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Our Global Issues & Ethics Book Group is devoted to discussing books that cover the most relevant topics of our everyday lives. Our selection for March is Israel vs. Utopia by Joel Schalit. Israel is a synonym for many things: the ancestral home of the Jewish people, the antagonist of the Palestinians, the realization of a centuries-old dream of freedom, the heart of the War on Terror. No country inspires as much debate about its rights and wrongs, its legitimacy and illegitimacies, as Israel. In this new volume, Israel vs. Utopia Israeli American journalist Joel Schalit distinguishes between the Israel he knows and the image of it that exists in the imagination of Americans and Europeans. Israel is a state of mind, Schalit argues, as much as it is a sovereign state. Exploring this tension—in America, in Israel, in Europe—through a combination of personal observations, political analysis, and cultural commentary, Schalit defines the instability of Israel, as a metaphor, and America's troubled love for it, as only an Israeli American could. Doug Henwood said of the book, "Fresh thinking about the Middle East is rare, but that's Joel Schalit's specialty. Regardless of your politics, you probably won't see Israel in the same way again after reading this admirable and engaging book—and that's something we all need. And you'll probably develop an irresistible appetite for good hummus along the way."
