Rating: 
Summary: The Tragic truth!
Review: Perfidy is not a thrilling novel, rather a very serious work for any true student of history. It reveals the tragic truth - that while the Revisionists Zionists (Jabotinsky's heirs today's right wing in Israel - perhaps the Likud) together with the Orthodox, did everything humanely possible to save Jews from the Nazis, the Haganah - Ben Gurion and his cohorts (Roughly todays Labour party)not only refused to help them but hindered their efforts. This book was banned by the Israeli government for many years. It is not an east book to read, nevertheless I gave it a top rating because of its important role in revealing who were the true Zionist heroes.
Rating:
Summary: The Truth Indeed!
Review: The Perfidy review (the only one listed) is accurate as far as it goes but contains one remarkable error. The reviewer states that Perfidy is fiction. It is not. It is fact, was well researched and documented, and Hecht was an eyewitness to much of what occurred. There was no other book published which satisfactorizy refutes Hecht's findings.
Rating:
Summary: Correction of prior review
Review: The Perfidy review (the only one listed) is accurate as far as it goes but contains one remarkable error. The reviewer states that Perfidy is fiction. It is not. It is fact, was well researched and documented, and Hecht was an eyewitness to much of what occurred. There was no other book published which satisfactorizy refutes Hecht's findings.
Rating:
Summary: Airing Dirty Laundry...
Review: This book gives new meaning to the phrase "cult classic." Published in the early 1960's it deals with one of the great "cause celebres" in Israeli history--the Kastner affair--which remains almost wholly unknown in the english speaking world. In brief, the story goes like this, Malchiel Greenwald charged Kastner with collaboration in Hungary. Kastner at the behest of the Ben Gurion government sued for libel. Alas Greenwald's attorney, Shmuel Tamir staged a spirited defense and the honor of established Zionist organizations during the Holocaust was challenged. Kastner lost the libel suit, appealed, lost again. And when faced with the possibility of being convicted under Israel's anti-collaboration law (the one Eichmann was convicted under), he was convenient "assasinated." Along the way Hecht shares many stories just beginning to be written about in english including Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl's "Europa Plan" and the death of Hanah Szenes. As well as his rather celebratory accounts of Irgun terrorists against the British in Palestine. (I use the term not in condemnation, Irgunists routinely embraced it) There are many levels in which this book can be read. It can be appreciated as a polemic against the establishment zionism of Weizmann and Ben-Gurion. It can be read as a powerful cautionary tale against nation-states. It can be read as a despairing anguished cry over a humanity that seems hell-bent for nuclear annihilation. The value for all people who care about the State of Israel is that this was the first--and for a long time only--comprehensive account of this defining moment in Israeli history.
To this very day, public airing of this controversy in english, is discouraged. Jim Allen sought to dramatize the story in his play PERDITION and, in 1987, was twice shut down by major Jewish organizations and was subjected to a libel action by a minor figure in a telling re-play of the original Kastner affair. The action was not sustained, a reading of the play was put on at a community center. (A full account can be found in Uri Davis's book CROSSING THE BORDER.) On the other hand, Hecht is so close to his subject. Everything is black and white. While he celebrates Irgun actions against the British, he has nothing to say concerning actions against the Palestinians. The name Deir Yassin is never mentioned. Likewise, by Hecht's reckoning it was the Irgun, and the Irgun only that won palestine for the jewish state. But the establishment of Israel was not just a military triumph but a diplomatic one as well. Without Weizmann cultivating the British and Ben Gurion cultivating the US, there would have been no Balfour declaration, no mandate for the establishment for a jewish state at Versailles, no US support for UN partition, and no US instantaneous recognition for Israel in 1948. In the interest of balance, it is probably a good idea to compare his account with the relevant section in Tom Segev's THE SEVENTH MILLION. Also for a fuller account of Weissmandl activities and his charges against the established Zionist organizations see THE UNHEEDED CRY. For a scholarly, critical account of rescue efforts and charges of zionist non-cooperation one should see Yehuda Bauer's JEWS FOR SALE. Finally, one should probably look at Trotskyite Lenni Brenner's ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF DICTATORS, while strident and tendentious, there is a mass of devastating information in the book.
Rating:
Summary: irrefutable facts to sicken your heart
Review: This non fiction recounting of the slander trial against Malchiel Greenwald is one of the most fascinating and at the same time sickening and eye opening accounts of an amoral spiral during the last century. The fact that the most "respected" Jewish leaders of their time were part of the betrayals described in this book is the most disturbing thing to contemplate. I am sickened but educated by reading this book. The author , Mr. Hecht, should have received the nobel prize for his effort.
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