Naomi Shepherd

In Tel Aviv, the windows of tall office buildings blaze all night long, conspicuously consuming. The brightest lights of Jerusalem, during Chanukah week, were those of a huge electric candelabrum at the city’s gate: an expense for which the municipality, dominated by religious factions, was much criticised – the holy city is notoriously the poorest in the country. On the Tel Aviv...

With the virtual disappearance of the Jewish working class in the Diaspora, and the decline of the Labour movement in Israel, Jewish socialism is beginning to look historically limited, rather than an intrinsic part of a cultural heritage. The idea that the Jews are somehow natural radicals by virtue of their internationalism, messianism and inherited ethic of social justice does not stand up to scrutiny. Jews came very late to political activity, almost a century after their emancipation in Western Europe. Their reputation for radicalism is based mainly on the role of the famous theorists of Communism, and the prominence of the Russo-Jewish intelligentsia during the populist, the Social Democrat and Bolshevist phases of the Revolution. By 1905, almost a third of all political prisoners in the Russian Empire were Jews, as were four of the seven members of the 1917 Politburo.

Ariel Sharon is both hero and bogeyman: brilliant military tactician and rogue general, master both of the pre-emptive strike and of the cover-up, populist leader and – in the eyes of liberal Israelis – perennial threat to Israel’s democracy. Uzi Benziman’s portrait is a commendable first attempt to evaluate the Sharon phenomenon. It is a journalist’s book – lively and readable, though sloppily translated and edited. The English edition, moreover, lacks the political glossary and the maps which are essential in a book which deals with the Middle East conflict. It has been subtitled ‘An Israeli Caesar’, and the nearest contemporary parallel would be Douglas MacArthur, the audacious general whose political ambitions had to be curbed by the American President – Truman. The proximity of Israel’s military leadership to the political hinterland, and a well-informed and critical press, have ensured that few of Sharon’s moves have been kept from the public for long. Why, then, despite his proven disregard for authority in the Army, and his belief that national security outweighs democratic procedures, has Sharon been allowed so loose a rein?’