Watch the NIOD Annual Lecture with Omer Bartov

The Israeli-American scholar Omer Bartov is Dean’s Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University. He has written widely on war crimes, interethnic relations, and genocide. His recent books include  Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (2018), and Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis (2023). Bartov’s essays and commentaries have been widely featured in national and international magazines and media outlets. His new book, Israel: What Went Wrong? was published in April 2026.

During the NIOD Annual Lecture 2026, Bartov discussed his new book. Israel: What Went Wrong? ( April 2026). In the book, he sketches the transformation of Zionism, a movement that sought to emancipate European Jewry from oppression, into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism. How did a state founded in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, find itself credibly accused of perpetrating large-scale war crimes? How do we come to terms with the fact that Israel’s war of destruction was conducted with the support, laced with denial and indifference, of so many of its Jewish citizens? Tracing the roots of the violent events currently unfolding in Israel and the occupied territories, Bartov will consider the origins of Zionism, the intertwining of Israel’s independence with Palestinian displacement, the politics of the Holocaust, controversies over the term "genocide," and the uncertain future.

The NIOD Annual Lecture was established in 2025, on the institute’s 80th anniversary, as an annual occasion to reflect on current academic and societal discussions regarding war, mass violence, and genocide.

This year’s programme consisted of a lecture, followed by a Q&A session with the audience. This was followed by two panel discussions, in which various researchers joined Omer Bartov to discuss topics such as the history of Zionism in the Netherlands, the use and misuse of Holocaust memory, and the future of Holocaust and genocide studies.

You can watch a recording of the lecture below.