Nuanced picture of Israel explores its spirit of innovation, identity politics, culture wars and inability to agree a border with the Palestinians
August 3, 2023 15:44
The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Battle for its Inner Soul
By Isabel Kershner
Published by Scribe 2023, pp.370
Some view the Israel of today through rose-coloured glasses, often as a reaction to campaigns against the state from those who wish that a Hebrew republic had never been established in the first place.
This excellent book by Manchester-born Isabel Kershner, Israel-based correspondent for the New York Times, paints a realistic, nuanced picture of Israel, exploring the Jewish state’s spirit of innovation, its identity politics, its culture wars and its inability to agree a border with the Palestinians.
In Kershner’s words: “Israel has largely learned to live with its outside enemies but seemed less adept at managing itself.”
She explores the soul of contemporary Israel in a way that recalls David Grossman’s The Yellow Wind, published in 1987.
The Land of Hope and Fear book (Photo: Handout)
Each chapter focuses on a section of Israeli society — Russians, Ethiopians, Charedim, Mizrahim, the IDF — telling the story through their triumphs and tribulations. In many cases, this is a story of the transition from immigrant to Israeli citizen.
The book also examines how the socialist collectivism of the state’s founders has given way to “a society that is more competitive, individualistic and controlled by market forces”.
There are, for example, now more Thai than Israeli workers in the Arava, in southern Israel, managing its fish farms and the production of medicinal cannabis.
Israel’s citizens’ army, a founding precept of the state, is also now being questioned, notes Kershner. Given that half the country’s first graders are being educated in Arab and Charedi schools, the idea of a paid, professional IDF has become a serious consideration.
Quoting the Haim Gouri poem I am a Civil War, Kershner writes about the widening chasm between Israel’s warring tribes, a gulf that can often be reduced to “only Bibi” or “anyone but Bibi.”
As she points out, even some old-time Likudniks and disciples of Jabotinsky bemoan the direction Netanyahu has taken.
A market in Jerusalem (Photo: Alamy)
