THE FATE OF ZIONISM: A Secular Future for Israel & Palestine

Author of The French Enlightenment and the Jews, The Zionist Idea and other books, eminent academic Hertzberg heard David Ben-Gurion thunder against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza on the eve of Israel's victory in the 1967 war. Although it took "a couple of years of hard thinking to become one of Ben-Gurion's followers," this proposed, resolutely secular framework for Israel and for a Palestinian state grew out of the experience: anti-messianic and anti-absolutist, Hertzberg proposes that, at the very least, it is time "for the insistence of hard-liners on both sides to end." (On sale Oct. 14)