How Israel Lost
The Four Questions
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
The ebbing support for Israel among Western governments is a major landmark in the history of the last decade. It is, without doubt, an issue that has already influenced many international events. Richard Ben Cramer, who has won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Middle East, now presents readers with HOW ISRAEL LOST, a brilliant polemic looking at four key questions that define this conflict and explaining how the policies of Ariel Sharon have ostracised his country in the eyes of the world.
Since Israel was founded, the West has seen it as a beacon of hope and democracy amid hostile neighbours. Cramer describes how in the past ten years Israelis seem to have squandered that respect and good will, focusing on the key players and crucial events that have turned the tide against Israel in the eyes of the international community. With the same meticulous research and intelligence that has made Richard Ben Cramer one of America's most highly regarded journalists, HOW ISRAEL LOST is a timely, powerful and important look at one of the most pivotal points of the world -- and in history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If ever a book on Israel and the Palestinians was a good read, it's this introduction to the half-century-long conflict. Cramer, who won a Pulitzer in 1979 for Middle East reporting, divides his book into four parts, dealing with four questions on the model of the four questions asked by children at the Passover seder. He blends up-to-the-minute events of the Palestinian uprising with memories of his time as a Middle East correspondent in the late 1970s and early 1980s for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Cramer is great at telling an anecdote, whether about his visit as a correspondent to an Arab village where he learns about both hospitality and honor, or about a recent visit to an Israeli family that he finds instructive regarding Palestinians' inability to reconcile themselves to a Jewish presence. When it comes to prognosis, Cramer shoots straight from the hip in giving advice to both sides. He's of the "plague on both of their houses" school ("I should have told the same thing I would have told Sharon: ...you can't make a nation... based on whom you hate, or how many of them you kill"), and he's equally dismissive of Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon, although he seems to come down harder on the Israelis for failing to recognize the Arab world's need for honor. Many will find this a welcome personal introduction to the conflict, but those looking for a more measured tone would be better served with David Horovitz's Still Life With Bombers (Forecasts, Jan. 26).
