Like so many books about Palestine, Toward an Open Tomb has a timeless quality to it, despite being 16 years old. Zionism, regardless of the latest trendy descriptor it is given by its critics (racism in the 80s, colonialism in the 90s, apartheid in the 2000s) is still with us. The first five chapters contain little that is new or special for anyone who has read a few critical anti-Zionist articles on Israel.

Two things about the first half of the book do stand out as especially well done, however. One is the author's ability to surgically select illustrative examples of shocking racist/colonial/apartheid violence against Palestinians. They are banal now for their common occurrence in the country, but beyond the news cycle, Warschawski brings us back to them to emphasise his argument - and it is very effectively done, without wallowing in outrage, details, or dragging out each story. They are sufficiently impactful on their own, and his concision allows the power of taking into the brain a number of different cases together such that one sees the patterns. Pro-Palestinian activists can sometimes move from one outrage to another, such that yesterday's horror is quickly forgotten.

The second success of the otherwise flat first half of the book is the view it gives the reader into Israeli society. The Hebrew language often acts as a barrier to visibility of Zionist racism, and Palestinian-Israelis, suffering under Israeli ethnocratic "democracy" are for whatever reason bereft of strong native-English spokespeople to take advantage of their specific window into Israeli society. Warschawski's translation of election campaign slogans, bumper stickers, posters, and other incidents allows us to witness the shocking racism/colonialism/apartheid profoundly alive in mainstream Israeli society. The New York Times does not report on these stories, and they jarr with Israel's democratic Western image on reading - even for a non-Zionist reader.

What is unfortunate about the first half of the book, however, is the way the main argument is not clearly signposted. The supposed purpose of the book is to show how Zionism does more than oppress the Palestinian people but is also generating deep rot in the core of Israeli society. Buried among these chapters, Warschawski slowly argues that:
- Statistics show how violent crime within Israel, especially domestic violence, is on an inexorable upward trajectory - he argues this is because of the way military brutality is held up by Israeli society as admirable
- The famed Israeli army itself is so accustomed to "using massive and disproportionate force" to achieve its aims that it is suffering "generalised degeneration" and loss of "its operational capacity."
- Re-integration of soldiers into civilian life after years in the military is becoming increasingly difficult, in particular that "Israeli soldiers spend so much time yelling at natives that they are gradually losing the power of speech," and the capacity to form coherent sentences
- At an international level, as well, "faced with a world that it sees as (almost) totally anti-Semitic, Israel can no longer engage in a dialogue with international public opinion, whether it is right-wing, left-wing, pro-Palestinian, or even motivated by a sincere concern for Israel's future. Looking through the distorting prism of anti-semitism, Israelis see any criticism, even the most moderate, as monstrous."
- That although the wall and occupation are meant to place Palestinians into a ghetto and separate Palestinians from Israelis, instead Israelis are confining themselves: "The irony of history is that Zionism, which wanted to topple the ghetto walls, has created the biggest ghetto in Jewish history.... turned in on itself and convinced that everything beyond its walls is a jungle."
- Rising ultranationalism, manifested in the return of non-military censors, witch-hunts on universities, attacks on non-Zionist politicians and "leftists", and outright violence and murder of Arab-Israeli citizens wear at the democratic fabric of life that used to hold ethnonationalism in check.
- Checks and checkpoints have become commonplace - no just in the 'occupied territory' but also within 'Israel proper' (as it conceives of it), further wearing on the markers of normal democratic society
- Israeli society itself has begun to apply within itself the social and cultural norms that it expresses(as it conceives of it) 'outside' of itself against the Palestinians, such that "steadily greater contempt for the law is not only characteristic of the military administration in the occupied territories, but increasingly of the Israeli civil service..." Police, private guards, politicians - in short, all authority figures in society - "have begun to abuse their power more and more, reproducing in Israel the behaviour characteristic of checkpoints and controls in the occupied territories... fiat has been replacing law" and political corruption shamelessly overt.
- Israeli society, never especially deferential or elaborately polite, "has become more and more aggressive and rude," such that "the lack of civility that has always been one of Israeli society's blemishes has mutated into sheer crudeness.

Most important of all, Warschawski asserts "the mixture of aggressive nationalism and victimisation produces a level of violence inside Israeli society that can hardly be gauged from outside."

These are hugely important points, and they seem to be the points that directly support the author's avowed intent with the book to take on the degeneration of Israeli society produced by the occupation. Sadly, they are mentioned in passing, buried in the text and not made his points of focus and argument. Instead he takes a chronological/thematic approach, discussing the massacre in Jenin, problems with the argument of self-defence, the distortion of anti-semitism, the construction of the apartheid wall, etc. All of these topics are well elaborated in other blogs and books. It would have enhanced this book so much more if he had more directly embraced his own thesis and arguments about the rot in Israeli society itself.

The second half of the book, in particular chapter 7, is another winning argument - unique, concise and extremely useful - that is lost by appearing to come up only in passing. Warschawski convincingly and concisely argues that there are three key phases in Israeli history:
1948-1977, a phase of left-wing rule that ended with the defeat of the Labour Party
1977-1995, a liberal phase - governed by the country's secular, liberal, Ashkenazi elite - of opening up to markets, Arabs, and the world - producing the hope of a peace agreement
1996-the present, a phase - triggered by the assasination of Prime Minister Rabin - of military control of the state and a turn away from reconciliation with the Palestinians and towards ultranationalism; governed by a new coalition of orthodox, Mizrahi, and the poor.

"Jews of Arab origin felt excluded and marginalised by an increasingly globalised - ie Westernized - elite. Orthodox believers saw behind the High court decisions a desire to 'de-Judaize' Israel and challenge the old modus vivendi between state and religion. As for the poorest Israelis, they were seeing the welfare state being dismantled and services privatised. All these groups felt threatened by the modernisation and liberalisation (both cultural and economic) of the state and society. They made common cause with the right, which was afraid of seeing Israel's patrimony sold off to the highest bidder."

This is incredibly fertile intellectual territory! Our gaze towards the Middle East that sees it as complex and exceptional obscures that the components of the ascendant Sharon-Netanyahu coalition parallel those of Donald Trump (evangelicals, poor whites), the impact that global trends have on all geographies, despite each having its localised manifestations. This framework is the same - although more explicitly put - as in Smadar LaVie's Wrapped In The Flag. Understanding Israel in this way gives a more complete idea of what those fighting against Zionism need to include in their offers and approaches in order to realise their utopian visions. If a one state solution is to include all inhabitants of the land, a governing coalition of Jewish and non-Jewish Palestinians in this single country will need to offer solutions to its composite factions. And this solution has less to do with appeasing the Palestinians' erstwhile oppressors as it does with confronting the real questions of state-building and governance within late capitalism.

Warschawski, of course, says none of this. He should have. But perhaps, he himself didn't fully realise what exactly he was writing.

Two more notes:
1. Warschawski is a member of the Chomsky school of thought about Israel and America, attributing Israeli behaviour to its Imperial sponsor. For him, the dog wags the tail, not the tail wagging the dog. This is important, and I agree with him there, especially the nuance he brings to the question.
2. Like so many outspoken critical Israelis, it is important to note that Warschawski says nothing about 1948 or the refugees or the one state solution. Is he, like Norman Finklestein, seeking to save Israel from itself instead of recognizing that the entire notion of stealing a country and erasing its inhabitants is wrong? Without asking him directly we cannot know, as his focus in this book was on Jewish Israel. We will have to read his book on binationalism, only available in French and Spanish, to find out. ( )

translated from French