Pressures to lift economic sanctions against Iraq and Iran make studies of such sanctions, along with other restraints on investment and commerce, welcome additions to the political-economy literature. Uri Bialer's book is a diplomatic history of the effects of the Arab League boycott on Israeli oil supplies and the countermeasures Israel took to overcome them. The story he tells is powerful, and it has made me rethink carefully my former position on economic sanctions. This highly sympathetic consideration of Israel's difficult situation under sanctions reveals the extent to which desperation lowers inhibitions against actions that might have been disdained by policy-makers facing happier choices. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that this story shows that even when sanctions are operationally effective, they rarely achieve the strategic goals the initiators had in mind; indeed, sanctions are more likely to work at crosspurposes to those goals.