Melville House Books

Amos Elon, 1926-2009

Amos Elon, one of modern Israel’s most renowned authors and public intellectuals, died Monday in Italy of leukemia. He was 82. As detailed in a New York Times obituary by Ethan Bronner, Elon rose to fame with the publication of his book The Israelis: Founders and Sons, a book that was both “affectionate but unsparing portrait” of the early Zionists and founders of Israel.” He wrote, for example, that they sought “a national and social renaissance in their ancient homeland,†but “were blind to the possibility that the Arabs of Palestine might entertain similar hopes for themselves.†It was an unheard criticism at the time, and, in addition to his regular writings for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, it led on to a series of controversial books and articles for such places as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books. Eventually, in the late 1990s, Elon began living in Tuscany, Italy, leading to “a debate in Israel on what it meant that a cultural giant and social critic could simply leave.” But Bronner says Elon had ”grown weary and angry at what he considered the growing influence of religion and a heightened focus on military power in Israel, especially after the capture of the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 war.” But Elon said he took solace from the Tuscan landscape: “It’s so beautiful that it melts your heart. So in the few years I have left, I want to look at this view most of the days of the year. On the other days, I’ll come to Israel and get mad.â€

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.