The Myths of Liberal Zionism

September 7, 2009
These five long essays— first published in English by Laor, an Israeli poet, playwright, novelist and political commentator—focus not so much on “liberal Zionism,” a term he never defines, but on such subjects as Israeli leaders' appropriation of the Holocaust to gain victim status and, Laor believes, to persecute Palestinians. He also takes on European philo-Semitism and what he sees as the false leftist credentials of such Israelis in the “peace camp” as the writers Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua. Laor himself subscribes to the anti-Zionist shibboleth that “Zionism has no source of legitimization except the old colonial discourse.” Meanwhile, the Palestinians are represented solely as victims, and his prose is often tendentious, as when he writes that the Israeli army's pursuit of Palestinian terrorists in March 2004 marked “a systematic expansion of the activity of its death squads.” There are a few valuable insights, as when Laor focuses on Yehoshua's ambivalent, and sometimes negative, feelings about Israelis who, like himself, whose families have come from Arab countries. But Laor's work lacks nuance and a sense of balance.