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5,030 words · no email, no account
No. 117 · Power & Politics · World Politics
The Siege Mentality
a biography of Benjamin Netanyahu
What the book is
A boy presses his ear to the wall of his father's study in Jerusalem, listening to the historian's lectures on exile, betrayal, and the long memory of the Jewish people. Decades later, that same boy will stand at a lectern in Washington and warn the world about Iran; will bury a brother at Entebbe; will become the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, and the most fiercely contested.
Yoav Eldan follows Benjamin Netanyahu from the seminar rooms of MIT to the commando units of Sayeret Matkal, from the television studios where he refined a new political vocabulary to the coalition rooms where he assembled, broke, and rebuilt governments. He traces a worldview forged in Revisionist Zionism and tempered by the certainty that the Jewish state lives always within range of its enemies — a siege mentality that became both political philosophy and governing instinct.
The book reckons with the costs. Corruption indictments. The judicial overhaul that split a country down its center. The intelligence failure of October 7, and the war that followed across Gaza, Lebanon, and beyond.
Drawing on Israeli, Palestinian, American, and Arabic sources, Eldan offers neither prosecution nor defense. He presents a man inseparable from the history that produced him, and asks what it means when a single life so thoroughly shapes — and is shaped by — the fate of a nation.
At a glance
- Subject
- Benjamin Netanyahu
- Shelf
- Power & Politics · World Politics
- Written by
- Yoav Eldan
- Chapters
- 19 across 278 pages
- Narrated by
- Camille Rhodes
- Editions
- Paperback · Hardcover · EPUB · Audiobook
- Authorisation
- Unauthorised — no subject, estate or label had approval over the text.
Contents · 19 chapters
- 01The InheritanceRead free
- 02Cheltenham2,759 words
- 03The Unit3,380 words
- 04The Institute3,471 words
- 05The Hot Tape3,586 words
- 06First Term3,068 words
- 07Wilderness3,186 words
- 08The Iran Clock6,944 words
- 09The Congress Speech3,002 words
- 10The Settlements5,123 words
- 11The Trump Years4,855 words
- 12The Trials6,435 words
- 13The Overhaul4,976 words
- 14October Seven6,457 words
- 15The Gaza War3,425 words
- 16The Expansion6,088 words
- 17The Longest-Serving6,708 words
- 18Rising Lion3,276 words
- 19The Warrant3,903 words
The opening chapter is published in full — read it here.
Editions
- Paperback · $19.99
- 6 × 9 in · 278 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback
- Hardcover · $24.99
- 6 × 9 in · 278 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · case laminate on the same text block
- EPUB · $3.99
- EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books
ISBN 979-8-90470-050-8 - Audiobook · $5.99
- Unabridged · 9h 18m · read by Camille Rhodes
ISBN 979-8-90623-031-7
The printed edition has no ISBN registered yet. It affects library and retail listing, not your order.
Questions
01Who is The Siege Mentality about?
Benjamin Netanyahu. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Siege Mentality — and the name goes on the line underneath.
02Is this an authorised biography?
No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented.
03Can I read some of it before buying?
Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 5,030 words of the book.
04How long is it?
About 85,000 words, 19 chapters, 278 pages in the paperback. The audiobook runs 9h 18m, measured from the finished masters.
05What is the printed book like?
6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf.
