Israel: did it go wrong?
JVL Introduction
Omer Bartov’s new book Israel: What went wrong argues that had Israel’s leaders implemented what they had promised – a constitution, bill of rights and defined borders – things might well have been different, and we might have been spared the genocide in Gaza.
This has provoked some debate to which Martin Shaw contributes here, taking strong issue with any attempt to locate Zionism’s problems solely in 1948 when it became a state ideology.
It also leads him to challenge Bertov’s belief that Israel might yet be restored to the constitutional path it eschewed.
The genocide is international in character, fundamentally enabled by most western states, the rot much deeper than Bertov seems to grasp.
But ultimately says Shaw the book’s thesis, encapsulated in its title title, Israel: What Went Wrong?, begs the question as to whether it was ever right…
RK
This article was originally published by Martin Shaw's Substack on Mon 11 May 2026. Read the original here.
Israel: did it go wrong?
My contribution to the debate on Omer Bartov’s book ‘Israel: What Went Wrong?’
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The Jewish state is a curse on all Jews.
I have just started (Introduction) reading this book and have already begun to contemplate putting it down. Even I, a complete learner in this field, understand enough to be confident that the Zionists never had the slightest intention of sharing Palestine with the ‘existing non-Jewish communities’ If Omer Bartov is not on the same page on that foundational fact, we part company. Does he seriously believe, with his lifetime of learning, that had Israel got a constitution, bill of rights and defined borders everything would be good in the best of all possible worlds… he’s lost me. There’s a reason why Israel hasn’t got a Constitution. And that’s in the same family of ideas as why Israel executed Sinwar instead of arresting him, detaining him and having him testify in ‘the modern-Eichmann trials’. And with that thought…
I have about 200 books on Israel-Palestine and no time to squander on duds! I will persevere for a while, but if what Gideon Levy writes above is fair – and I have a great deal of respect for him (and Daniel Levy!) then I’ll move on to something more rigorous. All 2000 books in my collection, BTW, 95% non-fiction, will end up via my LW&T with Oxfam (for whom I worked in Chad). So none will go to waste. All will find good homes. My interest in Israel-Palestine stems from 7 October 2023. So I’ve still got L plates on. The more I think I know something in this field the more I realise how little I ‘know’
This summary acknowledges Bartov’s lack of ‘historical specificity’. I always argue that it was the needs of the defence of the powers of British imperialism in the middle of the first world war which drove Britain to endorse the Zionist project. That is, the take over of the levant by Britain and France where Britain was desperate to occupy Palestine in order to control the Suez canal which was its lifeline to India, ‘The Jewel in the Crown’. A line in the sand’ by James Barr describes the Franco/British conflict. Other motivation for the endorsement of the Zionist project was the need for cheap oil, the wish to rid Britain of the large Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe etc. The concept of ‘a loyal little Ulster’ in the Middle East was predominant and was followed by the USA when the US replaced the British post World War two. The current need by the US to keep Israel powerful is being played out under Trump continuing Biden’s policy and that of previous presidents. Now we see the main trade enemy of the US, China, being attacked by the control of oil from both Venezuela and Iran and the desire to take Greenland and the Panama Canal to control the sea passages of oil tankers The need to build socialist movement s to destroy the capitalist system has never been so urgent.