Synopses & Reviews
One of Israel's most independent writers demystifies the "peace camp" liberals.
Yitzhak Laor is one of Israel's most prominent dissidents and poets, a latter-day Spinoza who helps keep alive the critical tradition within Jewish culture. In this work he fearlessly dissects the complex attitudes of Western European liberal Left intellectuals toward Israel, Zionism and the "Israeli peace camp." He argues that through a prism of famous writers like Amos Oz, David Grossman and A.B. Yehoshua, the peace camp has now adopted the European vision of "new Zionism," promoting the fierce Israeli desire to be accepted as part of the West and taking advantage of growing Islamophobia across Europe.
The backdrop to this uneasy relationship is the ever-present shadow of the Holocaust. Laor is merciless as he strips bare the hypocrisies and unarticulated fantasies that lie beneath the love-affair between "liberal Zionists" and their European supporters.
Review
"For more than three decades, Laor has ignited controversy, and the success of his verse, novels, stories, and the play "Ephraim Goes Back to the Army" has given rise at times to outright paradox: when he won the 1990 Prime Minister's Prize for Poetry, Israel's highest such award, Yitzhak Shamir, then prime minister, refused to sign the official declaration. Laor should not be read as the bane of officialdom, however, but rather as the stern comfort of the Israeli soldier who can no longer pretend to be the courageous warrior; his poetry is both the balm of those who serve only the orders of their own conscience and the prophetic exhortation of those he describes in his poem 'Balance'". Joshua Cohen, Harper's Magazine (Read the entire )
Synopsis
Yitzhak Laor is one of Israel's most prominent dissidents and poets, a latter-day Spinoza who helps keep alive the critical tradition within Jewish culture. In this work he fearlessly dissects the complex attitudes of Western European liberal Left intellectuals toward Israel, Zionism and the "Israeli peace camp." He argues that through a prism of famous writers like Amos Oz, David Grossman and A.B. Yehoshua, the peace camp has now adopted the European vision of "new Zionism," promoting the fierce Israeli desire to be accepted as part of the West and taking advantage of growing Islamophobia across Europe.
The backdrop to this uneasy relationship is the ever-present shadow of the Holocaust. Laor is merciless as he strips bare the hypocrisies and unarticulated fantasies that lie beneath the love-affair between "liberal Zionists" and their European supporters.
Synopsis
One of Israel's most independent writers demystifies the "peace camp" liberals.
About the Author
Yitzhak Laor is a distinguished Israeli poet, novelist and veteran political activist. A longtime editor and writer for the daily newspaper Haaretz, he now also edits an independent journal of literature and political thought, Mita'am.