Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination (review)

Book Reviews 133 a puzzling question that has persisted long after the period covered in this book. Ifthe United States does have such a powerful strategiC interest in a strong and effective Israel, why has there been such consistent opposition to that concept in key sectors of the government? Is it possible that a mirror image ofthe special relationship paradigm motivates at least part of the foreign policy elite? The other question that Ben-Zvi leaves unanswered concerns the aftermath of the Sinai campaign. Arguably the American coercion toward Israel early in 1957, designed to compel Israeli withdrawal from Sinai and Gaza, was the defining event in the bilateral relationship during the Eisenhower years. Yet Ben-Zvi does not treat that confrontation systematically, leaving open the question ofjust how that series ofevents fits into his overall structure of analysis. Ben-Zvi's fine study does enable us to view the Eisenhower years in a new light. Clearly his most interesting contention is that there was a transformation in policy attitudes that evolved gradually. That may well have set the stage for Kennedy to carry things a step further. But Eisenhower's legacy with regard to Israel is likely to reflect the response to the Sinai campaign as the defming moment, one which overshadows the gradual transition to a more nuanced policy. Harold M. Waller Department of Political Science McGill University Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination, by Ehud Sprinzak. New York: The Free Press, 1999. 366 pp. $27.50 (c). This volume deals withpolitical violence within Israel's Jewish community between the establishment ofthe State ofIsrael (1948) and the assassination ofPrime Minister Rabin by the religionationalist Yigal Amir (1995). The author, a professor ofpolitical science at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem, is a veteran student ofIsraeli right-wing extremism , and the book reflects his long-term interest in the violent aspects ofIsraeli politics. The book is an important contribution in several ways. First, it turns the intellectual projector to a phenomenon that many observers have tended to ignore-violence committed by Israeli Jews against other Israeli Jews. Second, the volume calls for studying violence as a social and political phenomenon, not a psychological orpsychiatric one; put differently, Dr. Baruch Goldstein (who killed 29 Moslems in the midst of a prayer in Hebron in 1994) and Yigal Amir were not sociopaths or madmen. Third, the book offers a theoretical model (although not a very elaborate one) for dealing with political violence in Israel. Most important, the book places the major violent acts committed by Israelis since 1967 in a broad historical and cultural perspective, emphasizing that political violence 134 SHOFAR Fa1l2000 Vol. 19, No.1 does not exist in a vacuum. Of great significance in this regard is, in the words of Sprinzak, "the issue of Jewish exceptionalism" (p. 9). Based on others' scholarship (Biale, Breines), Sprinzak shows that contrary to common belief, Jews have occasionally been involved in internal violence. Yet, he hastens to add that Jewish violence has not matched other people's violence. In his opinion, there is a powerful internal solidarity and taboo against internal violence among Jews that explains this reluctance to use violence against "brothers." Sprinzak's general interpretation ofIsraeli politics could be regarded as conservative . He "vows," somewhat apologetically, that his study is not a "revisionist history" and expresses the beliefthat "the full story ofmodern Israel is a tale ofconstruction, not destruction" (p. 8). It is interesting to note, however, that the data included in his own book may give, and indeed have given, rise to a different and more critical interpretation . The conservative "tilt" ofthe book is reflected in the periodization adopted by the author. Part I deals with the years 1948-67, and Part II with the years between 1967 and 1999, the so-called two Israeli "republics." Yet, it is clear that even prior to the Six Day War, Israel suffered from significant violence between left and right (Altalena), Ashkenazim and Sepharadim (Wadi Salib), secular and religious, etc. In viewing 1967 as the watershed year, Sprinzak, like all analysts in the center-left, implicitly pins all problems on the occupation ofthe West Bank...