A Blood-Dimmed Tide: Dispatches from the Middle East

The title, taken from a famous poem by Yeats about the Irish conflict, reflects this book's melancholy and pessimistic tone. The essays track Israeli society and politics since the 1967 Six-Day War, which Elon considers a Pyrrhic victory, for rather than ""opening a way for peace, Israel's stunning victory in war merely closed too many leading political minds."" One of Israel's most respected intellectuals, author of Founder: Meyer Amschel Rothschild, a Man and His Time, and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, Elon delves into such topics as the Intifada, the rise of Jewish terrorists and relations with Egypt and Jordan. His portraits of such major figures as Moshe Dayan, Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat are particularly impressive. Consider, for example, the opening lines of his piece on Dayan, a towering presence in Israeli society in the 1960s and '70s who has been largely forgotten in the in the West since his death: ""This gloomy, lonely, gifted man--too cunning, too admired, too hated, too ambiguous, too glamorous, too extravagant, too famous--who has played a leading role in Israeli life for the past thirty years."" In another essay, Elon describes how both the Labor Party--particularly the late Prime Minister Rabin--and the PLO moved toward each other in the late 1980s to jumpstart the peace process. If at times the author's judgments appear to be a bit off the mark--witness his seemingly over-pessimistic view of the future of the peace process under Prime Minister Netanyahu--on the whole, the essays are well written and incisive. Whether or not you agree with them, they are always thought-provoking. (June)