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Toward an Open Tomb: The Crisis of Israeli Society

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Michel Warschawski has really achieved something with this book, I think. A harsh critique of Israeli society, the book manages to pack a lot into a small number of pages. Furthermore, Warschawski manages to mix up the format very effectively, giving the book a very alive feeling. In addition, despite certain flaws, Warschawski's thesis -- that the assassination of Rabin was a turning point in which the Israeli left refused to confront the extreme right, priveleging "national unity" over peace and progress -- is compelling. I can easily say that this book had an impact on me that few others have.

This book is as frightening as it is clarifying. It seems that the government of Israel has gone mad and that it has infected the citizenry and the entire social and civic fabric of Israeli society. With no respect for law, with no recognition of rights, with pathological hatred of non-Jews and paranoia that is all-encompassing, the state of Israel is heading for a bottomless pit.

The recent barbaric invasion and destruction of Lebanon, a sovereign nation, is the work of people who have lost control and are working strictly on "lizard brain" impulses. Anyone can see that this deliberate destruction of a nation's infrastructure and the slaughter of its people is not "self defense" but the crazed lashing out of a wild beast with its back to the wall. The trouble is that Israel has created this situation by treating the Palestinians and other Arab peoples in the region like subhumans while stealing their land and water. Israel cannot exist, it believes, unless there is constant war against its immediate neighbors.

Warschawski makes the history and current events very clear, indeed.

Michael Warschawski claims that some Israelis actually see the present Arab cult of dying to kill Jews as similar to the German National Socialist cult of the 1930s and 1940s. Well, he's right. Some Israelis do see some similarities. And so do I.

Of course, the author implies that it is evil to think such thoughts. He's entitled to his opinion. If he wants, he can say that "racism and violence have always been in Israeli culture." Matter of fact, he wrote exactly that. That's a very misleading thing to write, but it seems that people can say anything, and this book proves it.

The author says that the symbol of Israel is the bulldozer. Not to me. I might pick some nice, drip-irrigated fields. And he does discuss the use of a National Socialist "vocabulary," not by the Arab terrorists, but by the Israelis.

Still, if the Israelis are not good enough for him, who is? Surely nations in general are, on the average, worse than Israel. What solution does that imply? I think it would have been fair for him to explain that we humans have made a huge number of species extinct, but that only one more species has to go to end the slaughter. That would have put his views into perspective.