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.
the way out need not be reasonable for the zionists. They are not due “reasonableness” at this point. Justice and peace needs to be restorative to the victims, not reasonable in the eyes of the criminals. The dead cant be brought back can they? How are zionists going to find a way out of that, beyond paying with their own blood? We’re all open to their suggestions, but they arent even interested in coming to the table and never have been.
and
Go back and read about ben gurion and the start of Israel. Its never been reasonable, they always knew they were using terorristic means, theft and murder. They used to be more honest about it. Netenyahu is just the latest in 90 years of these violent supremecist murdering thieves.
https://www.progressiveisrael.org/ben-gurions-notorious-quotes-their-polemical-uses-abuses/
How is this any different from the mentality that the Israeli far right uses now? This reads to me like collective punishment. The reality is that Israel is not going anywhere. The country is already established and it has a big distinct population, institutions, and culture. You can’t destroy it. Like what is even the thought process here? To ethnically cleanse 7 million people to counterbalance previous ethnic cleansing? That’s just the classic an eye for an eye mentality. The goal should always be to see Israelis and Palestinians living together in peace with everybody having the same rights and freedoms, not to carry out some weird vendettas for some misguided sense of justice held by westerners.
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.
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.
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.
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.
All assessments are through an ideological lense. I explained my lense which is examining policy and where it is heading. I also took a stab at yours which you have confirmed. It amounts to a societal pendulum, which is of course is my very reductionist view of it.
It is a common but misleading trope on many levels but does have some validity depending on how you look at it. While on the surface this may may often seem true the devil is in always in the details.
Take the forward march of progress on something like slavery. There are more slaves today than at any time in history. This is also discounting indentured service and a more extreme leftist viewpoint like underemployment or even wage slavery.
There are numerous examples of this and I think they would challenge your worldview. Take another example like environment degradation. Even though the US has the strongest environmental laws in history (discounting this most recent administration) they still have managed to poison every human with forever chemicals and micro plastics. Not to mention other future catastrophic calamities like the oceans dying off or global warming set to displace billions of people.
This raises an important criticism of a policy based perspective. Policies are not always enforced and can be also be used for nefarious purposes. Take the War on Drugs for example. Under the guise of a public health emergency the US grew their prison population to encompass 20% of the world’s total declared prison population but only having about 5% total of the world’s population. Of course, we later came to realize that it really was an attack on minorities which amounts to a slow burn genocide by the white nationalists.
History teaches nothing about the computer or what things like the military industrial complex has achieved through rampant fascism around the world. While it can serve as a predictor of some human behavior it can’t explain how to handle AI. I think this is where history can’t help us even if it is fascinating to study.