Occupation Blues

While Israel's decisive victories on the battlefield and overwhelming advantage in military force are crucial to its dominance in the Middle East, perhaps just as important is the success of its propaganda campaign.

Never has this been made clearer than in Tanya Reinhart's new book, which offers a well-documented account of Israel's culpability for the failure of the Oslo process and the current crisis. Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 explains not only how the Israeli leadership has pulled off this public relations achievement but the importance of that PR in bolstering support for the Israeli project, both outside and inside the country.

Drawing heavily on reports from the Israeli press that most US readers never see, Reinhart accomplishes the formidable task of adding insight into a subject that is written about endlessly, and doing so without equivocation but also without slipping into raw polemics. There is a refreshing bluntness and candor in her work that makes the political analysis particularly compelling.

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