The Making of Modern Israel

May 1, 2009
Today Israel is occasionally described as a regional superpower. The term is overblown, but, in just over 60 years, Israel has created a relatively prosperous, vibrant, and messy but democratic society. It is useful to be reminded how unlikely that seemed in 1948, and this survey of the first 19 years of Israels history illustrates how the foundations of the society were constructed. Stein is a senior research fellow at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His book is largely sympathetic to the creation of Israel, but he also strives for balance and doesnt shy away from describing the seamier aspects of nation building. In his chapter on the War of Independence, Stein convincingly refutes those who maintain that the expulsion of Palestinians was part of some master plan for ethnic cleansing. In his chapter on the ingathering of the exiles, he describes eloquently the difficulties involved in the rapid absorption of Jews from European displacement camps, as well as their coreligionists from Arab nations. This is an admirable effort to explain the molding of a modern nation from widely disparate elements.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)