Books in Brief: Farewell Israel!

Farewell Israel! by Ephraim Sevela (Gateway Editions, 295 pp., $12.95). Disillusionment is the harsh price one pays for maturity. So it has been for Sevela, one of 24 Russian Jews who staged a protest against the Kremlin’s restrictive emigration policies in 1971. Expecting the worst, the demonstrators were stunned by the Soviet decision to allow an exodus to Israel. Miraculously, victory was theirs— or so they thought. Euphoria soon turned to despair, as they discovered the Jewish homeland to be a bitter disappointment. This collective despair fuels Sevela’s polemic, which asserts that, the dynamic image notwithstanding, Israel is a land of indolent wastefulness, discrimination, and insufferable arrogance. He finds it particularly ironic that the vow to return to Jerusalem, so long a Jewish inspiration, should now become the bane of their existence. Nationhood has brought the wandering Jew to the precipice. Beset by internal strife, Israel is surrounded by millions of people who seek her annihilation. The author doubts the continued ascendancy of her military, and somberly reminds those of Israel’s supporters who romanticize her that the Jews can only bleed so much. “You cannot see the military cemeteries from the gleaming windows of the luxury hotels, from the pale blue waters of the swimming pools where the tourists cool their bodies from the heat of the day. Behind the barrier of fresh tropical vegetation, the sighs of widows and the tap of the young invalids’ crutches cannot be heard.” Ominous words, from one who lives within the dragon’s maw.

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Alan L. Miller

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Farewell Israel! by Ephraim Sevela (Gateway Editions, 295 pp., $12.95). Disillusionment is the harsh price one pays for maturity. So it has been for Sevela, one of 24 Russian Jews who staged a protest against the Kremlin’s restrictive emigration policies in 1971. Expecting the worst, the demonstrators were stunned by the Soviet decision to allow an exodus to Israel. Miraculously, victory was theirs— or so they thought. Euphoria soon turned to despair, as they discovered the Jewish homeland to be a bitter disappointment. This collective despair fuels Sevela’s polemic, which asserts that, the dynamic image notwithstanding, Israel is a land of indolent wastefulness, discrimination, and insufferable arrogance. He finds it particularly ironic that the vow to return to Jerusalem, so long a Jewish inspiration, should now become the bane of their existence. Nationhood has brought the wandering Jew to the precipice. Beset by internal strife, Israel is surrounded by millions of people who seek her annihilation. The author doubts the continued ascendancy of her military, and somberly reminds those of Israel’s supporters who romanticize her that the Jews can only bleed so much. “You cannot see the military cemeteries from the gleaming windows of the luxury hotels, from the pale blue waters of the swimming pools where the tourists cool their bodies from the heat of the day. Behind the barrier of fresh tropical vegetation, the sighs of widows and the tap of the young invalids’ crutches cannot be heard.” Ominous words, from one who lives within the dragon’s maw.