Possibly one of the most devastating books to come out about Israel in recent years, ‘Goliath’ is the new book by American journalist Max Blumenthal. Blumenthal, who earned the reputation of a critical surveyor of right-wing politics from his previous book ‘Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party’, immersed himself in Israel after the 2008-2009 Gaza war. The book chronicles contemporary Israeli society and places special emphasis on the rising younger generation of Israelis and Palestinians.
The book is a mixture of history and the contemporary, with a blend of interviews with rising starts in right-wing parties, what remains of the Israeli left, Palestinian citizens of Israel, professors, authors, journalists, dissidents, activists and many more. The impression one gets of Israeli society from the book is of a deeply insular, xenophobic, inward-looking, belligerent and highly insecure society.
It’s a society in which many associate the lessons and horrors of the Holocaust with the Palestinians. “I have got a chip on my shoulder and a click in my head, and it’s called the Holocaust”, as David Rotem, who lives on an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and a member of the Knesset for the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu, told Blumenthal. Rotem, like most Israeli, never experienced the Holocaust, but uses the Holocaust to justify sponsoring anti-democratic and anti-Palestinian bills in the Knesset.
This book is a journey into the modern Israeli psyche and along the way we meet the Rabbis and youth gangs, who are trying to ‘save’ Jewish girls from falling in love with Arab men. We meet teenage refuniks, who have been to prison for refusing to do compulsory military service. We meet Palestinian members of the Knesset, who are on the verge of being outlawed. We meet African migrants, who are becoming targets of the Israeli right and we meet the right-wing activist targeting them. We meet American tourists, who attend ‘anti-terrorist’, ‘counter-insurgency’ and commando workshops in the West Bank, in a self-styled commando Disneyland.
This book has many strong point and far too many to mention, but of particular note is discussion of non-traditional violence. For those familiar with Foucault’s notion of gentrification, you will find numerous examples of this. Gentrification can be summarized as non-physical violence, for example the destruction of old neighborhoods to be replaced by modern or urban buildings and neighborhoods, which is done for ideological reasons to destroy what the old neighborhood represented. Examples in the book include the Palestinian town of Jaffa, which is south of Tel Aviv, where the old Palestinian neighborhoods are being destroyed and replaced by European structures, including the conversion of a 300-year old Mosque into Israel’s only bondage and fetish nightclub.
But with particular consequence for us in the outside world is our own complicity in the gentrification process. One particular example is the UK-owned evangelical TV station God TV, which partnered itself with the Jewish National Fund to help plant trees in the Negav desert. In order for the trees to be planted, Israel had to destroy Bedouin villages and expel the residences, and God TV helped fund the project. This shows us that what happens in Israel/Palestine is also about us.
Because of this, the book has courted some controversy, with the Nation’s Eric Alterman describing the book as “Technically accurate”, but then goes onto to attack the book and its author. Alan Dershowitz called on Bill Clinton to denounce Blumenthal’s father, who worked as a media adviser to the Clinton administration, and called on Blumenthal’s father to denounce his son. The fact that this book has caused such a commotion underlines some of the problems when it comes to discussing Israel/Palestine. But this book is essential reading because it delves deep into the society, which new reportage cannot do, and provides context to the events that take place. It also represents the experiences of many of those who have either lived or been to the country, and fundamentally, it provides insight into the trouble of peacemaking in the region.
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