Goliath

September 16, 2013
In his latest book, journalist Blumenthal (Republican Gomorrah) takes the Israelis to task for their racist and proto-fascist tendencies. He begins by critiquing the "herd of clueless American reporters and columnists who into Jerusalem and Tel Aviv each week." The charges of a "rising climate of repression" portending a "frightening authoritarian future" are amply substantiated, and inevitably, much of the book is deeply depressing. Blumenthal takes a hard if extreme look at the social structure. Palestinian citizens of Israel who take work as security guards in coffee shops are described as having given in to "sustained pressure to participate in the Jewish state's security sector," while the Zionist left is "well-educated Ashkenazi teens insert themselves into frontline combat units to civilize their less cultivated, lower-class peers from Mizrahi and Russian backgrounds." Blumenthal's Israel is represented by its basest instincts, a blunt look at a country where citizens are clearly divived into the "haves" and the "have nots".

October 1, 2013

Journalist Blumenthal (formerly, senior writer, Daily Beast; Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party) presents the Israel-Palestine conflict as the result of a colonialist endeavor to displace an indigenous population and establish a racist, militaristic, theocratic state on its land. Though he focuses on the past 20 years, Blumenthal seeks to convince the reader that Israel has become a fascist society and that neither Greater Israel (including the West Bank) nor Israel proper (the territory behind the 1948-67 Green Line) could ever be Jewish and democratic. His contention--that the current right-wing government is different in degree but not in kind from all previous Israeli governments in its persecution of Palestinians within and outside the Green Line--is supported by references to the Palestinian narrative that cites public and private statements of Jews and Arabs and through descriptions of public reaction to demonstrations by and in support of Palestinians. VERDICT Blumenthal's clear political left bias and some obvious factual errors should cause some skepticism in readers. Ari Shavit's My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, which uses in-depth interviews to explicate the positions of significant figures in present-day Israel and Palestine, will leave many with more hope for Israel's future, while those less supportive of the Jewish state may find Blumenthal's book appealing.--Joel Neuberg, Santa Rosa Junior Coll. Lib., CA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 15, 2013
A rich, roiling examination of "the State of Israel during a period of deepening political and societal crisis." From the gory details of Operation Cast Lead, when Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip with laser-guided missiles in late 2008, through the right-wing election sweep soon afterward of Bibi Netanyahu and the unleashing of racist, nationalist elements and rushes for new settlements, Blumenthal (Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party, 2009) tracks the escalating rhetoric and violence in episodic fashion. Having established himself in various parts of Israel over the ensuing years to observe and flush out the action--he recognized he could sail through airport security since, as an Ashkenazi Jew, he "would be automatically afforded special rights according to the designs of Zionism"--Blumenthal is an enterprising reporter, finding lessons in vanished Palestinian neighborhoods, such as once-thriving Jaffa, before the Israelis drove out the residents, razing homes and appropriating land; and hanging out at the Knesset, which he sarcastically calls the "Fortress of Democracy," where he chased down various cronies of right-wing Avigdor Lieberman's party to explain a series of alarming proposals enacted to suppress Palestinian expression. With acquiescent support of the left as well as the general Israeli public, the legitimization of (to Western readers) frightening cultural concepts like homogeneity and Judaization has instigated what Blumenthal and some of his left-leaning interviewees call fascist measures in a once-lively democracy, where a dissenting version of the official narrative is not permitted. Government officials, young educated Arabs, border police, journalists, Army refuseniks and rabid nationalists: Blumenthal taps them all in this vivid and relentlessly negative portrait of Israel. Dense, in-the-trenches reportage revealing details that go from grim to grimmer.

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