Dissonance in Zion

This book is meant to be a guide to the contemporary Israeli political scene, a description of where Israel has reached and how it got there, and an assessment of the possibility of peace in the region.

The book’s focus is the 1982 invasion of Lebanon which was, and remains, a critical experience for Israel. This war brought to the surface of Israeli political life the ideological contradictions within the Zionist ideology of the state and deepened the socio-cultural division of the society produced by the in-gathering of Jews from the world over. This deepening rift jeopardizes the democratic foundations of the state and, because of the need for an external challenge to re-establish a national consensus, threatens to plunge the Middle East into a new war.