Books in Brief
Confronting Jihad: Israel’s Struggle and The World After 9/11 by Saul Singer (Cold Spring, 296 pp., $14.95). The situation in Israel, particularly the confrontation with Palestinian terrorism, is often discussed formulaically in the West, with Israel and its supporters treated as a monolith. But Saul Singer’s columns for the Jerusalem Post represent a very useful antidote, indeed.
Now collected in a single volume, Singer’s writings make clear that the war on terror has not produced ideological rigidity–except, perhaps, on the pro-Palestinian left. In a column from the spring of 2002, Singer points out that the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the most violent forms of Islamist extremism remains among the strangely unexamined issues in regional politics. He quotes Donald Rumsfeld, who gave Saudi Arabia “a broad pass”–declaring, “It isn’t countries that do this. . . . It’s an individual mullah, and it’s an individual financier who decides they want to send their money and help out” al Qaeda.
Singer notes, “This, unfortunately, lacks Rumsfeldian fervor and does not nearly do justice to the scope and significance of the problem.” He might have added that the relations of the mullahs and financiers with the royal authorities in Riyadh was something Rumsfeld should have known before the wakeup call of September 11.
Although he affirms in eloquent detail the need of Israel to remain forceful in its response to terror, Singer does not exclude the possibility of a meaningful dialogue between the two sides. He notes the stance of Israel’s Labor party, which claims its opponents on the right are “incapable of responding to an opening for peace.” But, he asks, “was it not Menachem Begin who made the ‘painful concessions’ of his time in response to Anwar Sadat’s overture? And if Ariel Sharon wants to avoid similar difficult choices, then why would he prefer Labor over the right-wing parties as his partner? Perhaps it is too much to ask that the Left admit that the Right actually has a better chance, and arguably a better record, of building a workable peace.”
Singer’s views will give no comfort to those who, inured in their hatred of the Jews, want to believe that Israel represents a single-minded, expansionist, and essentially colonialist power in the Middle East. His Israel fights to survive and allies itself with the United States in the war against terror. But it is an Israel that requires more than perfunctory commitment from itself and its allies, and which clearly wishes to be left in peace rather than to impose itself on others.
–Richard Datchery
The Book of Nurturing: Nine Natural Laws for Enriching Your Family Life by Linda and Richard Eyre (McGraw-Hill, 182 pp., $19.95). A decade ago, the Eyres’ “Teaching Your Children Values” was the first parenting book since Dr. Spock’s to top the bestseller lists. Now the prolific pair–nine children, over a dozen books–has written a prequel. It was inspired, they say, by parents’ feedback from their previous book. While much was laudatory, some was bewildered; one parent plaintively wondered how to impart values to a drug-addicted gang-member son. The couple concluded that a family foundation, established by nine kinds of nurturing, must precede values training.
They’ve pegged the list to nature fables, drawing parallels between, for example, the intertwined roots of giant redwoods and a child’s need for security. Each chapter includes examples of how to implement the principle. At times the book abandons itself to mystifying treacle: “Like the whales, we need to make our communication not a lecture but a song–a song of honest interchange and mutual respect.”
Still, some of the observations are devastatingly accurate. There really are parents better at organizing their children (“general-contractor parenting”) than nurturing them. This book alone won’t make your basic harried parent stop and smell the Play Doh, but for some it could be a start.
–Susie Currie
