Cutting Tom Segev Some Slack

At age 80 the historian-journalist sounds downhearted about the Zionist enterprise

Political Zionism’s greatest success was the creation of the Jewish State in 1948. Yet, the Zionist enterprise is not an unmitigated triumph. While historian and journalist Tom Segev has come to feel that Zionism is “not such a great success story” and “maybe it wasn’t right from the outset,” I see it as a work in progress.

The headline in the April 4, 2025, Haaretz Magazine was clickbait: “Casting doubt on ‘the whole Zionist thing.’” בגיל 80, תום שגב מסתכל לאחור וחושב שאולי הציונות היתה טעות

One of my favorite historian-journalists, Segev, turned 80 on March 1, 2025, and Haaretz, the post-Zionist newspaper he had been writing for, ran a feature that naturally drew my interest.

I wondered if the headline reflected Segev’s true sentiments.

Now, maybe I am cutting Segev too much slack, but the way I see it, we should be grappling with what Zionism got wrong. “Israel” can be translated as “to struggle with God.” My own Judaism is not anchored in blind faith and obsessive-compulsive ritualistic behavior or expressive garb but in contemplation and, yes, doubt.

The way I choose to read Segev is that just as being a Jew requires us to “struggle” with God, so too does being Zionist, especially these days, demand that I struggle with the legacies of Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), founder of political Zionism and Ze’ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940) the classical liberal Jewish nationalist and cosmopolitan.

While Zionism achieved its first imperative – the creation of a national Jewish homeland in Palestine- it is not, for me, at any rate, “mission defined, mission accomplished.” Herzlian Zionism was supposed to have solved “the Jewish problem.” It hasn’t. Antisemitism, sometimes manifested as anti-Israelism, is rampant globally. The Galut has not been negated. And in 2025, some Diaspora Jewish counterelites would dissociate from the centrality of Israel to create a covenant-less Judaism rooted in… Larry David-like Jewish humor, knishes, and some misguided notions of “Tikkun olam.”

Even by the yardstick of our own Declaration of Independence, Zionism has fallen short of its goals. We still do not have a constitution. Or peace with our Arab neighbors. Or a civic society in which the various tribes of Israel pull together in national service.

So, it is not outlandish to question, as Segev does, whether Zionism is a success story.

New Historians

Segev is one of Israel’s so-called “New Historians” who have punctured some of the country’s founding myths by utilizing archival material not previously tapped. He and fellow journalist-historian Benny Morris tell it like they believe it was – not to undermine the Zionist enterprise but to illuminate its true, painful history.

In contrast, two other “New Historians,” Avi Shlaim and particularly Ilan Pappe, have a more sinister agenda, Pappe’s being the more malevolent. His is a categorical rejection of the right of the Jewish people to a national homeland.

Segev is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds a PhD in history (with a specialization in Germany) from Boston University. His parents were German communists who fled Hitler. Tom was born in Jerusalem. German is his mother tongue. His father died in a war-related mishap during the 1948 War of Independence.

His history reads like well-crafted journalism – rooted in skepticism – sourced by interviews or unearthed archival material. Among his best books are The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, which deals with the impact of the Holocaust on Israel’s identity; One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate; and A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion. There are many others.

Like all writers, he shapes his material. Closeminded readers can’t handle revelations that our side – the Zionist side – was imperfect, made mistakes, did bad things, or that our leaders were fallible, self-interested human beings.

Segev recognizes that our 100-year-plus conflict with the Palestinian Arabs is a zero-sum game.

“The conflict has no solution because it doesn’t deal with rational matters. It’s not a question of borders and the partition of the country. It’s about two national identities that are confronting each other. Each of the two peoples defines its identity through the whole land.”

Elsewhere, he says,

“The problem is that the Arabs always take the bribe and never deliver the goods.”

Segev rejects being labeled an “anti-Zionist,” which is good enough for me. He doesn’t even consider himself a “New Historian” but simply among the first historians who accessed the country’s records and archives.

But let’s return to what he controversially said about Zionism:

AT THE AGE OF 80, I’M STARTING TO THINK THAT MAYBE IT WASN’T RIGHT FROM THE OUTSET, THE WHOLE ZIONIST THING. [THAT] ZIONISM WAS NOT SUCH A GREAT SUCCESS STORY. IT ALSO DOESN’T PROVIDE SECURITY TO JEWS. IT’S SAFER FOR JEWS TO LIVE OUTSIDE ISRAEL.

Whether it is safer for Jews in the Diaspora can be a matter of debate. However, some 550-plus days into the October 7 War, with 1,863 plus dead (and counting) and many wounded young citizen-soldiers with life-altering injuries, Segev’s complaint does not sound like an enormous overstatement to this Anglo-Israeli.

Part of his discontent and mine is what Binyamin Netanyahu has wrought in the 18-plus years of his leadership. How he has fragmented and parochialized the body politic, de-Jabotinsky’ized the Likud, and demagogued his way into concentrating power in his own hands. Once a liberal nationalist who understood that democracy does not mean pure majority rule but preserving overarching democratic values, Netanyahu has unleashed a destabilizing judicial putsch.

Segev told Haaretz that, “It was a major mistake to put Netanyahu on trial [for corruption]. Certainly in the matter of his relationship with the media.”

He thinks Netanyahu’s opponents underestimated the depth of his support among a majority of Israelis. I would quibble with him about it being a majority.

The way I read it, Segev is saying that if we, Netanyahu’s detractors, knew then what we know now, namely the lengths to which he would go to save his political skin, we would have been happy to let him get away with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust; to receive favors from businessmen in exchange for gifts; to solicit flattering coverage from Yediot Aharanot in exchange for limiting the circulation of Israel Hayom.

Upon reflection, I think Segev is right. I would have let Netanyahu steal just enough to wet his beak, like Don Fanucci in Godfather II.

I mean, who even remembers that the trial now shlepping along (for Bibi is also a master of procrastination) consolidates Cases 1000 [gifts from Arnon Milchan and James Packer in return for political favors], 2000 [Arnon Mozes Yediot and Bibi’s betrayal of Sheldon Adelson] and 4000 [unblocking the business interests of Shaul Elovitch]; or that Case 3000, his government’s dodgy procurement of German-made submarines was dropped as far as Netanyahu’s culpability is concerned.

In other words, maybe if the Attorney General had not applied the rule of law to Netanyahu, Bibi would not have empowered Yariv Levin’s judicial putsch. Had he not faced criminal trials, he would not have undertaken a judicial putsch, and we would not have needed to protest against his usurpation of power. The upheaval that followed undermined Israeli strategic deterrence (as the generals told Netanyahu).

Had Bibi been allowed to wet his beak, maybe October 7, 2023, would have been just another Simhat Torah.

So, no, while I don’t think, as Segev does at age 80, that perhaps Zionism wasn’t the correct answer from the outset, I do think there is plenty to reproach. In the final analysis, as my colleague Calev Ben David reminds me, paraphrasing Winston Churchill: “Zionism is the worst solution to the Jewish problem – except for all the others that have been tried.”

Our April 14, 2025 Podcast