Please join the Global Justice Program for a lecture on "Israel: What Went Wrong?" by Omer Bartov, an Israeli-American scholar and Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University.

This lecture will provide a gist of Bartov's forthcoming book, Israel: What Went Wrong?, to be published in April 2026. The book explores the tragic transformation of Zionism, a movement that sought to emancipate European Jewry from oppression, into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism. How is it possible that a state founded in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, an event that gave legitimacy to a national home for the Jews, stands credibly accused of perpetrating large-scale war crimes? How do we come to terms with the fact that Israel’s war of destruction is being conducted with the support, laced with denial and indifference, of so many of its Jewish citizens? Tracing the roots of the violent events currently unfolding in Israel and the occupied territories, the book tracks Israel’s moral tribulations and considers the origins of Zionism; the intertwining of its independence with Palestinian displacement; the politics of the Holocaust; controversies over the term "genocide"; and the uncertain future. 

Bartov is an Israeli-American scholar and Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. He has written widely on war crimes, interethnic relations, and genocide. Recent books, published in multiple languages, include Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018), which won the National Jewish Book Award, and Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis (2023), named Choice 2024 Outstanding Academic Title. Bartov’s essays and commentaries have been widely featured in national and international magazines and media outlets. His new book, Israel: What Went Wrong? will be published in April 2026 by FSG in the US and Penguin/Random Books in the UK.