“Destined to become a contemporary classic.” ―Eyal Weizman Contrary to popular belief, the architecture and spatial politics of the State of Israel were not born haphazardly out of emergency or speculation. The Israeli built environment is the deliberate response to a unique objective―how to design and build a model state nearly instantaneously. To do this, space had to be remade: a new terrain was molded, and dozens of new towns and hundreds of rural settlements were constructed. Fashionable postwar architectural trends like Brutalism and Structuralism were appropriated as signifiers of national vigor. The Object of Zionism is a critical study of Zionist spatial planning and the architectural fabrication of the State of Israel from the early 20th century to the 1960s and '70s. Zvi Efrat scrutinizes Israel as a singular modernist project, unprecedented in its political and ethical circumstances and its hyper-production of spatial and structural experiments. Efrat explores the construction of the State of Israel in a book that promises to become a standard reference on Israeli architectural history. Architect and architectural historian Zvi Efrat is a partner at Efrat-Kowalsky Architects in Tel-Aviv and was head of the Department of Architecture at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, between 2002 and 2010. He studied at Pratt Institute, New York University and Princeton University and has curated numerous exhibitions, among them Borderline Disorder and The Object of Zionism . Efrat is a Graham Foundation awardee.

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The View From the Israeli Right

On Tuesday I got back from an eight-day trip to Israel and the West Bank. I happened to be there on the day that Benny Gantz resigned from the war cabinet and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to schedule new elections, breaking the unity government that Israel had had since shortly after Oct. 7. There is no viable left wing in Israel right now. There is a coalition that Netanyahu leads stretching from right to far right and a coalition that Gantz leads stretching from center to right. In the early months of the war, Gantz appeared ascendant as support for Netanyahu cratered. But now Netanyahu’s poll numbers are ticking back up. So one thing I did in Israel was deepen my reporting on Israel’s right. And there, Amit Segal’s name kept coming up. He’s one of Israel’s most influential political analysts and the author of “The Story of Israeli Politics” is coming out in English. Segal and I talked about the political differences between Gantz and Netanyahu, the theory of security that’s emerging on the Israeli right, what happened to the Israeli left, the threat from Iran and Hezbollah and how Netanyahu is trying to use President Biden’s criticism to his political advantage.

Books recommended:

• 📕  The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power; Means of Ascent; Master of the Senate; The Passage of Power by Robert A. Caro
• 📘  The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, Anthea Bell
• 📗  The Object of Zionism: The Architecture of Israel by Zvi Efrat
• 📙  News from Waterloo, The by Brian Cathcart

Amit Segal June 14, 2024 4 books recommended

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