Ten Myths about Israel


Ilan Pappé - 2017
    In this groundbreaking and controversial book he examines ten of the most contested ideas concerning the origins and identity of the contemporary state of Israel. Once and for all he explodes the myths that justify the rights of the Israeli state, asking, - Was Palestine an empty land at the time of the Balfour Declaration? - Were the Jews a people without a land? - Is there no difference between Zionism and Judaism? - Is Zionism not a colonial project of occupation? - Did the Palestinians leave their homeland voluntarily in 1948? - Was the June 1967 War a war of -no choice-? - Is Israel the only democracy in the Middle East? - Were the failed Oslo negotiations of 1992 the PLO's fault? - Was it a question of national security to bomb Gaza? - Is the Two States Solution still achievable? Written for the general reader, this book will prompt a huge, and necessary, debate.

Catch-67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War


Micah Goodman - 2017
    In 2017, best-selling Israeli author Micah Goodman published a balanced and insightful analysis of the situation that quickly became one of Israel’s most debated books of the year. Now available in English translation with a new preface by the author, Catch-67 deftly sheds light on the ideas that have shaped Israelis’ thinking on both sides of the debate, and among secular and religious Jews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Contrary to opinions that dominate the discussion, he shows that the paradox of Israeli political discourse is that both sides are right in what they affirm—and wrong in what they deny. Although he concludes that the conflict cannot be solved, Goodman is far from a pessimist and explores how instead it can be reduced in scope and danger through limited, practical steps. Through philosophical critique and political analysis, Goodman builds a creative, compelling case for pragmatism in a dispute where a comprehensive solution seems impossible.

Whose Land? Whose Promise?: What Christians Are Not Being Told about Israel and the Palestinians


Gary M. Burge - 2003
    Whose Land? Whose Promise? is Burge's personal exploration of his feelings about the crisis in the Middle East, put on paper to communicate with other Christians who share the same opinions he does and seek answers to the same questions he does; questions such as: How do I embrace my commitment to Judaism, a commitment to which I am bound by the Bible, when I sense in my deepest being that there is a profound injustice afoot in Israel? How do I celebrate the birth of this nation Israel when I also mourn the suffering of Arab Christians who are equally my brothers and sisters in Christ? How do I love those Palestinian Muslims who are deeply misunderstood by all parties in this conflict?

Dinner at the Center of the Earth


Nathan Englander - 2017
    The guard who has watched over him a dozen years. An American waitress in Paris. A young Palestinian man in Berlin who strikes up an odd friendship with a wealthy Canadian businessman. And The General, Israel's most controversial leader, who lies dying in a hospital, the only man who knows of the prisoner's existence.From these vastly different lives Nathan Englander has woven a powerful, intensely suspenseful portrait of a nation riven by insoluble conflict, even as the lives of its citizens become fatefully and inextricably entwined--a political thriller of the highest order that interrogates the anguished, violent division between Israelis and Palestinians, and dramatizes the immense moral ambiguities haunting both sides. Who is right, who is wrong--who is the guard, who is truly the prisoner?

The Unmaking of Israel


Gershom Gorenberg - 2011
    Informing his examination using interviews in Israel and the West Bank and with access to previously classified Israeli documents, Gorenberg delivers an incisive discussion of the causes and trends of extremism in Israel’s government and society. Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, writes, "until I read The Unmaking of Israel, I didn't think it could be possible to feel more despairing, and then more terribly hopeful, about Israel, a place that I began at last, under the spell of Gershom Gorenberg's lucid and dispassionate yet intensely personal writing, to understand."

My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel


Ari Shavit - 2013
    Facing unprecedented internal and external pressures, Israel today is at a moment of existential crisis. Through revealing stories of significant events and of ordinary individuals—pioneers, immigrants, entrepreneurs, scientists, army generals, peaceniks, settlers, and Palestinians—Israeli journalist Ari Shavit illuminates many of the pivotal moments of the Zionist century that led Israel to where it is today. We meet the youth group leader who recognized the potential of Masada as a powerful symbol for Zionism; the young farmer who bought an orange grove from his Arab neighbor in the 1920s, and with the Jaffa orange helped to create a booming economy in Palestine; the engineer who was instrumental in developing Israel’s nuclear program; the religious Zionists who started the settler movement. Over an illustrious career that has spanned almost thirty years, Shavit has had rare access to people from across the Israeli political, economic, and social spectrum, and in this ambitious work he tells a riveting story that is both deeply human and of profound historical dimension.As it examines the complexities and contradictions of the Israeli condition, My Promised Land asks difficult but important questions: Why did Israel come to be? How did it come to be? And can Israel survive? Culminating with an analysis of the issues and threats that Israel is currently facing, both internal and external, My Promised Land uses the defining events of the past to shed new light on the present. The result is a landmark portrait of a small, vibrant country living on the edge, whose identity and presence play a crucial role in today’s global political landscape.

The Netanyahus


Joshua Cohen - 2021
    When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host, to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with non-fiction, the campus novel with the lecture, THE NETANYAHUS is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics - 'An Account of A Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Incident in the History of a Very Famous Family' that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.

From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map: Essays


Edward W. Said - 2004
    Said offers impassioned pleas for the beleaguered Palestinian cause from one of its most eloquent spokesmen. These essays, which originally appeared in Cairo’s Al-Ahram Weekly, London’s Al-Hayat, and the London Review of Books, take us from the Oslo Accords through the U.S. led invasion of Iraq, and present information and perspectives too rarely visible in America.Said is unyielding in his call for truth and justice. He insists on truth about Israel's role as occupier and its treatment of the Palestinians. He pleads for new avenues of communication between progressive elements in Israel and Palestine. And he is equally forceful in his condemnation of Arab failures and the need for real leadership in the Arab world.

Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa and Other Stories


Ghassan Kanafani - 1984
    Each involves a child, a victim of circumstances, who nevertheless participates in the struggle towards a better future. As in Kanafani's other fiction, these stories explore the need to recover the past by action.

A Tale of Love and Darkness


Amos Oz - 2002
    The story of an adolescent whose life has been changed forever by his mother's suicide when he was twelve years old. The story of a man who leaves the constraints of his family and its community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz, change his name, marry, have children. The story of a writer who becomes an active participant in the political life of his nation.(back cover)

Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon


Robert Fisk - 1990
    A remarkable combination of war reporting and analysis by an author who has witnessed the carnage of Beirut for twenty-five years, Fisk, the first journalist to whom bin Laden announced his jihad against the U.S., is one of the world's most fearless and honored foreign correspondents. He spares no one in this saga of the civil war and subsequent Israeli invasion: the PLO, whose thuggish behavior alienated most Lebanese; the various Lebanese factions, whose appalling brutality spared no one; the Syrians, who supported first the Christians and then the Muslims in their attempt to control Lebanon; and the Israelis, who tried to install their own puppets and, with their 1982 invasion, committed massive war crimes of their own. It includes a moving finale that recounts the travails of Fisk's friend Terry Anderson who was kidnapped by Hezbollah and spent 2,454 days in captivity. Fully updated to include the Israeli withdrawl from south Lebanon and Ariel Sharon's electoral victory over Ehud Barak, this edition has sixty pages of new material and a new preface. "Robert Fisk's enormous book about Lebanon's desperate travails is one of the most distinguished in recent times."—Edward Said

The Hope


Herman Wouk - 1993
    In The Hope, his long-awaited return to historical fiction, he turns to one of the most thrilling stories of our time - the saga of Israel. In the grand, epic style of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, The Hope plunges the reader into the major battles, the disasters and victories, and the fragile periods of peace from the 1948 War of Independence to the astounding triumph of the Six-Day War in 1967. And since Israelis have seen their share of comic mishaps as well as heroism, this novel offers some of Herman Wouk's most amusing scenes since the famed "strawberry business" in The Caine Mutiny. First to last The Hope is a tale of four Israeli army officers and the women they love: Zev Barak, Viennese-born cultured military man; Benny Luria, ace fighter pilot with religious stirrings; Sam Pasternak, sardonic and mysterious Mossad man; and an antic dashing warrior they call Kishote, Hebrew for Quixote, who arrives at Israel's first pitched battle a refugee boy on a mule and over the years rises to high rank. In the love stories of these four men, the author of Marjorie Morningstar has created a gallery of three memorable Israeli women and one quirky fascinating American, daughter of a high CIA official and headmistress of a Washington girls school. With the authenticity, authority, and narrative force of Wouk's finest fiction, The Hope portrays not so much the victory of one people over another, as the gallantry of the human spirit, surviving and triumphing against crushing odds. In that sense it can be called a tale of hope for all mankind; a note that Herman Wouk has struck in all his writings, against the prevailing pessimism of our turbulent century.

The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace


Einat Wilf - 2020
    

Gate of the Sun: Bab Al-Shams


Elias Khoury - 1998
    Keeping vigil at the old man's bedside is his spiritual son, Khalil, who nurses Yunes, refusing to admit that his hero may never regain consciousness. Like a modern-day Scheherazade, Khalil relates the story of Palestinian exile while also recalling Yunes's own extraordinary life and his love for his wife, whom he meets secretly over the years at Bab al-Shams, the Gate of the Sun.A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the YearOne of Kansas City Star's 100 Noteworthy Books of the YearA Boldtype Notable Book of the YearA Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the YearA San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year

Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes


Mitri Raheb - 2014
    A Palestinian Christian theologian shows how the reality of empire shapes the context of the biblical story, and the ongoing experience of Middle East conflict.