My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

Shavit is a columnist for the center-left Israeli daily Haaretz. Unlike some on the Israeli Left, he isn't an anti-Zionist provocateur. Rather, he is a fervently patriotic Israeli with an abiding love for his nation's history and the best of its traditions and institutions. So his honest and sometimes brutally frank portrait of his homeland's past and its present dilemmas is especially poignant. Shavit's narrative is strongest when he utilizes the stories of individual Israelis to paint a rich tableau based on personal experiences. What emerges isn't necessarily optimistic. He regards the current peace process as a dead end, since no Palestinian leader or government can guarantee an agreement that offers the necessary security for Israel. Yet his own military experience on the West Bank has convinced him that control over Palestinians is poisonous and cannot be sustained. Finally, he makes clear that Iran truly is an existential threat that must, somehow, be neutralized. This is a masterful portrait of contemporary Israel.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2010 Booklist

Shavit's (Does This Mean War?) retelling of important events in Israeli history is written from a personal perspective and includes his great-grandfather's first visit to the area, discussions of the lives of immigrant Holocaust orphans, and a look at recent dot-com entrepreneurs. The author uses taped interviews, historical documents, letters, and diaries of both well-known Zionist personalities and little-known early immigrants to tell the fascinating stories. Paul Boehmer reads the book with an Israeli accent that makes the listener feel that the author himself is narrating the book. Boehmer's tone and voice convey the Shavit's emotions and deep feelings for his beloved country. -Verdict For those interested in a personal account of past and present Israel. ["Shavit's case for a more inclusive 21st-century Israel will interest all those following Israel's struggles," read the review of the Spiegel & Grau hc, LJ 8/13.]-Ilka Gordon, Aaron Garber Lib., Cleveland (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Israel has betrayed its best, truest self, argues Haaretz journalist and peace activist Shavit in this wrenching dissection of the nation's past and present. Born in 1957, the author is the descendant of intellectuals and idealists who brought Zionism to the shores of Palestine at the turn of the 20th century. The author's great-grandfather, a successful British solicitor, first visited Palestine in 1897 with a Zionist delegation; his reports on the marvels of progress and modernization that he witnessed there gave Theodor Herzl hope that a deprived people could create a future in their ancient homeland. To note that Palestine was in fact already populated, as one of the delegates dared to do, was received as "scandalous heresy" by his fellow Zionists. The movement's denial of Palestinians' existence, Shavit contends, meant that first Zionism and subsequently the state of Israel were established on a rotten, unstable foundation. Step by step, the author follows the Zionist dream as it played out in Israel. Kibbutz socialism initially had great success as the pioneer generation rebelled against the "daunting Jewish past of persecution and wandering." But tit-for-tat violence, fueled by global anti-Semitism and Arab nationalism, led to a "messianic impulse" that the author believes ran amok with the West Bank settlements initiated in 1975. While on military reserve duty, Shavit served as a guard in an internment camp for Palestinians; his searing account of the grim conditions there, "On Gaza Beach" (published in the New York Review of Books in 1991), made a seminal statement of his despairing belief that innocence is finished in his native country. Various internal revolts have riven Israeli society, Shavit writes, rendering it as chaotic as "an extravagant bazaar." His effective mix of autobiographical reflections and interviews with key participants peters out toward the end into journalistic snippets, but that hardly muffles the overall impact of his anguished cri de coeur. Thoughtful, sobering reflections on a seemingly intractable conflict.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Shavit is a columnist for the center-left Israeli daily Haaretz. Unlike some on the Israeli Left, he isn't an anti-Zionist provocateur. Rather, he is a fervently patriotic Israeli with an abiding love for his nation's history and the best of its traditions and institutions. So his honest and sometimes brutally frank portrait of his homeland's past and its present dilemmas is especially poignant. Shavit's narrative is strongest when he utilizes the stories of individual Israelis to paint a rich tableau based on personal experiences. What emerges isn't necessarily optimistic. He regards the current peace process as a dead end, since no Palestinian leader or government can guarantee an agreement that offers the necessary security for Israel. Yet his own military experience on the West Bank has convinced him that control over Palestinians is poisonous and cannot be sustained. Finally, he makes clear that Iran truly is an existential threat that must, somehow, be neutralized. This is a masterful portrait of contemporary Israel. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

Israeli journalist Shavit (editorial board, Haaretz) presents a history of and meditation on Zionism's successes and failures since his great-grandfather's arrival at Jaffa in 1897. He traces the rise and demise of the kibbutzim, the 1948 displacement of Palestinians, the shock of 1967's Six-Day War victory, and the near defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Unlike other recent books, either by foreign journalists focusing on the military or Israelis who accentuate the positive (e.g., Martin van Creveld's The Land of Blood and Honey: The Rise of Modern Israel), this work attempts a personal, political, intellectual, and cultural history of Israel through dozens of interviews with those who participated in the Zionist enterprise, asking and answering the important questions: Can Israel fully integrate its Arab citizens, do justice to the Palestinians, and assure security in the face of looming military and demographic threats? Long a critic of the "Occupation," Shavit argues that Israel's future depends not only on giving up that land but on coming to terms with those displaced by Zionism. VERDICT Shavit's case for a more inclusive 21st-century Israel will interest all those following Israel's struggles.—Joel Neuberg, Santa Rosa Junior Coll. Lib., CA