A Firm Response at Sea Will Help, Not Hinder, Nuclear Negotiations with Iran
American inaction only makes the ayatollahs more daring.
August 13, 2021
A Literary Exploration of American Jews’ Relationship with Israel Makes a Distasteful Mockery of Zionism
Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus.
In Joshua Cohen’s novel The Netanyahus, set in 1960, an Israeli historian of the Spanish Inquisition named Benzion Netanyahu arrives for a visit at the American Corbin College, with his wife and three sons in tow, and is hosted by an American Jewish professor named Ruben Blum. Benzion is not a fictional character but a very real historian and the personal secretary to Vladimir Jabotinsky; no less real are his wife and three sons, one of whom was until recently the prime minister of Israel. The visit too is real, although Cohen fictionalizes the rest of the work. At its heart is what Allan Arkush calls “a spurious history” of Zionism, apparently designed to flatter the assumptions of American Jews who are uncomfortable with Israel. And that’s not the only flaw Arkush finds:
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The Causes of Arab-Israeli Unrest Don’t Lie in Economic Disparities
Radical leaders incite the population, even as it grows more prosperous.
When Anti-Semitism and Vaccine Refusal Converge
Yellow stars and “laboratories of Jewish businessmen.”
A Literary Exploration of American Jews’ Relationship with Israel Makes a Distasteful Mockery of Zionism
Joshua Cohen’s The Netanyahus.
How the Hebrew Bible Sought to Humble the King
A human being must not forget that he is a king himself.