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"Siege" we are told in the dictionary is the condition of being cut off from all sources of nourishment or reinforcement and thus becoming obliged either to surrender to the violence of the besiegers or to perish from famine and thirst. According to this criterion, Israel is just about the least besieged country on the face of the globe. No other human society is more in pursuit of external aid or more successful in obtaining it. The proportion of its resources that it receives from beyond its borders is without parallel. It is integrated into the international agencies and the major world economic systems, sells whatever it can produce, buys whatever it needs, travels and receives travelers in great profusion, addresses the media with a frequency and universal resonance that few other nations can command and now has openings into the Arab world through the Egyptian treaty, the open border with South Lebanon and the flow of people and goods from the Jordan-Palestine region. It is a small house with vast doors and windows. As Churchill would have said in a similar context of defiance: "Some siege!"
The siege syndrome which runs throughout this book by Conor Cruise O'Brien reflects Israel's paradox; it lies in the tension between conventional belief and new reality. Israel combines the fact of power with the psychology of weakness and vulnerability. Its most successful and realistic former prime minister, Levi Eshkol, used to call Israel: "Poor little Samson!"
Those who read a large number of history books are likely to learn a great deal about historians, and our understanding of Conor Cruise O'Brien is immensely enhanced by this massive book. It might have been thought that compendious volumes about Israel from 19th- Century Zionism to the present day was almost every month accounted for, had reached saturation, but this judgment should not apply to "The Siege." It bears the mark of a restless, original idiosyncratic mind and-more surprisingly-a talent for the...