Title: Israel's Politics of Nationhood
Review: This is a fantastic book -- it actually starts before the Holocaust with the battle of Tel-Hai and the death of Yosef Trumpledor and touches also on the ghetto fighters, the Exodus affair, the Kastner trial, the Eichmann trial, the 1967 war, and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin -- focused on exploring the treatment of the Holocaust and related issues by the Israeli political elite (especially Ben-Gurion) in their quest to craft an "Israeli national identity." As mentioned, the book touches on a number of different incidents and issues, but the keystone is the Eichmann trial and Hannah Arendt's book "Eichmann in Jerusalem" and the controversy that accompanied it. It is quite clear that Zertal is an admirer of Arendt, and has published on Arendt and her work before. It is well footnoted and very accessable (that is, you don't have to be an academic to really get a lot out of this book).
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