At first glance, it appears Frankel has written yet another in the sequence of prominent American journalists' books about Israel and the Arabs. But his book differs from those by David Shipler and Thomas Friedman in two respects: his topic is not the Arab-Israeli conflict but Israel; and he has a specific thesis that pervades the volume. The title makes that thesis clear: by "beyond the promised land," the author means that Israel is, chrysalis-like, emerging from its Zionist stage ("a small, collectivist, mobilized garrison-state under siege") and entering something very different ("a more open, pluralistic, bourgeois and democratic country"). The author welcomes this "new Israel," as he calls it, arguing that it is "much closer to the benign fate that Herzl and others originally predicted" for the Jewish state. He draws on his three-year residency in Israel during 1986-89 and subsequent trips to the country to produce a lively, chronologically-oriented argument to back up this thesis, one inspired by an affection for and a familiarity with his subject matter.
So far, so good. But Frankel's account suffers a fault that suffuses the book and much reduces its value: he has an acutely partisan view of Israeli politics, admiring Labor and nearly despising Likud. In a typical passage, he terms the change of government in 1992 the ending of "right-wing Likud domination" and "a return to the more pragmatic, less ideological rule of the left-of-center Labor Party." Beyond the Promised Land would have been a much better book had the author reigned in his prejudices.
