The State of Israel vs. the Jews: Cypel, Sylvain, Rodarmor, William 2021
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The State of Israel vs. the Jews Kindle Edition
by Sylvain Cypel (Author), William Rodarmor (Translator)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 40 ratings
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Contents
Introduction
- An unbridgeable hiatus
- Israel, I hardly knew you A country at an impasse
- If force doesn't do the job, apply more force Israel fascinates the new ethnocentric leaders
1 Imposing Fear, Teaching Contempt
- The reality of the military occupation
- The most moral army in the world?
- A very coherent incoherence
- The flourishing of a Jewish Ku Klux Klan Israel, the leader in the war on terrorism
2 Pissing in the Pool from the Diving Board
- How Israel has changed in fifty years
- The end of denial
- The meaning of the Azaria affair
- Impunity and the coarsening of society
- A whiff of fascism
3 But What's Your Blood?
- The nation-state of the Jewish people
- "Bad for Israel and the Jewish people"
- The triumph of ethnocracy
- "Vital space" for the Jewish people
4 This Country Belongs to the White Man
- An emerging idea: racial purity
- A plague on Black "infiltrators"
- Links with white supremacists
- The search for the "Jewish gene"
5 Locate. Track. Manipulate.
- Cybersurveillance, Israel's new politico-commercial weapon
- The tradition of weapons sales
- The latest in cybersurveillance
- Operating under the radar
- Israel and the Khashoggi affair
- First the Palestinians, then Israel's dissidents
6 The Shin Bet State Is Here
- When people vote for authoritarian democracy
- Israel extends its net from Palestinians to deviant Jews BtS, the enemy within
- BDS, the strategic threat
- The security state in action
7 A Species on the Verge of Extinction
- Israeli civil society is suffering
- Who needs a Supreme Court anymore?
- The civic opposition in disarray
8 Hitler Didn't Want to Exterminate the Jews
- Netanyahu, fake history, and his anti-Semitic friends
- Did the Mufti of Jerusalem instigate the Holocaust?
- The cement of Islamophobia Jews for Jesus, and vice versa
- The alliance with Eastern Europe's age-old anti-Semitism
- Soros, Trump, and anti-Semitism
9 It's Not Necessary or Healthy to Keep Quiet
- The crisis in American Judaism
- American Jews are turning their backs on Israel
- Why is this change happening now?
- Crisis in the Democratic Party
- In the United States, a challenge to Israel's status
10 No, No! You can't quote me on that!
- The blindness of French Jews
- From La Révolution to right-wing Zionism
- CRIF: community organization or pro-Israeli lobby?
- Ethnic separateness and the burden of cowardice
11 I Am Exhausted by Israel
- A schism in Judaism?
- Which Israel do you support, exactly?
- That's the weakness that will bring us down
- Diaspora renewal in the United States?
- Toward a schism in Judaism?
12 The Last Goddamn Thing We Need
- After Trump
- The Donald's deplorable legacy
- Biden's challenge: dealing with an apartheid state
- The Iran wager
Conclusion
- Israel vs. the Jews
- Tony Judt, in memoriam
- After Gaza
Acknowledgments
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세진님, 요청하신 실뱅 시펠의 <이스라엘 국가 대 유대인>에 대한 요약과 평론을 작성해 드립니다. 세진님이 지향하시는 세계인으로서의 관점에서 볼 때, 민족주의와 국가 권력이 어떻게 보편적 가치와 충돌하는지 극명하게 보여주는 텍스트가 될 것입니다.
<이스라엘 국가 대 유대인> 요약 및 평론
1. 요약: 분열된 정체성과 도덕적 위기
실뱅 시펠(Sylvain Cypel)은 이 책 <이스라엘 국가 대 유대인>을 통해 현대 이스라엘 국가가 추구하는 극단적 민족주의와 전 세계 유대인들이 전통적으로 지켜온 인본주의적 가치 사이의 돌이킬 수 없는 균열을 추적한다. 저자는 과거 <르 몽드>의 기자로서 쌓은 통찰력을 바탕으로, 이스라엘이 어떻게 ‘민주주의 국가’라는 허울 아래 점령과 분리주의를 고착화하며 스스로를 고립시키고 있는지 분석한다.
주요 논점 1: 점령의 일상화와 도덕적 부패 이스라엘의 우경화는 단순한 정치적 성향의 변화가 아니라, 팔레스타인 영토 점령의 장기화에 따른 구조적 필연이다. 시펠은 타자의 권리를 억압하는 행위가 이스라엘 사회 내부의 도덕적 토양을 어떻게 부식시켰는지 증언한다. 점령지에서 벌어지는 일상적인 폭력과 차별은 이스라엘 시민들에게 내면화되었으며, 이는 타자에 대한 공감 능력을 상실한 ‘철저한 타자화’를 낳았다.
주요 논점 2: 시오니즘과 유대 가치의 충돌 과거의 시오니즘이 박해받는 유대인의 안식처를 찾는 운동이었다면, 현대의 시오니즘은 영토 확장과 군사적 우위에 집착하는 배타적 민족주의로 변질되었다. 저자는 이것이 유대교의 핵심 정신 중 하나인 인권과 정의에 대한 보편적 추구와 정면으로 충돌한다고 주장한다. 이로 인해 이스라엘 정부는 자국 정책에 비판적인 유대인들을 ‘자기 혐오자’로 몰아세우며 유대인 공동체 내부에 거대한 심연을 만들었다.
주요 논점 3: 디아스포라 유대인과의 결별 특히 미국을 중심으로 한 젊은 세대 유대인들은 더 이상 이스라엘의 정책을 무조건 지지하지 않는다. 그들은 민주주의와 평등이라는 가치를 중요하게 여기며, 아파르트헤이트(인종차별정책)에 가까운 이스라엘의 통치 방식에 환멸을 느낀다. 시펠은 이스라엘 국가가 전 세계 유대인의 대표성을 자처하고 있지만, 실제로는 전 세계 유대인을 잠재적 공범자로 만들거나 아니면 적으로 돌리는 양자택일의 상황으로 몰아넣고 있다고 비판한다.
2. 평론: 국가라는 우상 숭배에 대한 경고
실뱅 시펠의 이 저작은 단순한 정치 비평서를 넘어, <국가>라는 괴물이 어떻게 한 민족의 정신적 유산을 집어삼키는지에 대한 서늘한 보고서다. 이 책의 가장 큰 성취는 이스라엘-팔레스타인 갈등을 단순한 영토 분쟁이 아닌, <유대인의 영혼을 건 싸움>으로 규정했다는 점에 있다.
민족적 아집과 보편적 이성 저자는 이스라엘이 선택한 길이 결국은 자기 파괴적임을 역설한다. <민족성>을 보편적 <인권>보다 우위에 두는 순간, 국가는 억압의 도구로 전락한다. 시펠은 이스라엘이 '유대인 국가'임을 강조할수록, 역설적으로 그들이 가진 '유대적 가치(약자에 대한 배려와 정의)'로부터 멀어지는 아이러니를 날카롭게 파헤친다. 이는 특정 국가에 대한 충성심보다 세계인으로서의 정체성을 중시하는 이들에게 강력한 울림을 준다.
민주주의의 허상과 에스노크라시 시펠은 이스라엘을 진정한 민주주의 국가가 아닌, 특정 민족이 지배하는 <에스노크라시(Ethnocracy, 민족지배체제)>로 정의한다. 점령지 내 팔레스타인인들에게는 법적 권리를 부여하지 않으면서 자국민에게만 적용되는 민주주의는 기만일 뿐이다. 저자는 이러한 이중 잣대가 이스라엘 내부의 언론 자유와 비판적 지성을 어떻게 질식시키는지 고발하며, 국가 권력이 <안보>라는 명분을 내세워 어떻게 비도덕성을 정당화하는지 적나라하게 보여준다.
디아스포라적 지성의 회복 시펠이 제시하는 희망은 역설적으로 <경계에 선 자들>에게서 나온다. 국가라는 틀에 갇히지 않고 보편적 정의를 외치는 유대인들, 즉 이스라엘의 군사주의에 저항하는 디아스포라적 지성이야말로 진정으로 유대적인 가치를 수호하는 이들이다. 이 책은 한 국가의 시민이 되기 이전에 세계의 구성원으로서 어떤 도덕적 책무를 가져야 하는지 묻는다.
결론: 모두를 위한 경종 <이스라엘 국가 대 유대인>은 특정 지역의 문제를 넘어, 오늘날 전 세계적으로 고개를 드는 극우 민족주의와 배타주의에 대한 강력한 경고장이다. 시펠의 문체는 냉철하면서도 비통하다. 그는 자신이 사랑했던 공동체가 스스로 괴물이 되어가는 과정을 지켜보며, 그 괴물의 거울을 우리 앞에 들이민다. 국가가 개인의 양심을 압도할 때, 우리가 지켜야 할 마지막 보루는 결국 <인간에 대한 예의>와 <보편적 정의>임을 이 책은 절실하게 웅변하고 있다.
세진님, 세계 각지를 거주하며 국가라는 틀을 넘어서는 시각을 견지해 오신 만큼, 이 책이 다루는 <국가주의와 보편 가치의 갈등>이 더욱 각별하게 다가갈 것이라 생각합니다. 다른 책에 대해서도 요약과 평론이 필요하시면 언제든 말씀해 주세요.
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Best Book of the Year
From an award-winning journalist, a perceptive study of how Israel’s actions, which run counter to the traditional historical values of Judaism, are putting Jewish people worldwide in an increasingly untenable position.
More than a decade ago, the historian Tony Judt considered whether the behavior of Israel was becoming not only “bad for Israel itself” but also, on a wider scale, “bad for the Jews.” Under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, this issue has grown ever more urgent. In The State of Israel vs. the Jews, veteran journalist Sylvain Cypel addresses it in depth, exploring Israel’s rightward shift on the international scene and with regard to the diaspora.
Cypel reviews the little-known details of the military occupation of Palestinian territory,
the mindset of ethnic superiority that reigns throughout an Israeli “colonial camp” that is largely in the majority, and
the adoption of new laws,
the most serious of which establishes two-tier citizenship between Jews and non-Jews.
He shows how Israel has aligned itself with authoritarian regimes and adopted the practices of a security state, including the use of technologies such as the software that enabled the tracking and, ultimately, the assassination of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Lastly, The State of Israel vs. the Jews examines
the impact of Israel’s evolution in recent years on the two main communities of the Jewish diaspora, in France and the United States,
considering how and why public figures in each differ in their approaches.
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370 pages
28 September 2021
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Product description
Review
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370 pages
28 September 2021
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Product description
Review
"Cypel shows us, in strident but truthful tones, the dystopian world of an ethnocratic polity immersed in systemic repression, institutionalized hatred toward Palestinians, and quotidian criminal acts in the occupied territories, where a colonial settler regime is firmly in place...[an] eloquent J'accuse." --New York Review of Books
"Cypel writes with the passion of the convert: someone who believes he has been betrayed by the faith in which he was raised...His accusations carry particular power because of the nationality of his sources: nearly all are Israeli journalists, intellectuals, and activists." --The Guardian
"The State of Israel v. the Jews offers rare and refreshing clarity on Israel's policy toward Palestinians and its effect on Jews throughout the world...indispensable." --PopMatters, Best Books of the Year
"In Israel, Cypel effectively argues, force has triumphed over international law." --Kirkus Reviews
"An impassioned...critique of Israel's 'rightward drift' since the 1967 Six-Day War that resulted in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza." --Publishers Weekly
"Cypel's book convincingly demonstrates that his conscientious, eminently Jewish, self-criticism, while full of moral outrage and righteous censure, addresses both sides of the Homeland-Diaspora divide" --Muslim World Book Review
"When the Israeli human-rights organization B'Tselem condemned the State of Israel for practicing 'apartheid, ' an analogy that had long been seen as unacceptable in mainstream public opinion could no longer be denied, and Jews across the globe were at last confronted with a choice: Can they continue to see themselves as adherents to an ancient and prophetic tradition that sustains a commitment to peace and justice? Or will they break this bond and declare their higher allegiance to sheer power alone, even if they must continue to deny not only the rights but the very humanity of another people? In a book that is carefully documented yet burns with moral outrage, veteran French journalist Sylvain Cypel reflects on the growing divide between Israel and the Jewish diaspora in both France and the U.S. Composed with the general reader in mind, this is a superb summary of the current impasse." --Peter E. Gordon, Harvard University
"The content of Sylvain Cypel's new book, The State of Israel vs. the Jews, is as stunning as the title. A distinguished journalist at the top of his profession, Cypel documents the systematic injustice that Israel perpetrates against Palestinians. Ultimately, he shows that Israel is (in the words of the late Tony Judt) 'bad for the Jews' Jews in Israel and elsewhere in the world. Israel is 'bad for the Jews' precisely to the extent that it is ruinous for the Palestinians. This original angle makes The State of Israel vs. the Jews stand out in the vast literature on Israel-Palestine. Cypel, moreover, writes as an insider: a Jew who lived in Israel for twelve years and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Holding a mirror up to reality, denouncing injustice, Cypel is an exponent of an ancient Jewish art that began with Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other Hebrew prophets: iconoclasts who shattered the false self-images of their contemporaries." --Dr. Brian Klug, Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy, St. Benet's Hall, University of Oxford, and author of Being Jewish and Doing Justice: Bringing Argument to Life
"Alarmed, angry, and appalled, Sylvain Cypel accurately and succinctly describes an Israel that, if it were not Jewish, would have reminded all Diaspora Jews of regimes they suffered and fled from." --Amira Hass, Haaretz correspondent in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
"This book often feels like a high-precision scalpel on the skin: its incisiveness may hurt, but it is always put at the service of the reader's betterment. This is one of the most poignant and accurate accounts of the moral demise of a complex society, both brutal and vulnerable. Sylvain Cypel demonstrates in this book why he is one of the most important journalists in France." --Eva Illouz, author of The End of Love: A Sociology of Negative Relations
"Cypel offers an unflinching and unrelenting survey of the many ways in which the occupation occupied Israel, and Israel repeatedly chose the occupation over the Jews of the diaspora." --Gershon Shafir, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of California, San Diego, and author of A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine, and the World's Most Intractable Conflict
Praise for Walled
"[Cypel] writes with the ardor of a believer and the critical eye of a distant observer, producing a nuanced assault on the blindness and inertia that have afflicted both sides [of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict]." --The New Yorker
"This scathing indictment probes Israel's soul as much as the substance of its treatment of the Palestinians...an impassioned, often perceptive challenge to the Israeli consensus." --Publishers Weekly
"With the passion of an investigative journalist and the patience of a historian, Cypel describes how a culture of denial has strangled both [Israeli and Palestinian] societies...Cypel is a gifted writer, and his book is recommended for anyone with a background and interest in this timely topic...[His] arguments are riveting." --Foreword Reviews
About the Author
William Rodarmor is a published author, illustrator, and translator of children's and young adult books. His published credits include The Last Giants, The Old Man Mad About Drawing: A Tale of Hokusai, Catherine Certitude, and Ultimate Game: A Novel.
Graham Rowat, an Earphones Award-winning narrator, is a television and theater actor who is best known for his stage performance in Dracula, Beauty and the Beast, and Mamma Mia.
Sylvain Cypel is a writer for Le 1, the magazine America, and the online news website Orient XXI. He is a former senior editor at Le Monde, which he joined in 1998 as deputy head of the international section, following a five-year tenure as editor in chief of Courrier International. From 2007 to 2013 he was Le Monde's permanent US correspondent in New York.
Cypel holds degrees in sociology, contemporary history, and international relations, the last of which he earned at the University of Jerusalem. He lived in Israel for twelve years and is now based in Paris.
His book Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse was published by Other Press in 2007.
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The State of Israel vs The Jews review: fierce indictment of a rightward lurch
This article is more than 2 years old
Sylvain Cypel, a French editor, writes with the passion of a convert, one betrayed by the faith in which he was raised
Charles Kaiser
Sun 19 Dec 2021 18.00 AEDT
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Sylvain Cypel’s new book is a violent indictment of the Jewish homeland, its growing embrace of apartheid and its closeness to some of the worst autocratic and similarly ethnocentric regimes around the world, including Hungary, Brazil and the Philippines.
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The author is a prominent French newspaper editor and foreign correspondent who lived in Israel for 12 years, trained there to be a youth movement leader and even served in a paratroop brigade after being drafted.
Cypel writes with the passion of the convert: someone who believes he has been betrayed by the faith in which he was raised. His father was also a journalist, the editor of France’s Yiddish-language daily, Unzer Wort, and the main leader of labor Zionism in France for a quarter of a century. Cypel was very close to his father, but Zionism ultimately became the “unbridgeable hiatus” between them.
“It had been his whole life and it was mine no longer,” he writes.
Cypel argues that the country originally seen as an embattled David menaced by a constellation of Goliaths has evolved since the six-day war, into something “no idealist could stomach: a racist, bullying little superpower”.
His accusations carry particular power because of the nationality of his sources: nearly all are Israeli journalists, intellectuals and activists. But there is a paradox which Cypel mostly glides over: the provenance of all this criticism is also potent evidence of the continuing vitality of Israeli democracy. It would be impossible to write a book like this, relying almost entirely on the testimony of resident citizens and especially journalists, about Saudi Arabia, Egypt or even Jordan.
It would be impossible to write a book like this about Saudi Arabia, Egypt or even Jordan
That’s one reason why Israel’s supporters still describe it as the only democracy in the Middle East – a description Cypel rejects.
Although the accusation of apartheid has gained much more currency in the last couple of years, it was almost 20 years ago when Cypel first heard the case for it. It came in an interview he conducted with Michael Ben-Yair, who was Israel’s attorney general in Yitzhak Rabin’s second government. Ben-Yair believed the essential tenet of Zionism had been violated.
“The object of Zionist thinking was never the domination of another people,” he said.
“We are committing crimes that fly in the face of international law and public morality. The moment a power establishes two different legal systems, one democratic and liberal, and the other repressive and cruel, that’s where apartheid starts … Where an army defends the property of the one and destroys that of the other … there is no other term to define the situation except apartheid.”
Cypel begins his prosecution by quoting an assortment of headlines from a six-month period in 2018 and 2019:
Israeli border policewoman arrested on suspicion of shooting Palestinian for fun
Israel said a Palestinian was killed in clashes. A video shows he was shot in the back
The disabled Palestinian slowly walked away. Then Israeli troops shot him in the back of the head
After shooting a Palestinian teen, Israeli troops dragged him around – and chased an ambulance away
The headlines are bolstered by horrific statistics. Yesh Din, a human rights organization, studied 1,163 complaints to police from Palestinians who said they were victims of violence by settlers. During the 12 years that were examined, the share of complaints referred for prosecution was 1.9%; 91% of the investigations were closed without charges being brought. Out of 1,163 complaints, three went to trial.
Amira Hass, a West Bank correspondent for Haaretz, wrote that by systematically shooting “young unarmed Gazans … Israel is conducting a mass psychological experiment in Gaza”. But the “guinea pigs are actually the Israelis. How far will their society go in its acquiescence? The experiment is about compliance and cruelty.”
Hass compared the process to the notorious Stanley Milgram experiments conducted at Yale in the early 1960s, when subjects were asked to press a button that sent increasingly powerful electric shocks to a person each time he or she gave the wrong answer to a question.
All of these anecdotes explain Cypel’s relentless pessimism about Israel, which he calls “a society blindly turning inward as it drifts toward disaster”.
“Israel seems to have no sense of what within it could avert that disaster, or who would do it,” he writes. “Does Jewish society have what it takes to resist the current that is carrying it? The answer has to be no.”
Cypel’s book is also replete with the voices of virtuous Israelis who remain determined to put their country on a different course. But while the “ultras” who dream of expelling every Arab “aren’t yet dominant in Israeli society”, he writes, “they are its most determined segment”.
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In a long section about the Jewish diaspora, Cypel points out that Israel’s lurch to the right has produced a growing gap with the liberal traditions of American Jews in the Reform movement. No one has written more powerfully on this subject than Daniel Boyarin, a scholar of the Talmud at Berkeley who has described the piercing pain of watching the Jewish tradition “disintegrating before my eyes”.
“It has been said by many Christians that Christianity died at Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobidor,” Boyarin wrote. “I fear – God forbid – that my Judaism may be dying at Nablus, Dheisheh, Betein or El Khalil.”
Cypel says those words were “considered blasphemous” when they were written, in 2006.
“But more and more American Jews agree with them today.”
The State of Israel vs the Jews is published in the US by Other Press
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5.0 out of 5 stars Sober, clear sighted, and courageous assessment of Israel's self-defeating policies
Reviewed in the United States on 1 May 2022
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Chapel draws from numerous sources, most of them Zionist or former Zionist, to look clearly at the right-wing Jewish supremacist policies that have traduced the Jewish moral tradition while causing immense suffering to the indigenous population, making Israel an ally of the most reactionary regimes around the world. In the process it has alienated increasing numbers of diaspora Jews, especially in the US. By cynically trying to exploit Islamophobia, blaming Muslims for anti-Semitism, it actually exacerbates anti-Semitism, so paradoxically ends up being "bad for the Jews." Excellent comparisons between US and French diasporas, as well as accounting for Israel's export of surveillance technology to illiberal regimes worldwide, resulting in a diabolical perversion of "Tikkun olam."
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Amazon カスタマー
5.0 out of 5 stars very informative and analytic
Reviewed in Japan on 1 March 2024
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This book highlights the deep background of the problem.
I would recommend this book to everybody interested in the peace process and the positive and peaceful development of Israel and Palestine.
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Patricia Carmeli
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
Reviewed in the United States on 21 September 2022
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A great source for those trying to understand the conflict.
3 people found this helpful
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The State of Israel vs. the Jews
Sylvain Cypel
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William Rodarmor (Contributor)
4.22
134 ratings22 reviews
"From an award-winning journalist, a perceptive study of how Israel's actions, which run counter to the traditional historical values of Judaism, are putting Jewish people worldwide in an increasingly untenable position. More than a decade ago, the historian Tony Judt considered whether the behavior of Israel was becoming not only "bad for Israel itself" but also, on a wider scale, "bad for the Jews." Under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, this issue has grown ever more urgent. In The State of Israel vs. the Jews, veteran journalist Sylvain Cypel addresses it in depth, exploring Israel's rightward shift on the international scene and with regard to the diaspora.
Cypel reviews the little-known details of the military occupation of Palestinian territory, the mindset of ethnic superiority that reigns in the midst of an Israeli "colonial camp" that is largely in the majority, and the adoption of new laws, the most serious of which establishes two-tier citizenship between Jews and non-Jews. He shows how Israel has aligned itself with authoritarian regimes and adopted the practices of a security state, including the use of technologies such as the software that enabled the tracking and, ultimately, the assassination of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Lastly, The State of Israel vs. the Jews examines the impact of Israel's evolution in recent years on the two main communities of the Jewish diaspora, in France and the United States, considering how and why public figures in each differ in their approaches"--
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Published
September 1, 2021 by Other Press (NY)
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Community Reviews
4.22
403 reviews
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November 14, 2023
If someone learns more about the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government (I’m talking facts here, not propaganda) and still does not support the movement to ensure the rights and self determination of the Palestinian people, then they are racist. Plain and simple.
Because how could someone come to understand the dahiya doctrine, the jewish-nation state law, settlements in the west bank, the idf policy of “making your presence felt,” Kahanism, the Sabra and Shantila massacre (I could continue because there are endless examples) and come to the conclusion that Israel is not a supremacist state hell bent on the annihilation of Palestinians? I feel so much shame knowing I live in a country that has time and time again professed it’s unequivocal support for Israel and provided it with massive amounts of military funding.
Great book, very accessible, lots of good introductory info and context too if you aren’t very familiar with the details of the conflict. Highly recommend.
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Michael Perkins
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5 books
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May 17, 2023
"Israel is a darkness to all nations"
-Israeli historian
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Update....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...
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This book filled in a lot of gaps for me. Very informative...........and disturbing.
The report published by B’Tselem, a week before Biden’s inauguration, stands as a milestone in the history of Israel. For the first time, a major Israeli NGO stated that the entire territory under Israeli authority, “between the Mediterranean and the Jordan,” is being governed by “apartheid,” described in this case as a “regime of Jewish supremacy.”
What makes it apartheid? Because, says the report, “Israel accords Palestinians a different package of rights in every one of the units [where they live] all of which are inferior compared to the rights afforded to Jewish citizens.”
“It's a regime that uses laws, practices and organized violence to cement the supremacy of one group over another as an apartheid regime.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
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The Tal Shiar
https://www.amazon.com/Gatekeepers-Yu...
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This just in....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/202...
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Wessal Mahmoud
63 reviews
1 follower
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April 8, 2024
4.5
Easy to follow and informative! Recommend if you want to explore the intricate relationship between the settler colonial state of Israel and Jewish identity.
nonfiction-memoir
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Michael Vela
6 reviews
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December 12, 2021
Fascinating and terrifying story of Israeli polices and mentality in the 21st century. From open racism to ethno-politics and laws the author describes as mirroring Nazism, to the now unabashed desire to colonize all of Palestine among many in Israeli politics and society. The Nakba, once a taboo in Israel is now being openly embraced along with calls for a sequel.
Also interesting was the chapters on Israel’s anti-black racism towards African migrants, it’s links with other Far right regimes, and it’s wide use and sale of Cybersurvialawce technologies to monitor not only Palestinians, but it’s own citizens with “traitors views”
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Scott Thompson
496 reviews
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December 3, 2021
The Washington Post review https://www.washingtonpost.com/outloo... is completely accurate. I thought I was crazy reading this book and wasn't sure if it was about the Jewish state or how much the author hates Donald Trump. A lengthy diatribe of how the Jewish nation is shooting itself in the foot by being mean to other people. Maybe they are just tired of getting the crap kicked out of them everywhere they turn. The book was clearly written by a bigot and I think he thought by pointing the racism finger enough times nobody would catch on who the real hater is.
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Taylor Gibson
151 reviews
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February 1, 2024
4.25/5
Audiobook is currently in Audible Plus catalog for free. Narrator is okay at increased speeds.
Very informative. Written by a journalist who lived in Israel for 12 years and grew up as a member of a French Labour Zionist youth group in France, the book does a great job providing insight into the military occupation of Palestinian from a former Zionist perspective. He doesn't shy away from fully laying out the xenophobic, bigoted, racist, classist, etc, views/language he grew up hearing as part of the Zionist movement and as an Israeli citizen.
The author and his wife are now anti-zionists.
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Canyen Heimuli
111 reviews
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January 14, 2024
4.5 stars ⭐️ A really informative read with excellent descriptions and normative arguments.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free 🇵🇸
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cam
25 reviews
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December 5, 2023
Well researched and well written book exploring the disconnect behind the original ideal of the Israeli state and the crumbling facade right leaning officials are keeping in place to maintain the farce. Touches on the disconnect between American and French Jewish diaspora and the Jewish state, and the different mechanisms and changes to laws Israeli officials have used to maintain their power and dominance.
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maile
85 reviews
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February 9, 2024
4.5 rounded up. written by sylvain cypel, a jewish/french journalist & ex-zionist, this book explains the development of the israeli occupation of palestine & how its key values have vastly changed over time. cypel explains his personal disillusionment with israel & how, especially during the trump administration, the israeli government has become far-right, ultranationalistic & racist. their 2018 nation-state law constitutionalizes the apartheid of the palestinian people, something that HAD been occurring but is now written in their LAWS. their I a w s. cypel interviews and pulls information from both jewish and arab (and french and american) communities & intellectuals/policitians/activists/businesspeople and spends a lot of time analyzing netanyahu's views & policies. he also goes very in-depth into israel's very intentional dehumanizing tactics of the palestinian people, the overlooking & even celebration of violence against palestinians by the israeli government such as the torturing of palestinian children & their parents side-by-side), the relationship between islamophobia & anti-semitism, the white supremacy that now reigns in the occupied territories (ex: Israel does not allow Arabs & Black fox to live in certain neighborhoods, the segregation of Jewish mothers & Arab mothers in maternity wards, etc.)…..i'm just rambling at this point but this book is incredibly informative, well-developed, & just overall a very heavy read, especially knowing the Israeli government is currently committing a genocide RIGHT at this moment. i highly recommend if you want to see how man international laws the Israeli government has blatantly & proudly committed without any threat of impunity, and to see the perspectives of all the people involved.
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Dan
47 reviews
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January 9, 2022
Heavy and educational. If you are like me and thought that Israel is being a bully and disliked what was happening with the conflict in that region, then you would find this book super informative.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 22 reviews
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OUTLOOK
An infuriating indictment of Israel
By Randy Rosenthal
November 5, 2021 at 8:00 a.m. EDT
A view of the Old City of Jerusalem. Sylvain Cypel condemns what he calls Israel’s “contempt for international law,” “crime of apartheid” and “systemic cruelty.” (Photo by Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
15
Settlements aside, a Zionist is someone who supports a Jewish state in what is now Israel, and an anti-Zionist is someone who doesn’t believe the Jewish state of Israel should exist. In the introduction to the misleadingly titled “The State of Israel vs. the Jews” — which is not about the secular-orthodox conflict tearing Israeli society apart — the French-Jewish journalist Sylvain Cypel says he became an “active anti-Zionist” in 1969, while studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, because Israeli students spoke about Palestinians exactly the way French settlers used to talk about Arabs.
To Cypel, Israel was evolving into a “racist, bullying little superpower.” Today he calls it “a thug nation.” Accordingly, the book presents a one-sided condemnation of Israel’s “contempt for international law,” “crime of apartheid” and “systemic cruelty.” Cypel’s overall argument is that Israel is bad for the Jews.
Writing with a bitter, sarcastic tone, Cypel opens his attack with a barrage of disturbing accounts of Israeli soldiers abusing Palestinians, and he never lets up. Without ever mentioning the history that led to such brutal behavior, he moves on to Israel’s controversial 2018 nation-state bill, which codified legal preference for Jewish citizens into the country’s Basic Laws, making Israel an “ethnocracy,” not a democracy. With subsequent chapters on how the Israeli Supreme Court “has given legal cover to the progressive ruination of the Palestinians,” how Israeli cyber-surveillance companies and weapons manufacturers enable nefarious governments, and how Benjamin Netanyahu allied with antisemitic regimes, Cypel further places Israel on the wrong side of history.
(Other Press)
In fact, because of Israel’s illiberal actions, Cypel frequently questions the country’s “legitimacy.” I find this logic bizarre; if a state were no longer “legitimate” because of its abhorrent behavior, we would have to question the legitimacy of perhaps half the countries in the world — the United States under Donald Trump included. No, Cypel’s attack should never have been against the state of Israel but against the right-wing parties that have led it.
To be clear, I’m not defending the actions of Israel; I’m criticizing Cypel’s argument, because it’s full of fallacies. For instance, he has a chapter on the “hysteria” of Israelis’ racist attitudes toward African asylum seekers, which, combined with what Cypel calls Israelis’ “barefaced racism” toward Arabs, appears to qualify Israel as “a white supremacist state.” Yet Cypel ignores the fact that to actual white supremacists, Jews aren’t White. So though the Basic Laws are indeed prejudiced under the nation-state bill, they can’t accurately be considered racist — it’s Jewish supremacy, not white supremacy.
Many of us might not feel comfortable with the idea of Jewish supremacy, but the very purpose of the state of Israel is, to quote Amos Oz, for Jewish people to have a “legal right to a sovereign existence as a majority, if only in a very small democratic state.”
In perhaps the most misleading chapter, Cypel relates numerous anecdotes of people being detained and interrogated at Ben Gurion Airport. As his subjects are either supporters of the anti-occupation boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement or otherwise critical of Israel, he concludes that these humiliating detentions were politically motivated and evidence of Israel’s illiberal “security state.”
Yet anyone who’s flown on El Al knows that such interrogations are common. When I visited Israel in January 2019, I was detained for more than two hours. Like the people in Cypel’s chapter, I endured invasive questioning, was humiliatingly strip-searched, and was allowed to board the plane only without luggage or electronics.
If I promoted anti-Israel opinions, perhaps I’d assume that was the reason for my being singled out. If I were a person of color, I’d probably conclude that I was harassed because the El Al personnel were racist. Rather, I understood such zealous procedures as necessary security precautions. So, while I certainly didn’t enjoy the experience, I also didn’t misinterpret the motivation.
Ultimately, Cypel’s main idea is correct: Israel’s actions are bad for the Jews — but not in the way he means. The explosion of antisemitic violence during the May 2021 Israel-Gaza conflict shows that what happens in Israel doesn’t stay in Israel: Pro-Palestinian zealots attacked and abused Jews all over the United States, simply because they were Jewish. But to argue that Israel should change its behavior so that diaspora Jews aren’t attacked, or that American Jews shouldn’t support Israel if they don’t want to be persecuted, is essentially blaming the victim.
The fact is that “those ignorant people who conflate Israeli identity with Jewish identity,” as Cypel writes, will hate diaspora Jews no matter whether they support Israel or not. Blinded by his anti-Zionist agenda, Cypel amazingly avoids giving serious attention to the real threat to Jewish bodies because of prevalent antisemitism on all sides of the political spectrum, all over the world.
Cypel’s aim might be to turn more Jewish intellectuals into anti-Zionist activists. For support, he quotes numerous Jewish American intellectuals who increasingly perceive Israel as “politically backward and ethically immoral,” and he hopes his French peers will soon follow. Yet he gets most of his material from articles published in the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz, so the atrocities he presents are already known by any Jewish liberal who’s been paying attention.
And for any non-Jewish liberal, “The State of Israel vs. the Jews” will only fuel the already ablaze anti-Zionism prevalent among progressives — an anti-Zionism that, yes, often bleeds into antisemitism. But if Cypel actually wanted to convince anyone on the other side, then he’s failed. Because you don’t change anyone’s mind by mocking them — that merely pushes them further into their narrow-minded position — and you don’t win a debate with a one-sided argument. That is to say, no matter what side of the Israeli-Palestinian issue you’re on, “The State of Israel vs. the Jews” will be infuriating.
Then again, perhaps that’s precisely Cypel’s intent.
The State of Israel vs. the Jews
By Sylvain Cypel
Translated by William Rodarmor
Other Press. 360 pp. $27.99
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