Explaining Israel

The Jewish State, the Middle East, and America

In this collection of 40 columns written for RealClearPolitics between 2014 and 2024, Peter Berkowitz explains Israel by reporting events, examining ideas, and placing both in their larger geopolitical context.

The senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution draws on the great Israeli mosaic of people, opinions, and aspirations to illuminate the domestic politics, diplomatic and national security imperatives, and multivalent spirit of the Middle East’s only rights-protecting democracy.

The carefully curated collection of essays in Explaining Israel demonstrates that to understand the Jewish state, it is necessary to appreciate the nation’s accomplishments and setbacks, the sources of its political cohesiveness and the forces dividing it, and the splendid opportunities and grave threats that it confronts.

The essays commence with Israel in 2014 at the height of its prosperity and self-confidence. They explore intensifying schisms inside the country and gathering dangers on its borders and throughout the region. And they culminate in penetrating analyses of the two crises that struck Israel in 2023. In January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sweeping judicial-reform proposals set off bitter controversy and months of massive protests. Then on October 7, Iran-backed Hamas jihadists invaded Israel, massacred some 1,200 people and kidnapped around 250, enmeshing Israel in a seven-front war against Iran and its regional proxies.

Berkowitz’s essays clarify the breathtaking achievements, the heartbreak, and the remarkable resilience of a nation struggling valiantly to be Jewish, free, and democratic in a dangerous region crucial to America’s interests.