Wednesday, January 15, 2014

My Promised Land: the Triumph and Tragedy of Israel / Ari Shavit 445pages

It's impossible to evaluate this book without considering this year's other historical survey-type book of Israel, Yossi Klein Halevi's Like Dreamers. Shavit takes an earlier starting point, a visit by his great-grandfather to 1897 Palestine which led him move his prosperous Jewish-English family there. In separate chapters, Shavit chronicles major trends in the state's history from the points of view of both key players and ordinary people: "Orange Grove," "Masada," and "The Project" (referring to the development of nuclear weapons capacity in the Negev) are a few. Shavit is a columnist for Haaretz, and one gathers given the access to extremely prominent figures he clearly possesses, one of the country's most prominent journalists. The writing style is journalistic and somewhat personal; in fact, many of the chapters were first published as long magazine pieces in Israel and elsewhere, including in the New Yorker.

Shavit is a subtle thinker who makes a point of straddling lines, taking positions which are not exactly left or right, hawk or dove. His most firm point is that occupation is wrong for moral and practical reasons, but that ending occupation will not bring peace. For Shavit, Israeli security lies neither in expanding the territories with settlements, nor in pursuing a utopian peace. Rather, it consists in a return to the cohesion and commitment of the country's early decades and in a courageous leadership. Very fresh material; the chapter on Iran considers quite recent developments.

While I thoroughly enjoyed Shavit's analyses, as a book-length work I find Klein Halevi's book to be superior. I found myself thinking of the difference between showing and telling: Shavit told us many things about Israel; through the lives of the seven individual paratroopers in Like Dreamers, Klein Halevi showed us more.

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