Bradley Burston

Burston was born and raised in Los Angeles and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1976.[1] Shortly after graduation, he immigrated to Israel in his twenties and was part of a group that established Kibbutz Gezer, situated between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.[2]

Following his arrival, Burston studied medicine for two years before committing fully to journalism.[1] He also served for many years in the Israel Defense Forces as a combat medic.[2] His early years in Israel therefore included kibbutz life, medical study, and military service before his full-time journalism career.

Burston worked as a correspondent for The Jerusalem Post. During the First Intifada (1987–1993), he served as the paper's Gaza correspondent, and he also covered the Gulf War (1990–1991) as the Post's military correspondent.[1] He subsequently reported on Israeli-Arab peace talks for Reuters.[3]

In 2000, Burston joined Haaretz, where he worked as a writer and columnist for nineteen years.[1] He was a founding editor of the Haaretz English online edition and was later identified as a senior editor at Haaretz.com.[2][3] In comments from 2008, he described Haaretz's international online readership with the observation that its readers "not only speak with accents but also understand with accents," explaining that the internet edition was edited with overseas readers in mind.[4] At that time, the English and Hebrew online editions combined had many hundreds of thousands of daily users.[4]

For his journalism, Burston received the Eliav-Sartawi Award for Middle East Journalism in the Israeli press, presented at the United Nations in 2006.[3] The Times of Israel author archive also lists his April 27, 2023 essay, "A Song for Peace: The Dangerous Anthem."[5]

Burston has been described as an ardent Zionist who has made a journalistic case for a two-state solution intended to safeguard Israel's security while providing Palestinians with national aspirations.[2] His long-running Haaretz column, "A Special Place in Hell," served as the primary source for his later book.[2]

In a 2011 essay published in Sh'ma, Burston argued that while the United Nations had been "monumental" in its unfairness toward Israel, withdrawing from international engagement would run counter to Israeli interests.[3] He contended that isolation risked encouraging self-destructive policies and entrenching the status quo, and advocated instead for diplomacy, flexibility, and initiative with the Palestinians.[3] Burston described Israeli society at the time as divided among opponents of Palestinian statehood, those who wanted one established quickly, and a larger centrist group that doubted whether leaders on either side genuinely sought or could achieve workable peace.[3] He argued that Israel's future hinged on whether that political center could be moved toward a peace agreement.[3]

Burston also wrote on the BDS movement, questioning in a Haaretz column whether it sought to encourage a two-state outcome or aimed for a one-state Palestine, and characterized the movement's own position on that question as unresolved.[6]

A personal essay, "A Song for Peace: The Dangerous Anthem," recounts his attendance at the November 4, 1995 peace rally in Tel Aviv, where he was present with his family—his twelve-year-old daughter and a toddler not yet two years old.[7] He recalls more than 100,000 people singing "Shir LaShalom" as Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin joined in at the rally's close.[7] Burston describes the song, which he notes was commissioned by the army and first sung by soldiers, as "a revolution in seven verses."[7]

The End of Israel: Dispatches from a Path to Catastrophe draws primarily on articles Burston wrote for Haaretz between 2000 and 2019, supplemented by later pieces, and is organized into eighteen themed sections.[1] The book covers four major Israel-Hamas conflicts—those of 2008–2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021—as well as Burston's assessment of Benjamin Netanyahu's political tactics across eight general elections.[1]

Burston completed an original version of the manuscript roughly a month before the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, with that draft focused on the country's internal divisions over judicial reform.[2] After the attack, he rewrote the book substantially, redirecting its argument toward how years of Netanyahu's leadership had left Israel vulnerable.[2] The revised book appeared on December 10, 2023, after a rewrite lasting a couple of months.[2]

The book includes a 2010 column titled "Free Barghouti Now," concerning Marwan Barghouti—described in the interview as a potential Palestinian leader serving life sentences for murder—which Burston noted remained timely despite having been written years earlier.[2] On the 2014 conflict, the book quotes Burston's description of Gaza as "an unstaunched bleed" and criticizes extremists on both sides for foreclosing the prospect of a two-state peace.[1]

Burston argues in the book that Netanyahu's governing strategy was to maintain the status quo through periods of both conflict and relative calm, and that opportunities for Israeli-Palestinian compromise were repeatedly missed.[2] He also argues that Netanyahu had received public warnings of a developing crisis before October 7.[2] These are Burston's political assessments, presented as such.

Burston's career spans Israeli newspaper reporting, international wire-service work, English-language digital editing, and political commentary. He helped found the Haaretz English online edition and later collected columns from roughly two decades into The End of Israel.[2][1] His 2006 Eliav-Sartawi Award recognized his Middle East journalism in the Israeli press.[3]

Burston's positions on international engagement, a two-state agreement, BDS, and Netanyahu are political arguments rather than uncontested biographical facts. HonestReporting challenged his characterization of the BDS movement's goals, disputing his treatment of whether the movement sought a two-state outcome or a single Palestinian state.[6] A Jerusalem Post review likewise noted that readers unsympathetic to his stance would reject much of the argument in The End of Israel.[1] His claims about Netanyahu's responsibility for Israel's vulnerabilities before October 7 remain attributed assessments rather than neutral findings.[2]