A gutsy book by an Australian of Jewish ancestry. He calls it as he sees it, in spite of the spiteful personal attacks by Zionists. Very insightful. ( )

In spite of occasional longueurs and some trouble with acronyms, I found this book a thing of beauty. Basically, it challenges the practice of a number of well-organised lobbyists in Australia and elsewhere of claiming to speak for all Jews, and being fairly unscrupulous in discouraging and discrediting anyone who steps out of line. It challenges the conflation, exploited to the hilt by these lobbyists, of anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, and of the global war on terror with Israel's war on Palestinians. It challenges its readers, gentiles as well as Jews, to seek facts and think rather than accept the prevailing wisdom. Implicitly, it challenges gentile readers to be scrupulous about acknowledging their own unexamined anti-semitism, but not to let the desire to be seen as a 'good gentile' stop us from looking at hard questions. It does these things in a journalistic mode, and it manages at the same time to be intensely personal. The prose may not burn with a hard gemlike flame, but it does burn: here is a young man who has not been intimidated into keeping his head below the rampart. It's a good head. He says nice things about his parents: I hope they're proud. ( )