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.

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.

Cakes to Die For


Mara Webb - 2021
    After a lifetime of bad luck, it seems she’s ended up at rock bottom, saddled with debt from her cheating ex, a dead-end job with no prospects and a studio apartment that’s not even fit for a dog. It all seems a little hopeless until there’s a knock at the door…It turns out Zora has long-lost family on the other side of the country, hidden away in a little town on an unknown island. After uprooting herself Zora arrives in town to find that not only has she inherited an estranged family, she’s also the sole heir of the town’s local bakery—there’s one other thing too, apparently she’s a witch.With a whole world of magic to learn and a small business to run it seems like Zora’s hands are more than full, but when some new evidence comes to light and casts doubts on the nature of her aunt’s death, Zora is quickly drawn into solving a murder mystery.At her side is a sarcastic cat, headstrong cousins, and a whole host of townsfolk who are nothing short of interesting. Can Zora learn to bake, catch a killer and settle into her new life without ending up on the chopping block herself?

The Crisis of Zionism


Peter Beinart - 2012
    In Israel, the deepening occupation of the West Bank is putting Israeli democracy at risk. In the United States, the refusal of major Jewish organizations to defend democracy in the Jewish state is alienating many young liberal Jews from Zionism itself. In the next generation, the liberal Zionist dream--the dream of a state that safeguards the Jewish people and cherishes democratic ideals--may die.In The Crisis of Zionism, Peter Beinart lays out in chilling detail the looming danger to Israeli democracy and the American Jewish establishment's refusal to confront it. And he offers a fascinating, groundbreaking portrait of the two leaders at the center of the crisis: Barack Obama, America's first "Jewish president," a man steeped in the liberalism he learned from his many Jewish friends and mentors in Chicago; and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who considers liberalism the Jewish people's special curse. These two men embody fundamentally different visions not just of American and Israeli national interests but of the mission of the Jewish people itself.Beinart concludes with provocative proposals for how the relationship between American Jews and Israel must change, and with an eloquent and moving appeal for American Jews to defend the dream of a democratic Jewish state before it is too late.

The Olive Grove: A Palestinian Story


Deborah Rohan - 2001
    Near the end of the First World War, Ottoman soldier Kamal Moghrabi is imprisoned by his Turkish masters. Reunited with his family after being freed by British soldiers, he marries his childhood friend Haniya.But their happiness is short-lived as their homeland is ravaged by violence between the local Arab population and Jewish immigrants fleeing Europe. Any hope of an independent Palestine is shattered and the Moghrabis are forced to flee their home with its cherished olive groves.Based on a true story, this family saga is a universal depiction of Palestinian life and culture with a warm and engaging love story at its heart.Deborah Rohan met Hamzi Moghrabi in 1993. Over the course of several years and many interviews with Hamzi and his family, she wrote the story of one family’s experience of the turbulent events that have shaped today’s Middle East. She lives in Colorado, USA.More information about The Olive Grove can be found on her website www.theolivegrovebook.com.

It's Easier to Reach Heaven Than the End of the Street: A Jerusalem Memoir


Emma Williams - 2006
    A month later the second Palestinian Intifada erupted. For the next three years she worked with Palestinians in Ramallah by day and spent her time with Israelis in Tel Aviv. This is her story.

Ghosts & Gateaux (Wicked Witches of Brookdale Book 1)


Sara Bourgeois - 2021
    

Witches Of Brimstone Bay Cozy Mysteries: Books 1-3


R.K. Dreaming - 2021
    One click and read now to join witch Esme on her charming and funny murder mystery adventures.★★★★★ "R.K Dreaming weaves a wonderful tale of friendship, family, romance and mystery. Well written, fun read - looking forward to future releases." - Amazon ReviewerBOOK ONE:Solving crime one ghost at a time.Disaster strikes and witch Esme Westbrim flees in the dead of night to her magical hometown of Brimstone Bay with a terrible secret. The ramshackle old castle left to her by a great-aunt is the perfect hide-out for a desperate witch seeking a charm to get her out of harm's way, right up until a dead body turns up on her doorstep.Things get worse when the ridiculously handsome investigating Special Agent Chris Constantine puts Esme on his suspect’s list. Esme must put her amateur sleuthing skills to the test and prove her innocence before Agent Constantine takes too close a look at her — because Esme has a secret worse than murder.Juggling life and death turns into magical mayhem when a moody psychic cat, a busybody ghost aunt, and Esme’s three wild witch cousins burst in on her life. Will they help her catch the killer, or will they run for cover when they find out what Esme is hiding?BOOK TWO:Solving crime one fairy tale at a time.Witch Esme Westbrim is settling into a new life in Bewitching Brimstone Bay when the murder of a tourist hits too close to home. The second body in a few months has turned up on her doorstep!To make things worse Esme has seen someone she knows all too well lurking around the scene of the crime. Afraid her family will come under suspicion, Esme must attend a magical fairy-tale reunion ball and uncover deadly secrets from the past. Even help from a psychic cat, magically marvellous cupcakes, and a wild witch cousin might not be enough when a certain ridiculously handsome Special Agent keeps getting in Esme's way!Can Esme find happily ever after for everyone or will her belief that fairy tales always end badly come true?BOOK THREE:Solving crime one beast at a time.Life in Bewitching Brimstone Bay has not turned out the way that witch Esme Westbrim hoped, but when girls start going missing across town, including a customer at her café, Esme puts aside her own troubles in order to help. To her dismay, she stumbles across a wicked murder.It turns out the victim is tied to the ridiculously handsome Chris Constantine’s troubled past, and the race is on to solve not just one beastly crime, but three. Worse, Esme’s faith in Chris is shaken when she discovers an alarming secret. With the help of her psychic cat, ghost aunt and wild witch cousin, can Esme untangle the complicated mysteries of Chris’s past and her own heart before time runs out and the vengefully wicked past catches up with all of them?

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.

Method and Madness: The Hidden Story of Israel's Assaults on Gaza


Norman G. Finkelstein - 2014
    Taken together, Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), and Operation Protective Edge (2014), have resulted in the deaths of some 3,700 Palestinians. Meanwhile, a total of 90 Israelis were killed in the invasions.On the face of it, this succession of vastly disproportionate attacks has often seemed frenzied and pathological. Senior Israeli politicians have not discouraged such perceptions, indeed they have actively encouraged them. After the 2008-9 assault Israel’s then-foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, boasted, “Israel demonstrated real hooliganism during the course of the recent operation, which I demanded.”However, as Norman G. Finkelstein sets out in this concise, paradigm-shifting new book, a closer examination of Israel’s motives reveals a state whose repeated recourse to savage war is far from irrational. Rather, Israel’s attacks have been designed to sabotage the possibility of a compromise peace with the Palestinians, even on terms that are favorable to it.Looking also at machinations around the 2009 UN sponsored Goldstone report and Turkey’s forlorn attempt to seek redress in the UN for the killing of its citizens in the 2010 attack on the Gaza peace flotilla, Finkelstein documents how Israel has repeatedly eluded accountability for what are now widely recognized as war crimes.Further, he shows that, though neither side can claim clear victory in these conflicts, the ensuing stalemate remains much more tolerable to Israelis than the beleaguered citizens of Gaza. A strategy of mass non-violent protest might, he contends, hold out more hope for a Palestinian victory than military resistance, however brave.

1949: The First Israelis


Tom Segev - 1986
    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 year.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 indispensible for understanding the dilemmas that continue to confront--and divide--Israeli society.

Israeli Mossad: Operation Orchard Israel's Strike On The Syrian Reactor


Dan Magen - 2016
    For 7 months, both the U.S and Israeli governments imposed blackouts on all new reports about the raid. Subsequently, the Central Intelligence Unit (CIA), and the White House confirmed that American intelligence had confirmed that the raided site was a military purposed nuclear facility. Syria denied those claims. In 2009, an investigation conducted by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) reported traces of graphite and uranium and concluded that the raided site had features resembling an undeclared nuclear reactor. However, IAEA could not confirm or deny the findings because Syria had refused to provide IAFA investigators the co-operation they needed to take their investigations to a conclusive end. On April 2011, almost four years after the raid, IAEA officially confirmed that the bombed site was indeed a nuclear reactor. How did it happen? What weren’t we told? To know more about this operation, this is the right book for you. You will learn everything you need to know about the Operation Orchard.

Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948


Tanya Reinhart - 2002
    Examining the official record of recent diplomacy, including United States-brokered accords and talks at Camp David, Oslo, and Taba, Reinhart explores the fundamental power imbalances between the negotiating parties and identifies Israel's strategy of creating facts on the ground to define and complicate the terms of any future settlement. In this indispensable primer, Reinhart's searing insight illuminates the current conflict and suggests a path toward change.

The Blue Between Sky and Water


Susan Abulhawa - 2015
    The men here, those who have escaped prison or the battlefields, worry over making ends meet, tend their tattered pride, join the resistance. The women are left to be breadwinners and protectors, too. Nazmiyeh is the matriarch, the center of a household of sisters, daughters, granddaughters, whose lives threaten to spin out of control with every personal crisis, military attack, or political landmine. Her brother’s granddaughter Nur is stuck in America; her own daughter’s son, traumatized in an Israeli assault, slips into another kind of exile; her daughter has cancer and no access to medicine. Their neighbor, the Beekeeper’s wife, will extract the marijuana resin to shrink her tumor, but it is also Nazmiyeh’s large heart and zest for life that heals, that will even call Nur back from the broken promise of America and set her on a new path. All Nazmiyeh’s loved ones will return to her, and ultimately journey further, to that place between the sky and water where all is as it once was, and where all will meet again.Born of a troubling history that continues to rage forth and claim its dead, The Blue Between Sky and Water is a novel of survival and of the vivid, powerful women who manage to enlarge and enliven the everyday. It is a novel for our time—and one that is also timeless.

On Palestine


Noam Chomsky - 2015
    The need to stand in solidarity with Palestinians has never been greater. Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky, two leading voices in the struggle to liberate Palestine, discuss the road ahead for Palestinians and how the international community can pressure Israel to end its human rights abuses against the people of Palestine. On Palestine is the sequel to their acclaimed book Gaza in Crisis.