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Recommended Books
The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict and
History of Zionism and Israel
(Continued from Recommended Reading main index)
Amos Oz, In the Land of Israel
Amos Oz, one of Israel's foremost writers, and a leader of the Peace Now movement, probes the soul of his country through a series of interviews with both Jews and Arabs. (Publisher)
Amos Oz, Israel, Palestine and Peace: Essays
The "modern prophet of Israel" (Sunday Telegraph) brings his poetic vision and his voice of conscience to advocate a two-state solution. (Publisher)
David Grossman, The Yellow Wind
The Israeli novelist David Grossman's impassioned account of what he observed on the West Bank in early 1987 - not only the misery of the Palestinian refugees and their deep-seated hatred of the Israelis but also the cost of occupation for both occupier and occupied - is an intimate and urgent moral report on one of the great tragedies of our time. The Yellow Wind caused a sensation upon its original publication. Now with a new introduction by the author, it is essential reading for anyone who seeks a deeper understanding of Israel today. (Publisher)
David Grossman, Sleeping on a Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel
Almost one fifth of Israel's citizens are Arabs and they are in a painful position--Arabs in the eyes of Israel's Jewish population, Israelis to the Palestinians. As one man describes his current situation, "my people is at war with my country." This book provides a searching report on their plight by an Israeli Jew intent on understanding them. "A....writer of passionate self honesty, unafraid to ask terrible questions" –Nadine Gordimer (Publisher)
Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel's Fateful Hour
In this outstanding book Harkabi challenges all the conventional wisdom about Israeli national security by demonstrating that the PLO and the Arab states are prepared to conclude peace with Israel but that an 'iron wall' of Israeli intransigence is inhibiting a peaceful settlement. . . . He presents a highly convincing argument that the only hope Israel has to ensure its security and survival is to cease Jewish settlement and to enter into negotiations with the PLO. . . . {Harkabi's} impeccable scholarship, incisive strategic analysis, and intellectual integrity make this fine translation essential reading for all--college students, scholars, and general readers--who are interested in the Arab-Palestinian-Israeli conflict. (From C.A. Rubenberg – Choice)
From David K. Shipler — The New York Times Book Review: Having served as chief of military intelligence and as an intelligence adviser to several prime ministers, Mr. Harkabi made his initial reputation as a meticulous analyst of Arab writings on the Middle East conflict. . . . Mr. Harkabi has gone through a long process of conversion from hawk to 'Machiavellian dove,' as he calls himself. And that process has now led him to write his thundering statement, 'Israel's Fateful Hour,' a cogent policy analysis and prescription . . . It takes the reader well inside the anguished debates that occupy the Jewish state, illuminating with reasoned clarity the case against what the author calls the 'nationalistic Judaism' that holds the balance of power in Jerusalem.
Amos Elon, A Blood Dimmed Tide: Dispatches from the Middle East
A Blood-Dimmed Tide gathers nearly thirty years of Amos Elon's work on the Middle East. Skillfully moving from the Intifada, to the Gulf War and its aftermath, to the Peace Now! movement, these essays provide a nuanced account of relations between Jews and Arabs, and among the Israelis themselves. This internationally-known journalist presents sharply observed portraits of the region's key figures: Shimon Peres, Yitzak Rabin, King Hussein; he interviews Yasir Arafat, and considers Moshe Dayan's life and legacy. Elon also ranges far to sketch the political climate of the region and its players, from Israeli settlers in Hebron and their uneasy coexistence with Arab neighbors to the foreign policy of Egypt. From the Palestinian's refusal to accept Israel's 1978 offer of "full autonomy," to the Israeli government's insistence that settling the occupied territories would bring security, Elon traces what he considers to be the deadly miscalculations of both groups. As he examines the events and misunderstandings that have made it so difficult for Palestinians and Israelis to establish peace, Elon concludes that what will finally bring the two sides together will not be moral imperative or personal courage, but exhaustion. (Publisher)
Yaron Ezrahi, Rubber Bullets: Power and Conscience in Modern Israel
A senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, Ezrahi has written an eloquent, often personal account of a not often talked about transformation inthe way Israelis see themselves: Where once citizens were taught their individual lives mattered only insofar as they were actors in the collective Zionist drama of return and redemption, the special meaning of private existence is now ever more assertively permeating life. Ezrahi explores how this emerging individualism has allowed many Israelis--among them the late Yitzchak Rabin--to view the 'land for peace' equation as something other than a betrayal of the Zionist dream. {The book} would be worth reading for this nuanced analysis alone, but the author renders an additional service by painting a picture of a country that is defined by more than its military and political struggles (thus avoiding a shortcoming of many other important works). This book is less about policy than it is about people. (Hanan Cohen - The New Leader)
Itamar Rabinovich, Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs at the End of the Century
When a veteran Israeli diplomat such as Rabinovich tackles the daunting task of bringing clarity to the relationships between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians, readers should avail themselves of the opportunity to learn something. [A] lucid primer on Middle East diplomacy.... As head of the Israeli delegation that negotiated with Syria from 1992 to 1995 and as a former ambassador to the U.S., Rabinovich had a good view of the diplomatic footwork that followed the Madrid conference and the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO. While he offers summaries of Israel’s post-Camp David cold peace with Egypt and its negotiations with PLO proxies (before direct talks), Rabinovich is most enlightening when discussing the very difficult negotiations with Syria and when demonstrating how the intricacies of domestic Israeli politics figure in the calculations of its negotiating counterparts. He is also very adept at explaining how, despite paying lip service to pan-Arab solidarity, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Syria’s Hafez al-Asad, Jordan’s King Hussein and PLO chairman Yasir Arafat were also competing against one another for advantage (and, frequently, for American favor). A firm advocate of the peace process, Rabinovich is cautiously optimistic. While celebrating the fact that a web of vested interests, relations and expectations conducive to peace has been established, he envisions peace arriving, if it arrives at all, haltingly, over many years and with many setbacks. (Publishers Weekly)
Amnon Rubinstein, The Zionist Dream Revisited: From Herzl to Gush Emunim and Back
"A passionate and profound critique of contemporary Israeli politics and at the same time a courageous restatement of faith in the basic principles of the Zionism of the generation of the founders." Walter Laqueur
"A brilliant analysis of politics and intellectual life.. This book is a must for anyone wishing to understand what happened in Israel under Begin and Sharon." Amos Elon
"'Hold fast to the things that have made us great: to liberality, tolerance, love of mankind. Only then is Zion truly Zion.' These words from the founder of Israel's liberation movement, Theodor Herzl, resound eloquently in Amnon Rubinstein's book. He does not shirk the tormenting question whether our society and its leadership are faithful to that dream. Those who have concern for the Jewish future and for Israel's destiny will be soberly rewarded by reading this lucid and visionary text." Abba Eban
Amnon Rubinstein, From Herzl to Rabin: The Changing Image of Zionism
Zionism has been co-opted by violent right-wing extremists and misunderstood by left-wing post- and anti-Zionist intellectuals, argues Rubinstein in this very dense and complex but illuminating account of the movement that resulted in the modern-day State of Israel. The fruit of this co-optation was the 1996 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, he contends. Rubinstein, who has long been a journalist, human rights activist and member of Knesset (he was also a minister in Rabin's government), advocates a return to what he calls the original tenets of Zionism, a movement that sought to establish a democratic home for the Jewish people, not a state governed by Mosaic law. "Only by returning to original Zionism," writes Rubinstein, can Israel continue as a Jewish state and live in peace and security. His most compelling chapter, "Toward Rabin's Assassination," chronicles the rise of religious nationalist extremism, which Rubinstein dates to Israel's victory in 1967's Six-Day War. He traces the rise of Gush Emunim, the ultra-Orthodox group whose members, despite Israeli prohibitions, moved to the Arab-occupied West Bank, forcing the Israeli government to protect them. He also quotes Yigal Amir, who, during an interrogation by the police after he assassinated Rabin, cited newly coined ultra-Orthodox rabbinic statements that he interpreted as sanctioning violence against anyone--Jew, Arab or otherwise--who disagreed with their vision of the Zionist ideal. (Publishers Weekly)
Arthur Hertzberg, Jewish Polemics
Provocative, politically important, and controversial essays--by one of the most widely read and respected scholars of the Jewish experience--that touch on topics such as Zionism in America, God and the Holocaust, Christian-Jewish relations, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Israeli politics. Especially compelling and of continued relevance to contemporary politics are Hertzberg's "Open Letter to Elie Wiesel" and "Open Letter to Menachem Begin." (Doni Remba)
David Hartman, Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating Its Future
Faced with the profound contemporary polarization between secular and religious in Israel, Hartman, a recipient of two National Jewish Book Awards for previous works (Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest, etc.), proposes a third path: one that allows secular Israelis seeking meaning in their Jewish identity to return to traditional texts without suffering authoritarian condemnation for not adhering to Jewish law. Hartman goes a step farther and will ruffle many religious feathers in arguing for the "demythologization" of the Jewish people, for an abandonment of the "narcissistic frame of mind in which the reality of God revolves exclusively around my people's history, my rituals and my traditions." In seeking a paradigm for this open-ended approach, Hartman turns to the two great medieval Jewish philosophers: Maimonides and Rabbi Judah Halevi. The latter viewed Judaism as a mystical, revelation-based religion oriented toward messianic redemption and the particularity of the Jews. Maimonides, in contrast, took an Aristotelian rationalist approach to Judaism, focusing more on the universalistic spirit of the Bible's creation narrative than on the particularism of the revelation at Mt. Sinai. Halevi's mode of thought, Hartman asserts, underlies the attitudes of religious Zionists who oppose territorial compromise in the Middle East, a position Hartman rejects, favoring territorial compromise just as he preaches compromise regarding the religious tradition. Judaism, he says, is a text-based interpretive tradition, and secular Jews can reenter the interpretive conversation without committing themselves to halakhic observance. Much of what Hartman says will be controversial, but he offers a serious proposal for reimagining Judaism in the modern, secularist world. (Publishers Weekly)
David Makovsky, Making Peace with the PLO: The Rabin Government's Road to the Oslo Accord
The road to the Oslo accord is the subject of David Makovsky's excellent book. An Israeli journalist who writes for both The Jerusalem Post and U.S. News and World Report, Mr. Makovsky interviewed numerous Israeli, Palestinian, American, Egyptian and Norwegian officials for this thoroughly researched, well-written account. Rich in detail and filled with insights about Israeli politics, Mr. Makovsky's narrative takes readers behind the headlines and offers information unavailable elsewhere. (Mark Tessler - The New York Times Book Review)
Distinguished by meticulous research, stylish prose, and many new insights. It is by far the easiest avenue now available for understanding the tortuous complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. -Abba Eban
With meticulous research and interviews with nearly all of the key Israeli players, the author provides a clear, detailed and very readable account of how, and equally important, why the Oslo agreement came about. It unravels the politics of why Prime Minister Rabin shifted policy in the course of 1993 and decided to deal with the PLO. An important addition to the literature on the topic. (Jewish Book World)
Uri Savir, The Process: 1,100 Days That Changed the Middle East
"Savir, Israel's chief negotiator with the PLO from 1993 to 1996, resigned as director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry when Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition took power. His dramatic chronicle detailing three years of secret and semi-secret talks between Israel and the Palestinians -- mostly in Oslo, but also in Rome, Geneva, Cairo, Tunis -- is a remarkable piece of living history." -- Publisher's Weekly
"Meet your Enemy Number One," a nervous Norwegian diplomat said to Uri Savir, the young director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, as he introduced him to Abu Ala, one of Yasser Arafat's top aides. They were in Oslo, and this was the first official encounter between Israel and the PLO. The atmosphere was tense. Savir read from prepared notes: "The aim of Israel's elected government," he began, "is to bring about a historic reconciliation with the Palestinian people. We have no interest in only a cosmetic change of the status quo. It is not our wish to control your lives ...." This book is the Israeli chief negotiator's extraordinary account of those negotiations, their implementation and aftermath, and of the unlikely partnership that emerged between Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat, and Shimon Peres. (Publisher)
"...Savir's book [is] critical for those -- in Israel and abroad -- who sincerely want to appreciate the real requirements for peace and the real obstacles to it....Savir is a professional diplomat, striving on every page to be fair and factual, and keenly aware of the failings of the peace process... -- New York Times Book Review, Serge Schmemann
Ehud Sprinzak, The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right
This important report provides the fullest picture to date of Israel's extremist right-wing movement and the threat it poses to democratic politics and culture. Sprinzak, who teaches political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, argues that the true believers of the Israeli far right, through their penetration of the power structure and their strategic location in the occupied territories, wield considerable political influence disproportionate to their numbers. He looks at various factions: the messianic Gush Emunim, committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank; recently assassinated Meir Kahane's violent Kach party; the Tehiya party, which articulates an ultra-conservative agenda in parliament; and the Moledet party which demands the ``transfer'' (i.e., deportation) of all the Arabs of the West Bank to the surrounding Arab countries. Sprinzak contends that the radical right may become even more divisive in the future, with a civil war or a major violent conflict a distinct possibility. (Publishers Weekly)
Ehud Sprinzak, Brother Against Brother: Violence and Extremism in Israeli Politics from Altalena to the Rabin Assassination
The 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin didn't happen "out of the blue," according to this extremely well researched and written study. Sprinzak (political Science/Hebrew University; The Ascendance of Israel's Radical Right) touches on other pockets of violence in Israel's history, but his primary focus is on violence by the political extreme right, beginning with the underground groups known as Irgun and the Stern Gang during the five-year-long revolt against British rule (1944-48) and continuing to the present day. He shows how, after the 1967 Six Day War and in such figures as the late Meir Kahane, Baruch Goldstein (the 1994 murderer of more than 29 Arabs praying at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron), and Yigal Amir (Rabin's assassin), an uncompromising nationalism was fused with a religious orthodoxy that dehumanized Arabs while also delegitimizing and demonizing Israel's leaders. Some rabbis spoke of Rabin according to the traditional heinous halakhic (Jewish legal) categories of rodef and moser (respectively, a person who pursues another with intent to kill, and a Jew who Informs on other Jews to the gentile authorities). Yet despite the sharp rise in political violence, Sprinzhak feels that, given the foreign and domestic pressures Israel experiences, things could be far worse. He argues that Israeli political life is in fact marked by relative restraint and that a violent civil war remains only a remote possibility, a major reason for this being "the stiff Halakhic prohibitions against domestic violence and even more so, the powerful psychosocial system of self-control and fear of civil war developed and experienced in the Diaspora." Sprinzak's guarded optimism about the durability of Israel's parliamentary democracy is well earned, coming as it does after a clear, thoughtful historical and phenomenological look at the prevalence of rhetorical and behavioral extremism In Israeli political life. (Kirkus Reviews)
Ian Lustick, For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel
A compelling book. There have been other efforts at telling the story of Jewish fundamentalism from the point of view of its intellectual history, its theological tenets, and its sociological dynamics, but none has the tightness of focus, quality of writing, and the overriding sense of policy urgency {of}the present volume. Lustick, who has established his scholarly credentials on the subject of comparative communal conflict with studies of Northern Ireland, French Algeria, and Arabs within Israel, has an alarming story to relate but he does so with objectivity and careful scholarship. . . . The author's reasoned analysis leads him to near apocalyptic visions of constitutional crisis and internal violence if a territorial solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is ever achieved under any existing territory for peace formula. Appendixes include a glossary, a summary of Israeli polling data on fundamentalism, and biographies of key activists. Recommended for all general library, high school, and college libraries. (L.J. Cantori - Choice)
The tension between the secular Zionist Jews who make up most of {Israel's} population and the messianic, religious fundamentalists, a small minority that rejects the whole notion of temporal democratic government for the Jewish state, ever simmers here, always threatening to explode. {This book} offers a compelling and, at times, frightening picture of this struggle. Indeed, it is Ian S. Lustick's theory that if it weren't for the preoccupying regional conflict between Arabs and Jews, Israel would find itself caught in another war, this one civil. The evidence he offers is convincing, and the objective facts certainly support his thesis. Lustick is a professor of government at Dartmouth College and a specialist on Middle Eastern politics. (Joel Brinkley - The New York Times Book Review)
Robert I. Friedman, Zealots for Zion : Inside Israel's West Bank Settlement Movement
"This is a chilling book." (New York Times Book Review) This book "is among a new genre of works on Israel that ... appears to be setting a higher standard of objectivity for studies of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. ...It is not only a penetrating look at the violence-prone Israeli zealots who are behind the aggressive establishment of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied territories, but also at the Jewish Americans who encourage, justify and help fund them." (Donald Neff, Washington Post Book World) "Above all else, Friedman documents the extent to which Israeli political figures have used the settler movement for their own purposes. He also argues convincingly that the general unwillingness of many Israelis to thwart the zealots poses a grave threat to the future of Palestinian-Israeli relations." (Rita Hauser, Tikkun) The penultimate chapter is about Peace Now. (DR)
Avishai Margalit, Views in Review: Politics and Culture in the State of the Jews
Sixteen thoughtful, sometimes penetrating essays and long reviews, most of which originally appeared during the past decade in the New York Review of Books, about the outstanding political personalities and societal issues of contemporary Israeli life. Margalit (Philosophy/Hebrew University; The Decent Society), a political columnist, notes "the tendency to describe and think about Israel in allegories" and the fact that "much of the criticism of Israel, both internal and external, is directed at its pretensions rather than its reality." By contrast, he focuses on the specific character and historical records of such political leaders as Benjamin Netanyahu, Ariel Sharon, the late Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres, as well as on the psychological, ideological, and socio-economic repercussions of such phenomena as the large-scale immigration to Israel from the former USSR. His best essays, "The Rise of the Ultra-Orthodox," "The Use of the Holocaust in Israel," and "The Kitsch of Israel," deal with the mythos of the Jewish state. Usually, Margalit writes as an observer, though hardly a dispassionate one; his "dovish" sentiments are evident. His fluid prose also manifests a keen awareness of the many paradoxical and ironical aspects of Israeli life, as when the author observes that right-wing immigrants "vacillate between a sense of megalomania about Israeli might, on the one hand, and on the other, feelings of extreme self-pity and powerlessness." His writing reveals that with the country's many internal tensions and countervailing trends, not to mention its balkanized party system, nothing is self-evident or simple about current Israeli politics. (Kirkus Reviews)
J. J. Goldberg, Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment
A seasoned reporter and gifted story teller, Goldberg offers a rare insider's portrait of the people, the institutions, the money, and the ideas that make up Jewish political influence in the United States, from the Anti-Defamation League to the United Jewish Appeal, to The New York Times, to the informal Jewish caucus in the House of Representatives. Blunt and unsentimental, Goldberg confronts some of the toughest issues raised by this influence. He details the absolutely vital role Jews play in Democratic party politics and fund-raising. He describes the inner workings of the feared pro-Israel lobby, its stormy relations with other Jewish groups, and its surprising role in shaping American foreign policy. And he tackles the thorny questions of Jewish media influence, starting with the thorniest: Why do the media so often appear to non-Jews as a base of Jewish influence, and to Jews as an anti-Jewish force? "They cannot both be true," he writes, "And yet, to a great degree, they are." With a mixture of anecdote and analysis, Goldberg shows how the Jewish establishment operates, names its players, and describes the political and religious feuds that divide it. He details its agenda, from foreign aid to affirmative action and school prayer, and describes the Jewish leaders' shifting alliances with other groups; the black community, the Republican right, the state of Israel. And he warns of a growing alienation between the Jewish establishment and the six million American Jews who are its "presumed constituency." (Publisher)
Anita Shapira, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force: 1881 - 1948
No other issue so dramatically demonstrates the deep change which occurred in the image of the Jew during the last century as the attitude toward the use of force. A people who were characterized as averse to violence and all forms of fighting adopted military might as its identity symbol. In Land and Power, Anita Shapira traces the road along which the Zionist movement gave up its early ideal of peaceful settlement in Palestine, to the incorporation of the use of force as a legitimate tool for realizing the idea of Jewish national sovereignty there. Shapira includes an in-depth discussion of the emergence of a new, "Israeli" national ethos, accompanied by its particular symbols, myths, and norms. She traces the evolution of a "defensive ethos" in the early decades of the century that reflected the scruples and inhibitions of first-generation socialist Zionist settlers. The appearance in the 1940s of an "offensive ethos" coincided with the coming of age of a new native-born generation, unfettered by their fathers' sensitivities. Shapira argues that this indicated that the barriers of ideology, moral norms, and mental restraints constructed by the founding fathers proved unequal to the impact of the social and political realities of state building. More than an account of political developments, Land and Power explores how the Israeli leadership and population developed a moral justification for the use of force. In so doing, Shapira points up the differences between leadership insights and the views of the general population, arguing that an ambiguity towards the use of force has always been a part of the Israeli national ethos. (Publisher)
Arthur Herztberg, The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader
The Zionist Idea, a classic since its initial publication in 1959, is an anthology drawn from the writings of 37 of the leading thinkers of the Zionist movement, including Theodor Herzl, Ahad Ha-Am, Martin Buber, Louis Brandeis, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Judah Magnes, Max Nordau, Ludwig Lewisohn, Solomon Schechter, Mordecai Kaplan, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Chaim Weizmann, and David Ben-Gurion. Includes a superb introductory essay by Hertzberg.
Walter Lacqueur, A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel
Classic account of the European background, the prehistory of the Zionist movement, five decades of Zionist activities, ending with the establishment of the state of Israel. Highlights the roots of the ideological conflict between right and left in Israel. (Doni Remba)
Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State
"In this new history of the Zionist idea, Avineri, an internationally renowned political philosopher and a leading figure in Israeli politics, rejects the common propaganda view--Zionist as well as anti-Zionist--which regards Zionism as solely a reaction to anti-Semitism and persecution. Rather, he sees it as another part of the universal quest for self-determination. In eighteen sharply etched intellectual profiles of Zionism's major thinkers from Moses Hess to Theodor Herzl and from Vladimir Jabotinsky to David Ben-Gurion, he traces the evolution of this quest from its intellectual origins in the early nineteenth century to the establishment of the state of Israel. The result is a book that enables us to understand, as perhaps never before, one of the truly revolutionary ideas of our time." (Publisher)
A B Yeshoshua, Between Right and Right: Israel: Problem or Solution
"One of Israel's foremost writers defines what is means to be a Jew, an Israeli, and a Zionist... Assays the old myths and new truths of the Jewish state and the state of being a Jew. As long as Israel remains a symbol to many and a nation to few, the myth of Jews as an alien, homeless people will perpetuate threats to the nation's existence." (Publisher)
Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust
A controversial and powerful work, this monumental history is the first to show the decisive impact of the Holocaust on the identity, ideology, and politics of Israel. Drawing on thousands of pages of newly declassified documents as well as diaries and interviews, Segev tells the dramatic story of how the Jewish community confronted the rise of the Nazis and have dealt with the consequences. {He examines} the Holocaust's impact on the ideology and politics of Israel, and how {it} . . . continues to shape the life of a nation." (Booklist)
Charles S. Liebman Eliezer Don-Yehiya, Civil Religion in Israel: Traditional Judaism and Political Culture in the Jewish State
"The major theme of this book by two Israeli scholars is the evolution of civil religion and its relationship to the political culture of Israel and of other Jewish communities." Highlights the struggle between pragmatic Zionist politics and a post-1967 Israeli civil religion animated by belief in the inevitability of Jewish persecution, the Jew as victim, the centrality of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism to Jewish experience in both the Diaspora and Israel, the inescapability of Gentile-Jewish conflict. The new civil religion in Israel is also discussed in books on this list by Rubinstein, Biale, Lustick, Zerubavel, Segev, Elon, Harkabi, Yehoshua. Its American Jewish reflection is explored in Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, Charles S. Leibman and Steven M Cohen, Two Worlds of Judaism: The Israeli and American Experiences, and Goldberg's Jewish Power. (Doni Remba)
Glenn Frankel, Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on the Hard Road to a New Israel
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award, this book by an American Jewish journalist who won the Pulitizer Prize as the Washington Post's bureau chief in Jerusalem, was called by Abba Eban "The most vivid, tormenting and candid portrait of the Israeli occupation that has ever appeared in print." "An erudite, astute synopsis of Israel's economic, social and political upheavals...This comprehensive history is a jewel." (Kirkus Reviews) "This superb, gripping piece of reportage is a pivotal account of a new Israel struggling to be born." (Publishers Weekly)
David Shipler, Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land
{This is} a definitive report of enormous size that, while exhaustively covering the whole often familiar ground, manages to do so with remarkable freshness and originality. . . . {It} seems to leave no aspect of the complex Arab-Jewish relationship untouched, ranging through such contrasting topics as war and friendship, terrorism and intermarriage, reciprocal myths and understandings, social and sexual attraction and repulsion, conflicting nationalisms, . .. all presented in an abundance of narratives, anecdotes and conversations that never seem hackneyed. . . . There is something utterly American . . . about this whole book, from its moments of most painful indictment to those of its most generous-hearted amiability. . . . For there is a subtext throughout Mr. Shipler's book that amounts to being a vicarious dialogue inside the American conscience. (Ronald Sanders - The New York Times Book Review )
Thomas Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem
Winner of the 1989 National Book Award for nonfiction, this extraordinary bestseller is still the most incisive, thought-provoking book ever written about the Middle East. Thomas L. Friedman, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, and now the Foreign Affairs columnist on the op-ed page of the New York Times, drew on his ten years in the Middle East to write a book that The Wall Street Journal called "a sparkling intellectual guidebook... an engrossing journey not to be missed." Now with a new chapter that brings the ever-changing history of the conflict in the Middle East up to date, this seminal historical work reaffirms both its timeliness and its timelessness. "If you're only going to read one book on the Middle East, this is it." - Seymour Hersh. "From Beirut To Jerusalem is the most intelligent and comprehensive account one is likely to read." - New York Times Book Review (Publisher)
David Horovitz, A Little Too Close to God: The Thrills and Panic of a Life in Israel
The editor of the Jerusalem Report [a prestigious English-language Israeli newsmagazine], Horovitz ...devotes much of the book to the difficulties of the stumbling peace process--which he and his wife strongly support--and on the increasing fragmentation of Israeli society as epitomized by the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. As the book's title implies, Horovitz, a liberal, secular Jew, has little stomach for the views of Israel's hard-liners, who oppose territorial compromise with its Arab neighbors. But while partisan, the book is no polemic. With the help of an Orthodox cousin and a brother-in-law who lives in the West Bank, Horovitz lays out the arguments for and against reconciliation with the Arab world. He's managed to write an engaging book that introduces the reader to the personal struggles emanating from the conflict in the Middle East. (Publishers Weekly)
Walter Laqueur (Editor) Barry Rubin (Editor), The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict
The Israel-Arab Reader is a thorough and up-to-date guide to the continuing crisis in the Middle East. It covers the full spectrum of the Israel-Arab conflict-from the earliest days, through the wars and peacemaking efforts, up to the Israel-PLO and Israel-Jordan peace accords. This comprehensive reference includes speeches, letters, articles, and reports dealing with all the major interests in the area from all of the relevant political parties and world leaders. Completely updated, consolidated, and revised throughout, The Israel-Arab Reader contains new sections on the Wye River agreement, and other recent developments, making it the essential resource on the ongoing conflict. (Publisher)
Ian J. Bickerton and Carla L. Klausner, A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Prentice-Hall, 4th edition, 2002). This is a condensed history which makes a good companion to Mark Tessler's big volume. It has the added advantage that every chapter is followed by a series of excerpts from key documents, including all the major UN Resolutions. And it is balanced and non-partisan. (Frank Tachau)
Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of the Israeli National Tradition
Because new nations need new pasts, they create new ways of commemorating and recasting select historic events. In Recovered Roots, Yael Zerubavel illuminates this dynamic process by examining the construction of Israeli national tradition. In the years leading to the birth of Israel, Zerubavel shows, Zionist settlers in Palestine consciously sought to rewrite Jewish history by reshaping Jewish memory. Zerubavel focuses on the nationalist reinterpretation of the defense of Masada against the Romans in 73 C.E. and the Bar Kokhba revolt of 133-135; and on the transformation of the 1920 defense of a new Jewish settlement in Tel Hai into a national myth. Zerubavel demonstrates how, in each case, Israeli memory transforms events that ended in death and defeat into heroic myths and symbols of national revival. Drawing on a broad range of official and popular sources and original interviews, Zerubavel shows that the construction of a new national tradition is not necessarily the product of government policy but a creative collaboration between politicians, writers, and educators. Her discussion of the politics of commemoration demonstrates how rival groups can turn the past into an arena of conflict as they posit competing interpretations of history and opposing moral claims on the use of the past. Zerubavel analyzes the emergence of counter-memories within the reality of Israel's frequent wars, the ensuing debates about the future of the occupied territories, and the embattled relations with Palestinians. A fascinating examination of the interplay between history and memory. (Publisher)
Yehoshafat Harkabi, The Bar Kohba Syndrome: Risk and Realism in International Politics
"Approaching the significance of victories and defeats," wrote Harkabi, "I ...examine what lessons [can] be gleaned from the defeats my people, the Jews, suffered. ...I am thoroughly convinced that the problems raised in this [historical] debate are crucial, even fateful for the future of Israel and furthermore for the Jewish people. True, the discourse starts with past events, but inevitably spills over to the present basic problems of our existence. At the center [lies] the issue of realism in politics versus unrealism as epitomized in [what the author calls] the 'Bar Kohba Syndrome'," which he sees afflicting Israeli and Jewish thinking. The book culminates in an epilogue titled "Is Current Israeli Policy Realistic?" in its approach towards the Palestinians and the Arab states. (Doni Remba)
Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution
Walzer's own reading of the Biblical text is subtle and suggestive. . . .Rejecting Messianic interpretations, Walzer regards Exodus as a commentary on the fallen state of mankind and the difficulties of liberation, particularly for souls raised in bondage. . . . His Exodus is a parable of cautious hope, illustrating both 'a democratic kind of politics' and the constant danger of moral weakness. The subject of this study is "liberation--'the idea of a deliverance from suffering and oppression.' {The author} examines this idea by interweaving an interpretation of the Biblical text of Exodus with accounts of how the Biblical story has been used in modern radical tracts, sermons and slogans. He argues that the Bible's account of what happened in Egypt and at Sinai became a model for later efforts to mobilize 'men and women for a politics without precedent in their own experience.' Thinking about Exodus may therefore illuminate some of the difficulties and dilemmas contained in the promise of liberation." (Newsweek)
The concluding chapter, Exodus Politics, offers a critique of messianic Zionism, in contrast with the pragmatism of Exodus politics. Discussing the Deuteronomic commandment according to which the Israelites were to drive out or kill the Canaanites and other inhabitants of the land, Walzer reminds us that "the commandment, 'Thou shalt utterly destroy them,' [Deut: 20-17-18] does not survive the work of interpretation; it was effectively rescinded by talmudic and medieval commentators arguing over its future applications. If there was another Exodus, would there be another conquest--and would the inhabitants of the promised land once again be placed under the ban? The commandment applied, the commentators argued, only to specific groups of people, named in the text, who no longer exist or can no longer be recognized. 'Sennacherb the King of Assyria cam,' wrote Rabbi Yehuda, invoking the biblical account of the reign of Hezekiah (2 Kings 18-19), 'and confounded all the nations.' 'Their memory,' wrote Maimonides, 'has long perished.' Hence the ban would have no practical effect; Jews returning to the land would not encounter Hittites or Amorites. Right-wing Zionists who cite the biblical passages are practicing a kind of fundamentalism that is entirely at odds with the Jewish tradition. For Judaism, like Exodus politics itself, is not found in the text so much as in the interpretations of the text....Compared with political messianism, Exodus makes for a cautious and moderate politics...Political messianism is quite different....[O]nce a decision has been made to force the End, there is no room for argument. Then politics becomes absolute, enemies satanic, compromise impossible." (Doni Remba)
David Biale, Power and Powerless in Jewish History
In this radical reinterpretation of Jewish history, David Biale tackles the myth of Jewish political passivity between the fall of an independent Jewish Commonwealth in 70 C.E. and the rebirth of the state of Israel in 1948. He argues that Jews throughout history demonstrated a savvy understanding of political life; they were neither as powerless as the memory of the Holocaust years would suggest nor as powerful as the contemporary state of Israel would imply. (Publisher)
Biale's "work argues that Jews were not nearly so politically passive and powerless as often imagined, nor did they enjoy absolute political power when sovereign in ancient Israel. His review of Jewish history {seeks to} demonstrate that biblical Jewish sovereignty was restricted by the hegemony of imperial powers. {According to the author} the classical rabbis were not otherworldly pacifists but pragmatic realists who developed a political theology lasting through the middle ages. {Further, that} medieval Jews acted on their sense of external and internal power despite their exile, and modern Jewish groups emerged that vied for political power and reread Jewish history to justify their own Jewish historical departures." (Choice) Index.
To shed light on the tensions he observed between Jewish perceptions of power versus political realities which ``are often the cause of misguided political decisions,'' like Israel's Lebanese War. Biale analyzes Jewish history from the point of view of politics and power. The author of Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History here challenges the conventions of what he terms the Jewish ``mythical past'': the anachronistic interpretation that the Diaspora, which occurred between the fall of an independent Jewish commonwealth in A.D. 70 and the rebirth of the State of Israel in 1948, was politically impotent, and, conversely, that the First and Second Temple periods were eras of full Jewish national sovereignty. His succinct, thoroughly researched, insightful arguments such as his thesis that the Hasmonean Revolt was neither a primarily religious nor a nationalistic resistance to the Greeks but an internal Jewish struggle for control of the high priesthood are sure to spark controversy. (Publishers Weekly)
Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
In perhaps one of the most valuable recent works on this subject, Oren, a scholar and Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, Jerusalem, details events from the Six Day War known in the Arab world as Al-Naksah (the setback) or simply the June war. The book's value lies in its focus and extensive documentation of multilingual resources, including archives, newspapers, reports, books, interviews, and Internet sites. In addition, Oren covers the international, regional, and domestic implications of the war and uses maps to illustrate the geographical changes and military strategies. Many books, e.g., Ahron Bregman's Israel's War: 1947-1993, Tibi Bassam's Conflict and War in the Middle East, 1967-91, and Eric Hammel's Six Days in June, cover a broader period, rely heavily on analysis, or fall short of objectivity. While Oren also recounts some necessary historical context for understanding the war's catalysts and discussing its aftermath, he primarily focuses on the pivotal six days of conflict, dedicating a full chapter for each day. Predictably, the most controversial information is his new findings on an Egyptian top-secret plan that came very close to eradicating Israel's army and nuclear power plant. (Library Journal)
This is the most complete history to date of the Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel entered and began its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While no account can be definitive until Arab archives open, Oren, a Princeton-trained senior fellow at Jerusalem's Shalem Center who has served as director of Israel's department of inter-religious affairs and as an adviser to Israel's U.N. delegation, utilizes newly available archival sources and a spectrum of interviews with participants, including many Arabs, to fill gaps and correct misconceptions. (Publishers Weekly)
A thoroughgoing analysis of the events that combusted 35 years ago to produce a maelstrom in the Middle East. Readers comparing historian Oren's thesis to current headlines may feel a certain sense of deja vu. He traces the origins of the Six-Day War of 1967 to several causes that were in no way resolved by the conflict, and underlines one of its effects--the Israeli conquest of the Sinai peninsula and the West Bank--that remains a subject of controversy today. One of those causes was resurgent nationalism in the Arab world's "postcolonial, revolutionary period," when Egyptian president Nasser attempted to play the Soviet Union off against the US, and to craft a military and political union of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt; Nasser's United Arab Republic soon collapsed, but among the unintended consequences of the destabilization were the rise of the Assad regime in Syria and, eventually, Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Another was a sudden upsurge of Palestinian nationalist activity, leading to the formation of groups such as al-Fatah and the PLO. Still another was internal conflict in Israel over whether and how to accommodate the demands of its neighbors. Slowly taking shape throughout the early and mid-1960s, these conditions "created an atmosphere of extreme flammability," Oren writes. "In such an atmosphere, it would not take much--a terrorist attack, a reprisal raid--to unleash a process of unbridled escalation, a chain reaction of dare and counter dare, gamble and miscalculation, all leading inexorably to war." Of course, that is exactly what happened, and Oren's narrative traces the military course of the war and its political aftermath, including lingering tensions in US-Israeli relations following the (accidental, in Oren's view) Israeli attack on the US naval vessel Liberty. Careful and well documented: Oren (Senior Fellow/Shalem Center, Jerusalem) finds fault on all sides of the conflict, which is sure to earn him critics everywhere he turns. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the troubled region. (Kirkus Reviews)
Alan Dowty, the Jewish State: A Century Later
"A careful, balanced and often highly insightful analysis of the making and workings of Israeli democracy. The strength of The Jewish State lies in its ability to elucidate the Israeli political system by examining the interaction between traditional Jewish politics, the pressures of security and immigration, ideological and religious conflicts and, not least, the struggle between Jews and Arabs. Dowty has an intimate knowledge of Israeli society and yet maintains the necessary detachment from the kind of political commitment that mars so many works by Israeli scholars." (Times Literary Supplement)
Dowty also proposes thoughtful answers to puzzles regarding the strengths and weaknesses of Israeli democracy in responding to the challenges of communal divisions, religious contention, the country's non-Jewish minority, and accommodation with the Palestinians. The Jewish State will be invaluable for anyone looking for that one book that gives an intelligent overview of both Israel today and of its origins. (Publisher)
"Not only has Dowty skillfully attached a tremendous amount of data to a sophisticated conceptual framework, but he has also produced a most readable volume. The Jewish State will surely become a core work in the field of Israeli domestic politics." (David Rodman, Israel Affairs)
Alan Dowty is Professor of Government and International Studies at the University of Notre Dame and Fellow at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate,
A cogent, readable, and meticulously researched account of Zionism and British policy in Palestine under the British Mandate. Ha'retz columnist Segev (The Seventh Million, 1993) draws from a mind-boggling array of primary and secondary source material to illustrate the wide range of issues and individuals that affected the political climate of Palestine between 1917 and 1948. His primary claim is that the British government was sympathetic to the Zionists over the Arabs at the close of WWI, because certain key officials (e.g., Lloyd George) believed the world's Jews to be a great and powerful transnational force that he would be wise to befriend and foolish to alienate. To this end, the author paints Chaim Weizmann as the one-man propaganda machine and spin-doctor who was behind it all–a kind of magic-bullet theory that fails to solve the puzzle satisfactorily. More plausible than Segev's radical claims of conspiracy and cowardice is his emphasis on Zionism in its pre-WWII form: he manages, through careful documentation and the innovative integration of source material, to effectively debunk the popular myth of Israel owing its independence to the sympathies of an international community horrified by the Holocaust. Making good use of historical documents, personal correspondence, and private journals, Segev allows certain characters to tell their own stories–from Yefim Gordin (a young Jewish immigrant who changed his name for the cause) to Khalil al-Sakakini (a leading Arab intellectual, educator, and nationalist)–which add up, in the end, to an intricate portrait of the mottled, beautiful, deadly mess that is the Holy Land. A careful, thorough, and intelligent work of journalistic history. (Kirkus Reviews)
From Omer Bartov - New York Times Book Review: "Segev has written an enormously important book, perhaps the best single account of Palestine under the British mandate."
Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis
The founding of Israel in 1948--one of the seminal events of the century--offers a dramatic narrative with few parallels in modern history. In 1949, a controversial best-seller in Israel, Tom Segev draws on thousands of declassified documents along with personal diaries and correspondence to reconstruct the unvarnished story of Israel's first years.
Segev reveals the lofty aspirations that guided the state's leaders as well as the darker side of the Zionist utopia: the friction between the early settlers and the immigrants; the lack of good-faith negotiations with the Arabs; the clash between religious and secular factions; the daily collision of the Zionist myth with the severe realities of life in the new state. Unflinching in its observations, this bold chronicle is indispensable for understanding the dilemmas that continue to confront--and divide--Israeli society. (Publisher)
From Elmore Jackson - The New York Times Book Review:
This book should be required reading for all who want to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . . The story is all here--the upheaval and violence that followed the United Nations partition resolution in November 1947 and the proclamation of the State of Israel in May 1948; the insecurity of Jewish settlers as they attempted to make their way in what were or had been predominantly Arab areas; and the parallel insecurity of Arab residents who had difficulty deciding whether to seek shelter behind Arab armies or to stay and face uncertain treatment in a largely Jewish state. It is deplorable but not surprising that atrocities took place. What is new in Mr. Segev's book is the wealth of graphic and substantiated detail, which sheds light on Israel's leaders in this early period.
Laurence J. Silberstein, The Postzionism Debates: Knowledge and Power in Israeli Culture
Postzionism is a term increasingly used in Israeli public culture to refer to those who challenge zionism's hegemony. This is the first book to discuss and analyze the debates over post-zionism that go to the heart of Israeli national identity and culture. Applying a framework drawn from contemporary cultural studies, postcolonial studies and the writings of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, The Postzionism Debates considers the arguments of the critics of post-zionism, who believe that it represents an effort to subvert the historical foundations of the state of Israel, and the proponents of post-zionism, who think it is a necessary prerequisite of Israel's emergence as a fully democratic society. The struggle for postzionism is a conflict over national memory and the control of cultural and physical space. Laurence J. Silberstein analyzes the phenomenon of postzionism and provides an intervention into this debate. (Publisher)
One of the most important books on Israeli culture...Its documents for the first time in English major shifts in Israeli culture, as well as peripherally in Jewish political culture outside of Israel. (From Daniel Boyarin — Tikkun)
Mitchell Cohen, Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel
"An excellent and arresting account of Zionism from its origins through the Ben-Gurion period…This provocative and thoughtful book is essential reading." Middle East Review
"[Zion and State] pulses with intellectual energy and stimulating material." Times Higher Education Supplement.
Zion and State explores the origins of the struggle between the left and the right in Israel and the Zionist movement. Mitchell Cohen traces the emergence of Jewish nationalism and modern Jewish political ideologies in the late nineteenth century, the birth of Zionist political parties at the time of Theodor Herzl, and the genesis of Israeli politics through the first fifteen years of Jewish statehood. (Publisher)
Itamar Rabinovich, The Brink of Peace: The Israeli-Syrian Negotiations
During the period from 1992 to 1996, Itamar Rabinovich was Israel's ambassador to Washington, and the chief negotiator with Syria. In this book, he looks back at the course of negotiations, terms of which were known to a surprisingly small group of American, Israeli, and Syrian officials. After Benjamin Netanyahu's election as Israel's prime minister in May 1996, a controversy developed. Even with Netanyahu's change of policy and harder line toward Damascus, Syria began claiming that both Rabin and his successor Peres had pledged full withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Rabinovich takes the reader through the maze of diplomatic subtleties to explain the differences between hypothetical discussion and actual commitment. The author portrays all sides and participants with remarkable flair and empathy, as only a privileged player in the events could do. In any assessment of future negotiations in the Middle East, Itamar Rabinovich's book will prove indispensable. (Publisher)
Diplomatic histories of disputes between two sides usually concern the gradual narrowing of broad differences through negotiation. But in the nearly four years (1992-1996) of Israeli-Syrian negotiations chronicled here, readers delve instead into the nature of a protracted stalemate. Despite the book's title, Rabinovich (History/Tel Aviv Univ.), Jerusalem's chief negotiator with Damascus, acknowledges that "at no point were Israel and Syria on the verge of a breakthrough." The primary reason was the lack of what diplomats call "ripeness," i.e., each side's readiness, ideologically and strategically, to come to terms with the primary concerns of the other. This was particularly the case with Syrian president Assad, who was and remains far more hard-line in his approach to Israel than were his Jordanian, Palestinian, and Egyptian counterparts. At one point, he commented to U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher that his side felt uncomfortable with the term "normalization." Thus, he adopted a diplomatic stance that was a "non-starter": he made full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights a precondition for any peace with Israel, while remaining maddeningly vague about what he meant by the term "peace." Unlike the late Egyptian president Sadat, and also unlike Jordan's King Hussein and even Yassir Arafat, Assad engaged only in sporadic, limited, and often clumsy "public diplomacy" in trying to influence the Israeli public. Rabinovich writes clearly and fair-mindedly about the views of both sides; his readers gain a ringside seat at Arab-Israeli diplomacy at its most difficult. But he relates a story of such long and intricate diplomatic pettiness, frustrations, and disappointments that it will interest academic mavens of recent Mideast affairs, yet hold only limited appeal for the general reader. (Kirkus Reviews)
Amos Elon, Israelis: Founders and Sons (Penguin, 1983)
"The most illuminating, evenhanded, candid, appraisal of the contemporary Jewish condition yet to appear." (Newsweek)
Israel was built on dreams and strivings, on humanistic principles and hard labor. What was conceived as a country of peace and dignity, however, has emerged as a society of contradictions, ethnic tensions, clashes between the religious and secular–a society buffeted by extreme changes in both national and international politics. The ideals of the founders have floundered in the reality of wars and violence. In this dramatic, fair-minded portrait of Israel, Amos Elon places the ongoing conflicts in the Mideast in brilliant historic perspective. In illuminating the political and philosophical background to the State of Israel, he offers rare insight into the rise to power of Menachem Begin and the complications of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, and he shows how Zionism, ironically, led to the development of its bitterest enemy, the Palestinian nationalist movement. (Publisher)
Yossi Klein Halevi, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew’s Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land
"In At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden, Yossi Klein Halevi describes his unprecedented and extraordinary spiritual journey to discover, as a religious Israel Jew, a common spiritual language with his Christian and Muslim neighbors in the Holy Land." ""Could religion be a source of unity?" wondered Halevi. To find the answer, he began a two-year exploration of the devotional life of Christianity and Islam. He followed their holiday cycles, befriended Christian monastics and Islamic mystics, and joined them in prayer in monasteries and mosques - searching for wisdom and holiness in places that are usually off-limits to outsiders of other faiths." With a new Foreword relating to September 11, Halevi chronicles the difficulty of overcoming obstacles - theological, political, historical, and psychological - that separate believers of the three monotheistic faiths. And he introduces a dynamic range of fascinating individuals attempting to reconcile the dichotomous heart of this sacred place - a struggle central to Israel, but which resonates for us all. (Publisher)
Yitzhak Rabin
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David Horovitz, and editors of Jerusalem Report, Shalom, Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin
Winner of the Non-Fiction National Jewish Book Award, this authoritative biography traces the life of Rabin, from 1922 to his untimely death on November 4, 1995, and its repercussions. (Publisher)
An absorbing portrait of the remarkable life of the late Israeli Prime Minister. Well-researched, engrossing, and admirably objective, Shalom, Friend is a significant contribution. David Horovitz, managing editor of The Jerusalem Report, deftly assembled the research of over two dozen of the Report's writers to produce a biography of Rabin that focuses on the recent peace process and the circumstances that led to his assassination. Earlier events in Rabin's life are covered in full–his early years in the Palmach, his military accomplishments in both the War of Independence and the Six Day War, and his stint as Israel's ambassador to the US–but this book's strength lies in its gripping analysis of Rabin's relationship with both the Palestinians and with Israeli settlers in the contested territory of the West Bank. Until the outbreak of the Intifada, Rabin paid almost no attention to the Palestinians. He knew little about them and had no interest in knowing more. His solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict leaned to the "Jordanian Option," with its provision for continued Israeli settlement along the Jordan Valley. When the Intifada did break out in 1987, Rabin, misreading the Palestinians, dismissed it as insignificant. Yet it was precisely the Intifada that caused Rabin to realize that the Palestinians were an enemy with whom he would have to negotiate. The Intifada "had turned the Palestinian people into a proper enemy. And, as such, they earned the right in Rabin's eyes to a proper peace." And if Rabin lacked insight into the Palestinians, he had even less into the West Bank settlers. He perceived most of them as obstacles to peace, and "was positively infuriated by the vigilante elements among them." And as a secular Jew, Rabin had "few sentiments for the area's past." It may well have been, in fact, the chasm between the secular Rabin and the religious nationalists that set the scene for his tragic death. (Kirkus Reviews)
At the time of his assassination last November, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, according to aides interviewed for this moving, dramatic biography, saw no urgent need for an Israel-Syria accord, though his long-range goal was reconciliation with all the Arab regimes to create a common front against the spread of Islamic fundamentalist extremism. (Publishers Weekly)
Yitzak Rabin, Yoram Peri (Afterword), The Rabin Memoirs
Yitzhak Rabin's memoirs, first published in 1979 but long out of print, are now available in this expanded edition. They provide a candid appraisal of significant events in Israeli history and restore passages censored when the memoirs were first published. A new afterword by Rabin's political advisor, Yoram Peri, and the addition of his most important speeches given after 1979 round out Rabin's life and show the evolution of his beliefs. Rabin writes of his years in the Haganah (the pre-state Jewish military) and gives a controversial account of the War of Independence. He details the tactical moves that made him a hero in the Six Day War and recalls his years as ambassador to the United States. He tells of his difficult decision to authorize the 1976 rescue of hijacked hostages from the Entebbe airport. Rabin describes the conflicts that eventually led to his party's defeat after thirty years in power, and he concludes with a shrewd assessment of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty and of prospects for peace with Israel's other neighbors, including the Palestinians. (Publisher)
Yoram Peri (Editor), The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
This book deals with the social and political developments in Israel in the painful process of decolonization from the occupied territories, following the late 1980s Palestinian Intifada and its aftermath. Fifteen distinguished contributors from a range of disciplinary viewpoints - historical, psychological, anthropological, political, and cultural - survey the various reactions to the assassination and analyze its ramifications and repercussions, creating a powerful mosaic of Israel with the assassination at its center. The assassination showed how easy it is for religious fundamentalists to ignore democratic rules and how militant nationalists will resort to violence to prevent the surrender of parts of the Holy Land. (Publisher)
Dan Kurzman, Soldier of Peace: The Life of Yitzhak Rabin: 1922-1995
From Dan Kurzman comes an intimate, comprehensive biography of the late Yitzhak Rabin. Kurzman dramatically describes Rabin's evolution from shy, troubled child to desert warrior to obsessive peacemaker in a biography that simultaneously tells the story of a pioneering nation's maturation into a modern, thriving Middle Eastern power. Kurzman draws heavily on his long relationship with Rabin. The author also presents fresh information from U.S. and Middle Eastern archives and from interviews he conducted with more than two hundred people, ranging from childhood classmates to top politicians and world statesmen - including Rabin family members. (Publisher)
A worthwhile review of the life of the late Israeli leader by an award-winning journalist, but it sheds little new light on one of the more intriguing personalities of the last 50 years. Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995, was almost the anti-politician. He was blunt, honest, and dour, didn’t tailor his remarks or his persona to his audience, and seemed always to be precisely as he presented himself. Thus, former Washington Post correspondent Kurzman (Blood and Water: Sabotaging Hitler's Bomb, 1996, etc.) undertook a difficult task in attempting to explain what made Rabin tick, and he mostly disappoints in the effort. Kurzman's central thesis is that it was Rabin's anguish at sending so many soldiers to die as a general that led him to become a peacemaker in his two stints as prime minister, and that Rabin always had an eye to making peace possible even as, in a range of key roles, he was building Israel's armed forces into a fearsome fighting machine. But Rabin presented this same thesis in his own memoirs, while illuminating as little as Kurzman the complexities of his character. Only in the last hundred pages, which draw on Kurzman_s access to many of the key players surrounding Rabin as he stunned Israel and the world by making peace with the Palestine Liberation Organization, does this biography finally come to multidimensional life. The chapter on the hours immediately preceding Rabin's assassination is the best one here, and a frustrating sample of what the rest of the book might have been. We are left wanting to know more about Rabin and the pioneering, native-born Israelis with whom his life is so intimately intertwined (the publication date coincides with Israel's 50th birthday). Rabin may have shown all his cards all the time, but one senses there are more complex explanations than those offered here for such a seemingly simple approach to life. (16 pages b&w photos) (Kirkus Reviews)
Jerusalem
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Meron Benvenisti, City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem
Jerusalem is more than a holy city built of stone: it is a battle cry, a magic spell, an act of defiance, a claim of sovereignty. To justify their rival claims, each faction has written extensive but partial and politically motivated chronicles of the city's ancient and contested history. In "City of Stone," Meron Benvenisti overcomes this legacy of self-interest to write an unofficial history of the city, a many-sided story without victors or vanquished. He describes the triumphs and defeats of all the city's residents, from those who walk its streets today to the meddlesome ghosts that still inhabit the Holy City. Benvenisti focuses primarily on the twentieth century, but, as with everything in Jerusalem, ancient history and ancient hatreds are constantly discovered just below the surface. (Publisher)
Amir S. Cheshin Avi Melamed, Bill Hutman, Separate and Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem
"A knowledgeable and sometimes riveting behind-the-scenes account that should be read by all who care about Jerusalem, and about Israeli-Palestinian affairs more generally. This sad chronicle of Israel's treatment of Jerusalem's Arab inhabitants, presented by analysts with deep personal involvement in the events they describe, stands in stark contrast to the glowing picture that Israeli spokesmen often present to naive Western audiences. Cheshin, Hutman, and Melamed tell a story that is consistently unblinking, frequently fascinating, most often depressing, but always important." Mark Tessler, Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (author of A History of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict)
Moshe Maoz (Editor), Sari Nusseibeh (Editor), Jerusalem : Points of Friction-And Beyond
The future of Jerusalem lies at the heart of the Arab--Israeli conflict. The city is home to more than half a million who must establish a common identity, whether they regard themselves as Israelis or Palestinians. Moreover, the Old City's holy places superimpose a layer of major international significance on a unique set of sensitive and challenging problems. This volume is the record of a signal achievement of a successful and committed Palestinian--Israeli alliance: the Truman Institute and the Palestine Consultancy Group. The joint efforts of these two research institutes have already produced landmark studies and recommendations in such crucially important areas as management of shared aquifers, environmental protection, waste management, economic cooperation, psychology of conflict, and education for coexistence, all in the context of Jerusalem -- its social and economic health and its preservation as one of the world's cultural shrines, equally cherished by Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The material in this book was compiled over an 18-month period by personal research among the inhabitants of Jerusalem. By exploring a variety of local, national and international issues and disaggregating Jerusalem's intricate problems in conversation with the people who must deal with them intimately on a day-by-day basis, the authors have provided a great service to the interested communities of policymakers, academics, and researchers. They have consciously set about developing meaningful models that, even though they may not yield solutions acceptable to all parties, will at least clearly demarcate common ground and draw the `red lines' that may not (yet) be crossed. The result is an enormously valuable resource that cannot fail to attract the attention of anyone concerned with the future of the Middle East region. (Publisher)
Jerome M. Segal Elihu Katz Nadar Izzat Said, Negotiating Jerusalem
An examination of how Jerusalem is seen by both Palestinians and Israeli-Jews, this book is a study of the potential for successfully negotiating the Jerusalem question. It sheds light on the question "what is Jerusalem?" By showing that the current boundaries are not viewed by either side as sacrosanct, the authors prove that there is room for creative efforts to reach an agreement. Such room may help resolve what is undoubtedly the most difficult issue standing between Israelis and Palestinians. (Publisher)
Rather than the usual fixation on the Israeli government and the PLO regarding the pivotal issue of whether Jerusalem's status is negotiable, the two parallel opinion surveys reviewed went directly to the people: 1995-96 interviews of a national sample and settler sub samples of some 1,500 Israeli Jews by Segal, et al., and by coauthor N.I. Sa'id, polls of some 870 Palestinians living in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. An opening essay discusses policy from this dual perspective, and the concluding one offers a model for a permanent status agreement. The findings (data are appended) quantify attitudinal obstacles and bases for some hope for compromise. Segal directs the Jerusalem Project at the U. of Maryland's Center for International and Security Studies. His coauthors are with the Israel Democracy Institute and Bir Zeit U. (Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Karen Armstrong, One City: Three Faiths
Jerusalem has been venerated for centuries as a Holy City by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. How this came to be and what it means both to the people of Jerusalem and to millions around the world is now richly told by the author of the best-selling and widely acclaimed A History of God. In every major religion, a "holy place" has helped men and women define their own place, indeed their own importance, in the world. Karen Armstrong shows how Jerusalem has become that defining place for adherents of the three religions of Abraham. She makes us see that the city has been not only a symbol of God but also a deeply rooted part of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim identity. She traces Jerusalem's physical history and spiritual meaning from its beginnings during the third millennium BC to its politically troubled and violent present. She explores the underlying currents that have played a part in Jerusalem's long and turbulent past, and she considers as well its archaeology and ever-changing topography. Throughout, Armstrong helps us understand the profound mythic sources of Jerusalem's holiness, its continuing power to arouse passions, and why the primal ideal of sacred space is once again a vital issue in Middle Eastern politics. (Publisher)
British religious scholar Armstrong (A History of God) has written a provocative, splendid historical portrait of Jerusalem that will reward those seeking to fathom a strife-torn city. Her overarching theme, that Jerusalem has been central to the experience and "sacred geography" of Jews, Muslims and Christians and thus has led to deadly struggles for dominance, is a familiar one, yet she brings to her sweeping, profusely illustrated narrative a grasp of sociopolitical conditions seldom found in other books. Armstrong spares none of the three monotheisms in her critique of intolerant policies as she ponders the supreme irony that the Holy City, revered by the faithful as symbol and site of harmony and integration, has been a contentious place where the faiths have fought constantly, not only with one another but within themselves, in bitter factions. Her condemnation of Israel's 1967 annexation of the Old City and East Jerusalem in the Six-Day War ("It was impossible for Israelis to see the matter objectively, since at the [Western Wall] they had encountered the Jewish soul"), however, pushes too far her theme of sacred geography as the physical embodiment of motivating myths and legends. (Publishers Weekly)
Martin Gilbert, Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century
Jerusalem today is a vibrant, flourishing city, the capital of an independent nation, and the vital center of worship for three world religions. Yet, one hundred years ago - a mere moment in time to a city celebrating its 3,000th anniversary - Jerusalem was a provincial town, an outpost of the Ottoman Empire ruled from Constantinople. The extraordinary transformation of Jerusalem, from the twilight of Turkish rule to the advent of the twenty-first century, is an epic struggle of passionate political, cultural, and spiritual forces. Often tragic, always fascinating, the remarkable history of contemporary Jerusalem is essential to our understanding of the Middle East. (Publisher)
A recurrent theme of this wonderfully vivid political, social and military history of 20th-century Jerusalem is that Arab intransigence in the face of repeated Jewish offers of peace, negotiation and reconciliation led to the protracted Israeli-Arab conflict. Gilbert contends that the Arab uprisings of 1921, 1929 and 1936 led to the separation of Jerusalem into Arab and Jewish neighborhoods. He also charges that Palestinian Arabs were, for decades, betrayed by their leaders, who rejected any form of Jewish sovereignty. And he notes that thousands of moderate Palestinians, who supported some form of compromise with the British or with the Jews, have been murdered by their fellow Arabs. He credits Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993, with making major efforts to draw Arabs into the municipality as equals and active city administrators. Marshaling primary sources and weaving in the accounts of journalists, politicians, settlers and visitors to Jerusalem, Gilbert makes a compelling if debatable case. Photos. (Publishers Weekly)
Gershon Gorenberg, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount
Although Gorenberg, an Israeli journalist, does not specifically address the recent violence at Temple Mount/Al-Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, anyone who seeks to understand the root of the fighting will find his thorough history of those 35 disputed acres to be indispensable. Gorenberg makes a stellar contribution to comprehending the troubled relationships among Arabs, Jews and Christians in Israel, meticulously analyzing the actions and beliefs of fundamentalist groups in all three religions. Jewish messianists and Christian millennialists insist that building the Third Temple on the site where both Solomon's and Herod's temples stood is essential for the advent of the Messiah, while Muslim apocalyptic believers fear that efforts to destroy Al-Aqsa mosque to make way for the Third Temple will prevent fulfillment of the prophecy about Islam's Meccan shrine migrating to Jerusalem at the end of time. Gorenberg writes objectively about advocates of each stance, slipping just once when he rejects the title of "martyr" for Baruch Goldstein (1994 killer of 29 Arabs in the Tomb of Patriarchs), calling that label "obscene." Gorenberg's prescience is manifest by his calling Temple Mount "a sacred blasting cap" and by stating that "any incident at the site can spin out of control." This valuable study greatly enhances readers grasp of the Middle East's religious and political complexities. (Publishers Weekly)
Gorenberg (coauthor, Shalom, Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin) offers an analysis of the ongoing apocalyptic obsession with the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. There will always be Jews, Christians, and Muslims who find millennialism appealing, he writes, because of the Kingdom of God's inherent power to address the injustices of an imperfect world. The belief in the apocalypse can spawn attempts to make it happen, and the author describes many instances when fringe groups have tried to achieve it. He explains the irony of different groups using each other to "bring about the end." For instance, in the 1990s, Christian evangelicals cooperated with [religious fundamentalist] Zionists in attempts to breed a pure red heifer, the sacrifice of which is a prerequisite for the building of the third Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Essentially, argues Gorenberg, this is the way Christian fundamentalists make sense of supporting the Jewish state. This book is a sobering lesson on the power millennialism wields to this day and the danger of nihilism when such prophecies fail and extremists take matters into their own hands. Recommended for public libraries. (Library Journal)
A 35-acre plot in Jerusalem is the navel of the world, focus of theological geopolitics and gateway to Heaven in three great religious traditions. It may also be the most dangerous place on earth, as Israeli journalist Gorenberg demonstrates. Israel has sovereignty over (but not management of) what Jews call the Temple Mount, the spot where they believe Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son, where the First and Second Temples stood. Muslims call that same spot Al Haram al Sharif and identify it as the place from which Muhammad ascended to Heaven. Many fundamentalist Christians believe the End of Days is nigh and a messianic millennium will follow the destruction of unbelieving Jews–after they erect a new Temple. Some Jewish fundamentalists, anxious for the messiah's first coming, prepare to nudge the Almighty by erecting a Third Temple in the place where Solomon built the first. The necessary ingredients, like a sacrificial pure red heifer (provided by American believers), are being gathered. Muslims understand that Al Aksa and the Dome of the Rock, at their third most holy venue, are threatened. They react violently to any perceived incursion as they also await the end of time and the militant victory of Islam. Despite urgent eschatological beliefs, different holy places cannot occupy the same place at the same time until some laws of physics are divinely abrogated. Attempts have been made to destroy the Dome. Self-righteous murders have been committed as theological necessity. If terrorism ignites catastrophe, it's all according to revelation, prophesied in the intoxicated view of true believers. This real specter must be acknowledged in any discussion of prospects for peace in the Middle East, Gorenberg argues in this valuable analysis of millennial politics. It's truly Apocalypse Anytime Now. An important and necessary book. (Kirkus Reviews)
Perspectives on the Palestinians
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Rashid. Khalidi, Palestinian Identity
Khalidi provides compelling challenges to the prevailing assumptions concerning the origins of Palestinian nationalism. . . . Beginning with the later Ottoman Empire, Khalidi uses Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, and Western archival sources as well as many unpublished sources--notably from the Khalidi Library in Jerusalem--to substantiate his thesis. . . . The material, intellectual, and spiritual importance of Jerusalem to Palestinians is well substantiated. . . . This original research sheds new light on the question of Palestine. It should be read by everyone concerned about accurate historiography, cultural mythology, the social construction of national identity, and a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. (Choice)
Winner of the 1997 Albert Hourani Book Award, Middle East Studies Association. Khalidi critically assesses the narratives that make up Palestinian history and identity and examines the ways in which the Palestinian national consciousness has come full circle. (Publisher)
An impressively thoughtful, layered, and well documented study of key aspects of the evolution of modern Palestinian nationalism. Those expecting either a comprehensive history of the modern Palestinian movement or a polemic against Zionism and Israel should look elsewhere. Khalidi, who teaches history and directs the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago, and who was a member of the Palestinian delegation to the Mideast peace negotiations, focuses almost entirely on the late Ottoman and early Mandate period (1880s through 1920s). He sees Palestinian nationalism emerging far earlier than is generally thought [but see Heller’s history, which also documents it well]–in the pre-WW I period, when absentee landlords in Beirut and elsewhere sold large tracts of Palestinian land to the Jewish Colonization Association. Yet while modern Palestinian history is inextricably intertwined with that of Zionism, Khalidi focuses as much on other constituents of modern Palestinian identity, which include "patriotic feelings, local loyalties, Arabism, religious sentiments, [and] higher levels of education and literacy." He demonstrates how the long-term influence of modernization, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and concomitant European incursion in the pre-WW I era, followed by the betrayal of promises made by both the British and French, contributed as much to Palestinian nationalism as the 1917 Balfour Declaration and Zionist immigration. The only flaw here is that Khalidi races through the last 70 years of the development of Palestinian identity. Even here, however, he offers a fascinating analysis of why Palestinian nationalism seemingly became "submerged" after the first Arab- Israeli War (1947-49) and until the PLO's founding in 1964.
At a time when the end of the hundred years' war between Zionism/Israel and the Palestinians appears on the horizon, this illuminating study will help readers gain a sophisticated understanding of how the Palestinians came to be who they are. (Kirkus Reviews)
Amira Hass, Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege
In what is sure to be a controversial book, Israeli reporter Amira Hass offers a rare portrait of the Palestinians in Gaza. Very few journalists have lived in that troubled region; Jewish ones are rarer still. "To most Israelis," Hass writes, "my move seemed outlandish, even crazy, for they believed I was surely putting my life at risk." But Israelis desperately need to understand the plight of the Palestinian people, she writes, and few of them read the unvarnished truth in the Jerusalem press. This has made most of them ignorant of what goes on right next door, and inspired unduly "harsh" attitudes toward Gaza and its one million residents. Hass even quotes the late Yitzhak Rabin, who wished that Gaza "would just sink into the sea," shortly before he signed the Oslo Accords. Wishing away the problem, however, is no solution, and Hass delivers a detailed--and highly opinionated--diagnosis of what's wrong with Israeli policy toward Gaza. Strong supporters of Israeli will say that Hass is nothing but a mouthpiece for the Palestinians. Indeed, this book's subtitle could apply as much to Israel, surrounded by bitter enemies, as it does to Gaza. Yet it would be wrong to ignore Hass: the scene in Gaza is woefully unreported. The book is not likely to change many minds--this is one of those subjects where passions run deep and fierce. Those who already sympathize with Hass's pro-Palestinian views will find Drinking the Sea at Gaza an invigorating book. (Amazon.com)
Raja Shehada, Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine
In 1948, Raja Shehadeh's Palestinian family was one of many driven from their homes when Israel defeated the Arab armies arrayed against it. Shehadeh's early childhood in the rural hills of the West Bank was marked by his family's sense of loss and impermanence, vividly evoked by the distant glittering lights of Jaffa he watched each night. An artful meditation on the meaning of time and place, Strangers in the House offers a unique perspective on decades of daily life under military occupation. It's also a story of the tensions between an idealistic son and a political activist father: Raja Shehadeh's father was ostracized by his fellow Arabs for advocating a peaceful two-state solution. (Publisher)
Palestinian perspectives on the Middle East conflict don't often reach the West and today they are more relevant than ever. In this fascinating memoir, leading Palestinian lawyer Shehadeh offers a chilling and moving view of life inside the Occupied Territories. He was born into a prominent family around the time of Israel's establishment in 1948. As Shehadeh recounts his relationship with his parents, his first love, intellectual experiments in college, world travels, law career and human rights work, his struggles under Israeli occupation distinguish his story. Shehadeh names his father, Aziz, also a prominent attorney, as the first Palestinian in the late 1960s to advocate recognizing Israel and adopting a peaceful two-state solution. The author gives a gripping narrative regarding Aziz's murder and the Israeli authorities' sluggish investigation; it's widely assumed that Aziz's killer was a Palestinian who disapproved of his willingness to compromise with Israel. More broadly, Shehadeh deftly renders the Israeli government's systematic harassment and humiliation of the Palestinians, ranging from constant surveillance at checkpoints to random searches in homes and offices. Such situations, Shehadeh makes clear, account for the powerlessness, frustration and anger experienced by most Palestinians. His deliberate analysis of the expansion of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories, a major obstacle to the peace process, is especially intriguing. The author argues that these settlements are illegal under international law, but have slowly and surely been aligned with Israeli legal statutes. Anyone seeking a nuanced view of Palestinian experience should read this brave and lyrical book. B&w photos. (Publishers Weekly)
Barry Rubin, The Transformation of Palestinian Politics: From Revolution to State-Building
This book is a comprehensive overview and analysis of the Palestinians' travail as they move from revolutionary movement to state. Barry Rubin outlines the difficulties in the transition now under way arising from Palestinian history, society, and diplomatic agreements. He writes about the search for a national identity, the choice of an economic system, and the structure of government.. "Rubin finds that, overall, the positive aspects of the Palestinian Authority outweigh the negative, and he foresees the establishment of a Palestinian state. His charting of the triumphs and difficulties of this state-in-the-making helps predict and explain future dramatic developments in the Middle East. (Publisher)
In this highly readable book, Rubin, deputy director of Israel's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and the author of numerous works on the Arab-Israeli conflict, examines the prospect of Palestinian statehood. The book focuses on post-1993 Palestinian politics and the internal and external challenges that have faced the Palestinian Authority in the aftermath of the Oslo agreement. Drawing on an impressive array of English, Hebrew, and Arabic sources, the author explores a complicated maze of interactions between Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority and its internal opponents. Crucially, the book also places the Palestinian Authority's struggle in the context of Israeli and regional politics. Because of the heavy focus on current events, readers not familiar with the history of the conflict will need other sources to place post-1993 Palestinian politics into context. Recommended for academic libraries and students of the Arab-Israeli conflict. (Library Journal)
Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
"Morris, an Israeli journalist, uses recently declassified Israeli/British/American state and party political papers to describe the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem as revealed by those actually involved." (Choice)
This 1988 book by an Israeli historian draws on previously unavailable sources to argue that neither the official Arab version--that Arabs were driven wholesale from their homes by Israeli terror--nor the official Israeli version--that Arab leaders broadcast orders for all Arabs to leave Palestine--is [not] without serious omissions and historical distortions. (The Reader's Catalog)
{Mr. Morris} is a rare combination of journalist and painstaking research historian, whose thorough use of Israeli, British and American archives–many of the materials unavailable until now--has enabled him to present a definitive history of his subject. Moreover, he does not succumb to the temptation of moralizing. Rather, he depicts both the Jewish and the Arab sides in all their human reality--aspiring, fumbling, succeeding, failing, gradually evolving their positions and constantly making errors of conduct and judgment under the stress of war. (Ronald Sanders - The New York Times Book Review)
Benny Morris, 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians
In this important book, now revised and expanded, Benny Morris examines and elucidates aspects of the Arab exodus from Palestine in 1948…In an expanded introductory chapter, Dr. Morris traces to the present day the historiographic controversy over the circumstances of Israel’s birth…Throughout Morris departs from the traditional Zionist and Arab historiographies, and attempts to describe and explain what actually happened, on the basis of recently declassified Israeli and Western documentation. (Publisher)
Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People
Traces the history of a people struggling to define their claims and aspirations, shows how this process is intertwined with the history of the Jews, and predicts positive results spurring from the current turmoil in the Middle East. (Ingram)
A compact, sobering, informative history of the Palestinians…The authors conclude that Palestinian self-determination will be realized only with the assent of a secure Israel, and that Israeli acceptance throughout the Middle East will need Palestinian approval. (Publishers Weekly)
Lex Takkenberg, The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law
This compelling book explores the status of Palestinian refugees in international law…It contains a thorough and useful analysis of various areas of international law, including refugee law, the law relating to stateless persons, humanitarian law, and human rights law, and probes their relevance to the provision of international protection for Palestinian refugees and to the search for a durable solution within the context of the Middle East peace process. (Publisher) Takkenberg is Chief of the Field Relief and Social Services Progamme, Gaza, for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (known as UNRWA).
Takkenberg concludes his study with the following: "The right of return is at least as contentious an issue as the question of responsibility, and the two are closely intertwined. The legal contents of the concept and its relevance to the Palestinian refugee issue have been extensively discussed in Chapter VII, leading to the conclusion that the refugees do have the legal right to return to their ‘own country,’ Palestine. As long as there is no Palestinian state, this right applies in principle to the entire territory of the former British Mandate. However, now that the PLO, as the representative of the Palestinian people, has recognized the right of Israel to exist, it is obvious that the Palestinian refugees will only be able to exercise their right to return in conjunction with their right to self-determination. The recognition also confirms that the PLO no longer envisages Palestinian self-determination within the territory of the state of Israel. Accordingly, the implementation of the right to return of the Palestinian refugees is likely to be realized only in the context of the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It is also for this reason that, at the beginning of this section, the recommendation was made that the permanent status negotiations first address the core issue of Palestinian territorial sovereignty. Assuming that Palestinian sovereignty will indeed eventually be forthcoming, the starting point for the negotiations should be the ‘right to live in the Palestinian state-to-be.’ As has already been mentioned several times, statehood implies that, within certain limits, the government of Palestine will be in a position to determine independently who its nationals are and under what conditions Palestinians in the diaspora, including refugees, will be able to return to, and live in the country."
Despite the propaganda so common among the anti-Zionist left, independent scholars of international law like Takkenberg endorse Sari Nusseibeh’s position on the right of return as consistent with, and indeed required by, international law. He also endorses limited family reunification for some refugees into Israel: Citing Nusseibeh and Heller, he notes: "Since the PLO has formally recognized Israel’s right to exist, thereby also implicitly recognizing the Jewish character of the state, it will be difficult for the Palestinian negotiators to press for a large-scale return of Palestinians to their former towns and villages, nor will such a return be practical. However, there are a number of Palestinian refugees whose home villages still exist and who have family members living there. In recognition of its shared responsibility for the refugee problem, and in accordance with the principle of the unity of the family, discussed in Chapter VII, Israel may be expected to admit a limited number of Palestinians belonging to the above category, provided they are willing to become citizens of the state of Israel with all that entails." (pp. 335-6, 338, Oxford University Press, 1998) (Doni Remba)
Donna E. Arzt, Refugees into Citizens: Palestinians and the End of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Refugees into Citizens: Palestinians and the End of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, a provocative and timely new book by Syracuse University international law professor Donna E. Arzt, offers an unprecedented blueprint for resolving what is often called the "last taboo" in the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations: a just and permanent solution to the problem of over three million Palestinian refugees. This book represents the first comprehensive effort to place the inclusion and dignity of Palestinian refugees at the core of creating viable and lasting peace in the region. Arzt blends traditional academic scholarship with a practical policy prescription: the end of the Middle East conflict can only be achieved when all Palestinian refugees are offered dual citizenship, compensation for lost property, and/or voluntary absorption options in either a future state of Palestine, other Arab states in the region, the broader international community, or on family reunification grounds, repatriation in Israel. Arzt argues that compensation should be based on a "no fault" assumption, and that all involved parties share equal responsibility for refugee absorption. (Publisher; Council on Foreign Relations) Another study by an international legal scholar which does not support the radical anti-Zionist left-wing view that international law provides to the refugees a right to return to their former homes and villages inside Israel. (Doni Remba)
War and Peace in Ethics and Law
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Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century.
If you read only one book this year, this should be it. Immensely readable, it provides an essential moral perspective for thinking about war and peace. (Doni Remba)
The twentieth century was the most brutal in human history, featuring a litany of shameful events that includes the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Stalinist era, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. This important book looks at the politics of our times and the roots of human nature to discover why so many atrocities were perpetuated and how we can create a social environment to prevent their recurrence. Jonathan Glover finds similarities in the psychology of those who perpetuate, collaborate in, and are complicit with atrocities, uncovering some disturbing common elements-tribal hatred, blind adherence to ideology, diminished personal responsibility-as well as characteristics unique to each situation. Acknowledging that human nature has a dark and destructive side, he proposes that we encourage the development of a political and personal moral imagination that will compel us to refrain from and protest all acts of cruelty. (Publisher)
One of the strongest works of moral philosophy of the last two decades, Humanity presents deeply felt and disturbing meditations on the 20th century's most brutal historical episodes. Jonathan Glover ambitiously attempts a moral psychology, tracing the patterns of human psychology that breed violence. Shrewd case studies examine the intellectual follies and moral horrors of the First World War's trench warfare, Hitler's Holocaust, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the ideologically driven social experimentation by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, and the ethnic and tribal hatreds that tore apart the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. (Michael J. Kerlin - America Magazine)
Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations
Updated in light of recent events, this classic work--with more than 60,000 copies sold in previous editions--presents "a clear, humane, and startlingly original survey of the moral issues that complicate modern war making."--The Atlantic. The classic work on the moral issues of warfare, updated in light of recent events. --NY Times "A magnificent book, an honor to its writer."--New York Review of Books
William V. O'Brien, Law and Morality in Israel's War with the PLO
"This book provides an in-depth study of the Israel-PLO conflict, analyzing both legal and moral questions that no other work has yet addressed. Unique in content and perspective, and written in a sophisticated yet highly readable style.." (James Turner Johnson, Rutgers University) A comprehensive and objective analysis of the legal and moral issues confronting Israel (Publisher) O'Brien is Professor of Government at Georgetown University and an authority on the international law of war and just-war doctrine.
Paul Christopher, The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction to the Moral and Legal Issues
A detailed overview and critical, philosophical analysis, this text surveys the historical development of just war reasoning, its incorporation into the international laws concerning when and how to wage war, and the specific shortcomings with existing laws and practices concerning the conduct of modern-day hostilities. (Publisher)
This classic introduction to the ethics of war and peace explores in depth the legal and moral issues of when and how to use force to achieve political objectives. A detailed overview and critical, philosophical analysis–written by a professional soldier with over 25 years of commissioned service–it surveys the historical development of just war reasoning, its incorporation into the international laws concerning when and how to wage war, and the specific shortcomings with existing laws and practices concerning the conduct of modern-day hostilities. Explores the often-conflicting moral and legal obligations that officers and soldiers have when ordered to fight in wars they believe to be unjust. Contains many recent examples–e.g., Gulf War, interventions in Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia. Addresses the moral and legal issues surrounding UN peacekeeping and peacemaking missions. Examines certain problematic aspects of the international laws of war and the just war tradition–e.g., obedience to superior orders, military necessity and reprisals. Shows that although many international laws currently in force are outdated (e.g., those prohibiting the use of barbed spears and glass bullets), the just war principles on which they are based can be used to formulate new laws more suitable to modern tactics and technology (e.g., flamethrowers and nerve agents). Highlights the influence of the Christian religion (both positive and negative) on the development of both the just war tradition and existing international law. For anyone interested in the ethics of war and peace.
Richard J. Regan, Just War: Principles and Cases
Most individuals realize that we have a moral obligation to avoid the evils of war. But this realization raises a host of difficult questions when we, as responsible individuals, witness harrowing injustices such as "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia or starvation in Somalia. With millions of lives at stake, is war ever justified? And, if so, for what purposes? In this book, Richard J. Regan confronts these controversial questions by first considering the basic principles of just-war theory and then applying those principles to historical and ongoing conflicts. Part One presents two opposing viewpoints: first, that war is not subject to moral norms and, second, that war is never morally permissible. The author rejects both perspectives, and moves to define the principles of just-war theory. He evaluates the roles of the president, Congress, and, most importantly, the U.N. Security Council in determining when long-term U.S. military involvement is justified. The moral limits of war conduct and the moral problem of using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons are also discussed. On the just cause to wage war, Regan argues that defense of nations and nationals--whether in self-defense or in defense of others--remains the only classical cause that in the modern world would justify resorting to war. With respect to military intervention in secessionist and revolutionary wars, he contends that such intervention might be justified, but that prudence dictates extreme caution. In considering acceptable war conduct, Regan elaborates the specific principles of discrimination and proportionality; he maintains that civilians uninvolved in the enemy's war should not be directly targeted and that the costs of military action must be proportionate to the anticipated benefits of destroying military targets. The second part of the book presents case studies of eight historical wars–World War I, the Vietnam War, the Falklands War, the revolution and civil war in Nicaragua, the civil war in El Salvador, the Gulf War, the intervention in Somalia, and the Bosnian War–and poses several provocative questions about each. It invites readers and students to apply just-war principles to complex war-related situations and to understand the factual contingencies involved in moral judgments about war decisions. The book will be of particular interest to students of the moral issues of international relations and to readers interested more generally in philosophy, theology, and political science.
This book confronts a host of difficult questions about the controversial decision to go to war: Is war ever morally justified? Who has the authority to wage war? What is acceptable war conduct? Regan considers the basic principles of just war theory and then applies them to eight historical and ongoing wars, including the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the Bosnian War.
"The author brings just war doctrine to life in his realistic treatment of the moral dilemmas of war."-Prof. Emeritus William V. O'Brien, Georgetown University
Richard J. Regan, a Jesuit priest, attended Harvard Law School and received a doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago. He is a professor of political science at Fordham University and is the author of several books, including God and Creation, The Moral Dimensions of Politics, and Conflict and Consensus
Robert L. Phillips and Duane L. Cady, Humanitarian Intervention: Just War vs. Pacifism
American and international involvement in war-torn regions such as Bosnia and Somalia has come under increasing scrutiny by politicians and scholars. Here, two distinguished philosophers debate military intervention from just-war and pacifist perspectives. Describing the range of values and issues facing governments as they consider intervening in the affairs of other nations, each scholar makes his case and then responds to the opposing argument. A clear and elegant treatment of the issue, Humanitarian Intervention provides an excellent overview for students of social and political theory, ethics, international affairs, and peace and justice studies.
Peter Malanczuk, Akehurst’s Modern Introduction to International Law
"Professor Malanczuk has written a new edition of Michael Akehurst's textbook which maintains its high traditions of clarity, precision and coherence. The new edition, more widely-detailed and widely-referenced, will appeal to a wider audience than its predecessor, whilst still satisfying the needs of those seeking an accessible introduction to international law, whether lawyers or not." Colin Warbrick, University of Durham
First published in 1970, A Modern Introduction to International Law rapidly established itself as the most widely used and successful textbook in its field. This seventh edition has now been completely revised and updated to take account of many new developments. A Modern Introduction to International Law covers a variety of topics, from diplomatic immunity to human rights, and from recognition of government to war crimes. The book is original in several respects. The author is particularly concerned with the relationship between international law and international politics, and he devotes special attention to such controversial topics as self-determination and the expropriation of foreign-owned property where the conflicting interests and attitudes of different states are most apparent. (Publisher)
Terry Nardin, Ed., The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Princeton UP)
A superb introduction to the ethical aspects of war and peace, this collection of tightly integrated essays explores the reasons for waging war and for fighting with restraint as formulated in a diversity of ethical traditions, religious and secular. Beginning with the classic debate between political realism and natural law, this book seeks to expand the conversation by bringing in the voices of Judaism, Islam, Christian pacifism, and contemporary feminism. In so doing, it addresses a set of questions: How do the adherents to each viewpoint understand the ideas of war and peace? What attitudes toward war and peace are reflected in these understandings? What grounds for war, if any, are recognized within each perspective? What constraints apply to the conduct of war? Can these constraints be set aside in situations of extremity? Each contributor responds to this set of questions on behalf of the ethical perspective he or she is presenting. The concluding chapters compare and contrast the perspectives presented without seeking to adjudicate their differences. (Publisher) Essays of special note include two on War and Peace in the Jewish Tradition, by Michael Walzer and Aviezer Ravitzky, and two on War and Peace in Islam. (DR)
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