Israel Shahak's book "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3,000 Years" is all the more important for being a document by a aknowledgeable Jew -- a Jewish "insider" -- about the beliefs and behavior of his fellow Jews. Born in Warsaw in 1933, Shahak spent a portion of his childhood in the concentration camp in Belsen, from which he immigrated to Palestine in 1945. He grew up in Israel, served in the Israeli military, and became a chemistry professor. Like all Israelis, he became fluent in Hebrew. He also became acclimated to the peculiar moral atmosphere of Israeli society: a combination of overweening arrogance and deceit, a mixture of pugnacious self-righteousness and duplicity.

Unlike his fellow Israelis, however, Professor Shahak is deeply troubled by this peculiar atmosphere. Whereas the Jews around him take it for granted that the goyim on whom they depend for economic, military, and diplomatic support are too stupid ever to figure out what the Jews think about them and say about them behind their backs and plan to do to them when they can, and too sheeplike ever to take effective action if they do figure it out, he worries. He remembers that the Romans figured it out, and they consequently sacked Jerusalem and ended their cult in Palestine. He remembers that the Germans figured it out, and that's why he became an involuntary tenant in a concentration camp. He's worried that if his fellow Jews continue behaving as they always have, they will get themselves into some really serious trouble -- again.