Israel: A History

The newest from Shapira (after Berl: The Biography of a Socialist Zionist), professor emerita at Tel Aviv University, is a wide-ranging history of Israel from the 19th-century origins of the Zionist movement to the beginning of the second intifada in 2000. The author is at her best focusing on economic, social, and cultural history—she makes deft use of Hebrew literature to illuminate her points, and she succinctly captures the zeitgeist of the times, as when she writes of an Israel that, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, “returned to its psychological condition before the Six-Day War: a small country in constant existential danger.” However, her analysis is weak on military history, devoting a paltry handful of pages to the Suez crisis, the Six-Day War, and the Yom Kippur War. Shapira also has a tendency to gloss over important details, as when she attributes Israel’s victory in its war of independence in part to “the collapse of Palestinian society,” without explaining what she means by this. But the most glaring omission is her failure to discuss in any detail the history of Israel’s Arabs, who now constitute around 20% of the country’s population. Despite these shortcomings, this is an indispensable guide to “one of the most astonishing attempts ever made at building a nation.” Maps. (Dec. 11)