How Israel Sank into the Quagmire of Apartheid

[Purveyor]

WASHINGTON, Dec 20 (IPS) - When one writes a book about Israel, one must expect that it will be analysed not for its quality but for its ideological bent.

The critique will generally be based on whether or not the work is “balanced,” which usually means whether the reviewer feels their own point of view was given a fair hearing in the book. On this basis, Max Blumenthal’s new book, "Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel", was doomed to failure before it was ever published.

But that expectation, which seems so especially prevalent for any book about Israel, is bound to fail because Blumenthal’s book is not an attempt to ask what Israel is. Rather, it is an effort by a journalist to answer the question of why Israel is what it is today.

The bulk of Blumenthal’s research was done simply by being in Israel and talking to the people there. He offers us a series of snapshots that don’t reveal new and hidden facts about the issues that made headlines in Israel, and often beyond, during his four years of research for this book.

Rather, they sum up and coalesce into a picture of an Israel drifting increasingly to the right, descending into fascism and with an opposition that is increasingly being boxed in and weakened.

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http://www.iede.co.uk/news/2013_3718/how-israel-sank-quagmire-apartheid

[oberliner]

1. Zionism was an entirely justified national movement

Whether one agrees with Zionism and Israel or not, it cannot be denied that Israel is now a central component of the Jewish existence.