A Friend's Lament

Well, it was different, and an unusual source too.

How Israel Lost, Richard Ben Cramer, Simon & Schuster, 307
pages

By Scott McConnell

In this snappily written book, Richard Ben Cramer argues that
Israel has been corrupted by its 37-year-long occupation of the
Palestinian territory on the West Bank and Gaza. The
occupation has diverted the country from its historic
mission-providing "a place where Jews could live the best life ...
in accordance with their values"-to something less ambitious
and admirable. Its energies and spirit sapped by measures to
control an embittered foreign population, Israeli life has begun
to coarsen. Some of the consequences are internal: domestic
assaults, road-rage killings, school violence, are now part of the
social texture. The once appealing smallness of the country,
Israel as a modern village in which everyone felt mutually
connected, is now gone. Gone too are such noble aspirations as
the doctrine of "purity of arms" through which the army tried
hard to avoid harming innocent Arab civilians; some of today's
top commanders don't even pretend to care. Cramer writes with
great empathy about the life Israel has inflicted on the
Palestinians, a captive people, shut off from all foreign contacts,
locked into a hopelessly uneven contest against one of the best
armies in the world.

Though seldom voiced in the United States, such arguments are
expressed often by Israelis unreconciled to Likud's policies. In
Cramer's colloquial American idiom, they are sharp and
refreshing. The "How Israel Lost" of the title sets down a
challenge for admirers of Begin, Shamir, Netanyahu, and
Sharon (including, it is now clear, George W. Bush) who would
deny that Israel has suffered meaningful loss at all. But Cramer
recalls how luminous Israel's reputation used to be in the
United States and in much of the world, and that clearly has
been lost. Was that reputation entirely deserved? "A land
without people for a people without land"-this was the most
commonly heard shorthand for the Zionist project 40 or 50
years ago. It was popularized in the movie "Exodus," with Paul
Newman as a Jewish underground fighter and "shiksa-goddess
Eva Marie Saint as his home-from-the-holocaust honey" (a
clause which could come with a "don't try this yourself"
warning). But the "land without people" slogan was an element
of what Cramer calls "hasbarah"-Hebrew for "explaining" or
spin-and one of the Jewish state's most successful exports. This
bit of hasbarah was a work of genius, as deeply burrowed into
the American subconscious in the 1950s and '60s as (Cramer
puckishly notes) "Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should."
Back then, most of America felt part of Israel's venture.

American Conservative