Book Review: Other Areas: Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1478-9302.12016_133 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
The single shortcoming in Seale’s account might be
that Riad el-Solh’s personality – a case study of politics
as a vocation – does not always come fully alive in the
mind of the reader. Instead, the book is mostly con-
cerned with colonial history and the story of the emer-
gence of the Lebanese state. Yet this is certainly a
seminal study of Lebanese and Arab history which will
immediately gain the status of a reference book.
Jörg Michael Dostal
(Seoul National University)
After Apartheid: Reinventing South Africa? by
Ian Shapiro and Kathreen Tebeau (eds). Char-
lottesvilleVA: University of Virginia Press, 2011. 376pp.,
£34.95, ISBN 9780813930978
This book focuses on the development of post-
apartheid South Africa. Though the political transition
is encouraging, the question is whether South Africa’s
future trajectory under the African National Congress
(ANC) will mirror that of Zimbabwe and Kenya.
South Africa’s success to date has depended on con-
tingencies of restraint in leadership, and though the
new South Africa has inherited a sizeable skilled com-
munity, which bodes well for the future, and though
the authors admit that there are a few cases in which a
nationalistic liberation movement, originally aimed at
overthrowing an oppressive regime, has managed to
move positively, many of the essays reflect serious
pessimism.
Though fiscal policies have been a resounding
success, there is a clear failure on the part of the
government to address significantly the extreme levels
of poverty and inequality. It could be argued that the
two actually worsened in the first five years after apart-
heid and, though the ANC has managed to foster
various forms of democratic legitimacy since 1994,
fundamental institutions, such as the electoral system,
need to be changed to foster deeper citizen participa-
tion in, and legitimacy of, the democratic system.
In a country that now has one of the highest HIV
prevalence rates in the world, Mbeki’s AIDS denialism
has hampered the use of antiretrovirals.And though the
new South Africa has made an explicit commitment to
the supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law
among other impressive laws, important exceptions to
this overall positive picture are the laws dealing with
whistle-blower protection and public access to infor-
mation.With eleven official languages, language policy
has in practice been a disappointment, and hence the
English language continues to disempower black South
Africans. Thus, although South Africa has made great
strides, looking forward, daunting problems still face
the country, making the overall picture mixed.
The contributors to the book analyse the strides that
the young South Africa has made and its missed
chances. The book is aimed at people interested in
South Africa’s history and it is relevant to historians,
economists, socialists and political scientists as well as
those interested in South Africa in particular and Africa
at large. The contributors certainly succeed in their
goals, for the book lays bare the historical and social-
political issues still affecting the country, and the only
gap or anomaly in its scope or coverage is that it should
be part of a series, not a single book.
Moses Kibe Kihiko
(Independent Scholar)
Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity
and Delegitimization by Colin Shindler. London:
Continuum, 2012. 308pp., £17.99, ISBN 978 1 4411
5013 4
It is easy to forget nowadays, with Zionism being the
bête noire of left-leaning activists worldwide, that the
Jewish state was once seen by the left as a progressive
democracy and a just response to the plight of Euro-
pean Jews after the Holocaust.The generally accepted
analysis traces this shift in attitude to the occupation of
the West Bank and Gaza following the Six Days’War,
which signalled a drastic change in Israeli policy.While
radical critics of Zionism disagree and argue that Israel
was unjust from its inception, Colin Shindler’s book
challenges the common explanation from the opposite
angle. While Israeli policies have definitely played a
part, it argues, they have not caused the attitude of the
left, but only enhanced previous anti-Zionist tenden-
cies. To affirm this thesis, the book traces the intricate
relationship between the radical left in Europe and
Zionism in a historical analysis from the nineteenth
century to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
(BDS) movement. Marxism-Leninism,as is emphasised
throughout this narrative, has always been politically
cynical in its approach towards Jews in general and
Zionism in particular. It often sacrificed the particular
interest of its Jewish adherents to the greater goal of
BOOK REVIEWS 309
© 2013 TheAuthors. Political Studies Review © 2013 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2013, 11(2)
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