Cockerell, Rachel. Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land. First American edition., Farrar, 2025.

My late father would often speak with disdain that Israel was in the wrong place.A secular progressive Jew, he always thought the Jews should have settled in a safe, discreet region of the world rather than smack in the middle of endless religious controversies and all-consuming passions.He was deeply troubled in the 1970s about all the attention Israel got, noticing the endless stream of stories that filled the first few pages of The New York Times.My dad equated all this Jewish attention with subsequent danger.He thought we Jews had made a horrendous mistake placing ourselves in the Middle East and had no patience for the biblical stories about our ancient homeland, believing them to be nothing more than dangerous nonsense.I don't think his heart ever mended from what had happened during the Holocaust, and he wanted to make sure this sort of barbarousness never occurred again.As the years went by and Israel survived one war after another and blossomed in ways that were inconceivable just years earlier, I thought I noticed a slight spark in his eye.But I'm certain he never gave up the belief that choosing Palestine was a grievous error.It hurts me to think what he thinks now--to see the Jews once again in such danger.