The Moral Collapse of a Nation
Hugh J. Curran 08/02/2026
Bartov grew up in Israel and wondered how the country had undergone such radical changes so as to become a perpetrator of violence, not only against Palestinians, but also against Jewish moral standing in the world. He explored the transformation of a nation dedicated to emancipating Jews from persecution to the embrace of an ideology of ethno-nationalism.
He also discussed why the U.S. enabled the Gaza bombing, the results which were broadcast to viewers throughout the world. The initial excuse of self-defense by Israel, following the Oct 7, 2023 assault by Hamas into Israel, which killed 1200, became less consequential as the bombing of Gaza took a daily toll, far surpassing the results of the Hamas’ attack. The destruction of hospitals, schools, universities and the deliberate targeting of medical personnel and journalists has continued without let-up for two years and ten months.
Bartov asks why Israel has become such a violent and divisive land. Although he lived in Israel in his youth he aspired to high ideals, wishing to work out accommodations with the Palestinians. But that potential is now in the past as Israel became wedded to the most extreme elements of Zionism, impelling tens of thousands of Israel’s most educated to flee the country.
Bartov asks why a nation, inspired by European and Zionist values in the late 19th century, and given legal status by the British through the Balfour Declaration in 1917, as well as being given support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. After WWII, Israel opened the country to survivors of the Holocaust. But under such circumstances, why would a nation, aspiring to be in accord with religious principles, presumably inherited from ancient Israel, have succumbed to committing genocide on a people who were not from Europe and had no involvement in the Holocaust?
An additional question is why such “chosen people” could forcibly displace 750,000 Palestinians eighty years ago and do so with such impunity? Why were these “crimes against humanity” ignored by a Jewish population which has given overwhelming support to extremist policies. Bartov asks whether Nazi war crimes against the Jews provides a link to the Israeli genocide? In an interview on Democracy Now!, he observed that “you cannot use the Holocaust to continue to draw on the credit of the past as a justification. Israel can no longer say we can do whatever we like because we were a nation subjected to genocide. You cannot continue to use this argument allowing the mass killing of another people. Future generations of Israeli people will not easily be cleansed of this immense moral stain. Although such cleansing may come from the shadow of the Holocaust when Israelis begin to look at reality as it is [rather than relying on shallow self-justifications]. At that point they can begin to think how they can reconstitute their own nation.”
One of the dangers Bartov warned against was that some nations in the future may use the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Gaza to justify future genocides. This “normalization” of such massacres may take place if there are no consequences from the international community, especially the International Criminal Court (ICC)
In still another interview, Bartov noted that there are countries in Europe and North America which have facilitated this genocide and they also need to be held to account. “If there is no mechanism existing to bring people to be held accountable for their actions we will slide back to pre-WWII days. After all, it was due to the horrors of WWI and WWII “that the international community organized humanitarian laws to prevent such a genocide ever taking place again”. But here we are again, gazing at blinding atrocities taking place in Gaza while those directly engaged, as well as those nations which have been complicit in providing weapons, attempt to find ways to excuse themselves from the consequences of their actions.
Bartov, who had studied in Germany, noted how difficult it was for Germans to admit to the horrors perpetrated in WWII. Their tendency was to blame particular units in the military, such as the SS, rather than assuming that all of the military were engaged in atrocities. In the same way Israelis do not want to ascribe atrocities to their own family members who are part of the IDF. They prefer to dehumanize the “Arabs” just as Germans dehumanized Jews, by referring to them as untermenschen (ie subhuman). In the same way many Israelis refer to the Palestinians as sub-human and therefore not deserving of consideration as being fully human.
Bartov, in an interview on Al Jazeera, stated that “up to 90% of homes and schools in Gaza have been destroyed ” He observed that: “In Rafah there is nothing, it’s just one big pile of rubble” and other parts of Gaza are the same. “Most of what the IDF is engaged in is demolition. What the IDF is doing is an intentional, deliberate destruction of the place so that people will not be able to live there again.” It is, in fact, “as great as the destruction that took place in Hiroshima which suffered the consequence of having a nuclear bomb dropped upon its civilian population, causing the death of over 100,000 people.
“The Scream,” by Edvard Munch. 1893.
Bartov believes that the genocidal destruction of Gaza was not inevitable. “Israel could have evolved in a more humane direction after its founding in 1948. He asks, “How is it that the appeal to humanitarianism, tolerance, the rule of law, and protection of minorities, which characterized the beginning of Jewish self-emancipation, gradually acquired all the traits of the relentless, remorseless, and increasingly racist ethno-nationalism from which Zionism sought to liberate European Jewry?”.
To what degree is Canada complicit in crimes against humanity in Gaza? Human rights organizations such as Oxfam, assert that Canada’s actions and omissions constitute complicity. Canada exports military parts for F-35 fighter jets to the United States, which are then used by Israel to bomb Palestinians in Gaza. In addition, Canada’s failure to act under the 1948 Genocide Convention, which it signed, is not only a moral failure but a legal duty, since the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determined that a “plausible risk of genocide in Gaza” has been taking place. Despite this, Canada has consistently indicated that it respects the independence of both the ICJ and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Another Human Rights organization, Greenpeace, accuses the Canadian government of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity in its failure to uphold international human rights laws regarding the conflict in Gaza.