Meron Benvenisti was deputy mayor of Jerusalem from 1971 to 1978, and is currently a columnist for Haaretz, Israel's largest newspaper. He is the author of Conflicts and Contradictions (1986) Intimate Enemies (California, 1995), and City of Stone (California, 1996).
"""When peace finally comes to Israel, Benvenisti will be regarded as a moral and courageous thinker who spoke out on behalf of the oppressed before it became the fashionable thing to do."" - Kirkus Reviews ""Benvenisti powerfully describes how Israelis have sought to obliterate all signs of the Palestinian past while Palestinians continue in their unrealistic fantasy of a return to a world that is no more."" - Tikkun ""Equally informed by intelligence and remorse, Sacred Landscape is a passionate book that eludes easy categorization [and] represents a heroic effort to transcend derelictions of the past through its scholarly restoration."" - Jerusalem Post ""The literature on the Arab-Israeli conflict is vast, but very little of it has anything new to contribute to a debate which usually amounts to no more than the reiteration of entrenched positions. Sacred Landscape is a refreshing exception to this. Here is an author who uses scholarship and knowledge of the land to make clear and uncompromising points. Benvenisti has produced an important work of lasting value. Its publication shows the strength and vitality of Israeli intellectual life. It is marked, above all, by an unflinching regard for truth, even the most inconvenient truths."" - Hugh Kennedy, Times Literary Supplement"