|
Literary Review
History written in blood
CHRONICLER Ahron Bregman has had to eat his words. And, he admits it at the outset itself in the second edition of his book Israel's Wars. In the preface to the 2002 edition of the book — now on the stands here as an Indian reprint — this Israeli Army officer-turned-writer/journalist recalls being swept by the euphoria that gripped the region in the wake of the Oslo Agreement.
That was in the second half of the 1990s when he was writing the first edition. But, so fragile was the peace brokered in Oslo that by the turn of the millennium, the "most famous land in history" was caught yet again in the all-too-familiar and seemingly endless cycle of violence.
Conceived as part of the series titled Warfare and History, Bregman's book on Israel's turbulent history since the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948 is more than just a chronicle of all the wars it was (is) engaged in. He also traces the attitudinal changes of this "nation-in-arms" from the days when the Holocaust survivors unquestioningly rallied under the Star of David to the more recent times when people began questioning the Government's hardline stance.
Written in an easy-to-read style — more so than the first edition as the academic inputs in the earlier book have been done away with in its new incarnate — Bregman has put into effective use the ringside view he has had of events; first as an Army officer, then as an employee of the Knesset, and now as a journalist.
Israel's Wars: A History Since 1947, Ahron Bregman, Routledge/Roli, Rs. 395.
ANITA JOSHUA
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Literary Review
|
