Like Dreamers

Starred review from August 26, 2013
American-Israeli author and journalist Halevi (Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist) traces the personal and religious lives and evolving political views of seven paratroopers who helped conquer the Old City of Jerusalem during the1967 Six Day War. They prove a remarkably diverse group: one joins an anti-Zionist movement and is lured into working for Syrian intelligence; another helps found the right-wing settlement movement Gush Emunim; and a third becomes his generation’s most iconoclastic, if underappreciated, songwriter. Halevi traces his subjects’ involvement with, and their country’s shifting moods during, key post-1967 events like the Yom Kippur War and the (first) Lebanon War, the 1993 Israel-PLO agreement, the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and the beginning of the second Palestinian Intifada. He skillfully relates lesser-known events—such as the January 1995 Beit Lid bombing—and conveys the ever-changing nature of Israeli culture and religious life. He also succinctly evinces the national psychology when he writes that “in Israel, no trauma was ever really forgotten, only replaced by a new trauma.” Halevi’s book is executed with imagination, narrative drive, and, above all, deep empathy for a wide variety of Israelis, and the result is a must-read for anyone with an interest in contemporary Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Starred review from September 15, 2013
It is probably the most iconic photograph of the 1967 Six-Day Wara group of Israeli paratroopers gazing upward with a look of wonder at the sacred Western Wall, the surviving remnant of the temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. These were men of Brigade 55, a reserve unit primarily responsible for liberating the wall and seizing East Jerusalem from Jordanian control. The photo and the Israeli victory engendered an immediate sense of pride, joy, and euphoria that enveloped Israeli and Diaspora Jews, left and right, secular and religious. Since then, of course, the conquest of Jerusalem and the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) has been rather a poisoned pill, dividing Israel politically as it rules over a huge Arab population. Halevi is an American-born Israeli journalist and a promoter of Jewish-Arab reconciliation. Here he tracks the subsequent lives of seven of the Brigade 55 members. Some became staunch proponents of settlement activity on Palestinian land and some became members of the left-wing Peace Now movement. One even helped create an anti-Zionist underground movement. Halevi succeeds in his broader goal of linking these men and their families to Israel's history during the past five decades. This is a beautifully written and sometimes heartbreaking account of these men, their families, and their nation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

August 15, 2013
The story of the Israeli 55th Paratroopers Reserve Brigade, which was instrumental in the victory in the 1967 Six-Day War. In the ensuing years, the members of the 55th came to represent the deep political, cultural and religious divisions in Israel. Shalom Hartman Institute scholar Halevi (At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land, 2001, etc.) relates the history of Israel from 1967 to the present by focusing on a handful of individuals from the old 55th and interweaving their divergent and arresting stories. There are, of course, somewhat detailed accounts of wars (1967, 1973--maps included), terrorist attacks, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and negotiations with the PLO and others, but for the most part, Halevi allows his cast members to tell their stories. Among them are Yisrael Harel, who became a journalist; Avital Geva, who eventually had a career in art that dovetailed with his kibbutz life; Yoel Bin-Nun, a Zionist and kibbutz leader; Arik Achmon, whose career varied from aviation to business consultation and politics; Meir Ariel, who became "the greatest Hebrew poet-singer of his generation," then segued into religious studies; Udi Adiv, who became an active anti-Zionist, spent 12 years in prison and then earned a doctorate in London before returning to Israel to teach. Halevi also follows the personal lives of his principals, covering marriages, divorces, family relationships, and children, and he shows how some of them became political and religious opponents. Among the most divisive issues: the surrender of lands (the Sinai, the West Bank) gained in 1967, the issue of settlements in disputed territories, and the debate about "peace at any cost" and Zionism itself. An artful, affecting blend of history, biography, political science, and religion and an illustration of how small lights can illuminate a large landscape.

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