The State of Israel was founded in May 1948; about a year later, in the fall of 1949, West Germany and East Germany were established. The years 1949–1969 saw the formation and crystallization of different types of relationships between Israel and each of the two Germanies, relationships which would remain in place until the German reunification in 1990. Many studies have been devoted to the subject of Israeli–German relations in the years preceding 1990. Few among them probed into the Israeli–East German issue, whereas the vast majority focused on the Israeli–West German angle. The reason for this stemmed from the fact that substantial ties developed only between the Federal Republic and Israel.

One may ask what Lorena De Vita's contribution to the field is. She claims that her book is the first study ever to examine the relations of the two Germanies with Israel concurrently. “The picture that emerges,” she maintains, “from a multi-analysis of the early history of German-Israeli relations, reveals the shortcomings of the one-sided treatment in much of the available literature” (4). This analysis is closely related to the considerations of the Cold War since, according to De Vita, “the historical context of the global Cold War crucially shaped the making of German-Israeli relations in the aftermath of the Holocaust” (2).

On the surface, there would seem to be some room in the existing literature for an additional study, especially one such as suggested by De Vita. Firstly, it is certainly worthwhile to try out a new research approach that examines the issue from a wider perspective: the Israeli–West/East German one. Seeing things differently can often lead to new insights. Secondly, a considerable portion of the studies on Israeli–German relations is written in languages other than English (the international language of academia), namely in Hebrew or German. Thirdly, the available works in English did not use all the relevant source material, and therefore it is possible that the historical picture they present is incomplete or, worse, misleading. In this context, it is worth mentioning that De Vita bases her monograph on a wide array of primary sources, including archival documents, newspapers, interviews, and memoirs. One would be hard-pressed to find another study of the German–Israeli question in the English language that is supported by such a vast array of primary materials.

And yet, despite all of the above, the new research approach and the abundance of primary sources fail to produce any notable insights, certainly none that can be deemed thought-provoking or groundbreaking. The profusion of sources which De Vita uses does allow her to portray certain events in a slightly more comprehensive (and, of course, better documented) manner than other scholars did in the past, but no more than that. This fundamental flaw is accompanied by three other specific shortcomings.

The first and most significant of these pertains to the question of the Cold War in the context of Israeli–German relations. Central aspects of this issue are either completely missing from the book or referenced only in passing. Thus, for example, there is no mention of the fact that the Western powers (the US, the UK, and France) rejected the idea that West Germany would pay the sum stipulated in the Israeli reparations claim (one billion dollars) in its entirety, out of the apprehension that this would badly hurt the FRG's economic robustness—an unwanted development in the eyes of the West, which sought to incorporate a strong West German state into the anti-Soviet bloc. The Western powers likewise refrained from explicitly and intensively promoting the Israeli reparations claim so as not to provoke the wrath of the Arab nations—Israel's neighbors and foes—whom they were trying to coax into an anti-Soviet defense alliance. On the other hand, De Vita does not emphasize the fact that the Soviet Union opposed the idea of East Germany paying reparations to Israel in light of Israel's rapprochement with the US-led Western camp. Nor is there an in-depth examination of Jerusalem's efforts during the 1950s to obtain reparations from Berlin. The Soviet Union used the reparations issue to try and mobilize Israel and World Jewry in support of its cunning plan to unify the two Germanies into one neutral country (thereby depriving the Western Bloc of a powerful ally such as West Germany). Finally, and rather startlingly, the book lacks a thorough analysis of the Hallstein Doctrine, the 1955 West German doctrine which stipulated that Bonn would cut off relations or refrain from establishing diplomatic ties with any country that recognized the GDR's legitimacy. This principle was at the heart of the intra-German Cold War, an embodiment of each of the German states’ desire to gain international recognition as the sole representative of the German people.

This faulty treatment of the book's subject matter does not stop with the core issue of the Cold War. De Vita ignores certain other issues that are important, to one degree or another, to the understanding of her topic, while delving at length into relatively marginal subjects. Thus, for instance, she fails to address the question of the Israeli–Jewish boycott of Germany or to thoroughly examine the Israeli and German public opinion at important junctions in the relationship. On the other hand, an entire page of the book is dedicated to the biography of an Israeli official dispatched to the two Germanies to investigate the compensation issue (11), and an entire sub-chapter is dedicated to German–Iraqi relations (110–113)—two subjects that contribute little to the book's central theme.

A third shortcoming concerns historical inaccuracies, which abound in De Vita's book. To mention a few noteworthy mistakes: the Israeli cabinet did not decide to sue the two Germanies for reparations at its February 15, 1950 meeting (14)—that decision was made on February 8, 1951; the biggest opposition party in Israel at the beginning of 1952 was not Herut (25) but rather the General Zionists; the sum Israel received in the Reparations Agreement for the Claims Conference was not 450 million dollars, but rather 450 million DM, while the sum allotted for the purchase of petrol from Britain was not 75 million DM, but rather 1.05 billion DM (39); the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser had not “affirmed himself as a leading political figure in Egypt as well as in the Arab and non-aligned world” by 1955 (64)—this only happened in 1957, following the Sinai Campaign; and Israel's “Alliance of the Periphery” focused on three states—Turkey, Iran, and Ethiopia—rather than all the Third World countries “from Bolivia to Togo” (155).

All things considered, one can see in De Vita's book a genuine effort to proffer a methodical and innovative look at the Israeli–West/East German story. Unfortunately, it falls short of the mark.