Best of
Israel

2009

Out of the Depths: The Story of a Child of Buchenwald Who Returned Home at Last


Israel Meir Lau - 2009
    Descended from a 1,000-year unbroken chain of rabbis, he grew up to become Chief Rabbi of Israel--and like many of the great rabbis, Lau is a master storyteller. Out of the Depths is his harrowing, miraculous, and inspiring account of life in one of the Nazis' deadliest concentration camps, and how he managed to survive against all possible odds.Lau, who lost most of his family in the Holocaust, also chronicles his life after the war, including his emigration to Mandate Palestine during a period that coincides with the development of the State of Israel. The story continues up through today, with that once-lost boy of eight now a brilliant, charismatic, and world-revered figure who has visited with Popes John Paul and Benedict; the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and countless global leaders including Ronald Reagan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Tony Blair.

Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle


Dan Senor - 2009
    Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel -- a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources-- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK? With the savvy of foreign policy insiders, Senor and Singer examine the lessons of the country's adversity-driven culture, which flattens hierarchy and elevates informality-- all backed up by government policies focused on innovation. In a world where economies as diverse as Ireland, Singapore and Dubai have tried to re-create the "Israel effect", there are entrepreneurial lessons well worth noting. As America reboots its own economy and can-do spirit, there's never been a better time to look at this remarkable and resilient nation for some impressive, surprising clues.

My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness


Adina Hoffman - 2009
    He traveled on foot to Lebanon and returned a year later to find his village destroyed. An autodidact, he has since run a souvenir shop in Nazareth, at the same time evolving into what National Book Critics Circle Award–winner Eliot Weinberger has dubbed “perhaps the most accessible and delightful poet alive today.”As it places Muhammad Ali’s life in the context of the lives of his predecessors and peers, My Happiness offers a sweeping depiction of a charged and fateful epoch. It is a work that Arabic scholar Michael Sells describes as “among the five ‘must read’ books on the Israel-Palestine tragedy.” In an era when talk of the “Clash of Civilizations” dominates, this biography offers something else entirely: a view of the people and culture of the Middle East that is rich, nuanced, and, above all else, deeply human.

Why Israel is the Victim


David Horowitz - 2009
    David Horowitz’s classic Why Israel is the Victim, updated by the author, sets the record straight about the basic truths of the Middle East conflict. In addition to restoring the authentic history of the region – a history of obsessive aggression first by Arab countries determined to physically annihilate the Jewish State and later by terror groups determined to destroy its will to survive and right to exist—this booklet brings the story up to date by showing the systematic way in which Hamas and Hezbollah, under Iran’s direction, have subverted peace in the Middle East. As Shillman Fellow Daniel Greenfield notes in his insightful introduction, this pamphlet “tells us why we should reject the “Blame Israel First” narrative that has so thoroughly saturated the mainstream media… It confronts the myth of Palestinian victimhood… and it delivers a rousing restatement of the true history of the hate that led us to all this.” America should be Israel’s protector. Instead, as David Horowitz notes, under the leadership of Barack Obama, it has become its prosecutor.

Saving Israel


Daniel Gordis - 2009
    Even average Israelis are wondering if they wouldn't be better off somewhere else and whether they ought to persevere. Daniel Gordis is confident his fellow Jews can renew their faith in the cause, and in Saving Israel, he outlines how.2009 National Jewish Book Award winnerAddresses the most pressing issues faced by Israel-and American Jews-today, without recycling the same old argumentsLays to rest some of the most pernicious myths about Israel, including: Jews could thrive without Israel; Israeli Arabs just want equality, and Palestinians just want their own state; peace will come, if Israel will just do the right things""Morally powerful . . . from a writer whose reflections are consistently as intellectually impressive as they are moving. . . . Gordis addresses the exigencies of our time with the urgency they overridingly demand, and with the depth of feeling they inspire.""-Cynthia OzickGordis has written many popular personal essays and memoirs in the past, but Saving Israel is a full-throated call to arms. Never has the case for defending-no, celebrating-the existence of Israel been so clear, so passionate, or so worthy of wholehearted support.

Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations


Avi Shlaim - 2009
    From the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the failure of the Oslo peace process, from the 1948 War to the 2008 invasion of Gaza, Israel and Palestine places current events in their proper historical perspective. It assesses the impact of key political and intellectual figures, including Yasir Arafat and Ariel Sharon, Edward Said and Benny Morris. It also re-examines the United States’ influential role in the conflict, and explores the many missed opportunities for peace and progress in the region. Clear-eyed and meticulous, Israel and Palestine is an essential tool for understanding the fractured history and future prospects of Israel-Palestine.

The Attack on the Liberty: The Untold Story of Israel's Deadly 1967 Assault on A U.S. Spy Ship


James M. Scott - 2009
    8vo.

Loud and Clear: The Memoir of an Israeli Fighter Pilot


Iftach Spector - 2009
    He was the leader of the flight that attacked the USS Liberty in 1967. After the 1967 and 1973 wars, in which he commanded a squadron of fighter-bombers, he rose to head the IAF’s Training and War Lessons Section and later became its the Chief of Operations. He was one of the eight Israeli pilots who attacked Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirik in 1981. In 2003, his career took an even more dramatic turn: he was the senior signatory of the famous “Pilots’ Letter,” in which Spector and 27 other Israeli pilots stated their refusal to bomb targets in Palestine where collateral damage would likely be severe. His maverick conscience is well on display in this artfully written memoir, which is currently a 10-week-and-counting bestseller in Israel and has been licensed in Brazil as well. The son of a family that immigrated to Palestine at the turn of the 20th century, whose father and mother served in the Palmach, Israel’s early clandestine commando force, Spector has written a rich and reflective meditation on loyalty, on what is right and wrong in war, and on his dedication to the idea and reality of the state of Israel. The Pilots’ Letter ended Spector’s military career, but also made him one of the most compelling and celebrated defenders of the conscience of the Jewish state. In that battle, as in his previous battles against Nasser’s MiGs, his mother’s constant lesson to him sustained him: “All from within.”General Spector’s first book, A DREAM IN BLACK AND AZURE (1992; never translated into English), won the Sade Literary Award, given to him personally by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He has a B.A. in history and Middle East Studies from Tel Aviv University and a masters in political science from UCLA, both with honors.

A Prophetic Calendar: The Feasts of Israel


Jill Shannon - 2009
    A Prophetic Calendar presents the biblical feasts as a mural of God's ageless desire to draw all people to Him.

A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism


Giulio Meotti - 2009
    Since the “Second Intifada” began ten years ago, Palestinian terrorists have claimed 1,700 Israeli civilians. This equates to a staggering 70,000 victims, when adjusted to the United States population for scale.In A New Shoah, Italian journalist Giulio Meotti’s extensive interviews with those Israeli families torn apart by hundreds of daily attacks in buses, cafés, kibbutzim, restaurants, night clubs, and religious shrines appear for the first time. A New Shoah reveals the stories, ideals, and faces behind the statistics, from the anticommunist dissidents who fled Moscow, to the American businessman who left everything behind to live the dream of Jewish pioneers.The remarkable individuals who make up A New Shoah reveal the raison d'être of the State of Israel and make a definitive case for its safeguarding. Judaism teaches that for survivors, the hazkarah, or the act of remembering, is the only way to defy the murder of Jewish people by their enemies. When we read these pages and remember, we empower Israel’s resistance to terror.

The Israel Test


George Gilder - 2009
    George Gilder's global best-seller ?Wealth and Poverty? made the moral case for capitalism. Now Gilder makes the case for Israel, portraying a conflict of barbarism and envy against civilization and creativity. Gilder reveals Israel as a leader of human civilization, technological progress, and scientific advance. Tiny Israel stands behind only the United States in its contributions to the hi-tech economy. Israel has become the world's paramount example of the blessings of freedom. Hatred of Israel, like anti-Semitism through history, arises from resentment of Jewish success. Rooted in a Marxist zero-sum-game theory of economics, this vision has fueled the anti-Semitic ranting of Hitler, Arafat, bin Laden and history's other notorious haters. Faced with a contest between murderous regimes sustained by envy and Nazi ideology, and a free, prosperous, and capitalist, Israel, whose side are you on?

The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives


Gilbert Achcar - 2009
    The terrain is dense with ugly claims and counterclaims: one side is charged with Holocaust denial, the other with exploiting a tragedy while denying the tragedies of others.In this pathbreaking book, political scientist Gilbert Achcar explores these conflicting narratives and considers their role in today's Middle East dispute. He analyzes the various Arab responses to Nazism, from the earliest intimations of the genocide, through the creation of Israel and the destruction of Palestine and up to our own time, critically assessing the political and historical context for these responses. Finally, he challenges distortions of the historical record, while making no concessions to anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial. Valid criticism of the other, Achcar insists, must go hand in hand with criticism of oneself.Drawing on previously unseen sources in multiple languages, Achcar offers a unique mapping of the Arab world, in the process defusing an international propaganda war that has become a major stumbling block in the path of Arab-Western understanding.

Whisper of Stone: Natib Qadish: Modern Canaanite Religion


Tess Dawson - 2009
    Have you ever wondered who the deities in the land of Canaan before the Bible were? This work helps you learn about Asherah poles, how to avert the Evil Eye, how ancient sorcerers created golems, and about the legends that inspired the Bible.

Grand Key of Solomon the King: Ancient Handbook of Angel Magic and Djinn Summoning


Asaph Ben Berechiah - 2009
    He is no other than Asaph Ben Berechiah, the Vizier of King Solomon himself. According to Islamic tradition, this Arabian Merlin bested a djinn in a magical contest, teleporting Queen Sheeba's throne in the blink of an eye, using his knowledge of the Great Name. Through the ages masters of the forbidden art of djinn evocation have shared with their disciples in secrecy an extensive oral tradition of rituals, incantations, and magical implements belonging to Asaph Ben Berechiah. Fragments of these arcane mysteries could be found in the writing of master occultists from the Middle Ages, the likes of Ahmed al-Buni. Few and far between, many have treasured what little fragments of this oral tradition could be found. There were also whispers of a grimoire compiled by an anonymous Arabian wizard brimming with secrets of the magic of Asaph Ben Berechiah. Known only as Ajnas, its reputation grew, but few possessed it. It has resurfaced in recent years and remains one of the most popular guides to angelic and djinn evocation in the land of the Arabian nights. O seeker of the art of the masters, you needn't wait centuries for this important grimoire to be available in English as has happened with Ghayat al-Hakim (Picatrix). Right now, you are beholding an accurate and complete translation of Ajnas waiting for its secrets to be unlocked by the disciples of today and the masters of tomorrow. "Heth Heth Sharet Maret Aeeret Ayolet"

The Israel Omen


David Brennan - 2009
    It will drive hundreds of thousands from their homes, many never to return. An earthquake of historical destructive power suddenly strikes from an unknown fault line in California, leaving in its wake the second most costly natural disaster in U.S. history. A flood, the like of which has not been seen for 500 years, ravages the Midwest United States, ruining crops and towns. Bizarre weather afflicts multitudes of people with hundreds of tornados striking in what is described as the "worst weather in U.S. history," immediately followed by a European heat wave described as the worst in the last 250 years. Terrorists successfully strike in another "day of infamy," and the entire financial structure of the world is shaken to its core as once mighty institutions begin to crumble. All of these terrible events would appear on the surface to be random acts of God. But, were they? The Israel Omen considers a series of historically destructive events since 1991, connected by a common thread: warnings found in ancient Hebrew writings. Are these events perhaps the telling signs of an ancient omen, the same omen ignored by Egypt some 3500 years ago resulting in the famous Biblical plagues? Did this omen return with the homecoming of the Jews to the Holy Land in 1948? As the nations of the world gather to remove the restored "Promised Land" from the Jews, the international group called the "Quartet" leading the effort eerily appears to be specifically mentioned in these ancient writings. Was the financial collapse that began in 2007 the beginning of a promised curse against the nations gathered to remove the restored "Promised Land?"

The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland


Donald M. Lewis - 2009
    Lewis examines why British evangelicals became fascinated with the Jews and how they promoted a 'teaching of esteem" that countered a "teaching of contempt." Evangelicals militated for the restoration of Jews to Palestine by lobbying the British cabinet on foreign policy decisions. Professing their love for the Jews, they effectively reshaped the image of the Jew in conversionist literature, gave sacrificially to convert them to Christianity, and worked with German Pietists to create a joint Anglican-Lutheran bishopric in Jerusalem, the center (in their minds) of world Jewry. Evangelical identity evolved during this process and had an impact on Jewish identity, transforming Jewish-Christian relations. It also changed the course of world history by creating a climate of opinion in the United Kingdom in favor of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which pledged British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The movement also bequeathed a fascination with Christian Zionism to American evangelicals that still influences global politics.

The Making of Modern Israel: 1948-1967


Leslie Stein - 2009
    Within a time frame of only nineteen years, culminating in the Six-Day War, Israel fought three separate wars. But within its first four years, thanks to mass immigration, its population doubled. Furthermore, Israel had been confronted with acute economic difficulties, intra Jewish ethnic tensions, a problematic Arab minority and a secular-religious divide. Apart from defence issues, Israel faced a generally hostile or, at best, indifferent international community rendering it hard pressed in securing great power patronage or even official sympathy and understanding. Based on a wide range of sources, both in Hebrew and English, this book contains a judicious synthesis of the received literature to yield the general reader and student alike a reliable, balanced, and novel account of Israel's fateful and turbulent infancy.

A State Beyond the Pale: Europe's Problem with Israel


Robin Shepherd - 2009
    For many, it has become the contemporary equivalent of apartheid South Africa—a system and a state with no legitimate place in the modern world. Israel's conflict with the Palestinians and the wider Muslim world also takes place across one of the great fault lines in global politics. No one with a serious interest in international affairs can ignore it. But why have so many people and institutions of influence in Europe chosen to place themselves on the side of that fault line which opposes Israel? Where exactly does all this hostility come from? Can this really be put down to a revival of anti-Semitism on a continent which gave the world the Holocaust? This book looks at the roots of anti-Israeli sentiment in Europe and shows why there is now a risk that it may even spread to the U.S. In the author's view, the Israel-Palestine conflict can be seen as a test case for the West's ability to stand up for the values it claims as its own. In Europe, important institutions and individuals are now failing that test, and this book explains why.

The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination


Jeremy R. Hammond - 2009
    It sets out to show, by examining principle historical documents and placing key events in proper context, that the root of today’s conflict is the rejection of the right to self-determination for the Arab Palestinians.

Best of Times, Worst of Times (Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry)


Walter Laqueur - 2009
    In this engaging memoir, Laqueur focuses on the political and historical events that shaped his thinking and that have inspired his intellectual work throughout his life. He discusses living and attending school under Nazism; Marxism, the Soviet Union, and the part he played in Cold War politics; and the image his generation had of Zionism, Israel, and the Middle East. Laqueur shares his views on beltway politics and think tanks, and concludes with a look at guerrilla warfare and terrorism, and the future of Europe.

Lone Soldiers: Israel's Defenders from Around the World


Herb Keinon - 2009
    Once there, they choose one of the harshest, most difficult frameworks possible in which to immerse themselves: the army. They are Israel's lone soldiers. ''Lone Soldiers: Israel's Defenders from Around the World'' tells a tale, engagingly written by Jerusalem Post diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon, with accompanying pictures by noted photographer Ricki Rosen. This book tells the personal stories of fourteen of these volunteer lone soldiers - including one, Michael Levin, who fell in the Second Lebanon War - and of an ''old school'' kibbutznik, Lt.-Col. (res.) Tzvika Levy, known as the ''father of the lone soldiers,'' whose life mission is to take them under his wing and make their landing in Israel and the IDF as painless as possible. Their stories are living proof of Israel's enduring strength and Zionism's vibrant appeal.

Dachau: a silent witness


Arthur Katz - 2009
    The seeming absence of God, when rightly understood, provides a key to the knowledge of His true reality and presence.

Aviva-No


Shimon Adaf - 2009
    "The brilliance of Yael Segalovitz’s translations in Aviva-No is matched by the perceptivity of her introductory note, which situates Adaf’s place as a Mizrachi Jew in contemporary Israeli society and insightfully analyzes the defamiliarizing effect of the Hebrew originals."—World Literature Today

Jesus of Nazareth: Archaeologists Retracing the Footsteps of Christ


Michael Hesemann - 2009
    Bible in hand, he takes readers on a stunning tour through the places Jesus lived, worked, and suffered—Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capernaum, Jerusalem—to give a concrete and colorful sense of the historical Jesus and the world he knew.Along the way, archaeologists reveal to Hesemann a host of little-known discoveries, from the apostles' boat to Herod's palace to what might be the sites of Jesus' miracles. This book brings readers face-to-face with the mystery of the Incarnation—a God who, if Scripture is right, became man and lived among us. Pack your bag and follow closely as Michael Hesemann retraces the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth.

Let's Go Israel: The Student Travel Guide


Harvard Student Agencies Inc. - 2009
    Relax on a beach in Haifa, visit ancient Petra, snorkel in the waters of Eilat, and unwind in sassy Tel Aviv—our student writers have the inside scoop on the best grub and the cheapest rooms for wherever you want to crash. Pick up a copy of Let’s Go Israel and get ready for adventure in the land of milk and honey.Let’s Go publishes the world’s favorite student travel guides, written entirely by Harvard undergraduates. Armed with pens, notebooks, and a few changes of underwear stuffed in their backpacks, our student researchers go across continents, through time zones, and above expectations to seek out invaluable travel experiences for our readers. Let’s Go has been on the road for 50 years and counting: We’re on a mission to provide our readers with sharp, fresh coverage packed with socially responsible opportunities to go beyond tourism.

Zvuvi's Israel


Tami Lehman-Wilzig - 2009
    Children can search for him hiding on the ski slopes of Mount Hermon and in the salty waters of the Dead Sea. A great way to introduce young children to the sites and sounds of Israel.

Back to Basics: A Study of the Second Lebanon War and Operation CAST LEAD


Scott C. Farquhar - 2009
    It studies, first, what did the IDF do to prepare for that operation in light of its harsh experience in what has become known as The Second Lebanon War that was fought against Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, and second, what possible lessons can be applied to the US Army.