Two new books, in English, are discussed this weekend in Haaretz.
"The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East," by Abraham Rabinovich. Schocken Books, 560 pages, $27.50.
I must confess that although I have not yet read any of them, for Abraham Rabinovich I have special sympathy: years ago he came all the way from Jerusalem to my HILAI project in the Galilee, stayed with us for two days, and wrote for Jerusalem Post a glowing excellent four-page reportage.
In Haaretz Hebrew online edition Prof. Benny Moris discusses the book with much appreciation.
In Haaretz English edition Chemi Shalev recommends Rabinovich and a second new book on that traumatic experience:
"The Eve of Destruction: The Untold Story of the Yom Kippur War," by Howard Blum. HarperCollins, 350 pages, $25.95.
I cannot wait to read them both!
"...Of contemporary interest, of course, are the descriptions of the battlefield antics and achievements of then-general Ariel Sharon, whose actual accomplishments, as depicted in both books, fall far short of the legend and hype that have become the conventional legacy of the war. Blum goes so far as to quote then-colonel Amnon Reshef's internal thoughts as "believing that there would always be a danger lurking in Arik's command, a rashness or an unruliness that was nothing less than madness."
Unknown Territory
This is one of the more unusual books to have been published recently in Israel. It's also a book that's hard to categorize. It's not a standard novel, not really a book of memoirs, not actually a work of history - but it is a book that offers a different, surprising take on Israel's first years. A loving and painful take, to resort to a cliche.
Corinna Hasofferett, embarked on this literary journey in the wake of two friends who were with her in a youth movement and were killed in Israel's cross-border reprisal raids. For years she collected testimonies of people who knew them, taping and editing.
She interweaves the testimonies, almost without intervention on her part. The result is a narrative flow that revives the period without any prettification or mythologizing.
She jokingly describes the book, "B'Eretz Lo Yadati" ("Unknown Territory," in English), as a Fighters Talk - referring to the famous book ("Siah Lohamim") in which soldiers described their experiences in the 1967 Six-Day War - but with no censorship.
There are a few interesting revelations in the book, apart from the story of Yehuda Kan Dror. For example, confessions about the killing of captives, or a surprising confession from a member of Unit 101 - the precursor of the Paratroops, Unit 101 was established by Ariel Sharon in the early 1950s - that the unit did not have any fatalities because it operated almost exclusively against civilian targets.
But concentrating on these aspects of the book could be misleading. It offers a far broader picture of a society that was still licking its wounds from the War of Independence, the picture of a country in which the signs of the previous Palestinian inhabitants were still visible, a picture of people whose memory of the Holocaust is not something they learned in school.
This is Corinna's sixth book, and she has published it herself - both for economic reasons and also to avoid having an outside eye that might cut sensitive passages. So it's not easy to find the book in bookstores. But it's worth making the effort.
Corinna's books, in Hebrew, are available for purchase directly from her Hebrew blog: http://www.notes.co.il/corinna/1823.asp
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