In her new book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein argues that in the wake of natural and unnatural disasters, neo-liberal economic reform is foisted on stricken societies while their citizens are in a condition of collective disorientation. She writes, in a context where “instability is the new stability,” “Israel is often held up as a kind of Exhibit A.” Contributor Raymond Deane reviews Klein’s blockbuster for EI. Read more about Disaster capitalism: Israel as warning
Overcoming Zionism, Joel Kovel’s first book on the question of Israel, is a contribution to the growing body of literature advocating “a single democratic state in Israel/Palestine.” However, while Kovel’s subtitle is longer than his title, it is the devastating critique of Zionism that occupies eight of the book’s ten chapters. What is unique about Kovel’s project is its multi-perspectival nature: he demolishes Zionism from historical, political, cultural, environmental, ethical, and psychological perspectives, and still has space left for elegant invective and stimulating digression. Read more about Book Review: "Overcoming Zionism"
Scotland is a region which, perhaps more than anywhere else in “the West”, is profoundly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, under the charismatic leadership of Mick Napier, is perhaps the world’s most energetic and fearless such organisation. The Glasgow Media Group has done sterling work in unmasking the sins of commission and omission in British media coverage of the conflict. Prominent politicians like George Galloway or novelists like James Kelman have been unstinting in their support for the Palestinians (although one should also recall the Scottish origins of people like Gordon Brown and John Reid, not to mention Tony Blair!). Read more about Book Review: Incandescent Nation
The highlight of the Rabin Memorial ceremony in Tel Aviv on 4 November last was, by common consent, David Grossman’s speech directed rhetorically to Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. This text has already done the rounds of the world’s liberal media, and there is general agreement that it represents Israeli pacifist humanism at its very best. Of Israeli literature’s “three wise men”, Grossman is the one who universally gleans most respect. Amoz Oz’s reputation survives outside Israel primarily because the repentant Germans dutifully worship at his shrine. A. B. Yehoshua put his foot in it once too often when in a Ha’aretz interview he prescribed the use of “full force against the entire population” of Gaza. Read more about The Anatomy of a Beautiful Soul
Jonathan Cook’s new book “Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State” focuses attention on the descendants of Palestinians who managed to remain in “sovereign” Israel during the ethnic cleansing of 1948. In this book review, EI contributor Raymond Deane says Cook meticulously analyzes the political basis for the daily discrimination exercised by the Jewish state against its Arab citizens. Cook lays bare the Zionist ideal of a state that is racially pure, and demonstrates how successive generations of Israeli politicians and soldiers - the former tending to be enlisted from the ranks of the latter - have sought to bring about this regressive aim. Read more about Book Review: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State
Michael Neumann’s “The Case Against Israel” is “the most comprehensive and devastating critique of Israel in print,” writes EI reviewer Raymond Deane. Yet it will make uncomfortable reading not only for Israel’s apologists but also pro-Palestinian activists. Neumann argues that although “Israel is the illegitimate child of ethnic nationalism,” its existence is “protected by the same useful international conventions that allow others” to retain “their ill-gotten gains.” Seeing that Palestinians have no true options to resist save violence, Neumann nevertheless advocates “the most extensive international sanctions possible”, undeterred “by the horrors of the Jewish past.” Read more about Book Review: The Case Against Israel
