About this episode

Professor Omer Bartov discusses the historical and political trajectory of Israel and the current crisis it faces.

How did a state founded in the shadow of catastrophe arrive at this moment of profound crisis? In this urgent and deeply reflective conversation, historian and genocide scholar Professor Omer Bartov joins the Britain Palestine Project to examine the political, moral, and historical trajectory of Israel from its founding to the present day. Drawing on decades of research into nationalism, war, memory, and mass violence, Bartov explores the ideological foundations of the Israeli state, the long-term consequences of occupation, and the growing international debate around human rights, apartheid, and genocide. He also reflects on the changing role of Holocaust memory in Israeli political culture, the collapse of the peace process, and the dangers posed by rising extremism and dehumanisation. This episode asks difficult but essential questions: What went wrong? Could it have been different? And what might accountability, justice, and coexistence look like now? Professor Omer Bartov is an Israeli-American scholar and Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. He has written extensively on war crimes, interethnic relations, nationalism, and genocide. His…

People in this episode

Host: Diana Safieh

Guest: Omer Bartov

Topics covered

• Israel
• political crisis
• Holocaust memory
• occupation
• human rights
• extremism
• coexistence

Keywords

• Israel
• Omer Bartov
• Holocaust
• occupation
• human rights
• extremism
• coexistence

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Brown University

Books & works: Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz, Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis, Israel: What Went Wrong?

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