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December 19, 2003
Israel: You can read all about it
Fresh books about the Middle East are catching up to changing
times.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
There has never been a shortage of books about Israel, from the
meticulously researched to the polemical. This year seems to have
produced a particularly enormous crop, probably because the slow-churning
publishing process has just caught up with the changed circumstances
of the Middle East crisis, which took a turn for the worse three
years ago.
Noted Israeli novelist and political activist David Grossman has
offered a slim, powerful collection of essays titled Death
as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years After Oslo (translated
by Haim Watzman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $36.50). Unlike many
in the peace camp, Grossman has not shifted massively from the hopefulness
of a decade ago. He maintains that negotiations, not fence-building,
should be the top priority of Israeli leaders, despite the fact
that plenty of Grossman's former allies have given up on talking
to the current crop of Palestinian leaders, nor does Grossman dispute
the dubious claim that it was Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple
Mount that began the latest conflagration. Indeed, Sharon is the
bogeyman of this book, as he is to much of the world, but Grossman's
quaint hopes for peace do not make a very convincing case. Ten years
of what Grossman's title calls "death as a way of life"
have seemingly convinced him only that more of the same talk is
needed, despite its failures in the past.
On the flip side, a rather strong view is offered from contributors
to Dangers of a Palestinian State (edited by Raphael
Israeli, Gefen Publishing, $15.95). In this collection of essays
from Israeli academics (and even a chapter exhumed from the writings
of the late prime minister Menachem Begin), a powerful case is made
that a self-determined Palestinian state is a danger to the region
and the world. Contributors note that, in the two decades since
Palestinian independence became a cause célèbre, Islamic
fundamentalism has made a massive advance all across the Arab world,
something that few commentators take into account when discussing
the Palestinian conflict. Some of the contributions are predictable
– the "peace process" demands that Israel give up
land, of which it has little, in exchange for peace from the Arab
countries, which have never demonstrated much of a willingness –
but it also has some stark assertions, including a chapter comparing
Palestinian and Nazi racism. There is an essay on the challenges
to American interests a Palestinian state would present (this book,
in English, is presumably aimed at a largely American audience)
but also carries a complex essay outlining the potential impact
a Palestinian state could have on inter-Arab hostilities.
Yaacov Lozowick, a director of Yad Vashem and a longtime lefty peace
activist, has written Right to Exist: A Moral Defence of Israel's
Wars, in which he brutally critiques five decades of bad
decisions by Israeli leaders, yet concludes Israel's fights have
been just ones, justly waged. The turning point for Lozowick (he
voted for Sharon, as he explains in his first chapter) was the realization
that the world's criticism of Israel over the past decade has gone
beyond a critique of individual policies and has cut directly to
the Jewish state's right to exist. This is a monumental book which,
together with Alan Dershowitz's The Case for Israel (to be
reviewed in an upcoming issue), provide a valuable resource for
those who engage in what Lozowick says is an imperative not only
to defend Israel with military might but with words.
The tragedies of the past few years are all here, especially in
a close-up by Newsweek magazine's Jerusalem bureau chief
Joshua Hammer, whose A Season in Bethlehem: Unholy War in
a Sacred Place (Free Press, $38) depicts the events leading
up to and including the 39-day siege of the Church of the Nativity,
where tradition says Jesus was born. Focusing on human stories to
illustrate the military and terrorist conflict, Hammer creates a
gripping allegory from irresistible fodder: the violent takeover
of the very site where Christians believe the embodiment of peace
and forgiveness was born.
As a testament that is at once depressing and optimistic, The
Israelis: Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land by Donna
Rosenthal (Free Press, $42) provides something that is often lacking
in a discussion of the Middle East situation: a look at the effects
of conflict on ordinary Israelis. Media have a field day taking
their cameras to West Bank funerals and recently demolished homes
where ordinary Palestinians are wailing in grief, but depictions
of Israelis too often is limited to uniformed soldiers or talking
heads from the prime minister's office. Rosenthal, an engaging storyteller
whose work has appeared in the New York Times and other top
North American media, examines the impact of army life on dating
and mating, the influence of Ethiopian and Russian immigration,
gay life in Israel, the unique situations experienced by Muslim,
Druze, Christian and Bedouin Israelis, as well as "hookers
and hash." The book is intended, the author writes, as an effort
to explain these people "who order Big Macs in the language
of the Ten Commandments" and buy J Lo CDs and gas masks. The
book is a genuine page-turner for readers hungry to learn what life
is really like in Israel today.
Interestingly, this year saw the release of two books on a topic
that has slipped in the international consciousness since the beginning
of the most recent violence. The ever-present tensions between the
religious and the secular in Israel has slipped from the headlines
as the conflict with the Palestinians eclipsed the internal Jewish
conflicts of the past. Yet, while many viewed the re-election of
Sharon last year as a story of hardline victory, there was a quickly
forgotten (at least by North American observers) sub-story. An aggressively
secular political party made huge inroads in the election, sneaking
up to within four seats of the Labor party. Two books review the
status of religious-secular divisions in Israeli society from particularly
intriguing viewpoints.
In A People Who Live Apart: Jewish Identity and the Future
of Israel, Dutch journalist and Israel resident Els van
Diggele discusses the "culture wars" in Israel (translated
by Jeannette K. Ringold, Prometheus Books, $42.99). The power of
the Charedim and the growing influence of non-observant Russian
immigrants (whom some religious and political leaders call "goyim")
demonstrates just the latest incarnation of a long-simmering debate
over the nature of the Jewish state. Van Diggele is balanced, but
critical of both sides, though she seems particularly concerned
about the growth of immigrant-baiting as a tactic of the ultra-religious.
She compares the Diaspora situation with Israel's and concludes
that the Orthodox outside Israel have accepted pluralism because,
with no overriding Jewish authority, they had no other choice. In
Israel, though, she argues, the institutionalization of religiosity
provides a forum for a constant battle between those who would impose
religious fundamentalism and those who would build a firewall between
shul and state.
Quite a different perspective comes from Noah Efron, a professor
of history and philosophy at Bar Ilan University, in his book Real
Jews: Secular vs. Orthodox and the Struggle for Jewish Identity
in Israel (Basic Books, $42.95). Though the outside world
is deeply exercised about the current construction of a security
fence along the West Bank, Efron is far more concerned about another,
less concrete wall being erected between religious and secular Jews.
He notes that the security fence could be torn down in a matter
of hours when (if) peace comes, but worries about the irreversibility
of the social schism between Jews.
"The divide between the ultra-Orthodox and the rest of us –
each group passionately intent on denying the legitimacy, the probity,
the decency of the other – may prove harder to close,"
he writes. Efron delineates the petty corruption and dubious ethical
grounds on which much of the religious establishment operates, from
degrading little extortions of funds from families trying to get
their dead buried by local Orthodox officials to the imprisonment
of Aryeh Deri, the Shas religious party leader. But Efron's conclusions
and point of view are decidedly with the ultra-Orthodox, against
what he sees as a degree of grotesque anti-religious propaganda
by the pro-secular side. He notes that traditionally anti-Semitic
images of stereotypically featured Jews atop piles of cash have
been imposed by anti-religious activists in the "debate"
and a lack of civility has polarized the two sides. Real Jews
is a heartfelt cry for a little more dignity in the discussion.
A couple of reference books are new arrivals on bookstore shelves,
including an updated edition of Myths and Facts: A Guide to
the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell G. Bard (American-Israeli
Cooperative Enterprise, $19.95). This almanac-like compendium of
Israeli history and contemporary events is a useful resource for
anyone interested in the field, though it is a dog's breakfast in
terms of design. But the chapters are divided in appropriate ways,
such as partition, boundaries, refugees, Jerusalem and so forth.
Scrupulously notated, the handbook is ideal for finding not only
the fact you need, but the citation as well.
An odd, though similar, new book by the same author is an updated
second edition of The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Middle
East Conflict (Alpha, $28.99). The Idiot's Guide series
approaches every subject under the sun with a hip, flippant style
that includes cartoonish illustrations and bite-sized details of
its topics, in this case, one of the most challenging international
issues of all time. For what it is, the guide is surprisingly enjoyable
and handy to check details. Who doesn't know someone who could use
a book with this title as a gift?
A brief mention of current fiction: Infiltration is
a novel by Yehoshua Kenaz (translated by Dalya Bilu, Zoland Books,
$33.95) about the Israeli right of passage that is induction into
the military. Set in the 1950s, when Zionist idealism was still
almost unchallenged, but when the future of the state remained precarious,
Kenaz follows the experiences of one platoon whose members represent
a diversity of the Israeli culture, with their hopes, fears and
very disparate life experiences. Kenaz, a prominent Israeli novelist
and a translator of French classics for Israeli readers, presents
a panoply of ideas in a hefty (593 page) novel, notable most of
all for the endurance of the same issues that face the Jewish state
today: religious versus secular, Ashkenazi versus Sephardi, left
versus right, sabra versus olim.
All of these titles are available at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public
Library in the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver and
most major bookstores. Regardless of one's level of interest, knowledge
or perspective, the new crop of books on Israel and the Middle East
has something for all readers.
Pat Johnson is a native Vancouverite, a journalist and
commentator.
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