Rating: 
Summary: POWERFUL WRITING AT THE SERVICE OF A MAXIMALIST STANCE
Review: The well-known liberal attorney and Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz maintains in this book that Jews should be more self-assertive. They shouldn't feel "shenda fur de goyim" (Yiddish for "shame before the Gentiles") as they did in the past. They should be proud of their achievements, instead of begging to be forgiven for them. They should abandon their "sha'a shtil" ("remain quiet") attitude and loudly denounce the faintest hint of anti-Semitism they might detect either in their personal experience or in society at large. And, most important of all, they should have no mixed feelings about supporting the state of Israel, regardless of this country's human rights record. Dershowitz' writing is powerful, expressive - and flawed... When it comes to discussing Israel's policies, Dershowitz adopts a maximalist stance. Israel is almost always right-and when it isn't, it doesn't matter. This civil rights advocate fails to find much wrong in a country where atheists do not enjoy the right to get married. He fails to clearly denounce the administrative detention (i.e., imprisonment without a charge) of Palestinians, on the grounds that all detainees are known to be terrorists or terrorist contacts; in other words, since they are anyway guilty, it doesn't matter so much whether they enjoy legal guarantees or not. He believes torture may in some cases be necessary to extract critical information, as of terrorist attacks, and therefore condones some instances of the government-approved use of torture in Israel, against international law which forbids any kind of torture... The bottom line of [this] book is that because Jews were formerly persecuted, they should be allowed to practise some bigotry without being criticized. Fortunately, Jews around the world do not share this view... This book will be enjoyed by... [those] who see Israel's legal and practical discrimination of Arabs as a first step towards ethnic cleansing, and who will be delighted to learn that a liberal Jew finds such discrimination tolerable. It will be far less welcome, however, by those Jews who, like the author of this review, don't like to be told what they should think about Israel in order to be good Jews.
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