In Goliath, New York Times bestselling author MaxBlumenthal takes us on a trip through the badlands and high roads ofIsrael-Palestine, painting a startling portrait of Israeli society under thesiege of increasingly authoritarian politics as the occupation of thePalestinians deepens.

You start with the national electionscarried out during Israel’s battle on Gaza in 2008/9, which brought into power thecountry’s most right-wing government to date, Blumenthal tells the storyplot ofIsrael in the wake of about Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel the collapse of the Oslo peace process.

As Blumenthalreveals, Israel has become a country where right-wing leaders like AvigdorLieberman and Bibi Netanyahu are sacrificing democracy over the altar of theirpower politics, where in fact the faithful opposition largely and passively stands asideand watches the organized assault on civil liberties, where state-fundedOrthodox rabbis publish books offering instructions on how so when to killgentiles, where fifty percent of Jewish youngsters declare their refusal to sit in aclassroom with an Arab, and where mob assault targets Palestinians and Africanasylum seekers scapegoated by leading federal government officials as “demographicthreats.”

Immersing himselflike few other journalists inside the world of hardline political leaders andmovements, Blumenthal interviews the demagogues and divas within their homes, inthe Knesset, and in the watering slots where their young acolytes go out, andhe speaks with those political leaders behind the structured assault on civilliberties. As his journey deepens, he painstakingly reviews for the occupiedPalestinians demanding schemes of demographic parting through unarmedprotest. He discussions at length to the leaders and youngsters of Palestinian societyinside Israel right now targeted by security program dragnets and legislationsuppressing their conversation and provides in-depth reporting on the tiny band ofJewish Israeli dissidents who’ve shaken off a conformist mind-set thatpermeates the press, schools, as well as the military.

Through hisfar-ranging travels, Blumenthal illuminates the present by uncovering theghosts of the past-the histories of Palestinian neighborhoods and villages nowgone and forgotten, how that history has set the stage for the existing crisisof Israeli society, and the way the Holocaust continues to be converted into justification foroccupation.

A brave andunflinching account of the real facts on the floor, Goliath is an unprecedented and compellingwork of journalism.