Great book by my friend David Ranan, which I am very much enjoying reading right now.
Israeli governments have for many years maintained a consensus concerning the need for the nation’s citizens to serve in the army. This consensus was based on the ethos of a Jewish state surrounded by Arabs who want to destroy it. The Iranian nuclear program is the most recent of the many threats to the Israeli state. But for some time Israel’s black and white view of itself has been eroding. Conscientious objection to conscription and ‘draft dodging’ as well as the rights and wrongs of occupation and settlements have become explosive issues for all shades of Israel’s political spectrum. Can we expect young Israelis, who are called to serve their country at eighteen, to have the maturity to weigh such complex issues? Does Israeli society really want them to? For this stimulating book, David Ranan held interviews with Israelis aged between eighteen and thirty. The twenty-seven monologues presented here reveal some of the difficult moral questions that concern this generation. First published in German in 2011, this English-language edition contains a comprehensive introduction to Israel’s history that has been revised and updated to maintain its relevance.
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