It was probably only a matter of time, then, until Cohen, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair magazines, tackled Israel. The result is “Israel Is Real,’’ a smart, energetic overview of the history of the place and its relation to the Jewish people, from biblical times to the present.
Cohen’s narrative is propelled by muscular prose and an irreverent wit at times reminiscent of Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show.’’ It is peopled with everyone from Flavius Josephus (“the first writer of the Exile -- the first to realize that for a stateless Jew, power comes only by making yourself useful to the goyim’’) and King Herod (who in rebuilding the Second Temple “followed the plan described in the Book of Kings - God was the architect, Herod his contractor’’ through various familiar leaders of the state of Israel, with pauses en route for pivotal but lesser-known figures such as Theodor Herzl (the father of Zionism), Samuel Zemurray (the banana peddler-turned-business magnate whom Cohen suggests resigned his job running United Fruit for a year to play key backstage roles in the creation of Israel), and “the perfectly named Rabbi Abraham Kook’’ (founder of the settler movement).
Ariel Sharon gets more attention than most: His heroism in the 1948, Six-Day, and Yom Kippur wars; his role in the deaths of scores of Palestinian civilians at Kibbya in 1953 and the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982; his loss of a young son in a 1967 gun accident; and his decision in 2005 as prime minister to relinquish the Gaza and West Bank settlements he had once considered crucial for Israel’s defence. (“A stunning moment of recognition,’’ writes Cohen of this latter. “It was the old man realizing the dream had to be re-imagined, Israel had to get smaller to survive.’’)
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4:59 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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