General Discussion

Bartov says the early Zionist movement had liberatory intentions, aiming to emancipate the persecuted Jewish minority in Europe and modeling itself after other contemporary ethnonationalist movements. He then argues that while Israel had the opportunity to “become a normal state” and “issue a constitution that would provide equality to all its citizens, would define its borders and create a legal framework” that could also acknowledge and redress the Nakba, it chose another path. Instead of remedying its foundational violence, he says, the modern Israeli state has become increasingly “militaristic, centralized, expansionist, racist and, as we’ve seen since October 2023, genocidal.” Though Bartov does not identify as an anti-Zionist, he says Israel “must discard Zionism, it must put it on the garbage heap of history, and it must redefine itself, going all the way back to 1948.”

Levy, on the other hand, says Zionism has never been reformable, because the movement, from its very beginning, “started wrong, without the belief or the conviction that we can live together.” He contests Bartov’s assertion that early Zionist intentions became warped over the 20th century, and says instead that the violent dispossession of Palestinians is embedded into the premise of the movement. “This very same attitude, this very same policy never stopped ever since ’48,” Levy contends. His latest piece in Haaretz is titled “Zionism Didn’t Go Wrong, It Was Always Built This Way.”

OMER BARTOV: Yeah, that’s a good question. Look, as I was trying to say, I think if you understand Zionism as the claim the Jews made already in the late 19th century that Jews, like all other people, have the right of self-determination, while I myself — and I’ve written two books on that — am not a great supporter of nationalism, if you make that claim, then you have to be consistent. That is, if you support the right of self-determination for Jews, you would support it for anyone else, including, of course, for Palestinians. The one right you do not have with self-determination is to exercise it while oppressing or removing others from the land that you claim to be your own. So, I would not define myself as anti-Zionist, in the sense that I think that all groups, including Jews, have a right of self-determination.

I do think, however, that Zionism, as it has evolved and what it has become now, is no longer supportable. I don’t think that one can reform it anymore. And I think that the state of Israel, if it wants to become again a normal state, if it wants to be a member of the international community, it must discard Zionism, it must put it on the garbage heap of history, and it must redefine itself, going all the way back to 1948. In other words, it has to find a way, together with Palestinians, of how these two groups that live there — 7 million Jews and 7 million Palestinians — how they can share the space.

LEVY: The second remark, which in my view is more important, is the belief of Omer that Zionism was very justified and had good reasons, a legitimacy, and Israel has a legitimacy, and then something went wrong, while I’m claiming that from the very beginning Zionism took a wrong direction, because the Jews who came to Palestine, like my parents and Omer’s parents, had no other place to go, and it was for them a real safe haven. It was a real — the only place they can rescue themselves. But this could have been done in a different way. You don’t come to a neighborhood and turn your back to the people who lived there centuries before you. And what Zionism did from the very beginning — not it went wrong, it started wrong — without the belief or the conviction that we can live together. Zionism never really tried to [inaudible] Palestinians. It was always to conquer them, to transfer them, to take their jobs, to take their lives, to take their properties, in order to become the only people who lives between the river and the sea. And here, we really differ, because not something went wrong, something started wrong.