Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, when asked to explain the apparent about-face that led him to advocate the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, quoted a beloved Israeli pop ballad. “What you can see from there, you can’t see from here,” he said, referring to the shift in perspective he had supposedly undergone since coming to power.
Israeli-born Holocaust historian Omer Bartov invoked the same line when he was asked how he had come to view Israel’s ferocious assault on Gaza as a genocide. Living in the US, where he has spent more than three decades, he said, had given him the necessary distance to see the annihilation of Gaza for what it was. “I think it’s very hard to be dispassionate when you’re there,” he said.
Bartov did more than simply apply the word genocide to Israel’s actions: he shouted it from the establishment-media rooftops, making the case in a lengthy July 2025 essay in the New York Times titled: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. (He had addressed some of the arguments in a Guardian essay the year prior.) Bartov’s declaration cost him several close relationships, he told me, even though subsequent events have not only validated his analysis but further demonstrated the lack of concern for Palestinian suffering that has become prevalent in Israeli society.
His new book, Israel: What Went Wrong?, is an attempt to explain that indifference. The book, which was published on Tuesday, is a detailed account of how Israel was transformed from a hopeful nation that in its founding document promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens irrespective of religion, race or sex” into one intent on what he bluntly terms “settler colonialism and ethno-nationalism”.
That’s clearly not what I said. I said that the region has never had a righteous or rightful ruler because the regions history for the past few thousand years consists of different groups of people conquering it for themselves while putting down everybody else. That’s not whitewashing, that’s just history.
The problem is that statement is so sweeping and general that it isnt really saying anything. You could say that about literally any part of the world.
Jews and Christians are “people of the book” according to Islam and the Abrahamic religions coexisted relatively harmoniously for millennia. The Jew hatred seen in mediaeval and modern Europe was completely alien.
The rise in sectarian violence is relatively knew in the region and coincides, funnily enough, with the establishment of the European Zionist colony in Palestine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Book?wprov=sfla1
The statement could be applicable elsewhere, but it is most definitely applicable here. Just because it could be generalized that doesn’t mean it’s not true or that it doesn’t hold value.
I’m pretty damn knowledgeable on islam. I’m an exmuslim who studied the religion for a long time and I’ve also lived in Iraq and Syria, I’ve seen these things first hand, and I can tell you, that you’re not even scratching the surface here. Your understanding of islam and how it treats religious minorities under its rule is very much incomplete.
islamic scriptures (quran and the hadiths) are very explicit about the fact that islam is inherently superior to all other religions because it is the perfect word of allah. Those who don’t follow it are going against allah, and therefore they are enemies of islam. The religion treats is EXTREMELY hostile to anything that threatens islam. Atheism is punishable by death, polytheism is punishable by death, apostasy is punishable by death, criticizing islam is punishable by death. There are dozens of verses and sahih hadiths that talk about how Jews and Christians are vermin who will try to corrupt the pure hearts of muslims with lies about the allah and his messenger. It specifically gives stories about Jews are lying backstabbers who should never be trusted.
Like just take a minute and read these verses in the quran:
https://quranx.com/5.51?Context=3
https://quranx.com/5.64?Context=3
https://quranx.com/5.82?Context=3
Also take a minute to read these sahih hadiths:
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/Reference/Hadith-2922/
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/Reference/Hadith-2767d/
https://quranx.com/Hadith/AbuDawud/DarusSalam/Hadith-4542/
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/Reference/Hadith-1731a/
This is stuff that makes Hitler blush. Antisemitism is a core part of islam, and always was from the very beginning. Pretending that islam is a great peaceful religion that got along with other religions is a delusional take that’s only held by ignorant westerners who have a completely falsified image of the religion. This is the reality. islam has never gotten along well with Christians, Jews or any other religion for that matter because it’s inherently against the religion to do so.
Again, this is something that’s entirely false. Medieval europe was definitely very antisemitic, however, it was not worse than the muslim world at any point in history. This view you have of islam is not based in reality. Statements like this tell me that your knowledge on islamic history is very limited. The history of antisemitism in the muslim world was and still is just as severe, extensive, and chronic as Europe.
I have no idea where you’re getting your information from, but these statements have no historical accuracy. Sectarian violence is the norm in this region. That’s literally THE defining trait of this region. You can’t substitute actual factual history with ideological narratives. This idea that this region was all flowers and rainbows where everybody lives in peace and harmony while singing and dancing together before Israel showed up is not reality. That’s a myth. The reality is that this region and the middle east at large has such a comically long history of sectarian violence that it make statements like this equally frustrating and silly.
Before the modern states of Israel and Palestine and even the British mandate, this area was controlled by the Ottoman Turks. The Turks had a system of divide an conquer that they used to oppress all the non muslims and non Turks to keep the muslim Turks at the top. The Ottomans would employ tactics such evacuating entire towns when there’s a war nearby, but only allowing muslims to go back, not Christians, Jews, or other religious minorities. They place restrictions on certain religious groups from migrating to cities that are culturally significant to them (like Jews being banned from moving to Hebron and Jerusalem). All of this while, these people are subjugated under islamic rule where they’re treated as second class citizens. It’s not religious minorities, even muslims from other ethnicities like the Kurds and Arabs got rough treatment. There were so many revolts, genocides, ethnic cleansing campaigns, and wars under the Ottoman Empire that there exist lists of lists of the atrocities that they committed.
It’s not just the Ottomans, if you go back to the Arab caliphates like the Malmuks, Umayyads, and the Abbasids, you’ll see that they have a long history of exiling Jews, Christians and other religious minorities as well ethnically cleansing them, enslaving their women and children, oppressing them, and constantly going to wars with them in order to conquer them.If you go back even further, you’ll see the Crusader states did the same thing with muslims, Jews, and others. Even the Romans did similar things.
The reason for this is because religion in the middle east has a different place in society than in the west. In western societies, religion is seen as a personal matter. You believe what you want to believe, and as long as you’re not bothering anybody else there’s no problem with it. At the end of the day everybody has this right as long as they except the secular system of governance. That’s not how works in the middle east, your religion is your whole identity.
Your religion defines who your people are, what your public beliefs are, what your culture is, how open you can be, where you get to live, what your social status is in society, who your friends will be, who get to marry, how you get treated, and who’s going to look out for you. If your religious group and another hate each other, then you have to hate the other group. If you don’t then you’ll be cast out and you could lose your place in society. You also have to assume everybody else from the other religious group is out to get you, and they will assume you’re out to get them. If you try to get out of it by leaving your religion then you’ll branded as a traitor and you’ll be treated as an outcast or people will come to take your life. It’s very serious, and that sort of dynamic is simply foreign to people in the west. This is why things like collective punishment, sectarianism tensions, and religious hatred are so high in the middle east. Religion just has a different meaning over there.