Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel Book

Noted Israeli author Yaron Ezrahi has created a hybrid of memoir, history, and social commentary in Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel. He examines the complex and halting shift from a collectivist Zionist mindset to a contemporary individualism and delivers a critical and passionate account of the Jewish state. Here the rubber bullets Israeli soldiers cruelly and ineffectually fired at rock-throwing Palestinians serve as a metaphor for Israel's conflicted sense of self. Ezrahi analyzes the effects of mandatory military service, the threat of terrorism, and the absence of personal choice on Israeli youth. In a nation where solidarity is viewed as strength, even a necessity, he sees the dangers of sharp generational differences regarding the role of the individual and the original aims of Zionism. He writes of watching footage of violent clashes during the apex of the Intifada: "The pictures on the screen . . . suddenly settled . . . on a single Israeli soldier . . . pointing his gun at a group of shouting, stone-throwing Palestinian youth . . . and I was seized by an impulse to cover my father's eyes with my right hand while keeping my son's wide open with my left."Read More