The book starts out promising enough.

For the ones who love screaming ‘October 7th’. In 1956 (!!!) an Israeli politician said this at the funeral of an Israeli security guard killed by Palestinians. ‘For eight years now, they have sat in the refugee camps of Gaza and have watched how, before their very eyes, we have turned their land and villages, where they and their forefathers previously dwelled, into our home. It is not among the Arabs of Gaza, but in our own midst that we must seek Roy’s blood. How did we shut our eyes and refuse to look squarely at our fate and see, in all its brutality, the fate of our generation?
Let us today take stock of ourselves. We are a generation of settlement, and without the steel helmet and the gun’s muzzle we will not be able to plant a tree and build a house. Let us not fear to look squarely at the hatred that consumes and fills the lives of hundreds of Arabs who live around us. Let us not drop our gaze, lest our arms weaken. That is the fate of our generation. This is our choice—to be ready and armed, tough and hard—or else the sword shall fall from our hands and our lives will be cut short.’
The slain security guard was called Roy Rotenberg. The politician whose words you’ve just read was Moshe Dayan (see picture)
You can find all this in the book My Promised Land by Ari Shavit, on page 546 (ebook version).

And the Palestine-Israel ‘conflict’ is not complicated.

It’s not complicated:
“Occupation is the father of all sins. Occupation is the mother of atrocity. When we occupied the West Bank and Gaza, we opened a door, and evil winds swept through it. All the depravity you see in today’s Israel is because of the occupation. The brutality. The deceit. The decay. Even the army is now rotting because it was forced to be an occupying army. Because of occupation we have been held captive by an insane gang of messianic zealots who may yet destroy us like their forefathers destroyed the Second Temple. Don’t you see it? I am afraid we are doomed. And I saw it all coming. I saw it in advance. When I saw the first seeds of occupation, I knew they were the seeds of destruction.”
Yossi Sarid, quoted in the book My Promised Land.

My favorite quote is this one about what happened during the Naqba and how it set Israel on an inevitably evil course.

Nothing explains better why Israel is so morally degenerate. In 1948 a young Jewish man writes why Israel will have a degenerate moral code: ‘From day to day I see the devastation caused by this war to our generation, and to the next. From day to day my fear grows that this generation will not be able to carry upon its shoulders the burden of building the state and fulfilling the dream. I am all anxiety and concern. When I think of the thefts, the looting, the robberies and recklessness, I realize that these are not merely separate incidents. Together they add up to a period of corruption. The question is earnest and deep, really of historic dimensions. We will all be held accountable for this era. We shall face judgment. And I fear that justice will not be on our side. There is an impression that the quick transition to a state, and to a state of Hebrew power, drove people mad. Otherwise it is impossible to explain the behavior, the state of mind, the actions of the Hebrew youth, especially the elite youth. The moral code of the nation, forged during thousands of years of weakness, is rapidly degenerating, deteriorating, disintegrating.’
This young man is quoted in chapter 5, titled Lydda, in the book My Promised Land by Ari Shavit, he is a pro-Israeli author, but he does not shy away from Israeli atrocities.

So far so good, but then I start noticing something bizarre. Ari spots sexy Israelis everywhere he goes.


Ari Shavit is surprisingly open about Israeli atrocities, occupation and its use of violence to dominate the region, but it also has a bizarre tendency to celebrate casual sex and attractive bodies. He writes: ‘They are very good-looking, these youngsters. Here is an Israeli success story few write about. The combination of sea and sun and markedly different gene pools has created a unique sensual beauty here. And the closed, intense space of Allenby 58 makes this sexy beauty all too apparent. They are also very intelligent youngsters—quick thinkers, quick responders. But they are no anarchists. They totally accept the rigid laws of the prevailing economic regime. Even their world apart is built on the organizing principles of hierarchy and selection and marketing and profit.’
In other parts he celebrates malls (personally few spaces feel more soul deadening to me than malls), he seems relatively excited about drug use, emphasizes that among youngster in clubs in Israel you can get sex fast and there is no need to connect.
The book My Promised Land is well-written, critical of Israel, but also carries the not so subtle message that Israel should exist regardless of the many crimes the book does mention and it should exist, apparently, to be a place of casual sex, parties, clear hierarchies and profit seeking. And its citizens should be good-looking and sexy.

The book is both eye brow raising and seductive with its unusual openness and honesty in places, but perhaps accidentally paints a picture of a nation built and maintained on the basis of brutality and apparently with the pursuit of hedonism as its raison d’être.

By the way, three years after publication of My Promised Land, Ari Shavit had to put his career in journalism on hold because of accusations of sexual misconduct.

Maybe you have also seen signs of this. Israelis may be the first people to say: we deserve to live, because we are sexy.


There is also this rather unfortunate passage where he says Israelis love everything ‘aggressive’ and ‘fierce’.

He writes:

‘Israel is an exciting and excitable country, so Israelis need ever-increasing excitement. The Strauss team understood that this applied to the way everything must taste. They realized that Israeli salty snacks had to be much saltier than their American counterparts, and that Israeli sweets had to be much sweeter than European ones. Chocolate had to be much more chocolaty and vanilla much more vanilla-y. There were no nuances for Israel; everything had to be fierce and aggressive, to hit the palate with flavor.’

The book also advocates, back in 2013, for attacking Iran, before it was ‘cool’ to do so.

When I read books by Alan Dershowitz I have to chuckle. The pro-Israeli drivel is so on the nose. More insidious is a smartly dressed up book like My Promised Land. Rich in flavor, at times shockingly self-accusatory, especially in the first parts of the book.

‘If you’re sexy and you know it bomb some kids’ could be the real Israeli national slogan. The book my Promised Land sounds like My Sexy Land:
‘All around me are good-looking women and men, fit girls and boys, young families and youngish singles. They eat their continental breakfasts, organic breakfasts, Israeli breakfasts; they sip their double espressos, Camparis and champagne. I see bicycles, scooters, skateboards, prams. Bouquets of helium balloons whose colorful aluminum sheaths shine in the sun. A pantomime performance. An impromptu accordion concert. What a cocktail: an immigrant society and a warrior society against the backdrop of the blue Mediterranean. Jewish history and Israeli present and blue skies. The genetics of pain that burst forth here into gaiety. The genetics of Torah learning that burst forth into creation. Life on the edge, at the water’s edge.
I walk on the deck and pass a trendy yoga club. A slim mother walks in wearing tight designer jeans and red All-Star sneakers. Once inside, she parks the orange pram she is pushing next to a dozen other prams and joins dozens of other new mothers in postdelivery Shavasana. Here is vitality. Here is the demography of hope. An almost extinguished species renewing itself. Unlike the free societies of Europe, the Israeli free society reproduces. Ours is not about disaffection and debauchery but about warmth and family. Ours loves children and brings into a harsh world these toddlers who are crawling on the colorful mats facing the sea. As I see it, Israelis are diamonds in the rough. And Israeliness is an iridescent kaleidoscope of broken identities that come together to form a unique human phenomenon. Somehow, something quite incredible emerged in this old-new country. That is why there is an extraordinary emotional quality to our life here. That is why we are not only creative and innovative but authentic and direct and warm and genuine and sexy.’

The book undeniably has a certain energy to it and is better crafted than most non-fiction book, but am now quite relieved am done with it. That repressed libido of Ari Shavit bursts forth from several pages.