My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel

What enabled Jews to maintain their identity and their civilization was their closeness to God and their detachment from the surrounding non-Jewish world.

In just one month, the number of innocent Arab victims surpassed the number of innocent Jewish victims.

I have realized that the Israeli condition is extremely complex, perhaps even tragic.

But the eighty dead and the four hundred wounded in the summer of ’36 transformed the collective psyche of the Jews. So did the scorched fields, the uprooted orange groves, the roadside ambushes, and the ongoing night shootings. The brutal events that took place between April and August 1936 pushed Zionism from a state of utopian bliss to a state o

In 1925 al-Kassam forged a five-phase plan: preparing the minds for revolution; establishing clandestine revolutionary cells; assembling arms, money, and intelligence; killing Jews; and launching an overall armed struggle. By 1930 the plan was implemented and a web of secretive cells formed in northern Palestine. Each cell had five members committe

Wherever he goes, my great-grandfather will be adamant. “Palestine has never yet adopted another population,” he will claim. Arguing with the critics of Zion, he will insist that Palestine is absolutely suitable for “the teeming millions who are in distress in the East of Europe for whom a home might have to be found with a minimum of difficulty an

Without the idealism of kibbutz socialism, Zionism will not have the sense of moral superiority that is essential for the colonization process to succeed. Without the communal aspect of kibbutz, socialist Zionism will lack legitimacy and will be perceived as an unjust colonialist movement. Only kibbutz socialism can give Zionism the social cohesion

As Palestinian nationalism was asserting itself and demanding that Jewish immigration stop immediately, it was now impossible to ignore the Arabs living in the land, impossible to ignore the fact that the Arabs reviled the Zionist enterprise.

Some will argue that choosing socialism at this critical stage is Zionism’s cunning way of conquering the land. Socialism gives this belated colonizing project a sense of justice and an aura of legitimacy.