The Daily News: by Ben Lynfield

JERUSALEM: With international attention distracted by Iran and Syria, Israel’s fateful entanglement in the West Bank hardly gets a mention in the news these days.

Over the years, much has been written about the now 45-year-old Occupation’s deleterious effect on Palestinians. But in a significant new book, The Unmaking of Israel, launched recently at the Palestinian-owned Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem among other places, Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg argues convincingly that the Occupation is also having a destructive effect on Israel, or at least its chances of being a liberal-democratic society.

Unlike other critical works on Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories, Gorenberg’s book is written from an Israeli perspective, and out of a deep and personal sense of compassion for Israel’s future.

Author of The Accidental Empire, a history of the early years of the Jewish settler movement, Gorenberg in his new book has a here-and-now agenda that is almost clinical. He refers to future Israeli law enforcement officers being trained on an illegal West Bank settlement outpost, and examines the army rabbinate distributing a pamphlet erasing the distinction between combatants and civilians, from the perspective of physician diagnosing an illness and prescribing the cure. Read more