The future of yesterday: Avraham Burg on Ari Shavit's new book
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel,” by Ari Shavit, Spiegel & Grau / Random House, 464 pages, $28 Ari Shavit’s “My Promised Land” is the best book written in recent years about the waning Zionist empire. The book draws a touching and painful picture, highly sympathetic and gently critical, of the Zionist narrative. It purports to depict and encompass, in a responsible, nonpartisan manner, the Israeli totality, which is no longer wholly Zionist. For the real-world, Israel hardly resembles the establishmentarian, traditional Zionism of Shavit and his yearnings. This is a story and a book that begin with high hopes, and end under an immense question mark. Shavit, as a gifted writer, both attentive and opinionated, takes the reader on a personal journey across the length and breadth of Zionist history. At times he swoops past years, events, people and places, and at times he pauses unhurriedly and probes into the depths of understanding and insight. To allow us