Arendt would doubtless have had mixed feelings about 2011. This year marked a half-century since the trial of Adolph Eichmann, one of the architects of the Final Solution. Reporting on the trial from Jerusalem, she developed the ideas for her most influential book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality Of Evil. And 2011 is, of course, both the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the year in which Bin Laden met his end at the hands of American commandos.

To point out that the phrase “the banality of evil” is often overused is itself somewhat banal. Whenever a high-profile tyrant is brought to justice, headlines groan with the phrase. The New York Times used it in connection with Saddam; TIME magazine used it about Bin Laden; and when Gaddafi gets his comeuppance, it will almost certainly be used about him, too.

Or rather, misused. As Elisabeth Young-Bruehl points out in her excellent Why Arendt Matters (Yale University Press, 2006), the phrase is “predictably and reverently invoked—and completely misunderstood.” It doesn’t simply refer to an evildoer’s lack of charisma. It neither absolves criminal responsibility, nor suggests that we would all do the same under the circumstances. Rather, it expresses a complex reading of how murderous ideologies can take root. Continue on the Prospect website

Although Life and Fate centres around the moribund physicist Viktor Shtrum and the epic battle of Stalingrad, the novel weaves hundreds of interrelated stories and characters together to show a vivid cross-section of life under Stalin. Grossman was a high-profile frontline reporter during the war, and his fiction displays the same perceptiveness and honesty for which his journalism was renowned. Stories and characters arise and subside like waves in the broad river of humanity, winding through the horrors of the Eastern Front; the result is a novel that manages to be at once sweepingly panoramic and minutely detailed.

Life and Fate, by all accounts, is a work of colossal genius. Martin Amis called Grossman “the Tolstoy of the USSR,” and the historian Antony Beevor—speaking on a special Grossman edition of Start The Week on Radio 4 today—described the book as “one of the greatest Russian novels of the twentieth century.” Mark Damazer, the former controller of Radio 4 who commissioned the drama adaptation, was more laudatory still, calling Life and Fate “the best and most important novel of modern times.”

Grossman completed Life and Fate in 1960, but because of the novel’s dissidence—it dared to compare Nazism and Stalinism, for example—the manuscript was confiscated by the KGB, who famously seized the typewriter and carbon paper that Grossman used to write it. A decade and a half later, a small group of radicals managed to smuggle a microfilm version of the book under the Iron Curtain; an English edition was finally published in 1985. Frustratingly enough, by that point all eyes were on Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak and Life and Fate was eclipsed.

This new radio adaptation should bring the work to light again, though for the best parts of Life and Fate, you have to read the book. Continue reading on the Prospect Magazine website

'the muffled drums of war have been gathering volume for some time'

“Netanyahu thinks he is the superpower,” remarked Bill Clinton bitterly in 1996, “and we are here to do whatever he requires.” Today, as the Americans and the Israelis refuse to budge on the fraught issue of settlements in East Jerusalem, this statement rings truer than ever. US-Israeli relations are at a historic low. But the current standoff is about much more than settlement-building. Underlying it is Washington’s concern that Netanyahu’s repeated gestures of provocation—like the establishment of Jewish heritage sites in the Palestinian territories—are drawing the region towards a conflict unprecedented since 1948. And this time there is a nuclear dimension.

The widely-reported Israeli “insult” to the US—announcing renewed settlement construction just as Vice President Joe Biden was in the country announcing peace talks—was so audacious that Obama’s tough response has been largely supported, even in overwhelmingly pro-Israel America. The same was the case for Clinton in 1996. This time, however, US-Israeli differences run far deeper. The muffled drums of war have been gathering volume in the middle east for some time, and Obama is seizing the chance to send a clear message: that the US will not be drawn into conflict by the Israelis.

Much has changed as a result of Israel’s near-defeat at the hands of Hezbollah in 2006. Traditionally, the Israel Defence Force (IDF) has enjoyed a mythical status, based on a history of devastating operations such as the surprise attack on the Egyptian air force at the start of the Six Day War of 1967 (the entire fleet was destroyed before they could even leave the ground); the commando incursion into Entebbe in 1976 to rescue the Jewish hostages (Netanyahu’s elder brother was the only commando killed in the raid); and the audacious bombing of Saddam’s secret nuclear reactors in 1981. Not any more. Filled with renewed confidence, Hezbollah has since been resurfacing the roads near Israel’s border; next time the sabre is rattled, men-at-arms may be transported with far greater ease and efficiency. Israel, in turn, has intensified flights over Lebanese airspace. Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, gave these operations a chilling significance: “we see Hezbollah expanding inside Lebanon and its growing influence, political and otherwise,” he said. “We wish to make clear to the Lebanese leadership that we see everything, and we will hold the parties which cause increased tension responsible.”

Yet such threats ring increasingly hollow. Although Israel attempted to restore the IDF’s battered reputation through the use of awesome force in Gaza in 2009, what these school-bully tactics really indicated was how vulnerable Israel is feeling. The assassination of the Hamas gun-runner in Dubai in January, which made headlines across the world, is another case in point. Every petty shoplifter is aware of the need to avoid CCTV, yet these highly-trained Mossad assassins neglected to avoid the security cameras. Could there be any doubt that a breadcrumb trail was being laid to Jerusalem? Clearly, the Israelis are desperate to gain the upper hand in the propaganda war. They are jittery and starting to overcompensate.

And with good reason. In a development that has far-reaching implications—and is of grave concern to Washington—the middle-eastern powers are beginning to align to a degree never seen before against the Jewish state. In February, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) convened the latest in a series of meetings of all the major players in Palestinian militancy, seeking to reconcile their differences in order to unite against Israel. This has been mirrored throughout the region. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has started to warn, for the first time, of an alliance between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas in the event of war.

During talks with his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad, the Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that “we need to put an end to the Zionist regime once and for all.” Emboldened by this, the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem delivered a stark warning to Israel. “I tell them, stop acting like thugs,” he said. “Do not test the resolve of Syria. You Israelis, you know that war at this time will reach your cities. If such a war breaks out… it will indeed be total war.”

It’s impossible to tell how much of this is bluff. Nonetheless, Israel’s choice of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh for assassination in Dubai indicates that the strengthening of their enemies’ alliances is what most worries them: Al-Mabhouh was responsible for smuggling arms from Iran to Gaza, and as such is symbolic of this new level of cooperation.

When pressing for tougher sanctions against Iran in Febraury, Netanyahu’s logic was revealing. “At least we will know it’s been tried,” he said. In his mind, at least, it appears that military confrontation with Iran is inevitable. He has previously claimed in Moscow that “we are not planning any wars.” Ahmadinejad, on the same day, said Israel is “seeking to start a war next spring or summer.” Obama’s biggest concern is that all of these statements may be right. After all, everyone knows that Israel prefers not to wage war in the winter.