AM I MY BROTHER’S KEEPER?

An Israeli Political Novel Predicting a Civil War

Daniel Gelleri

CIVIL WAR IN ISRAEL!  Though it is seemingly impossible, world media are screaming the headline. Has the greatest experiment in democracy utterly failed? As the Arab world gloats, the United States – the world’s only surviving superpower – is faced with momentous agony. On the stage of international politics, did it back the wrong actor?

One hundred and ten years after the birth of Yitzhak Isaac Isserlish, descendant of a prominent East-European rabbinical line, in Krakow, Poland, his great-grandsons are at war with one another in the hills of Jerusalem – a war that may truly prove to the world that Armageddon is at hand!

Following the government's decision to return Israel to its pre-1967 borders, ideological controversy tears apart the paper-thin fabric of what the world has always viewed as a beacon of hope, a secure monolith in a sea of discord. What was formerly whispered behind closed doors now explodes onto the streets of every major city and town. Each side is adamant in its view of the final shape of the country. Each side is also intent upon achieving its desired goal. The greatest fear becomes reality: CIVIL WAR!

Israeli citizens confront one another, brother against brother. They all love their country, all have its best interest at heart, and all fear for its safety, but conversely and tragically each finds his opponents' vision to be an abomination. In a tiny nation that has faced the enemy without fear for seventy-five years, the impossible is happening: the enemy is within. The enemy is not at the gates; the enemy is inside the gates! Each side is fighting for its own justice, its own faith, its own truth, and its own vision of a Biblical Israel redeemed. In a tightly-woven transgenerational saga, Daniel Gelleri, author of the popular novel Iris, traces the lives of five generations of one Jewish-Israeli family whose members share not only time, place, hopes, and dreams with their forefathers, but who are deeply affected by the nightmares and fears of their own lives. 

Daniel Gelleri, a senior officer in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) Reserves, was originally a secular Jew, who became Orthodox at the age of 25. He lived with his family on the West Bank settlement of Bat-Ayin for ten years. When Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist, Gelleri began to reexamine his faith and beliefs. After a period of soul searching he returned to his original secular life style and abandoned the religious world in which he had lived. His first novel, Iris, was received with great success.