Jews are expert in the matter of salvaging hope from despair. Even so, one would imagine that the current troubles in Israel presented a new and more difficult problem: what happens when it's the Jew who's perceived as the villain? But consolation is found – in the belief that not every Jew, and indeed not every Israeli, is culpable for the Israeli Government's misdeeds, and that the Jewish State is still a civilised one. Liberals point to the size of Israel 's peace movement or to the continued independence of its judiciary to support their case.

This book – and its commercial success in Israel – is, paradoxically, another feather in that progressive Zionist cap.

For when Yellow Time – the title of the Hebrew original – appeared last year to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Six Day War, it had harsh things to say to