Fortress Israel

May 28, 2012
In this revealing chronicle of Israeli foreign and defense policy, New York Times correspondent Tyler (Running Critical) contends that Israel is dominated by military and intelligence cliques who just won’t give peace a chance. He follows this theme through an exhaustive recap of Israel’s conflicts from the Suez Crisis and the Six-Day War through the interminable struggle against the Palestinians, with its bloody counterpoint between Israeli air strikes, armored incursions, and targeted assassinations, and Palestinian rocket attacks and suicide bombings. At most junctures his intimate narrative of policy making shows a government driven by the “martial impulse” of officer-politicians, like Moshe Dayan and Ariel Sharon, riding roughshod over doves and turning away from negotiations and compromise toward bellicose overreaction. Tyler’s well-researched account illuminates an ugly and troubling dimension of Israeli policy and politics. He ascribes Israeli policy to factional maneuvering and a “sabra”—native-born Israeli—culture of toughness and militarism while underplaying factors like public opinion and the rejectionism of Palestinians and Arab regimes. In assuming that there always is a clear-cut peace program to be pursued, he underestimates the intractability of the Middle East deadlock. Photos. Agent: Peter Bernstein, Peter W. Bernstein Corp.

July 15, 2012
A scathing look at the belligerent mindset of Israel's elite, from David Ben-Gurion to Benjamin Netanyahu. Since its founding in opposition to Arab hostility, Israel remains "in thrall of an original martial impulse," writes former Washington Post and New York Times journalist Tyler (A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East--from the Cold War to the War on Terror, 2008, etc.). The native-born Israelis, sabras ("the new Jews, no longer a caricature of passivism, dependence, and weakness, but a people determined to take its fate into its own hands"), represented best in such figures as defense minister Moshe Dayan, grew up on cooperative farms, sparring with local Arabs over turf, reading the Bible not for religious instruction but as a "manual for war," and becoming radicalized while serving in the army. The new militarism superseded the romantic notions of Zionism's founding. By the mid-1950s, Ben-Gurion began urging for immediate escalation of Israel's military might in response to Egyptian leader Nasser's arms spree from Russia. Dayan, Ariel Sharon, Abba Eban, Menachim Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Golda Meir and others were enlisted in Ben-Gurion's new offensive-thinking policy, a call for an expansion of the Jewish state through preemptive strikes. Tyler attributes much of Ben-Gurion's new "activist strategy" to his impending retirement, deep-seated anxiety about his "weak-sister" successor and need to galvanize the support of the Israeli people. There has been a high price for this militarism--e.g., the Six-Day War, War of Attrition, border reprisals, Yom Kippur War and the current subverting of Iran's nuclear program by secret assassinations and bombings. The tragic result of this military folly, writes the author, is Israel's inability to generate effective diplomatic channels and alternatives for peace. Tyler ably demonstrates how a culture of preemptive warfare and covert subversion is isolating Israel and alienating it from its founding as a progressive and humanistic state.

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April 15, 2012

A longtime reporter and the author of the award-winning The Great Wall, Tyler here argues that Israel is not the democracy it proclaims itself to be but rather a military society built with the Holocaust in mind and now committed to maintaining war. Look for controversy.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2012
Former Washington Post and New York Times journalist Tyler presents a sharp critique of the close relationship between the Israeli government and the officer corps of the Israeli military. Beginning with an examination of David Ben-Gurion's gradual embrace of the rugged militarism of the native-born generation of Israelis, Tyler discusses the sabra mentality that became popular after WWII and, he suggests, continues to define the core of Israel's military culture. The persistence of that mentality, the ubiquity of military service, and the fluid channels between military and political leadership together culminate, he argues, in an isolated and highly militarized society that continues to refine and expand its definition of what constitutes an existential threat to the Israeli state. Ultimately, Tyler is concerned that Israel may ignore the opportunities for peace and diplomacy presented by the Arab spring because of the influence of this martial impulse. As for his critical examinations of the American military-industrial complex (Running Critical, 1986) and American involvement in the Middle East (A World of Trouble, 2008), Tyler researches deeply and does not pull his punches. Expect interest and controversy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2012

Tyler (former chief correspondent, New York Times; A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East--From the Cold War to the War on Terror) traces a 50-year history of what he considers the excessive influence of Israel's military establishment on the country's electoral politics and policies, especially its foreign policies relating to the Arab states and the relations of the Israeli government with the Palestinians. Relying on published articles, histories, diaries, and journals of political and military leaders, as well as dozens of interviews with Israelis who were active participants in the struggles he describes, Tyler makes the case that Israel, following its successful war of independence, soon became a "Spartan" nation, with a political leadership committed to military solutions to the exclusion of diplomatic alternatives. VERDICT Tyler is best at detailed descriptions of the who, what, when and where of the events described here, with extensive citation of sources, but he falters in explaining the why. Nonetheless, this will be valuable for readers interested in the history of Israel or the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.--Joel Neuberg, Santa Rosa Junior Coll. Lib., CA

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.