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WORK TITLE: How Long Will Israel Survive?
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://greggcarlstrom.com/
CITY: Cairo
STATE:
COUNTRY: Egypt
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Northwestern University, B.A., 2007; attended the American University in Cairo.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and journalist. Economist, Middle East correspondent in Cairo, Egypt. Times, London, England, former correspondent. Guest on television and radio networks.
WRITINGS
Contributor to newspapers and magazines, including Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Atlantic, Newsweek, Global Post, Politico, GlobalPost, San Francisco Chronicle, World Politics Review, and Columbia Journalism Review.
SIDELIGHTS
Gregg Carlstrom is a journalist and writer based in Cairo, Egypt, where he serves as the Middle East correspondent for the Economist. He has also worked as a correspondent for the London Times. As a specialist in the Middle East, he has published long-form work in newspapers and magazines that include Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, San Francisco Chronicle, Columbia Journalism Review, and the Atlantic. Carlstrom holds a B.A. in journalism from Northwestern University.
Carlstrom examines the political situation and internal stability of one of the world’s major political players in How Long Will Israel Survive? The Threat from Within. In this volume, Carlstrom makes it clear that Israel “faces internal divisions that threaten its very survival,” commented a writer in Publishers Weekly. He “argues that the State of Israel will not fall because of outside violence, but rather because of religious nationalism, intolerance, and its decisive move away from liberalism,” commented Benjamin Welton, writing in Foreword Reviews.
In Carlstrom’s view, Israel is “effectively without existential threats from the outside,” commented a Kirkus Reviews writer. It economically strong, thanks in large part to funding from the United States and other major world powers who support Israel. Militarily, it is strong enough to defend itself. It is also protected by “peace treaties, if uneasy ones, in its neighborhood,” the Kirkus Reviews contributor noted.
There are many factors that are creating a situation in which internal forces could have lasting and irreparable effects on Israel, Carlstrom believes. The continual state of conflict with neighbors and with other countries and political systems throughout the world is one of the main ones. The questions surrounding conflict and occupation in Arab territories is damaging to Israel, its relationships with surrounding countries, and its standing in the world political arena. These factors also generally damage relations between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East and elsewhere. The proliferation of religious and political groups within Israel threatens to destabilize what was once considered a solid democracy, mainly through increased nationalism and religious orthodoxy. The younger population of Israel tends toward conservatism, with liberal leftism existing largely in the older population of European Jews.
Internal conflicts are also gradually eroding the stability of Israel, Carlstrom believes. He notes that the country was once relatively evenly split between the political right and left, but now there are diverse groups within Israel that are fighting their own battles, with other groups and with Israel itself. He also suggests that the members of these fractured groups lack a functional understanding of Zionism and what it means to be an Israeli.
Outside of the political arena, Israel also suffers from a substantial amount of economic and social inequality. For example, it recognizes same-sex marriages from outside of the country, but does not allow them to be performed inside the country’s boundaries. Israel does not permit marriages between couples of different faiths, either.
Carlstrom believes that the greatest internal threat to Israel may well be the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has created a climate in which ideologues and extremists can damage the delicate political and social forces that hold the country together. Corruption in the Israeli government is widespread, Carlstrom suggests, and this corruption can and will eventually leave lasting damage on Israel.
The Kirkus Reviews writer called Carlstrom’s book a “provocative, highly readable view of a nation that seems headed for more trouble, this time from within.” Welton found the book to be a “great examination of modern Israel’s politics.” The Publishers Weekly writer observed that Carlstrom “puts a human face on the challenges Israel faces: and gives readers a “measured, detailed, and insightful look: into the background and causes of the situation Israel currently faces.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Foreword Reviews, November-December, 2017, Benjamin Welton, review of How Long Will Israel Survive? The Threat from Within.
Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2017, review of How Long Will Israel Survive?
Publishers Weekly, August 28, 2017, review of How Long Will Israel Survive?, p. 114.
ONLINE
Gregg Carlstrom website, http://www.greggcarlstrom.com (June 3, 2018).
Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online, http://middleeastreviewsonline.com/ (June 3, 2018), Josef Olmert, review of How Long Will Israel Survive?
ABOUT/CONTACT
11218454_10101587068204415_3140475380955681186_n.jpg
I'm a Middle East correspondent for The Economist, based in Cairo and covering the region from Morocco to the Gulf.
Previously I was a correspondent for The Times of London. My longer-form work from the region has been published in a range of newspapers and magazines, including Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Newsweek, Politico, New York, GlobalPost, The National, PRI, the San Francisco Chronicle, World Politics Review, Columbia Journalism Review, MERIP and elsewhere.
I've also appeared on TV and radio networks including the BBC, CNN and Sky News.
My first book, How Long Will Israel Survive? The Threat From Within, will be published in 2017. It steps away from the conflict with the Palestinians to look at Israel's internal problems: how a once-unified population now fights internecine battles—over religion and state, war and peace, race and identity—contesting the very notion of a "Jewish and democratic" state.
I graduated from Northwestern University in 2007 with a bachelor's degree in journalism, and spent time in 2006 studying at the American University in Cairo.
Phone: +20 100 539 7823 (Egypt) // +1 202 525 6445 (roaming)
E-mail: greggcarlstrom@economist.com
Carlstrom, Gregg: HOW LONG WILL
ISRAEL SURVIVE?
Kirkus Reviews.
(Oct. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Carlstrom, Gregg HOW LONG WILL ISRAEL SURVIVE? Oxford Univ. (Adult Nonfiction) $24.95 12, 1
ISBN: 978-0-19-084344-1
Tel Aviv-based journalist Carlstrom, a correspondent for the Times and the Economist, considers a nearterm
future in which Israel is destroyed--not by external enemies but instead torn apart by civil war.
The state of Israel, writes the author, is effectively without existential threats from the outside; it has
brokered peace treaties, if uneasy ones, in its neighborhood and is well-funded by the United States and
other powers, so much so that its economy is healthier than those of many European nations and in the
world's top quartile. Yet, whereas elsewhere in the developed world the rising generation tends to be
socially liberal, in Israel, conservatism among young people is a widespread trend, with leftism the province
of old, mostly European Jews; the fact of the disappearing political center resembles the U.S. in that regard.
Some of the conservatives embrace a conception of Israel as an expansionist power based on "territorial
maximalism," as exemplified by the long-established settler movement. Along with a rise in nationalism
and religious orthodoxy--which Carlstrom describes as "features, not bugs" of modern Zionism--is an
increasingly sharp division in domestic politics. There are some ironies attendant; for instance, Israel
recognizes same-sex marriage executed outside the country, but it does not allow such marriages to be
carried out in the country (or marriages between mixed-faith couples, for that matter). This is a product,
Carlstrom suggests, of the outsize influence of the religious orthodoxy and of a government, headed by
Benjamin Netanyahu, that the author, following several international organizations, does not hesitate to
label as wildly corrupt. The persistence of this corruption and of orthodoxy, along with the embrace by
Israeli youth of conservative and authoritarian politics, drives a "fundamental difference between Israel's
identity and the changing identities of Western societies."
A provocative, highly readable view of a nation that seems headed for more trouble, this time from within.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Carlstrom, Gregg: HOW LONG WILL ISRAEL SURVIVE?" Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2017. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509243958/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b72de62c. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A509243958
5/17/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1526586877338 2/2
How Long Will Israel Survive?: The
Threat from Within
Publishers Weekly.
264.35 (Aug. 28, 2017): p114+.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
How Long Will Israel Survive?: The Threat from Within
Gregg Carlstrom. Oxford Univ., $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-19-084344-1
Once viewed as the most stable state in the Middle East, Israel now faces internal divisions that threaten its
very survival, according to journalist Carlstrom in his debut book. Drawing on interviews with a large cross
section of Israelis, including both politicians and settlers, Carlstrom puts a human face on the challenges
Israel faces and offers a measured, detailed, and insightful look into the roots of the current situation.
Several factors, Carlstrom points out, threaten Israel's future, including an endless state of conflict and
occupation that tears down the relationships between the nation and the army and between Jews and Arabs.
In addition, while Israel has presented itself to the world as an ideal democracy surrounded by monarchies
and dictatorships, the state is now so divided into various political and religious groups that internal unity
seems impossible. Carlstrom observes that profound economic and social inequality is exacerbating this
disunity. Perhaps the greatest threat to Israel's survival, he asserts, is a prime minister, Netanyahu, who has
created a space for "the ideologues,--the sectarians and the extremists" intent on dismantling the delicate
social threads that have stitched the country together since its inception. Carlstrom's engrossing book
doesn't trade in dire warnings but offers a sobering look at contemporary Israel and its future. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"How Long Will Israel Survive?: The Threat from Within." Publishers Weekly, 28 Aug. 2017, p. 114+.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502652648/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=fc9adebb. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A502652648
HOW LONG WILL ISRAEL SURVIVE?
THE THREAT FROM WITHIN
Gregg Carlstrom
Oxford University Press (Dec 1, 2017)
Hardcover $24.95 (256pp)
978-0-19-084344-1
At its center is a dirge for the Israel of secular Labor and idealism.
How Long Will Israel Survive? provides an in-depth look at a society that is said to be rotting from the inside out. Gregg Carlstrom argues that the State of Israel will not fall because of outside violence, but rather because of religious nationalism, intolerance, and its decisive move away from liberalism.
The Israel that Carlstrom describes is miles away from the Israel that was founded in 1948. Back then, secular Zionism found a home in the country’s Labor Party, the left-wing party of choice for the country’s founding stock of well-educated Jews from Europe. Now, according to Carlstrom, secular Zionism has been replaced by religious nationalism, a right-wing ideology that defines Israeli identity as explicitly Jewish.
One of the major players in the book is Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister and the face of the nation’s Likud Party. The ever-cagey Netanyahu may be one of the more liberal—or at least moderate—members of Likud, but he is shown to be not above appealing directly to the racial fears of his voters.
The Israel where thousands of Jews protested their nation’s occupation of southern Lebanon is long gone, Carlstrom says; instead, it has been replaced by a nation wherein anti-war protesters are chased down and beaten by ultranationalists. The Israeli police, Carlstrom writes, not only let this violence happen, but the new Israeli state actively aids the whims of the country’s far right.
By his own admission, Carlstrom is not an impartial observer. He admits that his politics are well to the left of center. The book may actually most be a dirge for the old Israel—the Israel of secular Labor and idealism. What the book fails to fully address is the reality that violence, or at least the threat of violence, tends to make populations more jingoistic and more intolerant.
How Long Will Israel Survive? is a great examination of modern Israel’s politics, if it is clearly a polemic from the left. This does not demean Carlstrom’s excellent research; it merely decries what others may see as either a natural or preferable sociopolitical change.
Reviewed by Benjamin Welton
November/December 2017
How Long Will Israel Survive?: The Threat From Within
cover image
By: Gregg Carlstrom
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Oxford, UK and New York: Oxford University Press. 256pp. $24.95, ISBN: 9780190843441
Volume: 6 Issue: 3
March 2018
Review by:
Josef Olmert, PhD
University Of South Carolina
Columbia, SC
It is arguably the case, that Israel is a popular subject , and attracts a lot of attention on the part of all kinds of observers. In a somewhat cynical way, and not one which is detached from reality, the Israelis like to say, that there is never a dull moment there. In a more cynical way, and also more provoking one, it is customary for them to say, that Jews are news. So, at a time, when the entire Arab Middle East is in a state of turmoil, when Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya are undergoing bloody civil wars, claiming the lives of many hundreds of thousands, leading to millions of refugees, in fact, for a mass exodus from these and other Middle East countries to nearby Europe, we have this book about the survivability of Israel. Here it is. Jews are news.This is the perfect title for many Israelis and supporters of Israel to confirm their sense, that their country is getting perhaps too much attention, and not for the right reasons. The Middle East is in a near collapse situation, in fact, an entire civilisation is on the verge of complete chaos, and yet, an observer of the Middle East, with years of covering the region for respectable Middle Eastern and Western news organizations, is questioning the survivability of the most stable and prosperous country in the region. It is perfectly legitimate, of course, to raise such a question, but it is also legitimate to raise a question about the seriousness and relevance of this question, in fact, of this book.
Gregg Carlstrom is a journalist, and it is not irrelevant to refer to this fact in the context of reviewing this particular book, as well as many other books on Israel and the rest of the Middle East. Foreign correspondents usually come to this region with a cultural/political/religious /linguistic background which is so different than what they encounter in the places which they cover. Within a short period of time they are considering themselves, and/or considered by others to be experts on their countries of assignment. Well, in most cases they are not. This is a very relevant problem, as Carlstrom himself relates to the complaints of Israelis about the coverage of their country in the foreign press, and regards the complaints as ‘’petty’’[pp.186-188], but alas, he really shows exactly the type of coverage that leads to the repeated complaints in the first place. Had he done a really thorough research of the issue, for example meeting with the Israeli Government Press Office, he would have found ample evidence about the distinct anti Israel bias of many of his colleagues, past and present. He could have found CNN official apology to the Israeli Government about systematic distortions, and the replacement of their entire bureau in Israel as a result of their admission of misrepresentation of Israel. All this happened after Operation Desert Storm, but there were many more blatant examples of that attitudes afterwards, all the way to the present. I do not know Carlstrom personally, but after reading his book,I have to sadly conclude, that his stay in Israel failed to make him the profound observer of the reality of life there.
Referring to Israel’s domestic situation only, while ignoring the implications of the Arab-Palestinian -Israeli conflict on the shaping up of Israeli society and political culture is simply ridiculous. So, the Mizrachim of Israel almost half of the population, the backbone of the Right Wing electoral coalition are mentioned only 2-3 times, hardly any mention of the impact of the olim [immigrants]from the former USSR, another significant constituent member of this electoral coalition, and Menachem Begin, the builder of this coalition, the peace- maker with Egypt, the one peace treaty which changed the entire nature of the conflict, is also hardly mentioned. There is also no serious coverage of the Ultra Orthodox community, and while attention is given and rightly so to the settler movement, there really is no deep analytical reference to their origins and overall ideology.
God is my witness, that I harbour no grudge against journalists, but I find it somewhat superficial
and arrogant on the part of journalists, to write a book of this nature, basing themselves mostly on other journalists as their trusted , reliable sources. There hardly is any political correspondent in Israel, including some whose names are barely known to the vast majority of Israelis, who is not mentioned in this book.That goes also to so many politicians, but something is still very much missing. The voice of ordinary Israelis, not just the residents of the few neighborhoods where there still are people who read Ha’aretz, the anti Zionist Left Wing paper, but places like Be’er Sheva, Tiberias, Beit She’a, etc. No wonder, as I suspect, that Carlstrom does not command Hebrew. I will be happy to be proven wrong on this one.
Reading this book confirmed to me yet again, why foreign correspondents did not predict the Islamic revolution in Iran or the Arab Spring, the Muslim Brotherhood electoral success in Egypt, or the real reasons for Likud electoral victories in Israel. It is not a coincidence, not a combination of some notable failures, rather it is a structural weakness of those who come to different cultural/political environments and very clearly try to do what is so easy to do-to apply to these people the values and cultures of their country of origin, the sense of Western superiority, the sense that what is good in the US and Britain, for example, is necessarily what should be the case also in the Middle East in general, and when dealing with this book, in Israel in particular.
Carlstrom’s book follows a genre of writing on Israel, which can be described as the
Wishful thinking genre. You do not like a country, so question its survivability. In this case it is Israel which is the victim, but there could be many other potential victims. Interestingly enough, countries like so many of those which surround Israel and which are already in very advanced stages of their demise are left unattended, but ‘’somehow’’ Carlstrom picked on Israel. So, those who share this vision of Carlstrom will like his book. Those who want to get ‘’something’’ deeper than a superficial journalistic reportage will wait to other books on the subject on hand.