What went wrong

Two weeks ago I wrote about a prominent leftist Israeli academic who has tirelessly promoted the false claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Here I want to critically examine his explanation for why Israel is supposedly acting in such an atrocious way.

Omer Bartov’s criticisms of Israel are important to examine precisely because they are relatively sophisticated. Better-known political figures, such as Owen Jones and Jeremy Corbyn, draw on the Israeli-American historian’s work in their own campaigning. It gives their dubious claims a coherence they would probably not have otherwise.

It is also worth noting that Bartov is a self-proclaimed leftist. Examining his arguments more closely help explain the left’s terrible trajectory on Israel and related questions.

As a reminder, Bartov’s allegation of Israeli genocide essentially relies on a two-stage argument. His starting point is to redefine genocide to mean something other than how most people understand it. He concedes that Israel was not trying to systematically eliminate the Gaza population so instead defines genocide as making the territory unliveable. It is no doubt true that living conditions for Gazan civilians are hellish but blaming Israel is another matter. Hamas deliberately provoked the conflict with its 7 October pogrom in southern Israel after painstakingly constructing the battlefield in which it would be fought. The Islamist terror group spent many years constructing a huge tunnel network which enabled it to shield its forces under the Gazan civilian population.

In a talk at Birkbeck University of London this week he outlined his argument for why in his view Israel acted so appallingly. The title, “Israel: What went wrong”, was a reference to what he regards as the long-term political degeneration of Israeli society since its foundation in 1948. He is in the midst of writing a book on the same theme.

It is worth noting that the title is a nod to a book by Bernard Lewis, a renowned conservative Middle East expert, published in 2002. Its concern was how the Islamic world had over a period of centuries failed to keep up with the West and so fell under its domination. The core of Lewis’s argument is available to read in an article published in the Atlantic.

For Bartov the crucial turning point for Israel’s political degeneration was the foundation of the state in 1948. That was when Zionism moved from being a political movement to a state policy. After that, he argues, it embodied ethno-nationalist and racist ideas. Before then it at least had a positive side to it as a movement for Jewish liberation and a refuge from anti-Semitism.

He identifies several moments in what he sees as the degeneration of Zionism. There was the nakba (‘catastrophe’ in Arabic) in 1948 when, according to the anti-Zionist narrative, the Palestinians were forced from their land. There was Israel’s failure to devise a constitution which was a missed opportunity to embody democratic principles. In 1967 there was the Six-Day War in which Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza strip. This occupation in turn, argues Bartov, corrupted both Israeli and Palestinian society. His final key turning point, until 7 October, was the right wing government’s campaign for judicial overhaul. That was a package of legislative reform whose main plank was weakening Israel’s powerful supreme court.

A consistent feature of Bartov’s account of these different events is its one-sidedness. Although he has the in-depth knowledge of an academic in an important respect his account is more like that of an activist. He focuses on all the bad things Israel has supposedly done but neglects to take into account what it was reacting against. That approach inevitably leads to a grossly distorted historical view.

Take the standard anti-Israel activist account of 1948. From such a perspective Zionist settler colonialists migrated from Europe to impose a land grab on the Palestinian people. As a result, so it is argued, Israel expelled about 700,000 Palestinians from their land.

The reality was of course far more complex. For a start most of the Jews who ended up in the land were not ideological zealots but were fleeing persecution. Then, when they eventually established a state, it was invaded by the surrounding Arab armies intent on destroying it. That does not mean that Israeli forces behaved perfectly in every instance. It is possible to find examples of misbehaviour. But the context was an existential battle where Israel’s opponents were determined to strangle it at birth.

Bartov no doubt is aware of these nuances. He has a formidable reputation as a historian at an elite American university. But in his campaigning work he chooses to ignore them, downplay them or find excuses for the mortal threat posed to Israel.

His approach to the 1967 war shows a similar one-sidedness. It is true that Israel struck the surrounding regimes first but it was a pre-emptive strike against those making overt military threats. Withdrawing from the territories it captured in the war was more easily said than done. There were negotiations in which Israel made offers of partial withdrawal but these were not accepted by the Palestinian side. There was also the fear that if it did withdraw from captured territory it could be used as a base to attack Israel. This is exactly what transpired in relation to Gaza which Israel withdrew its military forces from in 2005.

In broad terms the same one-sidedness is apparent in his account of Israel’s recent invasion of Gaza. While notionally condemning the 7 October pogrom he goes on to describe Israel’s actions as essentially an act of vengeance. Israel’s military action in Gaza is portrayed as having no rationale apart from imposing pain on the Palestinian people.

It was only when I pushed him, using a term he had used 20 years ago, that he made some concessions to Hamas being ‘Hitlerite’. He accepted that Hamas was “not progressive” (his words) but then used the standard counter-argument that Israeli leaders have backed Hamas as a counter-weight to the Palestinian nationalists. To the extent there is truth in that charge it should be seen as a pragmatic measure designed to counter an existential threat. In any event it does not alter the fact that Hamas has anti-Semitism at the core of its doctrine. Nor that Islamism is hostile to any notion of rights including for Palestinians. It is unequivocally opposed to notions such as national self-determination as well as to individual rights for gays and women. This hostility is central to its worldview rather than incidental. It is part of the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Islamist movement, which sees destroying Israel as a pre-condition for building an international Islamic order.

Bartov also ignored my point that Israel is not just fighting Hamas but a wide range of Islamist forces. These include Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Houthis from Yemen and Iran. All of them are openly committed to Israel’s destruction. Israel may have gained the upper hand against them after over a year of bloody fighting but things could have been fundamentally different. Hizbullah had a plan to attack Israel shortly after 7 October but, fortunately for Israel, it hesitated before doing so. In any case the human, social and economic costs of Israel’s engagement in the war have been enormous.

He makes the common activist error of treating terms as political swearwords. For example, take the use of “ethnonationalism” in this context. Israel certainly defines itself as a Jewish state but it has a unique character as many of its inhabitants fled anti-Semitic persecution around the world. Imposing a label as a term of abuse means failing to grapple with its specific circumstances.

Nor does Israel in principle have a problem with having a minority of non-Jewish inhabitants who can become citizens, vote and become MPs. Israel’s record on these questions is not perfect but, according to objective rankings, it is better than most countries.

Another key defining feature of Bartov’s world view is his elitism. As I have written previously the protests against Israel’s judicial reform were essentially a revolt of the elites. Israel’s most privileged opposed an initiative which would have weakened the power of the supreme court to veto legislation from the democratically elected Knesset.

Strikingly the most positive force for change in Bartov’s view could have been the Biden administration. He lamented the fact it had not imposed a peace settlement on Israelis and Palestinians. Apparently he saw no possibly of any grassroots forces from Israelis or Palestinians driving positive change. Of course the spectre of the incoming Trump administration deepens his pessimism still further.

Ultimately Bartov’s approach inadvertently illustrates what has gone wrong with the left rather than with Israel. The self-proclaimed leftists, in common with others of that persuasion, plays down the threat posed by contemporary anti-Semitism. He is all too willing to argue that the spectre is simply being weaponised by Israel’s supporters. He also fails to advocate for Israel’s right to self-determination. The country is engaged in a constant battle with those who seek to destroy it. In addition, like most other leftists, he ignores the pernicious power of Islamism even though, when pressed, he will acknowledge it is “not progressive”. Finally, he sees the only positive political settlement in the region is one imposed by Washington DC rather than coming from Israelis or Palestinians.

In a way it is unfair to single out Bartov for his one-sidedness. It is the leftist tradition, with which he identifies, which has gone horribly wrong.

PHOTO: "Flickr - Government Press Office (GPO) - David Ben Gurion reading the Declaration of Independence" by GPO photographer is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.