In Israel, Cypel effectively argues, force has triumphed over international law.
A French author who spent more than a decade in Israel laments the seemingly insurmountable gap between the promise and the present-day reality of Zionism in Israel.
As Cypel, former senior editor at Le Monde and the author of Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse (2007), writes, in terms of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the more it changes, the more it stays the same. The author delineates how decades of strife have so degraded the essence of the original founding ethos of the state—“one primarily rooted in a progressive conception of humanity and society”—that Israel today is unrecognizable to its own Jews and those in diaspora. The military state, whose tactics include systematic cruelty, colonial racism, and dehumanization, is aimed at wearing Palestinians down and pushing them out. As the world looks away, Cypel writes, Israel can act with impunity; the real test is not how far the Israeli government can push the Palestinians, but how far Israeli society will “go in its acquiescence.” Making effective use of solid sources—newspaper articles, interviews, speeches, and others—the author regards the recent passage of the “Basic Laws,” defining who gets to be a citizen, as a chilling example of how the nation-state has grown more insular and “hyperethnocentric.” As Cypel shows, all of the following have led to the alienation of the Jewish diaspora, especially in America: enlarging the settlements and pushing the Palestinians into areas around cities; racism toward African asylum seekers; massive weapons sales to authoritarian, antisemitic states; censoring of humans rights leaders and harassment of dissident groups; and the courting of the Trump administration and his evangelical cronies. So what about the future? “If the State of Israel wants to survive without fundamental changes,” writes the author, “it will be forced to gradually enforce a totally structured, codified apartheid.
In Israel, Cypel effectively argues, force has triumphed over international law.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63542-097-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.
A wide-ranging critique of leftist politics as not being left enough.
Continuing his examination of progressive reform movements begun with The Cult of Smart, Marxist analyst deBoer takes on a left wing that, like all political movements, is subject to “the inertia of established systems.” The great moment for the left, he suggests, ought to have been the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd and the accumulated crimes of Donald Trump should have led to more than a minor upheaval. In Minneapolis, he writes, first came the call from the city council to abolish the police, then make reforms, then cut the budget; the grace note was “an increase in funding to the very department it had recently set about to dissolve.” What happened? The author answers with the observation that it is largely those who can afford it who populate the ranks of the progressive movement, and they find other things to do after a while, even as those who stand to benefit most from progressive reform “lack the cultural capital and economic stability to have a presence in our national media and politics.” The resulting “elite capture” explains why the Democratic Party is so ineffectual in truly representing minority and working-class constituents. Dispirited, deBoer writes, “no great American revolution is coming in the early twenty-first century.” Accommodation to gradualism was once counted heresy among doctrinaire Marxists, but deBoer holds that it’s likely the only truly available path toward even small-scale gains. Meanwhile, he scourges nonprofits for diluting the tax base. It would be better, he argues, to tax those who can afford it rather than allowing deductible donations and “reducing the availability of public funds for public uses.” Usefully, the author also argues that identity politics centering on difference will never build a left movement, which instead must find common cause against conservatism and fascism.
Deliberately provocative, with much for left-inclined activists to ponder.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781668016015
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
An oft-ignored but fully convincing argument that “we cannot prevent the next pandemic without creating a healthy world.”
The Covid-19 pandemic is not a one-off catastrophe. An epidemiologist presents a cogent argument for a fundamental refocusing of resources on “the foundational forces that shape health.”
In this passionate and instructive book, Galea, dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, writes that Covid emerged because we have long neglected basic preventative measures. “We invest vast amounts of money in healthcare,” he writes, “but comparatively little in health.” Readers looking to learn how governments (mainly the U.S.) mishandled the pandemic have a flood of books to choose from, but Galea has bigger issues to raise. Better medical care will not stop the next epidemic, he warns. We must structure a world “that is resilient to contagions.” He begins by describing the current state of world health, where progress has been spectacular. Global life expectancy has more than doubled since 1900. Malnutrition, poverty, and child mortality have dropped. However, as the author stresses repeatedly, medical progress contributed far less to the current situation than better food, clean water, hygiene, education, and prosperity. That’s the good news. More problematic is that money is a powerful determinant of health; those who have it live longer. Galea begins the bad news by pointing out the misleading statistic that Covid-19 kills less than 1% of those infected; that applies to young people in good health. For those over 60, it kills 6%, for diabetics, over 7%, and those with heart disease, over 10%. It also kills more Blacks than Whites, more poor than middle-class people, and more people without health insurance. The author is clearly not just interested in Covid. He attacks racism, sexism, and poverty in equal measure, making a plea for compassion toward stigmatized conditions such as obesity and addiction. He consistently urges the U.S. government, which has spared no expense and effort to defeat the pandemic, to do the same for social injustice.
An oft-ignored but fully convincing argument that “we cannot prevent the next pandemic without creating a healthy world.”Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-757642-7
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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