Less clear, however, is whether Mr. Burg has provided any serious answers. This is partly because his book and discourse vacillate between two poles: congratulating Jews and the Zionist movement for their success so far, but warning them that they are turning into a kind of self-justifying Sparta, a warlike state on the verge of tragedy.

His central point is summed up in the English title of his book: “The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From Its Ashes” (Palgrave Macmillan). The Nazi slaughter of six million Jews, he says, has become the central theme of Israeli life, dominating it in a way that distorts the country’s outlook. Teenagers are sent on trips to Auschwitz; every enemy of Israel (Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran) is viewed as the reincarnation of Hitler.

MR. BURG has shifted the title of his book over the years. When he was writing it, he called it “Hitler Won.” When he published it in Hebrew he called it “Defeating Hitler.”

Partly, he said in the interview, his thinking is evolving, and partly his American editors made some smart cuts and suggestions. But it also seems clear that he has modified and adjusted his arguments, especially for a foreign audience. The English version does not have some of his more alarming assertions in the Hebrew one  for example, that the Israeli government would probably soon pass the equivalent of the Nuremberg laws, with provisions like a prohibition on marriage between Jews and Arabs.

Asked what precipitated his initial shift from mainstream public figure to more marginal public scourge, Mr. Burg pointed to a process that began in 2001 when he ran for leadership of the Labor Party and lost in a tight race that he says was stolen from him through back-room deals.

It was not so much the loss, he asserted, as the realization that he had poured his heart and soul into trying to win something that he had thought so little about.

“I knew how to get elected, but what was I going to do once I got there?” he recalled thinking. Maybe, he felt, it was lucky that he lost.