Back to Zion
THE State of Israel is now a little more than four years old, and already there is a formidable library of literature about it. The only real cause for surprise is that in a State where almost every man, woman and child has an individual story which is worth telling, and where most of them are articulate enough to tell it, there have not been fifty times as many books written as have in fact appeared.
However, the stories of individuals who have made the journey to Zion are all variations on the same theme of Zionism itself as a political and spiritual idea. Dr. Buber's book is an interpretation of that idea, and the English reader who wants to know how it is that Israel exists today will find this the most useful book of the three. It is by no means an easy book ; Englishmen, though not unfamiliar with the Old Testament, may find it hard to believe that the creators of a modern State should spend so much time on the verbal inter- pretation of ancient texts. What did Jehovah promise to the Jews, and on what conditions ? What has all this got to do with partition or Tel Aviv, with the potash industry or a Middle East Defence Pact? In other words, now that Israel is a State, is there still room for Zionism as a philosophy? The question is one which, in one form or another, still sharply divides the secular and religious attitudes within Israel, and Dr. Buber's restatement of the religious foundations is of great value.
Mr. Sacher brings us back to the familiar land of modern con- troversy, with Britain in the well-known Jekyll and Hyde role (Mr. Bevin—" sterile and ridiculous bellicosity "—wearing the mask of Hyde most of the time). Mr. Sacher retraces the story of the mandate, but sheds no new prejudices on the argument. It is his narrative of the post-mandatory period that is of more value, though there is Much that is still obscure about the war with the Arab States and the still unpublished diplomatic exchanges that went on at the time. The New Slate of Israel is in many ways a disappointment. Mr. de Gaury can write so outstandingly well when his eye and sympathies are engaged that it is sad to find him accepting the status of a compiler. He has abandoned the desert for the sown, descriptive writing for statistics; and produced a book of facts and figures about the State of Israel—how it is run, its people, constitution, imports, exports, industries and so on—which are mainly compiled from official sources. His method is so thorough (" Painting. Painting is widely practised in Israel . . . ") that nothing is left out except the art which could have turned a catalogue into a book. EDWARD HODGKIN.
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