The New Anti-Semitism

The New Anti-Semitism by Phyllis Chesler

This book by feminist Phyllis Chesler is not so much a book as it is a rant.  She is mightily ticked off.  Reading this book, I kept wondering, when she turned in the draft to her publisher, if she typed the entire manuscript with the caps lock key on.  One feels as though they are being assaulted while reading.  I can definitely excuse her, however.  Being a well-educated Jew, she has every right to be infuriated with the current state of affairs concerning Israel and its mistreatment by the rest of the world.

When I say the “rest of the world”, I mean that quite literally.  As history as shown us time and time again, there always seems to be an infuriating hatred against the Jewish people.  Why?  Search me.  We’re talking about a race of people who have spent their entire history being abused, persecuted, humiliated, and regularly killed for no other reason than their identity as being Jewish.  What aids in the author’s anger is that she identifies herself as a leftist feminist, yet feels many of this crowd shares the same hatred towards Jews, Israel, Zionism, etc.  So she rightly feels betrayed.  How can people “on her side” be so prejudiced as well?

I really enjoyed this book, but couldn’t help thinking that if she would have taken a few deep breaths from time to time, the material could have been presented a bit better.  She pulls no punches.  Quite often she opens up a paragraph with “Let me say again…..” or “Let me be perfectly clear….”, so it’s quite obvious she feels quite exasperated.  I would not want to challenge this woman to an argument.  I must say again, that such sentiments are entirely justified based on history, and the perceived resistance by many to do anything differently. 

She spends a good amount of time pointing the finger at everyone throughout history – Arabs, Christians, Fascists, Liberals, etc. since all parties have, in fact, been guilty at one time or another of fierce anti-Semitism.  Throughout much of the book, she basically details a dirty laundry list of many key figures, countries, and governments and all of their offenses.  Despite her anger, she’s quite fair in her assessments, and does tend to look at everything rationally.  Example: She acknowledges that the United States has been guilty of crimes in the past – whether it be slavery, colonization, the treatment of Native Americans, or anti-Semitism, but she points out that one really needs to grade on a curve when looking at a country’s history.  America, like Israel, is definitely guilty of some crimes during its existence, but when matched up with its charitable contributions and philanthropic efforts, it’s very clear that rational people really shouldn’t be demonizing nations that do so much good for the world.

I also enjoyed the fact that she rarely mentions God, or quote scriptures throughout the book.  I only say this because it’s easy for one to be skeptical of Israel since they identify themselves as “God’s chosen people”.  Secularists will argue that this doesn’t matter (some would call the claim ludicrous), yet Chesler shows us that Jews throughout history have never used the “God is with us” argument to grab what they want, and they continue to be persecuted regardless.  In other words, God or no God, there’s no excuse to not give Israel what is rightly theirs, and was taken away from them over a thousand years ago in barbaric fashion.

Speaking of God, I felt that this book makes a very strong case for the Judeo-Christian deity.  How else can such a tiny underdog persevere under such conditions unless they have a higher power on their side??  You would think civilized people would cheer and rally to the Jewish cause, but alas, this is not to be.  Perhaps because Israel and/or the Jewish community has persevered and triumphed so many times is what makes so many cynical “intellectuals” hate them?  How dare a country keep winning wars that other people start.

I really didn’t read anything here “new” about the “new” anti-Semitism.  It’s the same old same old, the author just sadly reminds us that nothing has gotten better and, in many cases, gotten worse.  Perhaps I’m more of an optimist, but in the circles that I frequent, most are not oblivious to the situation, and apart from the occasional crabby celebrity who doesn’t have a clue as to what he is talking about (Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters comes to mind), most seem to rally behind Israel’s cause.  Even Howard Stern.

A good book, yet frustrating at times.  Not because of the author’s literary screaming in-your-face diatribes, but because so much still hasn’t changed, and too many ignorant “intellectuals” still can’t quite eradicate their obvious anti-Semitic attitudes.

Edge of Eternity

Edge of Eternity – by Ken Follett

The last book of the Century Trilogy by Ken Follett is, by far, the worst of the three.  In fact, it’s really the only bad one of the bunch.  But, boy, is it bad.  The first two were magnificent, but he manages to hit rock bottom with this one.

The Century Trilogy begins around the time of World War I.  The author focuses on four different families, each one is a different nationality – German, English, Russian, and American.  This way, the author can tell a story while incorporating a lot of history within the pages.  We seem to find our main characters right in the middle of some of the most important and well known events of the past century.  The first book ends around the conclusion of the First World War – with all of the main characters having babies.  The second book focuses on World War II, with all of those babies now grown up and being promoted to center stage.  Of course, they then have babies of their own so we can then have a third book taking place around the 1960s.

So, yes, the formula is the same with this, third, book.  The problem here is that Follett has run out of ideas on how to tell a good story.  Yes, we have the characters again immersed in the times of the early sixties – the main players being The Civil Rights movement, The Berlin Wall, The Cuban Missile Crisis, and, oddly, The British Invasion music scene.  Instead of well thought out characters doing what well thought out characters do, Follett has simply relegated everyone to be backup pieces to all of the major events.  In many ways, you could argue that this book could serve as a Cliffs Notes for 1960’s world history.  As I would read about these characters being smack dab in the middle of some of the most famous events in history, I couldn’t help be reminded of Forrest Gump.  Yes, Forrest Gump was a good movie, but it wasn’t supposed to be taken seriously.  This book, unbelievably, tries to pass off as being serious.

It just became tiresome after a while.  Example: When we read a chapter that begins with a character who is working with Dr. Martin Luther King going to Memphis in April 1968, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what will happen after the next twenty pages or so.  The entire book is like this.  The author also simply tries to include too much.  The Vietnam war is actually a minor player, but Follett figures he has to tell SOMETHING about the tragedy, so he hurriedly has a character get drafted, then in the jungle, and then experiencing every horror conceivable in only one chapter.  We basically never read or hear about it again.  It’s embarrassingly contrived.

Then we come to the sleaze factor.  Sadly, this is becoming a bit of a given with Ken Follett’s recent work, so I would be an eternal optimist to expect anything to change.  It can be downright sickening.  Yes, it’s ok for characters to fall in love and make love, but Follett simply doesn’t know where to stop with all of his pornographic descriptions.  I really wish he didn’t feel the need to tell us every personal, nauseating detail of what goes on in a closed bedroom between lovers, but his descriptions are enough to make any sane person lose their lunch.  It also happens over and over and over and over again.  He could have easily trimmed about 100 pages but cutting out all of the explicit sex. 

Speaking of unnecessary sleaze and sex, we even get to read about President Kennedy’s fictitious escapades behind the scenes.  Now, history tells us that Kennedy, sadly, was a womanizer, but is it really necessary to go into such X-rated descriptions here??  Apparently one of our main characters, a young female White House staffer, is having an ongoing affair with the married President, so we have to read about it ad-nauseum.  In every nasty detail.  Including when the young woman gets pregnant and Kennedy makes her get an abortion.  Yes, the author actually includes such ridiculous offensive garbage.  This make-believe event actually happens fairly early in the book, and a part of me wishes that I had just quit reading at that point.

About half of this book is 1960-1963, and the second half goes from 1964 to present day.  He should have stuck with the first half, as he zooms too quickly through history once 1964 arrives.  You can’t really tell a good story covering four different families on multiple continents over 54 years in only 500 pages.  So instead, we basically get regurgitated history thrown at us.  To be completely honest, at this point I basically DID give up, and just skimmed the remainder of the book.

It was also hard for me to remember all the characters from the first two books, and what their significance was.  They’re only minor players here, and Follett does do an adequate job refreshing the reader with who they are and what they did, but there were just too many people to keep track of, even though I did enjoy reading about most of them in the first two books.

The author even manages to invent a fictitious story about Ronald Reagan which shows the man as truly evil and demented.  We don’t read anything at all about Reagan’s role in things such as, aiding the Berlin Wall getting torn down.  A bit odd since the Berlin Wall is a major player in this story. But, for whatever reason, I guess we’re not supposed to read about anything good the man did since his ideologies conflict with the author’s.  Oddly, I only found this episode to be mildly annoying after all of the explicit X-rated affairs of Kennedy were detailed.

It’s too bad the author didn’t stop after two books.  They were actually quite good.  Follett has written mostly good work throughout his career.  I would recommend “The Pillars of the Earth”, “The Man From St. Petersburg” and “The Eye of the Needle”.  Yes, he has written some that were less than great, but none as bad as this one.   This one was atrocious.

Life After LIfe

Life After Life – by Kate Atkinson

I enjoy playing video games.  Quite often, when I start playing a game, and am doing particularly poorly, I’ll “cheat” and quickly press the Reset button and start all over again.  I’ve often wondered what life would be like if we could do the same thing.  I know I’m not alone in having such thoughts, and author Kate Atkinson does an absolutely marvelous job of telling such a tale with this book.

Ursula Todd is born on a cold, stormy winter night in 1911.  Because of the hazardous conditions, the doctor doesn’t make it on time to deliver the baby, so the baby dies.  End of story.  Right?  Not quite.  It seems that the author has invented/imagined a universe where “do overs” are possible.  So Ursula is born again in an alternate universe, and this time she survives.  Well, this time she only survives for a few days.  So the reset button is pressed again.  And again, and again, and again.  It can get confusing because these “lives” that we are reading about aren’t necessarily linear.  One life she may live until her twenties, the next life, she lives until her teens.  Then, we’re immediately transferred to, say life #6 where she’s in her thirties.  Then, we go back to life #3 where she’s still a schoolgirl.  It can get mightily confusing.

Yet somehow Kate Atkinson makes the whole thing work quite brilliantly.  This book is quite a remarkable achievement in how we can keep going back and forth, yet still be able to somewhat keep track of Ursula and her family.  Her “family” changes a bit as well from life to life, since such events (such as death) can radically change the cosmos, so to speak.  It might be beneficial to read this book with a tally sheet and a notebook handy.

The most interesting part of this book was during the days of World War II.  In one “life”, Ursula is a civil servant working in London (all of Atkinson’s books take place in England) helping the ravaged city cope through Hitler’s 1940 persistent bombing.  In “another” life, Ursula is a German citizen during the major conflict, and is actually close friends with Eva Braun.  Talk about a stretch.  Again, though, all of this works quite well.

After living so many lives, Ursula begins to have frequent bouts of déjà vu and “second sight”.  She goes through many episodes during her lives where she feels as though she’s “been here before”.  We, of course, know that this is true, but Ursula is nervously going through her lives wondering how and why she’s able to “predict things”.  If one pays close attention, you can actually see that she’s able to clearly choose the paths of her last two lives.  By then, her déjà vu is so strong, that she knows that her decisions that she makes can alter the course of history.  I confess that I didn’t quite “get it” until I read the “questions for discussion” section at the very end.

I’ve stated in other reviews that Kate Atkinson’s books aren’t for everybody.  Her style is quite anomalous, and probably won’t appeal to those who like to read straight-forward, meat and potatoes, stories.  In fact, this was the book that made Atkinson known to the masses after someone conducted an interview with Stephen King and he stated that this book was one of his favorites.  When Stephen King plugs your book, well…….. 

Her style of writing is par for the course compared to her other books.  Believe it or not, I actually found this book to be the least depressing of her catalog (and her books can be mightily depressing.) A pretty strong statement when the main character literally keeps dying all the time, but in a strange way, it gives us some sort of hope, in a bizarre, twisted way.  I would bet that 99% of the characters in her other books would have loved to have a reset button during their lives as well.

This was definitely one of a kind – and such a book could have ended up a garbled mess, yet the author manages to create wonderful, bizarre, strange story.

Crusade

Crusade – by Rick Atkinson

If you took a sight-seeing vacation via automobile, upon your return, I would love to have heard about the great things that you saw on your vacation. I would not love it if you would have, instead, popped the hood of your automobile and showed me every component of your car’s engine.  If you videotaped your vacation, and had videotaped 120 hours of footage, I would like to see a 15-minute recap of the highlights, I would not like to have to sit through and watch all 120 hours of unedited footage.

I use these analogies because while I was reading this book, I sometimes felt like I was watching 120 hours of video of someone showing me every component of a car engine.  I felt like this book was simply too much, and was way overdone in terms of detail.

This book is about the 1991 Gulf War.  A war that lasted six weeks.  Yet this book is 500 pages long.  Think about that for a second – a 500-page book about a six-week war.  I’m not sure anyone could do a good job giving such a drawn out narrative about such a brief moment of time, so safe to say, I would have enjoyed this book a lot better had it been carved in half.  There’s just too much detail.  Too many descriptions of military movements, weapon specifics, battle positions, and detailed meetings of Norman Schwarzkopf constantly berating his generals.  I was just mainly bored.  This book actually took me longer to read the book than the actual conflict lasted.  I had to force myself to read ten pages every day just so I could get through with it.

Then there’s the fact that most of this book focuses on the “here and now” and not enough on the causes of the war, and the backgrounds of the countries involved in the conflict.  Some of this is here, but not enough.  Had the author given us more background of the Middle East, and the turbulent histories, it would have made a much better book.  Instead, it seems were transplanted immediately to the battlefield and we immediately start following all the tactical moves in precise detail without really knowing much about the “why”.  This would have helped tremendously since most U.S. citizens had never even heard of Saddam Hussein until Kuwait was invaded.

Then, this book was written very shortly after the conclusion of the war, so there really isn’t any opportunity to reflect back on the conflict, and see where and why things happened the way that they did, and what many of the post war effects actually were.  This probably would have been a better book had it been written five or six years after the conclusion of the war.

The author does give us some insights, however.  He does talk in detail about the “goal” of the war – which was never to destroy Saddam Hussein and his evil regime, but to simply get them to withdraw from Kuwait.  George Bush was very careful about minimizing U.S. casualties, and figured that ousting Hussein would be too costly, and wouldn’t be worth the battle.  Plus, he earnestly believed that, after the war, Iraq would then dispose of their leader via a coup, and that would free the U.S. and its allies from having to do much of the bloody work.  Of course, hindsight now tells us that such judgements were mistaken, but we don’t get to read too much of this here though because, again, this book was written so closely after the war ended.

This book will tell you just about everything that happened during the war on the battlefield, so if that’s your thing, this book gives a great synopsis.  I just wanted “more” of some things, and definitely “less” of others – such as all the meticulous detail.