My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

Shavit, a descendent of some of the first Zionist settlers and a former columnist for Haaretz, supplements an exceptionally well-written history of Israel and Palestine with interviews with influential actors on various sides of the many issues involved, many of them personal friends.

It's the most lucid description of modern Israel I know of.

For those seeking a deeper, more nuanced explanation of the roots and development of the current conflict, I suggest reading this along with Rachid Khalidi's "The 100 Years' War on Palestine".

With his fantastic, balanced and absorbing writing, Mr. Ari Shavit places me in every historically significant event that has created and shaped the State of Israel that I have come to know from various media outlets that have portrayed and "reported on" the profound daily life and death struggles between the Israeli-Jews and Israeli-Palestinians.

I heard a radio interview of Mr. Shavit by Terry Gross on her Fresh Air show and was mesmerized by what Mr. Shavit was saying, prompting me to buy this book from Amazon to read.

I also hope to better understand why Professor Ze'ev Sternhell, "a lauded political activist against Israeli fascism, told Mr. Shavit: "To be a Jew was to have to run away all the time."

While Mr. Shavit's book is captivating, the subjects and topics he elaborates upon are so infinitely complex (yet need to be understood by everyone who cares about humanity) that I will write my review of this book piecemeal -- so that I can accurately capture the moral, human and historical lessons Mr. Shavit imparts upon me, as I embark on my own personal journey through his beautifully written book, filled with profoundly honest personal reflections by this author.

I will engage in a running review of this must-read book, which I hope will provide me with insights and better appreciation for why so many pogroms befell upon Jewish towns, neighborhoods, businesses and homes throughout Europe and Russian in living memory.

The founding of the State of Israel is testament to the extraordinary resiliency, tenacity, devotion, courage and creativity of the Jewish people. Mr. Shavit writes: "Israel is a harsh, hot land; ice cream is cold and comforting. So Israelis consumes much more ice cream than North Americans and Western Europeans. [I]sreal is a bitter land; dairy desserts are sweet and soothing. So Israelis love dairy desserts. [I]srael is an exciting and excitable country,so Israelis need ever-increasing excitement. [T]here [are] no nuances for Israel; everything [has] to be fierce and aggressive, to hit the palate with flavor. [I]srael has extraordinary people. [A]n astonishing geyser of innovation erupted out of this barren land."

My own understanding, prior to reading this book and hearing what Mr. Shavit said to Terry Gross on NPR, comports with the thesis Mr. Shavit's embraces: the Israeli-Palestinian "conflict" has been hoisted up by two pillars that have been present in the State of Israel -- "intimidation and occupation".

A "two-state solution," which I too believe is what might bring lasting peaceful co-existence between the Israelis and the Palestinians, is also fraught with existential threats to both peoples, especially since both people are living relatively close to one another in the same modern State of Israel.

The British Empire proposed a two nation-states when Palestine was still one of its colonies. In July 1937, Lord Peel's Royal Commission recommended to the British government to partition Palestine into "two nation-states, Jewish and Arab." Easier said than done!

Mr. Amos Oz, whom the author describes as "Israel's most distinguished author," "the peace prophet," "the guru of the peace movement and the chief rabbi of Israel's peace congregation," also believes "both morals and realism dictate[] only one solution, the two-state solution."

Mr. Shavit acknowledges: On July 25, 1938, Jewish extremists "murdered more than thirty-five Arabs by exploding a highly powerful bomb in the crowded Haifa market." Predictably, "[i]n the dance of blood, the atrocities that Arabs visited upon the Jews and the atrocities that Jews visited upon the Arabs grew even more grisly." As Max Boot recounted in his Herculean book entitled "Invisible Armies . . .," every underdog has used terror against its mightier opponent. Mr. Shavit acknowledges that the birth of the State of Israel witnessed the use of terror by all sides.

A very intriguing thesis was noted in a CNN program I was watching last night -- December 22, 2013 -- entitled "Back to the Beginning" by Christiane Amanpour made by ABC and first broadcast in 2012 -- what if the Israeli and Palestinian came from the same ancient tribe and they were in fact ancient brothers, sisters and/or cousins. What if the results of a well devised and administered, in statistically terms, DNA tests reveal this to be the case. What then? History has shown time and again that family feuds have lead to self-destruction of the family members, usually outside third-parties benefited greatly (unscathed).

I'm pleased that Mr. Shavit introduced us to his great-grandfather Herbert Bentwich,an upper-middle-class British Jew who went on a pilgrimage as a Zionist to Jaffa in 1897 and about Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism.

It is so heartening and inspiring to read about the youngsters who founded Ein Harod in the 1920's and their first arrival there in September 1921. It is refreshing for a person of Mr. Shavit great stature to observe: "Some will argue that choosing socialism at this critical stage (the founding of Ein Harod) is Zionism's cunning way of conquering the land (ancient land of Israel). [Y]et all this idealistic socialism is just subterfuge, future critics will claim. It is the moral camouflage of an aggressive national movement whose purpose is to obscure its colonialist, expansionist nature." The reality, of course, is not the simplistic black/white paradigm, as horrifically demonstrated by the 20th century Holocaust against millions and millions of Jews by the Nazis.

The late Shmaryahu Gutman's, whom Mr. Shavit interviewed for this book, arduous journey to Masada with forty-six disciples in early 1942 provides insights to the backbones that created and are upholding the modern state of Israel. Mr. Gutman "believes that the essence of Zionism is momentum -- never to retreat, never to rest, always to push forward. The new Hebrews must push the limits of what the Jews can do, of what any people can do. They must defy fate." Hence, Mr. Shavit notes: "The only way to maintain life is resistance." This ethos of resistance, as embodied by Gutman's Masada, enable me to better understand Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose charisma and orations captured my imagination when he began appearing on PBS's NewsHour and Charlie Rose.

While history cannot be undone, Mr. Shavit acknowledges "Lydda is our black box. In it lies the dark secret of Zionism." He exposes the raw truth about the "massacre" the new State of Israel, founded in May 14, 1948 after the British Empire relinquished Palestine and the UN General Assembly then endorsed partitioning it into a Jewish state and an Arab state, carried out against the Arabs -- Christian and Muslim families -- in Lydda in July 1948.

Mr. Shavit recounts a letter written by a Jewish lady during those early days.

"I cannot recognize the guys anymore. All of them are drunk with victory and driven by the lust for loot. Each one of them took all that he could and in the joy of triumph they broke loose, expressing feelings of hatred and revenge, turning into real animals. They smashed, destroyed, and killed anything in their path".

However, Mr. Shavit acknowledges: "If it wasn't for them, I would not have been born. They did the dirty, filthy work that enables my people, myself, my daughter, and my sons to live." Indeed, unhealed wounds abound, hindering peace from flourishing among Jews and Palestinians.

Mr. Shavit engages in a frank introspective about the first ten years of the State of Jewish-Israel, where and when he was born. He sheds instructive light on the Bizaron housing estate (shikun), which provided a new life for Pole, Russian, Hungarian, German, Iraqi, Ukraine and Czech Jewish refugees who escaped and survived the anti-Semitic genocides, Hitler's Holocaust and Mengeles' evil experiments.

Mr. Shavit argues that the existential need for Jewish-Israel to accommodate nearly one million immigrants engendered "four forces of amnesia": (a) "the denial of the Palestinian past," (b) "the denial of the Palestinian disaster," (c) "the denial of the Jewish past," and (d) "the denial of the Jewish catastrophe."

Mr. Shavit raises a profound (and likely controversial) thesis: "In the first decade, the unique endeavor of nation building consumes all of the young state's physical and mental resources. There is no time and no place for guilt or compassion. The number of Jewish refugees that Israel absorbs surpasses the number of Palestinian refugees it expelled. And all the while, the vast Arab nation doesn't life a finger to help its Palestinian brothers and sisters."

In the illuminating chapter about Dimona, Israel's (open) secret successful nuclear energy and defense programs, Mr. Shavit notes: "Even those among them who were not Jewish believed that Israel represented a historical act of justice and regarded it as a Western bulwark in the East."

Despite the decades of normalcy and deterrence Dimona has provided Israel, the author warns that "Israel's nuclear hegemony in the Middle East is probably coming to a close. Sooner or later, the Israeli monopoly will be broken. First one hostile state will go nuclear, then a second hostile state, then a third. In the first half of the twenty-first century, the Middle East is bound to be nuclearized."

Lasting resolution of the prolonged Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires equitable resolution of the settlements. Mr. Shavit, a self-professed "left-wing journalist," concedes that "[w]ith horror I realize that the DNA of [Yehuda Etzion's -- a founder of the Ofra settlement, which is "the mother of all settlements"] Zionism and the DNA of my Zionism share a few genes." The author states that people cannot understand the settlements without first understanding the searing consequences upon the psyche of Israelis caused by the Six Day War in May 1967 and the Yom Kippur War that began on October 6, 1973.

While Mr. Shavit provides the reader with a succinct, yet profound understanding of the settlements, this issue seems even more daunting and intractable and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians seems even more unattainable.

This apparent hopelessness is colored by Mr. Shavit's harsh criticism of two founders, Pinchas Wallerstein and Yehuda Etzion, of Ofra: "The reality created by Wallerstein and Etzion and their friends has entangled Israel in a predicament that cannot be untangled. The settlements have placed Israel's neck in a noose. They created an untenable demographic, political, moral, and judicial reality. But now Ofra's illegitimacy taints Israel itself. Like a cancer, it spreads from one organ to another, endangering the entire body. Ofra's colonialism makes the world perceive Israel as a colonialist entity."

But, as of Chapter Eight, Mr. Shavit had yet to offer any vision of how the 21st Century State of Israel could endeavor to achieve lasting peace among Israelis and Palestinians. In Chapter Ten, entitled "Peace, 1993," suggests anti-war protests and demonstrations for peace without "action" will render the State of Israel "a rudderless nation, lost at sea with no captain and no compass and no sense of direction."

In recounting a recent face-to-face discussion he had with Yossi Sarid, whom Mr. Shavit describes as "the undisputed hero of the Israeli peace movement" in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of Israelis who had demonstrated against wars in the 1970s and 1980s, the author seems to criticize his own inaction in the peace process. The author admits: "The hours I spent with him leave me bewildered and disheartened."

Mr. Shavit writes what he told Mr. Sarid: "Both you and the peace movement were always against. Against Meir, against Begin, against occupation. [Y]our failing was you were always about negation. Protests. Demonstrations. [Y]ou never built anything. You never put up a home or planted a tree. And you never accepted the heavy responsibility of dealing with the complexity of Israeli reality. [P]olitically and emotionally it was unproductive and barren, even corrosive. [A]nd there was too much judgment. [Y]ou did not nurture, did not inspire, you did not lead." Mr. Shavit's harsh criticism against Mr. Sarid seems also to be aimed against himself. The author seems to be projecting here; perhaps this is his own mea culpa, of sorts.

Mr. Amos Oz, the peace prophet, tells the author: "I made one big mistake. I underestimated the importance of fear. The Right's strongest argument is fear. [I]t's a legitimate argument. I, too, am afraid of the Arabs. So if I were to start the peace movement all over again, that's the one change I would make. I would address our fear of the Arabs. I would have a genuine dialogue about the Israeli fear of extinction."

The take-away from this book thus far is that Israelis, like residents and citizens throughout the world, are not monolithic about how best to resolve the seemingly never ending tragedy that grips the modern State of Israel -- the settlements. Mr. Shavit notes "Israel is at odds with itself."

His longtime colleague and friend, Israel Harel, reminds him: "The people of Tel Aviv will understand how hollow their existence is, that without us they have no roots, no depth, and no life. [W]hat began in Ofra will make Israel Jewish and Zionist again."

Another take-away from this profoundly insightful book is that Israelis and Palestinians in the current State of Israel have a connected destiny, wherein both peoples must succeed. The author yearns: "Like most Israelis, we'd prefer our Israel to be a sort of California. . . ." Having lived in California for decades, as a reader, I know our streets are not paved with gold. But wouldn't it be wonderful if in our lifetime all of the mountains and streets in the State of Israel and a new State of Palestine were lined with Jaffa orange groves and everyone enjoying the fruits of peace and prosperity.

Mr. Shavit espouses a hopeful vision. "One day, when Free Palestine is established, its government will surely lease this piece of land to some international entrepreneur who will build the Gaza Beach Club Med. One day, when there is peace, Israelis will come out here for a short holiday break abroad. By these blue-green waters, they will drink whine and dance the samba. On their way home they will buy embroidered black Palestinian dresses in the air-conditioned duty-free shop of the international terminal separating prosperous Israel from peaceful Palestine."

But still the author is resigned to the harsh realities on the grounds: "What is needed to make peace between the two peoples of this land is probably more than humans can summon." He notes: "Hulda says peace shall not be." He says the Valley of Hulda is a "cursed" land, which now has "an upper-middle-class community of Israel's new bourgeoisie" and boasts six varies of grapes, including Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc.

Early Jewish pioneers had purchased barren land from Arabs in Hulda and toiled to establish a thriving kibbutz. But in April 1948, a Jewish army invaded the Arab villages in Hulda and chased away the Arabs and pillaged their homes and farms. Mr. Shavit laments: "Hulda is the crux of the matter. Hulda is what the conflict is really about. And Hulda has no solution. Hulda is our fate."

The author notes a historical irony and makes a tragically dire prediction: "After eighteen hundred years of powerless existence, Jewish soldiers employed a large, organized force to take another people's land and to conquer dozens of villages -- of which Hulda was one of the first. Here, by the old well of Hulda, we moved from one phase of our history to another, from one sphere of morality to another. So all that has haunted us ever since is right here. All that will go on haunting us is right here. Generation after generation. War after war."

To his great credit, Mr. Shavit gives voice to the displaced Palestinian refugees. The author writes that in April 1993, he searched for and found a seventy-year-old Jamal Munheir, a Palestinian refugee in the West Bank, and then went with him to his ancestral land in Hulda.

Mr. Shavit poignantly reminds us how many of the Palestinians became refugees:

"You were a rich man," I said. Immediately, I realized I have made a terrible mistake. Jamal [Munheir] erupted, "My heart burns when I come here. I go crazy when I come here. We were respected people. Englishmen and Jews and Arabs listened to us. Our words carried weight. But today, who are we, what are we? Beggars. No one respects us. We, who owned all this land, don't even have one grain of wheat. Only a UNRWA refugee certificate."

"He went silent. Under the old pine trees the only sound was that of my small tape recorder recording the silence. Until Jamal turned to me again, crying, saying that from the beginning of time his forefathers lived here and died here and were buried here. They plowed this plot of land for hundreds of years. From this old well they drew water for generations. Until the Jews came to Hulda and wiped out the Munheir family. Until the Jews conquered and pillaged Hulda. "Where is Rasheed?" Jamal cried. "And where is Mahmoud, and where are all the village people? Where is our Hulda?"

The author recounts a 2003 "road-trip" to Galilee he took with Mr. Mohammed Dahla, the prominent Palestinian-Israeli attorney who was born and have deep roots in the Galilee village of Turan, whom Mr. Shavit considers an Israeli brethren and close friend.

Mr. Dahla reveals that he participated in the peace process through back-channels in the late 1990, wherein "the Palestinians demanded repatriations for their suffering and asked that these reparations be paid by Israel to the future Palestinian state so it would utilize them just as the reparations paid by Germany to Israel were utilized for national projects."

Mr. Dahla explains: "At the outset, the Jews had no legal, historical, or religious rights to the land. The only right they had was the right born of persecution, but that right cannot justify taking 78 percent of a land that is not theirs. It cannot justify the fact that the guests went on to become the masters. [W]e are not like you. We are not strangers ow wanderers or emigrants. For centuries we have lived upon this land and we multiplied. No one can uproot us. No one can separate us from the land. Not even you."

The author writes: "He [Mr. Dahla] tells me that the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 was not exactly like the Holocaust, but that he is not willing to accept the Jewish monopoly on the term 'Holocaust.' 'It's true that here, there were no concentration camps,' Dahla says. 'But on the other hand, unlike the Holocaust, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 is still going on. And while the Holocaust was the holocaust of man, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 was a holocaust of man and land. The destruction of our people,' he says, 'was also the destruction of our homeland.'"

In my humble opinion, the world owes a tremendous amount of gratitude to Mr. Avi Shavit for writing this eloquent, balanced and profoundly insightful book. He faces reality on the grounds with brave honesty and objectivity. I now better appreciate and understand the State of Israel and its people, including religious and secular Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews, Oriental Jews and Sunni and Christian Arabs. The chapter about Mr. Aryeh Machluf Deri, the (controversial) Moroccan-born Oriental ultra-Orthodox Jewish leader, added a nuanced and deep dimension to my understanding of the State of Israel.

But, after reading this marvelous book, I am less pessimistic than Mr. Shavit about the peace process. I'm cautiously optimistic that the current peace process, being partly spearheaded by the US Secretary of State John F. Kerry, could product a true peace accord that would preserve the State of Israel and create the State of Palestine. A perfect storm is sweeping through the Middle East -- Iraq is plunging into a failed state, especially with the recent fall of Fallujah to Al-Qaeda, Egypt has descended into military rule, Syria is being torn asunder by raging wars and internal fighting fueled by Al-Qaeda militants, Lebanon has erupted yet again into violence, Jordan is being crushed by the deluge of Syrian refugees that continue to multiply and pour in, and Al-Qaeda franchises are metastasizing throughout the Middle East.

My current optimism is supported by Charlie Rose's interview of Mr. Riyad H. Mansour, the current Permanent Observer of Palestine to the UN, that aired on US PBS TV stations on January 7, 2014. It sounds like Mr. Kerry has been able to help the parties reach advance negotiations. Mr. Mansour praised Mr. Kerry as tenaciously and passionately committed to this round of peace process, as evinced by his frequent face-to-face meetings with the parties. A peaceful and safe State of Israel is needed in the region more than ever. A peaceful, prosperous and safe State of Palestine will likely serve to help stabilize the chaotic Middle East.

The deep, simmering ethnic tensions between the Ashkenazi Jews (the European Jewry) and Oriental Jews (the Levant or Arabic Jewry) is yet another reality that compels the young State of Israel to achieve peace (with guaranteed security) with the Palestinians, sooner rather than later.

Mr. Shavit writes movingly and honestly about the plight of the Oriental Jewry, whose population may one day eclipse that of other ethnic Jews in the State of Israel. By 1990, Oriental Jews purportedly exceeded 50 percent of Jewish Israelis.

Ms. Gal Gabai, a journalist and the anchor of a popular political talk show, explains to the author, who is also her friend and colleague, why she is drawn to Mr. Dari: "Until Dari came and proved that we could stand tall and proud -- walk among the Ashkenazim as equals. Deri brought North African Jewish tradition to center stage. [H]e gave even Oriental yuppies like me the ability to be at peace with ourselves and feel worthy."

The author notes: "Between the mid-nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century, Arab world Jewry experienced a relative golden age. As it was close to French and British colonial rulers, it enjoyed their patronage. It won rights it had never enjoyed before. Many Jews in North Africa and the Middle East benefited from all that Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Cairo, Alexandria, Tunis and Casablanca had to offer. But by the 1940s and 1950s the magic of the Orient had evaporated. Colonialism retreated, Arab nationalism was on the rise, and Zionism was triumphant. Within a few years a civilization collapsed. Thousand-year-old communities disintegrated within months. With one swing of history's sword the soft underbelly of the old Levant was sliced open. The enchanting, pluralist Orient was gone. A million Jewish Arabs were uprooted, their world destroyed, their culture decimated, their homes lost."

Ms. Gabai theorizes that "[i]n Israel, belonging is bought with blood. We Oriental Jews didn't bleed enough into the river of belonging. We were not murdered in the Holocaust. We did not get killed in the War of Independence. [W]e were imported only because European Jewry was exterminated and there was no other way to grow the state. [W]estern Zionism feared us. It feared the Arabism we brought with us: the Arab music, the smells and tastes of Arab cuisines, Arab mannerisms. [F]rom the outset we were under suspicion. So we were culturally castrated. [W]e had to prove daily that we were not Arabs. [W]e do not accept ourselves and we do not love ourselves. [A]nd we are always asked to present proof. We have to prove we are not inferior and not flawed. [A]lthough my three kids are half-Ashkenazi, Ashkenazi Israel does not accept me as I am [a Moroccan-born Jew]. Israel still suspects me."

The history of every nation, including and especially the United State of America, is tainted by racism to varying degrees. The healing process can seem to take an eternity.

Courageously, Mr. Shavit discusses the tough issue of racism in this book. Equally important to ponder is the following: "Yet there is another way to look at this. There is a politically incorrect truth here that is not easy to express. And this truth is this truth is that Israel did a favor to those it extracted from the Orient. The Jews there had no real future in the new Baghdad, the new Beirut, the new Cairo, or the new Meknes. Had they stayed, they would have been annihilated."

In describing the Israeli "condition" on its fifth-decade of statehood, which coincided with the second millennium, Mr. Shavit notes that "there is a huge divide here." He states "You can see it at Allenby 58, young people saying, 'Enough, it's time for fun.' There is a new generation in Israel and it's demanding happiness."

By 2006, after the Second Lebanon War, the euphoria that ushered in the new millennium for the State of Israel had evaporated. The author notes: "By now Allenby 58 is closed, but Jerusalem's Hauman 17 has turned a huge garage in southern Tel Aviv into the new mecca of dance, drugs and casual encounters." As part of his research, Mr. Shavit meets a twenty-five-year-old blond psychology student at a new hip underground club in Tel Aviv, who laments: "Ecstasy was love-sex, coke is alienation-sex. [I]t's hard-core, in your face, but there's no love, no affection. No hope whatsoever."

Mr. Shavit characterizes the State of Israel as schizophrenic and laments that today "[t]here is no Israeli togetherness." He explains that the year 1973 was the "most decisive" pivotal year in Israel's history: "The trauma of the Yom Kippur War terminated the reign of Israel's ancient regime. It promulgated a deep distrust of the state, its government, and its leadership. It empowered the individual and weakened the collective. It crushed Ben Gurion's legacy and his concrete state."

The author contends: "The mass Russian immigration of 1989-1991 added to the chaos. The one million immigrants . . . invigorated [Israel's] economy and shared its Jewish majority but added to the lack of cohesion. [T]he well-educated newcomers [many of whom are engineers, technicians, programmers] felt they were superior to the ones absorbing them. Hence, they did not shed their old identity and endorse an Israeli identity as previous immigrants had done. They maintained their Russian values and their Russian way of life and they largely lived in Russian enclaves."

Mr. Shavit concedes: "Yes, occupation is killing us morally and politically, but occupation is not only the cause of the malaise but its outcome. [T]he immediate challenge is the challenge of regaining national potency. An impotent Israel cannot make peace or wage war -- or end occupation. The 2006 trauma provided Israelis with an accurate picture of the overall condition of their political body: an enfeebled national leadership, a barely functional government, a public sector in decay, an army consumed with rot, and a startling disconnect between metropolis and periphery."

The author adds: "But the 2006 experience also provides a detailed panoramic picture of the world Israel lives in: Iran on the rise, Hezbollah building up in the north, Hamas building up in the south. [F]aced with renewed existential danger, Israel has no relevant national strategy. It is confused and paralyzed."

It is highly encouraging that the Israeli youths awoke and took to the streets peacefully in the summer of 2011, occupying the posh Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard, which may even have served as partial inspiration for Occupy Wall Street to mobilize later in the same year. The author writes: "Moderate and nonviolent, it succeeded in wining the support of 80 percent of Israelis. For one summer, it unites Israelis again by giving them a sense of hope."

"On July 23, [2011,] 30,000 youths march in the streets of Tel Aviv, chanting a new-old slogan: 'The people demand social justice.' On July 30, they are 130,000 strong, on August 6, they are 300,000 strong. On September 3, 450,000 people take to the streets -- 6 percent of Israel's population. [Itzik] Shmuli is the keynote speaker at the rally held in Tel Aviv's Nation Square. 'We are the new Israelis,' he calls out to the 330,000 cheering demonstrations. 'We love our country and we are willing to die for our country. Let us live in the country we love.'"

Mr. Shumli tells the author: "We do not see ourselves anymore as cynical hedonists. Now our life as Israelis has meaning. This new sense of meaning is the great achievement of 2011. We love Israel again and believes in Israel and we are determined to reform it."

Like the Republic of Korea ("South Korea"), the State of Israel became an economic Hebrew Tiger! Mr. Shavit explains that Israel's economy is "one of the most nimble economies in the West." Mr. Stanley Fischer, who served as the governor of the Bank of Israel from 2005 to 2013, notes "Israel has more companies traded on the NASDAQ than Canada or Japan. No wonder that venture capital investments in Israel are larger than in Germany or France. [T]he high-tech revolution combined with a prudent macroeconomic policy has made Israel a hub of prosperity."

Mr. Michael Strauss, the Israeli business magnate, tells the author: "Israelis are exceptionally quick, creative, and audacious. They are sexy even in the way they work. They are hardworking and tireless. They are endowed with a competitive spirit -- with the need to be the first at the finish line. And they are willing to do whatever it takes to be the first at the finish line. They never take no for an answer. They never accept failure or acknowledge defeat."

This is a splendid book for anyone who desires a glimpse into the mind of a secular Zionist, a son of Abraham who loves Israel, is passionate about his Jewishness, but is not religious. And furthermore, one who is willing to look honestly at the atrocities his fellow Zionists have committed against Palestinians over the years and even to acknowledge that Israel exists because it “erased Palestine from the face of the earth.”

The Wall Street Journal called “My Promised Land” “nuanced.” K. Thurm on this page called it “all over the map.” I think all over the map is better, since anything you might say about the book – sensitive or callous, insightful or obtuse, humane or brutal – you can find support or refutation for with equal ease. The one constant is the author’s commitment to tribal identity, what Martin Buber called “blood” (“the deepest, most potent stratum of our being”) and what Benjamin Disraeli called “race,” saying, “Race is all.”

That’s the emotional world that Shavit inhabits, deploying the Israeli codeword “demography” to make his point. “Demography is vicious,” he says referring to the Jewish world’s supposed shrinkage. When his great-grandfather emigrated from Britain to Palestine in the 1890s, “Jews were 0.8 percent of the British population. Today they are less than 0.5 percent.” Not, of course, because they have been killed or expelled, but because they have ceased to see themselves as a separate people and have become British. Which someone else might not regard as a particular problem, like American descendants of Lithuanians or Greeks ceasing to be Lithuanians or Greeks and instead being Americans, or possibly just human beings. Shavit does see it as a problem, a huge problem. “Over the years our tribe could not survive on these lush green meadows,” he says of the British Isles. “With no Holocaust and no pogroms and no overt anti-Semitism, these islands kill us softly. Enlightened Europe also kills us softly, as does democratic America. Benign Western civilization destroys non-Orthodox Judaism.” The deadliness of good neighborly relations. What matters to him, he reveals, is not physical survival but tribal identity, and a very specific form of it at that, the “non-Orthodox” form, by which he seems to mean secular. (No black coats and sidecurls.) But why it should be a problem that secular Jews join other human beings in a common family he never explains, nor does it seem to enter his head that it requires explanation. It is just a given for him. Indeed, it is the underlying theme of the entire book, from his ode to early kibbutzniks, where he sees “new Jews” bursting with “manly energy,” to his rhapsody on the raucous nightclubs of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where what he hears is “the liberating roar of secularism.” What counts is being Jewish, especially secular Jewish. Not adhering to the religion but belonging to the tribe – to the Volk, you might say, to borrow a word from another nationalist movement.

It’s not just Great Britain that is a problem for tribal identity. “The demography of American Jews is vicious, too,” he writes, the self-identified Jewish population declining from 3 percent in 1950 to 2 percent today, though again, not because of genocide or expulsion – far from it – but because of “the same comfortable circumstances that made the number of British non-Orthodox Jews diminish.” The same deadliness of having good neighbors. He is dismayed too that “the Jewish birthrate in North America is low and the intermarriage rate is high” – and where else nowadays can one find condemnation of “intermarriage” except maybe on a white supremacist website? And where else can one find a lament for Jews “disappearing into the non-Jewish space” except maybe in a settler screed from the West Bank?

Even in Israel itself, “Throughout the country demography is turning against the Jews,” he says worriedly. “Today 46 percent of all the inhabitants of greater Israel are Palestinians.” (By greater Israel he means Israel proper plus the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza.) In Jerusalem, meanwhile, Jews are only 63 percent of the population. (Of course, because Israel annexed the Arab half of the city, which he doesn’t mention.) School kids in Jerusalem are 40 percent ultra-Orthodox, which he doesn’t like, and, horror of horrors, “more than 35 percent are Arabs,” while “only an eighth are non-religious Jews,” his sub-tribe, you might call it. But at least they make babies. “Unlike the free societies of Europe, the Israeli free society reproduces,” he says, sounding for all the world like a eugenicist from the 1920s.

So that is our author’s outlook on the world. For all his journalistic credentials, for all his intellectual ability, he is an unapologetic tribalist, even when he is finding fault with his tribe and documenting its transgressions, as he does most notably in his recounting of the Zionist conquest of the town of Lydda in 1948 during what Israel calls its War of Independence and what Palestinians call their Nakba, or Catastrophe. His moral center of gravity is Jewish identity.

Lydda was an Arab town near Tel Aviv that the United Nations, in its resolution to partition Palestine, assigned to the Arab portion of the country but that Zionist forces decided they needed to conquer, and not only conquer but clear of its 50,000 inhabitants. What happened has been reported before, mostly notably by the Israeli historians Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe, but Shavit does the job in more detail, having interviewed several of the leading actors 20 years ago and being able to draw on the tapes of those interviews now.

On July 11, 1948, a Zionist military column roared into Lydda, Shavit reports, “firing at all in its way … In forty-seven minutes of blitz, more than a hundred Arab civilians are shot dead – women, children, old people.” Thousands more either seek refuge or are herded as prisoners into a couple of mosques and a church. The next day, believing his troops are being shot at, the brigade commander gives an order to fire, and, “The soldiers shoot in every direction. Some throw hand grenades into homes. One fires an antitank PIAT shell into the small mosque … In thirty minutes, at high noon, more than 200 civilians are killed. Zionism carries out a massacre in the city of Lydda.”

What to do next? Comes the order, from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to operations officer Yitzak Rabin down to the brigade commander: “The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly, without regard to age.” So soldiers go from house to house ordering people to grab what they can and go, go, go. Along the way Zionist – now Israeli -- soldiers “force those marching to hand over cash and wristwatches and jewelry.” Back in town the soldier, nicknamed Bulldozer, who fired the rocket into the mosque is hospitalized, having injured his hand in the course of the firing. Shavit relates: “His comrades came to visit him and told him he’d done good, he’d killed seventy Arabs. They told him because of the rage they felt at seeing him bleed, they had walked into the small mosque and sprayed the surviving wounded with automatic fire. Then they walked into the nearby houses and gunned down anyone they found. At night, when they were ordered to clean the small mosque and carry out the seventy corpses and bury them, they took eight other Arabs to do the digging of the burial site and afterward shot them, too, and buried them with the seventy.”

In telling this horrific story, Shavit endeavors to muster sympathy for the murderers, informing us, for example, that Bulldozer was “exhausted” by the time he arrived in Lydda. “He has seen too much, done too much, killed too much.” He had specialized in “village raids, roadside ambushes,” and in torturing prisoners: “Once he starts beating the prisoners of war he begins to enjoy beating them … He makes them bleed so much that they cannot stand up.” So he was kind of frazzled.

Another soldier, identified as Sniper, has also been through a lot as a member of the “training group boys,” killing Arabs left and right even before getting to Lydda. Interviewed years later, he told Shavit of shooting a woman, a priest, a child. “Every time he felled an Arab,” Shavit tells us, “he carved another groove on the wooden butt of his Canadian sniper’s rifle. Fifty grooves in all.” So he must have been kind of frazzled too.

As for the brigade commander who gave the direct orders, he assures Shavit, who passes it along to us, “Officers are human beings too … although you are strong and well trained and resilient, you experience some sort of mental collapse. You feel the humanist education you received collapsing.” So obviously it was tough on him too, poor bugger.

What is Shavit’s own position on all this -- Ari Shavit, admirer of the state of Israel, which he calls at various points “an astounding collective success,” “a man-made miracle,” “a powerhouse of vitality, creativity and sensuality,” and “a truly free society”? It is this:

“I condemn Bulldozer. I reject the sniper. But I will not damn the brigade commander and the military governor and the training group boys. On the contrary. If need be, I’ll stand by the damned. Because I know if it wasn’t for them, the State of Israel would not have been born. If it wasn’t for them, I would not have been born. They did the dirty, filthy work that enables my people, myself, my daughter, and my sons to live.” Which the reader might have to think about to appreciate. Standing by the damned sounds sufficiently noble until you realize that by “the damned” he does not mean the people who were murdered or driven out of their homes but rather the people who ordered the murdering and the driving out. Those are the people he stands by. But at the same time he rejects and condemns those who carried out their orders, those who actually bloodied their hands – Bulldozer and the sniper. Not yet finished, he stands by the “training group boys” even though the sniper, rejected, was one of them.

Maybe this is what the New Republic reviewer had in mind when he said the book was “full of moral complexity,” though God knows what Thomas Friedman of The New York Times had in mind when he said Shavit remains “morally anchored.” If that’s anchored I’d like to see adrift.

As for supporting the commanders because if not for them “the state of Israel would not have been born,” that brings us back to the tribal perspective. The creation of the state for Shavit’s tribe – “my people,” in his words -- justifies the murder of innocents, apparently. Fine, but how does it enable Shavit and his family to live? He has already told us that his ancestors had it easy in the British Isles. No pogroms, no Holocaust, no overt anti-Semitism. They came to Palestine looking for trouble, it sounds like. He doesn’t put it that way, but that’s what it comes down to. They came so they could aggressively identify themselves as Jews and take the land away from the non-Jews who lived there, and do it by “decisive, rapid action; action to be carried out by a new breed of Jew.” Now he tells us that the slaughter of several hundred Arab civilians and the permanent dispossession of 50,000 was justified because without it he would not have been born and his family would not have been able to live. If there is any sense to this, it escapes me. If his great-grandfather, old Herbert Bentwich, had stayed put in England, where Shavit tells us he was “a gentleman of independent means,” Ari presumably would have been born there and would have grown up free of the “existential threat” that now keeps him in a permanent sweat. Maybe riding to hounds instead of worrying himself over Iran’s nuclear program. And if there is any morality here it can only be of the purely tribal variety enunciated by Benny Morris: “Preserving my people is more important that universal moral concepts.” Though even with that you can’t untangle why he stands by some war criminals but rejects others.

“I see that the choice is stark,” he says, “either reject Zionism because of Lydda, or accept Zionism along with Lydda.” He chooses the latter, as if there were something fine about that, something valorous, but one can imagine a thoughtful Aryan doing the same after contemplating whether to reject Nazism because of Auschwitz or accept it along with Auschwitz. And why not? if preserving one’s people is more important than universal moral concepts.

It’s an interesting trajectory our author has followed, from his youthful days in the 1980s as an “anti-occupation peacenik,” as he describes his former self, to his current standing as a chin-scratching contemplator of Israel’s ambiguities. He treats us to a rerun of his experience as a prison-camp guard toward the end of the First Intifada, in 1991, when he was called up as a reservist, basically to help enforce the occupation to which he was opposed. He was “horrified” at the prospect, he tells us, and considered refusing and going to jail instead, but then, he says, “I had a better idea. I would write about the experience,” which in fact he did, getting his account published in The New York Review of Books. “Gaza Beach,” it was called, referring to the site of the camp where young Palestinian men and boys were detained for participating in, or being suspected of participating in, the revolt against Israeli’s military occupation.

“Shoot and write,” you might call what he did, as a variation on the Israeli tradition of “shoot and cry,” referring to Jews feeling bad after committing crimes against Palestinians and beating their breasts about it in public before going back to commit more crimes. In the camp he guarded young Palestinians who believed essentially what he believed, that the occupation was wrong. What did he hear in this camp where he served, and what did he write about? “Hair-raising screams coming from the other side of the galvanized tin fence of the interrogation ward.” And why do the captives scream? “They scream because my Jewish state makes them scream … my beloved democratic Israel makes them scream … Thousands upon thousands are being held. Many of them are being tortured.” Then the confession: “This is a systematic brutality no democracy can endure. And I am part of it. I comply.” (He has a weakness for short dramatic sentences.) At this point the reader might think, this is surely evil, and those who do the torturing are evildoers, and maybe the state that requires it is evil too. But no, Shavit philosophizes, it is “evil without evildoers … It is an evil that happens, as it were, of its own accord, an evil for which the responsibility is no one’s.” Which is of course very convenient for him and very convenient for the “truly free society” he loves. What happens in the prison camp is also a tragedy, “a tragedy that never ends.” And tragedies don’t have culpable parties, they unfold as if by fate, which again is convenient for young Shavit, who, in any case, is unburdened of guilt because of his soulful confession.

It’s no surprise that our author, committed as he is to Jewishness, and especially secular Jewishness, glorifies the early Zionist pioneers in a manner nearly as effusive as that of his apparent mentor, Leon Uris, author of the 1950s and 1960s best-seller “Exodus.” Uris in his overheated novel had a lot of “high-breasted” women and “tall, lean, and muscular” men draining swamps and fending off Arabs in the kibbutzim of the 1920s, their leader being “a handsome figure on his white Arabian stallion.” Shavit has young Hebrew men “strong, buff, beaming with certainty … their fine torsos are proudly on display … tanned and muscular … they look like models of revolutionary potency … manly energy is now bursting,” while “the girls are surprisingly provocative … tantalizing.”

Uris had Arabs living in “filth, unspeakable disease, illiteracy and poverty … There was little song or laughter or joy in Arab life … cunning, treachery, murder, feuds, and jealousies became a way of life.”

Shavit spares us most of that, but does tell us, “The downtrodden [Arab] villagers wonder who are these newcomers singing, dancing, shooting in the air. The astonished valley wonders where these [Jewish] nomads came from to pitch tents and dance wildly into the night, to awaken the dormant valley from its thousand-year sleep.”

Of “Exodus,” David Ben-Gurion, founding father of Israel, commented, “As a literary work it isn’t much, but as a piece of propaganda, it’s the best thing ever written about Israel.” “My Promised Land,” of course, is more “complex” than mere propaganda, with its shoot-and-write confessions and its acknowledgement of Zionist atrocities, but it remains a hymn to the enterprise of European and Russian Jews immigrating to Palestine and taking over the land, even if with many a complication and non sequitur. Non sequitur? While acknowledging that these early European-born pioneers drove the Arabs out of the valleys that the pioneers coveted, he still writes of them, “By working the land with their bare hands and by living in poverty and undertaking a daring, unprecedented social experiment, they refute any charge that they are about to seize a land that is not theirs.”

At times the illogic can make your head spin. He has these European transplants working joyously all day at land reclamation and singing and dancing all night, with “young legs thrust up in the air,” but then tells us, glumly, “only five months after Ein Harod [their kibbutz] is founded, one of its founders cannot take it anymore. He is twenty-four when he takes his life with a shotgun.” Can’t take it anymore? Well, I sympathized. After just a few pages of these carryings-on, it was getting so I couldn’t take it anymore either.

Then there is the rhapsodic talk about early Zionists being able “to take the valley and to take the Land,” with a capital L, which is standard Zionist usage, as in his, “Another furrow, another acre, another swamp, until the valley is truly theirs. Until the land is once again the Land of Israel.” If you put that gusto for the Land together with the hosannas to Jewishness, the similarity to the Blood-and-Soil ideology of another national movement is disquieting, and I was sorry Shavit did not make the connection himself. That he concludes that the great “fire in the belly” of the young pioneers “will burn the valley’s Palestinians, but it will consume itself, too. Its smoldering remains will eventually turn Ein Harod’s exclamation point into a question mark,” strikes me as just a literary affectation, something that allows reviewers to call the book “nuanced” or “full of complexity.” Shavit’s own belly-fire, like that of the work-all-day, dance-all-night pioneers, is for tribal identity and tribal land – Blut und Boden.

He even buys into the Masada story, the story first told by a Jewish-Roman historian according to which 960 Jewish extremists, or Zealots, committed suicide rather than be captured or killed by Roman soldiers at their mountaintop fortress in 74 C.E. It’s a story not swallowed whole even by the nationalistic Israel Museum, in Jerusalem, which mentions it in a wall plaque and then says, “So goes the account of Josephus Flavius. While archeologists have never found the hundreds of bodies from this mass suicide, the skeletons of three Zealots were found in the northern palace.” The Jewish Virtual Library, not otherwise shy about celebrating the glories of the tribe, says, “because of Josephus’ proclivity to depend on hearsay and legend, scholars are never sure what to accept as fact.” Shavit gives no indication of doubt on anyone’s part. He repeats the tale without qualification in the course of celebrating the mission of an early Zionist labor leader, Shmaryahu Gutman, who in 1942 led a group of 46 Zionist youth leaders up Masada in order to “change the collective psyche,” because he knows that “when the Second World War ends, the brutal conflict over the fate of Palestine will be renewed.” He wants to fire up the kids, “to unify the Hebrew youth around a powerful concrete symbol.” And this he does with the arduous climb and his recounting to the kids of the tale of suicide in preference to submission. Shavit relates the trek in more of his breathless prose: “Their eyes can hardly see in the pitch-black night. Their throats are parched because of the shortage of water. The straps of their heavy rucksacks cut into their shoulders. The air is salty. The desert is filled with chasms and ravines.” And so forth. “After sixteen hours of walking, the forty-six are not far from breaking,” he tells us. But not to worry: “They are made of stronger stuff than that.” At last on the summit, where their mythological ancestors made their mythological sacrifice, “the youngsters light a campfire and sing and dance.” Gutman, “whose ideology was studying the land, loving the land, and becoming one with the land,” tells them the story again, and says, “Our tent too is pitched on the abyss,” after which, “he steps back into the darkness and” – fortunately not falling off – “watches the dancing begin anew … Eyes afire, feet as light as air. The young boys and girls of Israel have returned to Masada to dance with abandon on the abyss … The dancing boys and girls will fight the cataclysmic war that will save Zionism and save the Jews.” That is, the cataclysmic war against the Arabs to take the land from them once and for all. It’s a scene that puts one in mind of the film “Triumph of the Will,” by Leni Riefenstahl -- all those exuberant kids celebrating the ancestral soil and their bonds of blood, cranked up to do battle with the one people who stand in their way. That in the course of this orgy Shavit declares that Zionism has “no mythology,” is just one more example of the non sequiturs and contradictions that pepper the book and make it “complex” and “nuanced.”

Shavit’s devotion to Israel is such that he even rejoices in the nation’s development of nuclear weapons, which he calls a “mythic undertaking” and a “stupefying success,” though in deference to Israel’s policy of never admitting or denying that it has such weapons, he avoids coming right out and saying that it does. “I cleared this chapter with the Israeli censor,” he admits early on, so you can’t expect anything else. The chapter in question is based on an interview with the man who was director general of the Dimona nuclear plant when the first bomb was built, in 1966-67, and it is coy in the extreme. At critical points in their talk about the operation, they just raise an eyebrow or pour themselves another glass of Chivas Regal. “I know, he knows that I know, and I know that he knows that I know, but we do not say a word about it … We will conduct our conversation under a shroud of opacity.” Opacity, even though the newspaper that Shavit works for, Haaretz, is free to report what the Swedish Peace Research Institute says, which is that Israel has an arsenal of 80 nuclear warheads. It just can’t say it on its own account. This policy of speak-no-evil, we learn, was the result of a compromise between hawks and doves in 1962, one side wanting nuclear weapons, the other not. “A synthesis of these approaches emerged,” Shavit tells us, “a doctrine according to which Israel would be a nuclear power but would act as if it were not,” a doctrine that still obtains today, as Israel publicly fumes over the possibility of Iran going nuclear but refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Since the nuclear chapter has been censored, of course nothing is said about the highly credible report that Israel’s nuclear program was actually made possible by the theft of bomb-grade uranium from the United States, employing a front company in Pennsylvania named NUMEC, run by one Zalman Shapiro, a leader of the Zionist Organization of America, and funded by a veteran of Israel’s 1948 war, one David Lowenthal. (See the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, April 17, 2014, also the book “Divert!” by Grant F. Smith.) It was a company whose business was uranium enrichment and which mysteriously lost over 700 pounds of uranium at the same time that Israel was embarking on its “mythic undertaking.” Shavit looks the othe way, giving credit to France, guilt-ridden over the Holocaust, for helping Israel down the nuclear road. As for Israel’s reason for going nuclear, surprisingly enough it is not “the knowledge that the world is our enemy,” as Shavit favorably quotes an early labor leader as saying in another context. It’s more specific than that: “The expulsion of 1948 necessitated Dimona. Because of those dead villages it was clear that the Palestinians would always pursue us, that they would always want to flatten our own villages.”

Yes, those Palestinians out in the streets, throwing rocks, protesting the confiscation of their lands and water cisterns, confined to ever-shrinking remnants of their country, under siege and under occupation, walled in and fenced off – they are the ones against whom nuclear warheads are needed. To which the reader may append an exclamation mark if he so desires.

“Even your neighbors don’t know what they owe you,” Shavit says admiringly to his host, in a Tel Aviv suburb, as he takes his leave.

Yea, our author is all over the place. At times he hardly seems to know what he thinks. He acknowledges in one chapter that, “The Arabs who were not driven away in 1948 have been oppressed by Zionism for decades. The Jewish state confiscated much of their land, trampled many of their rights, and did not accord them real equality,” but in another chapter, he seems to forget about that and says the tension between Israel and its neighbors is “inherent,” because Israel is “a Jewish state in an Arab world, and a Western state in an Islamic world, and a democracy in a region of tyranny.” Not because one people stole the land of the other.

He vividly lays out some of the details of Zionism’s depredation of Palestine, giving the lie to Israel’s official story about itself, but then he blames the Israeli “elite,” of which he must be a member, for undermining the nation’s esprit with their “constant attacks on nationalism, the military, and the Zionist narrative.”

He speaks approvingly of the secularism of the early Zionist settlers while mentioning their “donning their white Shabbat outfits” and saying that their “Jewish identity … sanctified the Bible” -- which suggests the summation of secular Zionism offered by Max Blumenthal: “I don’t believe in God, but God gave us the land.”

He loves Israel, that much is clear, both the idea of it as an ethnocentric state and the practice of it -- or at least the secular go-go part of the practice. He loves the success stories of penniless refugees from the Holocaust who came to the barren land and created small businesses that grew into big businesses and became fabulously rich. He loves the licentious nightclubs of Tel Aviv. He loves the tanned torsos of the early kibbutzniks. He waxes rhapsodic about the basic Zionist enterprise: “We probably had to come … We performed wonders … we did the unimaginable,” employing the first-person tribal, as he does when talking about “the genocide done to us” or about how “we wrote the Bible.” He revels in the tribal spirit, the tribal toughness, the tribal energy. But he also tells us, “A movement that got most things right in its early days has gotten almost everything wrong in recent decades,” which is quite a let-down.

What happened, besides the grouchiness of a supposed liberal elite? What went wrong after the early victories of clearing the land of swamps and Arabs? Well, after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, “No one had moral authority anymore … Hierarchy broke down. The sense of purpose was gone.” Then in the 1990s the immigration of Russian Jews “added to the chaos … there was no governing ethos and no governing elite.” Then after the second Lebanon war, in 2006, “Old-fashioned Israeli masculinity was castrated as we indulged ourselves in the pursuit of absolute justice and absolute pleasure,” apparently referring to social justice for Jews and the pleasure of nightclubbing, which he nevertheless exults in. He is not specific about these failings, there are no details. Still, regardless of the accuracy or inaccuracy of his analysis, we are finally able to descry what he admires -- a hierarchical state. A governing elite with a strong “ethos.” National machismo. (“The Jews return to history and regain their masculinity,” he has already told us in gushing over an early kibbutz.) One can’t help comparing his vision with the vision of fascistic movements of the past -- the nationalistic fervor, the mysticism of the soil, the emphasis on blood ties, the nostalgia for moral authority, the yearning for a strong “governing elite”– though no such comparison occurs to him.

No surprise that our author has been a cheerleader for Israel’s periodic assaults on Gaza and has also adopted the party line that the thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths they cause are the fault of Hamas, which schemes to produce them – the bombings of hospitals, schools and apartment blocks -- so Israel will look bad.

In some ways this is not a good book at all, it is a terrible book, a profoundly confused book, romanticizing what it simultaneously reveals to be vile, deploring on one page what it glorifies on another, stubbornly trying to justify the unjustifiable, and espousing a morality that should make any decent person cringe. But in another way, it is a wonderful book, giving us a vivid look into the morally and intellectually tortured world of liberal, secular Zionism, an ideology that cannot help revealing its primitive fealty to blood and soil even as it endeavors to rise above it. For that I believe it deserves the five stars that I modestly bestow on it.

While I have followed the development of Israel over the years and read about the various peace accords that were attempted, I never understood the whole history from the inception of Zionism to the multitude of settlements that we continually read about and which sound so unreasonable, if Israel wants peace and credibility within the world community.

On the one hand, it was certainly easy to sympathize and want to encourage the Jewish people in finding a safe home after all they had suffered. But the problem is that it is not at all safe --- and anger keeps piling up which continues to roil the Middle East --- and certainly affect us in the U.S..

When I have read that this land "belongs" to the Jewish people, and not to anyone else, I thought of the home I was raised in, which has been lived in by several families since we left. If I went back and demanded that the present family get out because it was my "ancestral home," they would close the door or call the police.

So I thought it would be reasonable for the people of Israel to stand together, for once, and to stand back and consider the way we live in the US, with all the kinds of people we have. Get along!

In any case, this splendid book describes, as other reviews note, the new immigration of the Jews to Israel in the late 19th century, what happened since in a highly readable and instructive narrative, the effect of the Yom Kippur war on the fears and sensibilities of many people leading to an unjust colonization of the Palestinian areas. The various almost tectonic forces of the various groups in Israel, as well as their histories and outlook, seem to create in Israel the danger of a "perfect storm" which would do more to destroy the country than the Arab countries and Palestinian people around it.

I read at least three non-fiction books a week on matters of this sort in different countries. This is certainly the most instructive and provocative book I have read this year.

This is the finest modern national epic that I have ever read. It brings to mind Daniel Boorstin's prize-winning THE AMERICANS trilogy vignettes, but with greater love of country and far sharper elbows.

Shavit, a long-time, highly regarded Israeli journalist, has unparralled access to diverse Israeli personalities of the past two generations. His objectivity in reporting interviews with individuals with whom he clearly disagreed is remarkable. As a one-time 'peacenik,' Shavit's own personal views have matured over the past decades. One constant is his opposition to Israel's ever-expanding settlement programs.

Shavit combines his investigative reporting with an historian's love of research. His stories of individuals and villages reflect the style of David McCullough's BRAVE COMPANIONS.

Shavit creates a yet-incomplete mosaic of a Jewish homeland carved out of Palestine and its historical aftermath. His accounts of triumph and joy are balanced by the impact of successive waves of immigration, the effects of the wars of 1967 and, especially, 1973, and vignettes of modern-day Israel.

For Shavit, Israel has become an 'unmelting pot' in which the cohesion of post-1948 Israel has dissipated. He cannot predict whether 1) the lost cohesion can be rekindled; 2) the misguided Kingdom of Israel psyche can be supplanted by a more realistic strategic vision; and 3) an acceptable arrangement with the Palestinians and the Arab world can ever be successfully assured. Shavit suggests that the maturing of his beloved Israel might possibly, over the long term, have a positive result or, perhaps become a modern-day Greek tragedy.

The Israel of the Exodus is vastly different today. The original Western European Jews have been outnumbered by Jews immigrating from Eastern Europe and the Arab world. Within 50 years Israeli Arabs and the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) are projected to outnumber non-Haredi Jews. Some years ago border arrangement with Arab governments such as Egypt and Jordan were possible. In the post-Arab-Spring-world this seems far less likely. Moreover the Palestinians of today are far more fractious than a generation ago. Israel has had a nuclear capability for two generations. Is it likely, a decade hence, that Israel will remain the only nuclear nation in the Middle East?

Shavit describes an Israel very different from that of 1950 or 1990. People who recall the Israel of decades ago will be surprised to discover how profoundly this country has changed. What might observers conclude from the kaleidoscopic vignettes presented by Shavit? What are the implications of such systemic change on how Israel is viewed geopolitically?

I will not presume about how the viewpoint of others has evolved towards Israel over the years. I can trace my personal evolution as an interested observer of the Middle East since 1953.

In 1953 and 1954 I led two Yale student groups to Egypt and Israel. In 1954 I published a youthfully positive article, Peace in the Middle East, in a publication of the American Christian Palestine Committee. After my book NASSER'S NEW EGYPT:A CRITICAL ANALYSIS (1960)was banned in Egypt, I was invited to spend a month at the Israeli Defense college (I couldn't accept, because I entered the State Department). In the Foreign Service I refused an opportunity yo specialize in the Middle East, stating that the two major issues, Israel and oil, were White House-level issues.

I maintained a personal interest in Middle Eastern affairs while stationed in the Congo and Chile. In May, 1967. while dinind with a foreign Chilean foreign minister, I was pressed for my views in the wake of President Nasser's demand for the expulsion of U. S. personnel from the Sinai and his focus on the Straits of Tiran. Based on personal instinct rather than any inside knowledge, I stated that Israel, early one morning, would attack and destroy the entire Egyptian Air Force. I was surprised that Israel was caught so unprepared for the Yom Kippur War and in the manner by which the United States airlifted military supplies to permit Israel to turn the military tide.

I was delighted with President Anwar Sadat's trip to Jerusalem and the subsequent Camp David Accords. (I knew Sadat and had visited him at his home near the Pyramids. I was convinced, as was he, that he would leave the presidency in a casket.) In 1982 I was appalled by General Sharon's acquiescence in the Phalangist massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila. I strongly opposed the constant expansion of Israeli settlements and regretted Arab attacks against Israelis.

Over time I became disillusioned with the succession of Israeli coalition governments as well as the internal fighting within Palestinians. Recently I resented the manner in which Prime Minister Netanyahu sought to impose his settlements policy on U. S. policymakers as well as his 'red line' on Iran, while the United States was seeking a diplomatic alternative to what I consider a potentially disastrous military attack.

In the early fifties, Might have identified my self as 'pro-Israel.' Today I am confused as to what 'pro-Israel' means. Does it mean that an American should support whatever Israel does? Does it mean that when Israel deliberately attacked a U. S. naval ship (the U. S. S. Liberty in 1967 and killed 54 American seamen and wounded another 171) that the United States should have acquiesced to this Israeli action? Does it mean that the United States should condone expansion of Israeli settlements in disputed or Arab land, although it violates U. N. and U. S. policy?

I do not consider myself 'anti-Israel.' Back in 1954 I had the privilege of lunching with David Ben Gurion and his wife in the Negev. In 1960 I looked forward to the prospect of a month at the Israeli Defense College.

I unreservedly agree with the bed-rock U. S. policy to support the existence of Israel. However, as an American I reject the premise that it is 'anti-Israel' not to support whatever policy or action that a particular Israeli government proposes. For example, U. S> vital national interests in he Arab world differ from Israel's position vis-a-vis various Arab nations. I consider it 'anti-American' for a majority of U. S. senators and congressmen to declare themselves 'pro-Israel' without spelling out precisely what this means regarding their responsibilities as American members of Congress.

In his tour de force tour of Israel’s history, journalist Ari Shavit takes the reader on a journey through Israel’s past, stopping at key points along the Jewish State’s development. Each chapter is written in the present tense, adding to a sense of the reader’s involvement in the momentous events that Shavit so vividly portrays. The tour begins in the late 19th Century, as Shavit’s own relative from England come to the Holy Land. Like the other Europeans, they see the local Arabs not as a distinct group of people, but more as simple farmers or nomads who pose no foreseeable problem. To them, it’s time to begin the return to the homeland. We are taken to the see the growth of the Jewish settlements, as idealistic youths labor to carve new fields for farming, as orange growers modernize Palestine, as military men train youths for battle on the heights of Masada, so potent a symbol to Jewish nationalism. He pulls no punches as he forces us to watch the great and terrible battle at Lydda during the 1948 War, where so many Arab villagers were expelled to make room for Jewish settlers. He apologizes for the excesses as Lydda, but not for the substance of the battle. He realizes that what was done there was necessary for a Jewish state to survive. This is the most controversial portion of the book; many take exception with his judgment here. Others will see this as honest, the bitter truth of war and conflict: Every nation has displaced another.

From the ashes of Lydda, Shavit takes through postwar growth and hope, from a housing estate in the 1950’s to the nuclear reactor at Dimona. The story takes a sharp turn as the 1967 War led to the growth of the settlement movement and the occupation the peace activist author so clearly despises. He takes is to the settlement of Ofra in the West Bank, which he sees as a mutation of the original settlement movement, for this new settlement takes place inside the boundaries of someone else’s territory. He understands the deep-rooted Zionist impulse to settle, but this is not the way it should be, he tells us. His resentment of the occupation reaches its height in the chapter at the Gaza Beach prison camp in 1991; He hates the prison camp and the torturing of the Palestinians there so greatly that he cannot help but be reminded of another prison camp in Europe in the 1940’s. And while he realizes the analogy is incorrect, what happens in the camp in nonetheless morally repugnant to him. Therefore, he was encouraged by the beginning of the peace process in 1993. But looking back now, he sees it had a fatal flaw. For Leftists like Shavit, the peace process was about ending the occupation, which the left saw as morally bankrupt. Therefore they argued that relinquishing the territories would lead to peace, when in fact, these statements were made without examining the Palestinians positions. For it turns out that the main concern of their Arab counterparts was not simply ending the occupation, but a return home to their Palestine, a land without Jews. And no Israeli could ever accept that, Left or Right. Shavit returns to another town, Hulda, where Jews drove out Arabs in 1948. “Hulda has no solution,” he writes, “Hulda is our fate.” This enigmatic passage reveals that after a lifetime of searching for a peaceful solution, he has finally acknowledged that he can see none, only more conflict: “Generation after generation. War after war.”

This would have been a logical spot to conclude the book: He answered the question he originally posed. But there additional chapters dealing more with Israel’s internal situation that its external one. These are interesting as well. We get to see hedonistic youth partying at night, disenfranchised Sephardic Jews protesting their treatment by the Ashkenazi elite, a successful Israeli chocolate company. In the end, Shavit carries us back to the overall situation, where he leaves us worrying for Israel’s future on one hand, but resolute that he and his kinsmen will continue to carry on, come what may.

As usually happens when my book group is debating what book to read next, I read most of the 3-star reviews of this book last month. Without exception, the ones I read either said it was too pro-Zionist or too anti-Zionist (though the latter is a strange allegation towards a book written by an IDF combat veteran).

This is a book about and written for the purpose of defending Zionism, but a particular vision of Zionism which may be impossible to resurrect. You see it in Shavit's insistence that the first twenty years of the state were a golden age and things have gone downhill from there.

The book has 18 chapters, the last two of which have no date attached because they are an effort to sum up. My copy is at least a third edition and I'm thinking not all of the book may have been there for the first and second editions. I found chapter 18, "By the Sea," to be the best overall and was glad I stuck it out.

I was tempted not to when I read chapter 10, "Peace, 1993." Shavit has a reputation as a peacenik but in this chapter I began to wonder whether that is really deserved. The thesis of this chapter is that no Palestinian can really serve as a partner for peace because Palestinians cannot retreat from maximum demands. (In fact, you sort of get the idea that Shavit is asking, "Why should they," considering everything they've been through.)

It seems the impetus for Shavit's family to be born in Israel came largely from his English great-grandfather Herbert Bentwich (a second great-grandfather had migrated to Palestine even earlier). In chapter 1, "At First Sight, 1897," we read that 9 of Bentwich's 12 children were living in Palestine by the time he died in the 1920s. In the last chapter we read that 2 others went to America. Chapter 17, "The Millennial Challenge," is all about Jewish life in America today. The bottom line for Shavit is that precisely because less sets them apart from their neighbors than previous generations of Jews, non-Orthodox Jews in America and other Western countries will assimilate and over a very few generations cease to be Jewish.

If I could return to chapter 18, specifically page 430, Shavit specifies that Israel will become one of the following: *"A criminal state that carries out ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories; *"An apartheid state; *"A binational state; or *"A Jewish democratic state retreating with much anguish to a border dividing the land."

We all know which of these visions actually came true, in part because we Americans couldn't stop arguing about which of the latter two was preferable, and in part because neither of them was a realistic option to start with, as Shavit himself concedes in chapter 10. Four stars.

This is a most unusual work. I struggled with my rating, ending up with four stars for lack of a more suitable alternative: a one and a five. First, let me dispose of the easy part - language and style. I loved the language, as I admire a writer able to express his/her thoughts, feelings and ideas just so, conveying the nuances and shadings appropriate in each case. The author manages to be beautifully literary while just avoiding sounding bombastic and lost in his words. Great. And the style? Well, here I had a bit of a problem. Clearly, the author is viscerally, intimately involved with his subject and intent on insuring that we do not miss his points, as he makes them, most emphatically. Too emphatically, too repetitively, with too much stress, too many times, and again and again ... enough already, we got it, right? Now comes the difficult part: the substance and point of the book. I found the book to be very thought provoking, disturbing and uneven. (Full disclosure: I lived, went to school and served in the IDF in Israel throughout the 1950's. My objectivity may, therefore, be suspect) It was difficult, at times, to follow the author's train of thought, as it seemed to be heading into the darkest abyss of hopeless despair. At other times, we were being lead into euphoria and unbridled joy, or the most disgusting, revolting indignation at the scenes being described. There is no mincing of words here, the author gives it to us very clearly, holding nothing back. Reading the book is an emotional roller coaster of major proportions, perhaps too much for some of us. Nevertheless, I read it all the way through. How do I feel about? Ambivalent. Some of the author's characterizations and conclusions are so dire as to be indigestible. I found a saving grace in this area in the fact that these discouraging, despairing prognostications do not appear to flow, ipso facto, from the preceding discussion. Perhaps things are not as hopeless as he fears. A similar picture, though to a lesser degree, appears on the positive side: some of the glowing outlooks may be exaggerated. Perhaps things are not as wonderful as the author sees them. Ultimately, I do not regret the time and money I spent on this work for one principal reason: it has refocused my attention, with a somewhat novel perspective, on an issue that is most deserving of all the attention we can give it.

Shavit is a great writer with deep insight. Most of this book is informative and seems non-biased. Mr. Shavit explores the history of Israel in detail and offers his interpretations on a variety of subjects. The vast majority of the time, his assessments are enlightening and appear reasonable. In a situation this complex, readers will not agree with all of his analyses. Is it better to occasionally disagree with the author's opinions or should an author be less opinionated? I'll take the opinions every time if they seem reasonable and are the best attempt at finding the truth. Some readers may disagree, preferring less opinion.

The section on Lydda explores several atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers. According to Shavit, war crimes took place in the area around the time of the 1948 war. He investigates the expulsion (or fleeing) of the Arabs from that area and concludes that the actions taken by Israel in Lydda were unjust. It seems quite possible that Shavit's reporting about Lydda is factual. If the details are true, the implication is that even Israel had some immoral characters in its forces. What Shavit doesn't say is whether the evil acts committed by a minority of soldiers or leaders should be considered evidence that the majority of the population supported such atrocities. Did this same sequence of events happen elsewhere? Shavit does not answer. I've read other accounts of the subject of Arabs fleeing the country in 1948 explaining that many feared being caught up in the middle of a war and fled on their own accord for what they expected would be a short time until the neighboring Arab countries overran Israel. Was the Lydda expulsion typical or an anomaly? Shavit does not answer this question.

Shavit doesn't elaborate on several additional issues. First, the lack of character shown by the residents of Gaza for electing Hamas in 2006, even though they were card carrying racists. He points at the election relating to the ineptness and corruption of the PA but my feeling is that it is morally wrong for a population to vote for its pocketbooks while failing to consider that their party of choice has "kill Jews" in its charter. A second issue not explored enough: Why do Palestinians languish in refugee camps to this day within the neighboring Arab countries? They speak the same language as the residents of those countries and practice the same religion. It is unclear why they are still stuck in refugee camps. Should the blame be apportioned to Israel or its neighbors? Since Shavit is writing about injustices done to the Palestinians, this is a big issue deserving more detailed exploration.

I especially enjoyed the interviews of such diverse representatives of Israel as business magnates, Palestinian activists and politicians, Isreali political leaders (Aryeh Deri stands out), and the new generation of Israeli youth that seems more interested in partying than in politics. Shavit's back and forth dialogue is interesting; his confrontational style with the interviewees forces them to defend their positions.

Another interesting issue I discovered that Shavit makes more understandable to me is the effect of religious Jews on Israel. It is a sad fact that such a large percentage of the children entering schools in Israel are on track to learn orthodox Judaism rather than math or science. My conclusion--not Shavit's--is that this time bomb could eventually result in a brain drain and emigration by the best and brightest because they might not enjoy paying gigantic tax bills where much of the money goes to supporting religious folks on the dole.

Shavit also explores the motivations of Palestinians. However, compared to the Jewish subjects in interviews, there are fewer Palestinian voices. I wish Shavit would have elaborated on whether the Palestinians are really driven by that 10% of the West Bank that Israel has settled, or, are they interested in taking over the entire country of Israel? What percentage support ISIS or al Qaeda and just hate Jews? [Since I first published this review, I saw one poll showing that 25% of Palestinians support ISIS, the highest such polling numbers in the Middle East]. What is the meaning of numerous polls showing that a majority of Palestinians support suicide bombings? These seemingly essential questions are not covered.

Is Israel dealing with a foe that embraces racism on the level of Germans in the 1940s? I'm not suggesting that Hamas have committed the level of atrocities of the Nazis. But would they if they could? Based on the polls above, many Israelis have concluded that the Palestinian population itself has no problem with electing racists who state they would like to annihilate the Jews. Is the Israeli right wing assessment that Arabs in general are not very nice to minorities--Christians are killed regularly in surrounding countries--a valid reason to be hesitant about unenforceable peace treaties? What percentage of the Palestinians living in the West Bank have a positive view of Hamas in spite of its racism and TV programming aimed at teaching its children to hate Jews? Such questions are not answered in Shavit's treatise. They seem important in terms of conclusions. Shavit taught me a lot but left me wondering about a lot more.

The book was informative and therefore worth reading. Now you're waiting for the but.....but I had to endure several flaws in the book in order to learn new things about the origin and continuing saga of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. For one, the author is painfully redundant. Secondly and perhaps inextricably intertwined with his redundancy is his verbosity. The third and most fatal flaw is his political agenda that diminishes the objectivity of his reporting and by extension the credibility of his version of history. To the author's credit, he does attempt to provide a balanced view of the conflict. However, he paid in my opinion only lip service to the special circumstances surrounding the formation of Israel and its on-going struggle to survive in a very hostile region of the world. He shows much more compassion for the Palestinian refugees than for 6 million Jews (50% of the world's total) who fear for their very existence every day of their lives. I was hoping that the author would offer a viable solution for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but like everyone else he fails to do so because the only solution for the Islamic world is the destruction of Israel. He lost me when I perceived that in his mind Israel shares more of the blame for the on-going conflict because of the expulsion of some Palestinians in 1948 and the building of settlements in the West Bank. The author failed to document the amount of suffering Israel had to endure since 1948 due to multiple wars and rocket attacks instigated by the Arabs. Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?