Like Someone Who Actually Just Wants to Talk About the Settlements

Like Dreamers by Yossi Klein Halevi. Finished on May 22, 2026. Rating: ★★★★★ When I first picked out this book, I anticipated that “the story of the Israeli paratroopers who reunited Jerusalem” would have a lot more to do with the actual battles of the Six Day War. But as I now know: anyone looking for that book should look elsewhere. Like Dreamers is about these paratroopers and that war, but only insofar as Halevi believes the war to have been the most pivotal moment in modern Israel’s history and the paratroopers a useful example of engaged, elite citizens shaping the national project. Halevi instead focuses on the Six Day War as having introduced a previously unthinkable issue in the Israeli discourse: that of “should”. Israel fought a war and won—far surpassing the historic precedent of merely surviving—meaning that for the first time the nation thought not only of what it “could” have but what it “should” have. Like Dreamers is about the ongoing adjudication of this issue. In…