This dichotomy of triumph and tragedy tortures Shavit with ambivalence about the story of Israel. For example, there are two chapters devoted to nuclear power in the Middle East, one on Israel's nuclear reactor and a later one on Iran's current pursuit of nuclear arms. In the first, he extols the enormity of Israel's nuclear accomplishment, commenced at a time when only three other countries had nuclear weapons. But he also fears that in attaining nuclear power, Israel inaugurated the nuclearisation of the most volatile region in the world and thereby shot itself in the foot. To the less discerning reader, this analysis might seem timely, given Iran's march toward nuclear weaponry and threats from Arab leaders that they intend to follow. But this assessment — which seems to lay the blame for Iranian policy at Israeli feet — is totally misleading. Israel became nuclear decades ago, and, tellingly, no Arab country felt threatened enough by the Jewish state to imitate it. Those Arab states that did aspire to nuclear status — such as Saddam's Iraq and Assad's Syria — did so for reasons that had little to do with Israel, and it was Israel that halted their advance. Even Iran's nuclear endeavours are not inspired by fear of Israel — they are instead motivated in significant part by hatred of the Jewish state. And that hatred has nothing to do with 1967 and everything to do with 1948. However, come Shavit's later chapter on Iran's nuclear agenda, he effectively affirms this critique of his earlier analysis, praising Israel for hindering Iraq's and Syria's nuclear policies and blaming Iran for its own atomic belligerence. This, of course, leaves the reader rather confused as to where Shavit actually stands.
Are these paradoxes a mark of profundity from a commentator critically evaluating his country's history and prospects or are they a mess of contradictions by someone who lacks moral, historical and strategic clarity? Whatever the answer, such exacting introspection may be appropriate for Israeli readers, who are in more of a position to decide whether the price of such ambivalence is affordable. But Shavit did not write the book for them; he wrote it in English for American Jewry, which is deeply ignorant of Israeli history and increasingly impatient with Israeli policy. Regrettably, what liberal American Jews and their fellow travellers will see in My Promised Land is a refreshing confession of Israel's supposed 1948 sin. For them, this bestseller — which has won communal literary awards and much acclaim from Jews and non-Jews alike — is merely grist for their anti-Zionist mill.
Whereas Pelhman's book is a memoir and Shavit's a personal reflection, Ahron Bregman's Cursed Victory is an academic history — and a rather unusual one. It is not a history of Israel, its subtitle — A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories — notwithstanding, nor a history of the Six Day War of 1967, which barely gets a mention, nor of the Palestinian Arabs or Arab-Israel relations or Arab terrorism or Israel's struggles against it (although each of these has cameos). Instead, it is almost exclusively a history of Israel's physical presence in, and of some of the negotiations over, the territories captured in the Six Day War, a war Bregman reluctantly and quietly concedes was of Arab making, and which Israel won. That victory was cursed, one infers (and one has to infer it as Bregman does not expressly elucidate his book's title), because, although Israel liberated the Jewish heartland and acquired coveted buffer zones against its bellicose neighbours, it was also lumbered with a substantial population of embittered Arabs. The book's chapters are each devoted to a decade since 1967.
An account confined to Israel's occupation of the territories (or colonisation or empire — pick any of Bregman's synonyms) is already in its premise slanted against the Jewish state. This comes as no surprise, given that its author, an Israeli, resented so intensely the prospect of military reserve duty in those territories that he chose instead to emigrate to the UK, where he assumed a position at King's College London's War Studies department.
Are these paradoxes a mark of profundity from a commentator critically evaluating his country's history and prospects or are they a mess of contradictions by someone who lacks moral, historical and strategic clarity? Whatever the answer, such exacting introspection may be appropriate for Israeli readers, who are in more of a position to decide whether the price of such ambivalence is affordable. But Shavit did not write the book for them; he wrote it in English for American Jewry, which is deeply ignorant of Israeli history and increasingly impatient with Israeli policy. Regrettably, what liberal American Jews and their fellow travellers will see in My Promised Land is a refreshing confession of Israel's supposed 1948 sin. For them, this bestseller — which has won communal literary awards and much acclaim from Jews and non-Jews alike — is merely grist for their anti-Zionist mill.
Whereas Pelhman's book is a memoir and Shavit's a personal reflection, Ahron Bregman's Cursed Victory is an academic history — and a rather unusual one. It is not a history of Israel, its subtitle — A History of Israel and the Occupied Territories — notwithstanding, nor a history of the Six Day War of 1967, which barely gets a mention, nor of the Palestinian Arabs or Arab-Israel relations or Arab terrorism or Israel's struggles against it (although each of these has cameos). Instead, it is almost exclusively a history of Israel's physical presence in, and of some of the negotiations over, the territories captured in the Six Day War, a war Bregman reluctantly and quietly concedes was of Arab making, and which Israel won. That victory was cursed, one infers (and one has to infer it as Bregman does not expressly elucidate his book's title), because, although Israel liberated the Jewish heartland and acquired coveted buffer zones against its bellicose neighbours, it was also lumbered with a substantial population of embittered Arabs. The book's chapters are each devoted to a decade since 1967.
An account confined to Israel's occupation of the territories (or colonisation or empire — pick any of Bregman's synonyms) is already in its premise slanted against the Jewish state. This comes as no surprise, given that its author, an Israeli, resented so intensely the prospect of military reserve duty in those territories that he chose instead to emigrate to the UK, where he assumed a position at King's College London's War Studies department.
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