The Unmaking of Israel

“Closely argued and conditionally apocalyptic . . . Gorenberg outlines many reasonable steps Israel should take to disentangle religion from the state.” —Jeffrey Goldberg, The New York Times Book Review

Prominent Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg offers a penetrating and provocative look at how the balance of power in Israel has shifted toward extremism, threatening the prospects for peace and democracy as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intensifies. Informing his examination using interviews in Israel and the West Bank and with access to previously classified Israeli documents, Gorenberg delivers an incisive discussion of the causes and trends of extremism in Israel’s government and society. Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, writes, “until I read The Unmaking of Israel, I didn’t think it could be possible to feel more despairing, and then more terribly hopeful, about Israel, a place that I began at last, under the spell of Gershom Gorenberg’s lucid and dispassionate yet intensely personal writing, to understand.”

“At the core of the book lies a terrifying analogy: Israel as Pakistan, a country whose government has empowered a lawless, fanatical religious movement now subverting the very state that empowered it. Is the analogy apt today? No, but Gorenberg makes a frighteningly convincing case that it might be soon.” —Peter Beinart, Newsweek

“Gorenberg provides a deft but penetrating and highly nuanced account of the recent history and current politics of Israel . . . He issues a heartfelt and heart-rending plea for the repair of the Jewish democracy.” —The Jewish Journal

“Sure to raise contention, a strong dissenting voice from a burdened land where dissent is not simply tolerated, but a way of life.” —Kirkus Reviews