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The feted scholar who fears for Israel’s soul

Even if you don’t fully agree with his views, Holocaust survivor Saul Friedländer’s centrality to Israeli history makes his analysis of the country vital

October 16, 2024 10:22
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Distressed: Saul Friedländer
2 min read

On a warm evening last month I sat outside a bar in Tel Aviv speaking to two young Israeli men. Benjamin Netanyahu, they told me, needs to take the gloves off and occupy Gaza. “What about the Palestinians?” I asked. One waved his hand dismissively in response. “Who cares?”

This attitude is the central theme of Saul Friedländer’s Diary of a Crisis: Israel in Turmoil. Thanks to decades of military occupation in the West Bank, extremist views that have always been present in Israeli society are now central, he argues, leaving democracy at risk.

Starting in January of last year, the Holocaust survivor and celebrated scholar of Nazi Germany resolved to keep a daily record of developments in Israel from a distance. Now 91 years old and settled in California, he is horrified at what his country has become.

The book melds a blow-by-blow account of the horrors the Jewish state has endured in the last year or so and their devastating consequences with richly informed analysis of how we reached this point. Much of the history is recent, and will be familiar to anyone who has followed Israel closely. To see the awfulness set out so clearly, with each event following in such rapid succession, however, remains a shock.

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