Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsThe one-star reviews of this book highlight the emotional backlash to being presented unwanted truths.
Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2018
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning investigative journalist whose insight and integrity I trust, and I don't really trust all that many people.
I put off reading this book for quite a while, even for two months after purchasing it sat on my bookcase waiting its inevitable turn. I knew that I would face emotional and ethical conflicts from its contents, this is not a book to be read lightly.
Simply put, "Goliath" is powerful, much like the mythical character that is its namesake. It is a brutal reminder of the uncivilized origins of Judaism and not only through the state of Israel, but in its influence around the world as Judaism's barbaric offspring continue daily to assault reason.
You find that Israel learned too well the cruelties of ethnic and religious persecution from the Spanish Inquisition, Russian pogroms, Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, and pre-Civil Rights United States and used these places as blueprints for their new ethno-state starting in 1947.
The tactics employed daily throughout the occupied territories are eerily reminiscent of these historic mistakes and its tactics and propaganda are now being reimported to the United States in particular.
I now find myself reluctant to call Israel a nation as that lends an air of respectability to what has be perpetrated. Interestingly, utilizing largely American taxpayer money to foster the narrative of "civilization", "democracy" and "progress", a ethno-fascist regime has grown in place of these ideals.
The culture of Israel shamelessly continues to use the atrocities of The Holocaust as a propaganda smokescreen to obscure the behavior that so well mirrors the villains of that same history. I never thought I would feel a sense of shame in participating in the opening ceremonies of my local Holocaust Museum as a child, but the quoted words and fanatical behavior of Israelis definitely pushes me in that direction. As I continued to read of the daily desecration of that memory in the name of ethnic nationalism I must say that I am disgusted.
"Goliath" covers some of the background of the Israeli colonial territories in the Arabic Peninsula as far back as 1947, but mainly focuses on the era of 1990-2012, with an emphasis on the 5 year period Blumenthal spent witnessing history in Israel firsthand. He came to know its internal politics and struggles intimately as this was made easier for him due to his Jewish ethnic background. From besieged Gazan villages to the halls of the increasingly fascist Knesset, Blumenthal probes the striated layers of Isreali-Palestinian social constructs to the best of his ability.
I won't go into too much detail, but I must say that this book will turn your stomach one way or another. It may also turn your views on the subject as well, whether you actually care for human rights, international integrity and democratic ideals or whether you have fallen for the Israeli propaganda that the revisionists have sold to the world and US in particular. You will not forget this document, ever.
If Israel is truly the shining beacon of democracy in the middle-east, then religious ethno-nationalism should be its mortal enemy. However, in this troubled land, that enemy has been embraced with open arms and panicked heart, a slap in the face to all Holocaust victims and survivors, Jewish or otherwise, alike.
"Tapuz, a website for Israelis living abroad, hosted a 2005 forum on the topic of leaving Israel. According to the site's administrator, Limor Abis, the most frequently cited explanation for why they left was, 'The question is not why we left, but why it took so long to do so'." (Chapter 73, "Exodus")
This discussion is not over, unfortunately in many ways it is still just warming up and beginning to burn through the fog of state and religiously-sanctioned propaganda shrouding this small territory. All it may take for this fascist kettle to boil over is one more rash action. Whether the action of a government with no standing Constitution after 70 years, its ghetto-living minority, or of their neighbors, the cousins of the ghetto-living minority. If you wish to be prepared to understand this nearly inevitable day, this book is an excellent place to begin your education.
