Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights


Omar Barghouti - 2010
    In this urgent book, Omar Barghouti makes the case for a rights-based BDS campaign to stop Israel's rapacious occupation, colonization, and apartheid against the Palestinian people. This considered, convincing collection contributes to the growing debate on Israel's violation of international law and points the way forward to a united global civil society movement for freedom, justice, self-determination and equality for all.

The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust: A Memoir


Noam Chayut - 2013
    For that girl, I embodied absolute evil ... Since then I have been left without my Holocaust, and since then everything in my life has assumed a new meaning: belongingness is blurred, pride is lacking, belief is faltering, contrition is heightening, forgiveness is being born.” The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust is the deeply moving memoir of Chayut’s journey from eager Zionist conscript on the front line of Operation Defensive Shield to leading campaigner against the Israeli occupation. As he attempts to make sense of his own life as well as his place within the wider conflict around him, he slowly starts to question his soldier’s calling, Israel’s justifications for invasion, and the ever-present problem of historical victimhood. Noam Chayut’s exploration of a young soldier’s life is one of the most compelling memoirs to emerge from Israel for a long time.

The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes


Avraham Burg - 2007
    Burg argues that the Jewish nation has been traumatized and has lost the ability to trust itself, its neighbors or the world around it. He shows that this is one of the causes for the growing nationalism and violence that are plaguing Israeli society and reverberating through Jewish communities worldwide. Burg uses his own family history--his parents were Holocaust survivors--to inform his innovative views on what the Jewish people need to do to move on and eventually live in peace with their Arab neighbors and feel comfortable in world at large. Thought-provoking, compelling, and original, this book is bound to spark a heated debate around the world.

People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present


Dara Horn - 2021
    Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture—and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks—Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.

This is Not a Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature


Ahdaf Soueif - 2017
    Bringing writers to the nation from all corners of the globe, it aimed to break the cultural siege imposed by the Israeli military occupation, to strengthen artistic links with the rest of the world, and to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, "the power of culture over the culture of power."Celebrating the tenth anniversary of PalFest, Annexe is a collection of essays, poems, and sketches from some of the world's most distinguished artists, responding to their experiences at this unique festival. Both heartbreaking and hopeful, their gathered work is a testament to the power of literature to promote solidarity and hope in the most desperate of situations.Contributing authors include J. M. Coetzee, China Mieville, Alice Walker, Geoff Dyer, Claire Messud, Henning Mankell, Michael Ondaatje, Kamila Shamsie, Michael Palin, Deborah Moggach, Mohammed Hanif, Richard Ford, Gillian Slovo, Adam Foulds, Susan Abulhawa, Ahdaf Soueif, Jeremy Harding, Brigid Keenan, Rachel Holmes, Suad Amiry, Gary Younge, Jamal Mahjoub, Molly Crabapple, Najwan Darwish, Nathalie Handal, Omar Robert Hamilton, Pankaj Mishra, Raja Shehadeh, Selma Dabbagh, William Sutcliffe, Atef Abu Saif, Yasmin El-Rifae, Sabrina Mahfouz, Alaa Abd El Fattah, Mercedes Kemp, Ru Freeman."

How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less


Sarah Glidden - 2010
    Her experience clashes with her preconceived notions again and again, particularly when she tries to take a non-chaperoned excursion into the West Bank. As she struggles to "understand Israel," Sarah is forced to question first her beliefs, then ultimately her own identity.Sarah Glidden won the prestigious Ignatz Award for "Most Promising New Talent" as well as the Masie Kukoc Award for Comics Inspiration. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies.

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East


Sandy Tolan - 2006
    To his surprise, when he found the house he was greeted by Dalia Ashkenazi Landau, a nineteen-year-old Israeli college student, whose family fled Europe for Israel following the Holocaust. On the stoop of their shared home, Dalia and Bashir began a rare friendship, forged in the aftermath of war and tested over the next thirty-five years in ways that neither could imagine on that summer day in 1967. Based on extensive research, and springing from his enormously resonant documentary that aired on NPR’s Fresh Air in 1998, Sandy Tolan brings the Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to its most human level, suggesting that even amid the bleakest political realities there exist stories of hope and reconciliation.

Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad (Updated)


Gordon Thomas - 1999
    Gordon Thomas's 1999 publication of Gideon's Spies, resulting from closed-door interviews with Mossad agents, informants, and spymasters as well as from classified documents and top-secret sources, revealed previously untold truths about the Israeli intelligence agency. And now, in this edition, Thomas updates his classic text and shows the Mossad as it truly is: brilliant, ruthless, and flawed, but ultimately awesome.Three all-new chapters cover topics including:- How the Mossad planned to assassinate Saddam Hussein- Saddam's food-testing ritual, and the surprising "source" within his government- China's U.S.-based front-companies, and its relationship with bin Laden- Mossad's untold role in the events before and after 9/11- Mossad and revelations about Princess Diana's death- The disappearance of the millions transferred from the Vatican Bank to the Polish Solidarity movement- How extremists recruit suicide bombers, including women- Mossad's untold role in the Iraq war and the hunts for Saddam and bin Laden- Saddam's plans for trial

The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics


Gilad Atzmon - 2011
    Jewish identity is tied up with some of the most difficult and contentious issues of today. The purpose in this book is to open many of these issues up for discussion. Since Israel defines itself openly as the Jewish State, we should ask what the notions of Judaism, Jewishness, Jewish culture and Jewish ideology stand for. Gilad examines the tribal aspects embedded in Jewish secular discourse, both Zionist and anti Zionist; the holocaust religion; the meaning of history and time within the Jewish political discourse; the anti-Gentile ideologies entangled within different forms of secular Jewish political discourse and even within the Jewish left. He questions what it is that leads Diaspora Jews to identify themselves with Israel and affiliate with its politics. The devastating state of our world affairs raises an immediate demand for a conceptual shift in our intellectual and philosophical attitude towards politics, identity politics and history.

Antisemitism: Here and Now


Deborah E. Lipstadt - 2018
    And the reemergence of the white nationalist movement in America, complete with Nazi slogans and imagery, has been reminiscent of the horrific fascist displays of the 1930s. Throughout Europe, Jews have been attacked by terrorists, and some have been murdered.Where is all this hatred coming from? Is there any significant difference between left-wing and right-wing antisemitism? What role has the anti-Zionist movement played? And what can be done to combat the latest manifestations of an ancient hatred? In a series of letters to an imagined college student and imagined colleague, both of whom are perplexed by this resurgence, acclaimed historian Deborah Lipstadt gives us her own superbly reasoned, brilliantly argued, and certain to be controversial responses to these troubling questions.

The Case Against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace


Alan M. Dershowitz - 2008
    . . Alan Dershowitz speaks with great passion and personal courage."-Elie WieselAlan Dershowitz is at his outspoken, thought-provoking best in The Case Against Israel's Enemies, changing both the tone and the focus of the debate about Israel's adversaries at a time when the future existence of Israel is increasingly imperiled.

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.

The Origins of Totalitarianism


Hannah Arendt - 1951
    Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.

Can We Talk About Israel?: A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted


Daniel Sokatch - 2021
    As the head of the New Israel Fund, which is dedicated to equality and democracy for all Israelis, not just Jews, Sokatch is supremely well-versed on the Israeli conflict.Can We Talk About Israel? is the story of that conflict, and of why so many people feel so strongly about it without actually understanding it very well at all. It is an attempt to grapple with a century-long struggle between two peoples that both perceive themselves as (and indeed are) victims. And it's an attempt to explain why Israel (and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) inspires such extreme feelings-why it seems like Israel is the answer to "what is wrong with the world" for half the people in it, and "what is right with the world" for the other half.Complete with engaging illustrations by Christopher Noxon, Can We Talk About Israel? is an easy-to-read yet penetrating and original look at the history and basic contours of one of the most complicated conflicts in the world.

Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer


Phyllis Bennis - 2007
    With straightforward language, Phyllis Bennis, longtime analyst of the region, answers basic questions about Israel and Israelis, Palestine and Palestinians, the US and the Middle East, Zionism and anti-Semitism; about complex issues ranging from the Oslo peace process to the election of Hamas. Together her answers provide a comprehensive understanding of the long-standing Palestinian-Israeli conflict.