Award-winning Israeli-American author Omer Bartov at his book launch in Cambridge, near Boston, on Tuesday.

Award-winning Israeli-American author Omer Bartov at his book launch in Cambridge, near Boston, on Tuesday. Credit: Arthur Mansavage

In an interview with Haaretz ahead of the release of ‘Israel: What Went Wrong,’ renowned genocide studies scholar Omer Bartov talks about trading letters with Yitzhak Rabin as a young soldier, what’s wrong with Holocaust-Hamas comparisons and why he thinks Israelis, too, need to ditch Zionism

Eitan Nechin 12:13 AM • April 24 2026 IDT

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Cambridge, MASSACHUSETTS – In May 2024, the Israeli-born historian Omer Bartov concluded that what he was watching in Gaza met the definition of genocide under the 1948 UN Convention. It was not a conclusion he wanted to reach.

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