Son of the Cypresses: Memories, Reflections, and Regrets from a Political Life

"Now that I am seventy years of age, it is my prerogative to offer a summing up," says Meron Benvenisti, internationally known author and columnist, Jerusalem native, and scion of Israel’s founders. Born in Palestine in 1934 to a Sephardic father and an Ashkenazi mother, Benvenisti has enjoyed an unusual vantage point from which to consider his homeland’s conflicts and controversies.

Throughout his long and provocative career as a scholar, an elected official, and a respected journalist, he...