
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* Israel
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* Palestine
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* Israel-Palestine
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* Palestinians
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* Gaza
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* West Bank
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* anti-Israel
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* Holocaust
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* The Holocaust
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* Nakba
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* Israel-Gaza War
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* Genocide
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* apartheid
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* war crimes
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* IDF
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