The author does a good job of summarizing the books referenced and presenting an overall view. This quote from one of the books "It is well described by Sylvain Cypel, a French observer and editor of Le Monde, who spent many years in Israel, in his insightful book Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse. He writes, "The occupation automatically reinforced the most ethnicist tendencies." is a quote that could be applied to all occupations. I did find this contradiction in the writing; "The settlement fever first spread among young men and women who believed they were following in the footsteps of the early Zionist pioneers, the fabled "beggars with dreams" who between 1892 and 1948 had settled on land owned by Jews." and "Perhaps Israeli leaders recalled that in 1948, Israel had ended up with almost twice the area allocated it in the UN partition resolution". That 'almost twice the area' did NOT occur because 'beggars with dreams settled on land owned by Jews"; to the contrary, it was land seized from the legal owners as a result of the 1948 war. And the article fails to examine just why the world created a 'State' on land owned and settled by others than those the world wanted to give a 'State' to.