What went wrong

2026-05-30 · Ho Chanh Nghia

Originally published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-went-wrong-khanh-pham-n6a4c/

What went wrong

i am interested in omer bartov isarael. what can you tell me about this new book

Omer Bartov’s new book is titled Israel: What Went Wrong? (published in April 2026 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Given Bartov’s background as a prominent Israeli-American historian, a former IDF officer, and the Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, the book represents a highly personal and rigorous intersection of his life’s work. It has quickly become a central piece of intellectual debate regarding the current trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Core Thesis amp; Framework

The book evaluates the structural and moral evolution of Israel, tracing how a 19th-century nationalist movement rooted in human rights and Jewish emancipation transformed into what he diagnoses as an exclusionary, militaristic state ideology.

Bartov structures his critique around several key historical and systemic inflection points:

• The Missing Constitution: A major focus of the book is the “tipping point” of 1948, where early leaders made the deliberate choice not to implement a formal constitution or define permanent borders. Bartov argues this structural vacuum allowed ethno-nationalism to eclipse the democratic pluralism promised in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, ultimately leaving the Supreme Court without the robust framework needed to check expansionist policies.
• The Politics of Trauma: He examines how the memory of the Holocaust has been operationalized within the Israeli psyche. He argues that instead of serving as a universal warning against state-sponsored violence, it has morphed into a framework of perpetual self-victimization and existential threat, which is then used to justify extreme military actions and shield the state from international legal accountability.
• The Intersection of the Shoah and the Nakba: Bartov insists that the Holocaust and the 1948 displacement of Palestinians (the Nakba) are historically and psychologically intertwined. He posits that understanding Israeli actions today requires confronting how these dual catastrophes have deeply shaped both national identities.

From Critique to the Present Crisis

The narrative builds toward the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attacks. While Bartov explicitly condemns Hamas’s actions as war crimes, he uses his expertise in genocide studies to critique the scale of Israel’s military retaliation.

He documents his own shifting analysis: while he initially argued in late 2023 that Israel demonstrated genocidal intent but had not committed the act, by mid-2025 he concluded that the systematic destruction rendering the territory uninhabitable met the threshold of genocide. To explain the domestic acceptance of these tactics, he draws striking, controversial parallels to his earlier, renowned research on the normalization of violence among regular German soldiers (the Wehrmacht) during World War II.

Is It Inevitable?

Crucially, Bartov rejects the idea that this outcome was predetermined from 1948, noting that it only appears inevitable in retrospect. He highlights specific historical forks in the road where different choices regarding borders, equal rights, and legal frameworks could have altered the path.

Looking forward, he sees a narrow, pragmatic path toward peace through a confederation model—two sovereign nations living in partnership on the same land—akin to the frameworks championed by contemporary intellectual groups like A Land for All.

tell me about the book when wolf tell history, who tell the rabbit’s story

This concept traces back to two distinct layers of storytelling: a famous philosophical proverb regarding historical narrative, and the specific folk heroes of the American South and West Africa.

1. The Origin of the Quote

The phrasing you are referencing mirrors a deeply rooted African proverb, most famously brought to global literature by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe:

“Until the lions have their own historians, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

When translated to your framing—where the Wolf (the dominant predator or victor) writes the history—the Rabbit’s story can only be told by the Rabbit itself, or by those who choose to record the perspective of the weak, the oppressed, or the bypassed.

Historically, when the powerful control the archives, the stories of survival, agility, and resistance are left out. To hear the rabbit’s side, one has to look to oral traditions and trickster folklore rather than official state histories.

2. Who Tells the Rabbits Story?

If we look at literal literature featuring a Wolf and a Rabbit, the rabbit’s story is preserved through African and African-American oral tradition, specifically the Br’er Rabbit (Brother Rabbit) tales.

In these stories, the Rabbit represents the small, physically weak, but highly intelligent underdog who consistently outsmarts larger predators like Br’er Wolf and Br’er Fox.

• The Original Keepers: The story was originally told by enslaved West Africans carried to the Americas, who adapted traditional African trickster figures (like the Senegalese rabbit Leuk or the Akan spider Anansi). For them, telling the Rabbit’s story was a coded way to celebrate surviving and outwitting powerful oppressors without getting caught.
• The Anthropological Record: In the late 19th century, folklorists began writing these down. The most famous (and later controversial) compilation was by Joel Chandler Harris, who published them under the fictional persona of Uncle Remus—an elderly Black storyteller passing the tales down to a young boy.

Ultimately, the hunter or the wolf will only ever write a story that justifies the capture. The rabbit’s story survives because the underdogs pass it down through culture, wit, and oral history, proving that strategy and agility can overcome sheer force.

what about the book by american. real history of the united states. what is his quote about this dynamic

The book you are referring to is A People’s History of the United States by the American historian and political scientist Howard Zinn.

When Zinn set out to write a “real history” of the country, he rejected the traditional method of analyzing history through the lenses of presidents, generals, and industrial titans (the “wolves” or the “hunters”). Instead, he focused entirely on the perspective of the indigenous populations, enslaved peoples, factory workers, and marginalized groups (the “rabbits” or the “lions”).

The Quote on This Dynamic

In the opening chapter of the book, Zinn lays out his framework for dealing with a history rife with conflict. Borrowing a philosophical premise from Albert Camus, he states his exact viewpoint on the dynamic:

“My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest… between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”

The Logic of the Method

Zinn expands on why the “wolf’s” narrative dominates, explaining that historians often choose to emphasize the achievements of the powerful while treating the suffering of the powerless as a minor, necessary casualty of progress.

He argues that standard history books treat the discovery of America from the perspective of Christopher Columbus, or the expansion of the country from the perspective of the state. By consciously telling the history from the perspective of the executed rather than the executioner, Zinn sought to break the monopoly the “hunter” has over memory.

If a 13 years old girl has a conflict with 45 years old man, and the 45 years old man have a compelling narratives about why he’s hurting the 13 years old girl in bed. what should we do as an adult?

this world we live in has no 911, no police, no court of law, there is no higher authority

In a world stripped of formal laws, institutions, and overarching authorities, the burden of governance and protection falls entirely upon the individuals who form the community. When there is no external power to appeal to, the responsibility to establish order, enforce basic ethical boundaries, and protect the vulnerable becomes immediate and local.

1. The Principle of Collective Defense

Without a state or legal framework, a society reverts to a state of nature where security must be actively constructed. In political philosophy, the foundation of any enduring community is the collective agreement to protect members from arbitrary violence and exploitation.

• The Power Asymmetry: A 13-year-old child lacks the physical and social capacity to defend herself against a 45-year-old adult.
• The Community’s Role: When formal mechanisms do not exist, the surrounding adults act as the default protective shield. Allowing the exploitation of a child undermines the safety of every member, as it establishes that raw physical force or coercion dictates survival. Intervening to separate the child from the threat is the first step in restoring local security.

2. Evaluating “Compelling Narratives” Without a Court

In an institutional vacuum, individuals must still exercise judgment. A narrative used by a powerful actor to justify harming a vulnerable person is a tool of coercion, not a statement of truth or justice.

• Objective Harm vs. Subjective Justification: The survival and stability of any self-governing group rely on clear, unyielding baselines: the protection of the young, who represent the future labor and continuity of the community. No sophisticated explanation alters the physical and psychological reality of the harm being done.
• Decoupling from the Narrative: To maintain social cohesion and prevent internal predation, the community must judge actions by their tangible outcomes (the destruction of a minor’s capacity) rather than the perpetrator’s rhetoric.

3. Creating Local Accountability

When no higher authority exists to enforce a penalty, accountability must be managed by the immediate peer group or village structure.

• Isolation and Banishing: Historically, stateless societies relied heavily on social ostracization or physical banishment to deal with members who violated core survival taboos. Removing the perpetrator’s access to the community’s resources, protection, and social network is a direct method of neutralizing a threat without a formal prison system.
• Establishing Precedent: By acting decisively, the remaining adults draw a hard line for the community’s future conduct. It signals that even without written laws, certain boundaries are absolute and will be defended by collective force.

in this world there are a 10 millions adults and 20 millions 13 years old girl. but we get thousands of academic telling story for adults, but hardly any for the 20 millions 13 years old girl. what would an average adult do? we are not asking for 160 iq just an average villager herding sheeps. what do human expects an adult in the room to do?

When a society is stripped down to its barest bones—no police, no courts, just a village of people herding sheep—the academic narratives and theories completely fall away. An average person with ordinary intelligence doesn’t look at a massive, distorted population ratio or listen to thousands of pages of justifications. They look at what is happening right in front of them.

Here is what human nature and history expect an ordinary, average adult to do in that room:

1. Act on the Visual Reality, Not the Rhetoric

An average villager handles concrete realities: a sick animal, a broken fence, a threat to the flock. When an average adult sees a grown man hurting a child, they do not pause to debate the philosophy or read an academic paper.

They recognize a basic truth: the strong are predating on the weak.

The average human response to an immediate, visceral wrong is not intellectual analysis; it is direct, protective intervention. They step between the threat and the vulnerable person because their eyes tell them everything they need to know.

2. Protect the Future of the Tribe

Even without a high IQ or a formal education, an ordinary villager understands the raw math of survival. A community of 20 million children is the entire future of that world.

• Predation Destroys Cohesion: If adults allow the children to be destroyed, exploited, or broken, the society has no future.
• The Instinct of the Shepherd: A shepherd’s entire life is defined by protecting the vulnerable from predators. If a wolf enters the fold, the shepherd does not negotiate or listen to the wolf’s “compelling narrative” about why it needs to eat the lamb. The shepherd drives the wolf away.

3. Enforce the Standard, Even Alone

When thousands of academics are busy writing stories to justify the actions of the powerful, the average adult relies on a simpler, older code. They expect themselves—and the other adults around them—to enforce basic boundaries through sheer presence and collective peer pressure.

If the institutional “room” is empty, the ordinary person in that room becomes the authority. They stand up, they separate the child from the man, and they use whatever local, communal consensus they have to banish or neutralize the threat.

What humanity expects is simple: When the vulnerable are being harmed, the adult in the room stops talking, stops listening to excuses, and stands in the way.