Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel

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 [parachute] 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 [who] 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". (Oct.)