Itamar Rabinovich

The Syrian civil war was and is one of the bigger tragedies of the early 21st century, so academic types like myself naturally want to read books about it. This one seemed good based on the table of contents, but I did not really like it in the end. The authors' perspective is too neutral and bland, and I don't think they say anything that hasn't already been in the news. They go through a long list of armed groups that were active within Syria in the 2010s and discuss how various foreign powers intervened (or not) in the civil war and how these interventions, in the end, determined its outcome. I guess you could call this a diplomatic analysis of the war, which is no doubt valid but not all that interesting.

Lurking in the background is the brutal logic of authoritarian power politics not just of Syria but of the surrounding countries and Russia as well. In the Middle East there is a shifting web of friends and enemies on each level of national and international society, divided by religion, nepotism and corruption, and opportunistically united by greed and will to power. People living in other regions of the world may be poorer, but they may still have more political freedom (and a better chance to improve it) than the unfortunate Syrians who started their fateful uprising in the Arab spring.

This book does not tell their story. The authors don't show any particular sympathy for democratic protesters (or their goals) or for the people whose cities were captured by ISIS. Those who were enslaved by ISIS or tortured by the Syrian government are hardly even mentioned. Instead, the authors give a sterile high-level account of Iranian and Russian participation in the war without expressing any moral condemnation. They also discuss the American non-intervention on many pages without coming to any conclusion on whether anything could or should have been done differently. And they don't seem to have any particular insight into authoritarian power politics, either.

Each author is of course free to choose his own vantage point for his own book, and this book is certainly informative for readers who only care about state-level diplomacy. But I would not recommend it to readers looking for a detailed account of what happened in the Syrian civil war, or to those who want to see evil men being called out for their evil deeds.… (more)

Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman by Itamar Rabinovich is a biography of the famous Israeli politician. Mr. Rabinovich is a political operative who worked with Mr. Rabin.

This biography of the Israeli persona, an account of Mr. Rabin’s career and life as a solider and statesman. Mr. Rabinovich worked with Mr. Rabin late in his career and even held the same post, that of Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

The book’s most impressive part comes as a first-person account of Mr. Rabin’s second term as the Israeli Prime Minister. The author was witness to history and his narrative is fascinating, the insights are thoughtful , and the deductions are enlightening.

I still remember the day that Mr. Rabin passed away from an assassin’s bullet. I was not in Israel, but on a comfortable couch in New Jersey, however I felt as if I was in another world. After all Israel, “the light to be cast unto the nations” as David Ben-Gurion (Israel’s first Prime Minister) said, is not a country where political leaders are assassinated. At the time no one understood how such a tragedy could happen. A Jewish Prime Minister, assassinated by a Jewish man, in a Jewish state, surrounded by bodyguards and an adoring crowd.

Mr. Rabinovich wrote an outstanding summary which attempts to inform the reader of the complex circumstances which allowed a man to feel as if he was permitted to pull the trigger and murder a person in cold blood. Putting his emotions to the side, the author’s analysis is straightforward and thoughtful.

The author talks about Mr. Rabin’s many achievements, as well as his failures, his personality traits (both positive and negative), and the person he was, not just the public figure. The book is engrossing and an important primary source for future generations to study.

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