Thursday, April 16, 2009

If Literary, It Need Be Left

Seymour Hersh is asked in The New Yorker:

If you were a new diplomat in Tel Aviv, what would be the three books that you would not want to forget at home (from a professional perspective, of course)?

Realia Safo, Bucharest, Romania


and replies:

I guess I would read Israeli academics like Avi Shlaim, who now teaches at Oxford, and who has written extensively about Israel’s early and, in his view, illegal seizure of Palestinian land. Also, the many recent books by Benny Morris, a scholar who has moved from the left to the right. Also important would be Amos Oz’s memoir, “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” perhaps the best account of the early days [what early days? why not Meyer Levin's "The Settlers"?]. I’d also read the better Israeli novelists, like David Grossman (whose nonfiction is essential, too), Oz, and especially A. B. Yehoshua.


All left to extreme left except for Benny Morris.

Right-wing authors like the late Moshe Shamir or the poet Uri Tzvi Greenberg and others don't have a chance to be popular or referred to.

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