Non Fiction: Israel / Middle East

In this section we'll keep you up to date with news of books you might be interested in. The information will come from the publishers' website and we will add our reviews as often as we can.

Do also look out for events information and keep us posted if you are an organiser.

And remember, feedback is always welcome.

I Shall Not Hate

A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity

Izzeldin Abuelaish

Bloomsbury ISBN 9781408813676

February 2011

Do not miss his event at the South Bank Centre as part of pre-JBW 2011.

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

Gilbert Achcar

Saqi Books ISBN 9780863566394

April 2010

The Arab-Israeli conflict goes far beyond the wars waged in the Middle East. There is a war of narratives revolving around the two defining traumas of the conflict: the Holocaust and the Nakba. Middle East expert Gilbert Achcar critically assesses Arab attitudes to the Holocaust, which he argues are closely related to the dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948. From Hitler's rise to power up to the present day, he identifies a wide range of reactions among the Arab world's four main idealogical movements: pro-Western liberalism, pan-Arab nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism and Marxism. Based on a thorough examination of sources in several languages, including Arabic, English, French and German, "The Arabs and the Holocaust" is a major contribution to the discourse of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is also groundbreaking in its effort to bridge the gap between the conflicting narratives and to promote mutual understanding.

The 33 Day War: Israel's War on Hezbollah in Lebanon and Its Aftermath

Gilbert Achcar and Michel Warschawski

Saqi ISBN 9780863566462

April 2007

This is a timely, incisive and richly informed assessment of the recent Israel-Lebanon conflict written by noted experts from the two countries: the Lebanese Gilbert Achcar and the Israeli Michel Warschawski. The authors describe the popular basis of Hezbollah in Lebanon among the Shiites, and its relation to the country's other religious communities and political forces. They analyze the regional roles of Syria, Iran and Hamas as well as the politics of the US and Europe. They then dissect the political background behind recent actions taken by Israel, the impact of Israel's incursion into Lebanon and effects on Lebanon's population, and the consequences of the war on Israeli polity and society whilst offering their assessments of future prospects.

 A History of Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths

Karen Armstrong

HarperCollins ISBN 9780006383475

January 2005

Jerusalem has probably cast more of a spell over the human imagination than any other city in the world. Held by believers to contain the site where Abraham offered up Isaac, the place of the crucifixion of Christ and the rock from which the prophet Muhammed ascended to heaven, Jerusalem has been celebrated and revered for centuries by Jews, Christians and Muslims. Such is the symbolic power of this ancient city that its future status poses a major obstacle to a comprehensive regional peace in the Middle East. In this comprehensive and elegantly written work, Karen Armstrong traces the turbulent history of the city from the prehistoric era to the present day.

David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Renaissance

Shlomo Aronson

Translated from Hebrew by Naftali Greenwood

Cambridge University Press ISBN 9780521197489

December 2010

This book offers a reappraisal of David Ben-Gurion's role in Jewish-Israeli history from the perspective of the twenty-first century, in the larger context of the Zionist 'renaissance', of which he was a major and unique exponent. Some have described Ben-Gurion's Zionism as a dream that has gone sour, or a utopia doomed to be unfulfilled. Now - after the dust surrounding Israel's founding father has settled, archives have been opened, and perspective has been gained since Ben-Gurion's downfall - this book presents a fresh look at this statesman-intellectual and his success and tragic failures during a unique period of time that he and his peers described as the 'Jewish renaissance'. The resulting reappraisal offers a new analysis of Ben-Gurion's actual role as a major player in Israeli, Middle Eastern, and global politics.

1948: A Soldier's Tale - The Bloody Road to Jerusalem
Uri Avnery
Oneworld Publications
ISBN 9781851686292

Sep 2008
.
Written from the trenches, this moving memoir of a young Israeli soldier is the first eyewitness account of the Israeli War of Independence, and

is widely recognized as the outstanding book of that war – the Middle East’s All Quiet on the Western Front.

Joining the Israeli army at the outbreak of war, and later volunteering for the legendary commando unit, “Samson’s Foxes”, Uri Avnery took part in almost all the major battles on the Jerusalem and southern fronts. Writing from the battlefield, from the back of jeeps, in deserted villages and, at the very end, from a military hospital bed, Avnery captured the taste and texture of life on the front line: of adrenaline-fueled battles and day-to-day brutalities, as well as the bravery, camaraderie, and off-duty exploits of young men and women thrust into the horror and inhumanity of war. Gripping, sensitive, and at times deeply poignant, this is one man’s unforgettable story of a year that affected all those who lived, fought,and died in one of the most significant wars of our time.

Uri Avnery, journalist, writer, and politician, has fought for peace for over fifty years, co-founding the peace organization Gush Shalom. He has received numerous awards for his extensive humanitarian work, including the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize in 2001. He lives in Tel Aviv.

Plurality and Citizenship in Israel:

Moving beyond the Jewish/Palestinian civil divide

Edited by Dan Avnon, Yotam Benziman

Routledge ISBN 9780415557771

December 2009

Israel's political process is too often framed in terms of a dichotomy between Jewish and Arab/Palestinian citizens of the state, a framing which perpetuates political inequality and consequent injustices. This book focuses on the conflict within Israel and the role played by modern states in either mitigating majority-minority conflict or exacerbating it.

This comparative study concentrates on theoretical models and historical, legal or political patterns of development. With an emphasis on alternative approaches to alleviating civic and political inequality in a divided society such as Israel's, the book examines plurality and political pluralism as keys to enhancing Israel's democratic character. The dozen original essays address many of the basic points of contention between Jews and Arab/Palestinians within the Israeli civic body: unequal access to citizenship; unequal access to land; discrimination in access to public services; insufficient defence of minority rights in Israel's legal system; unequal obligations; unequal economic opportunities.

The essays raise a matter of principle that goes beyond the Israeli case: formal legal measures are relatively worthless if they are not preceded by political processes that are oriented to changing conceptions and perceptions of reality.

A New Voice for Israel

Jeremy Ben Ami

Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 9780230112742

August 2011

Many Americans who care about Israel's future are questioning whether the hard-line, uncritical stances adopted by many traditional pro-Israel advocates really serve the country's best interests over the long-term. Moderate Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder of J Street, the new pro-Israel, pro-peace political movement, punctures many of the myths that have long guided our understanding of the politics of the American Jewish community and have been fundamental to how pro-Israel advocates have pursued their work including:

-that leaders of established Jewish organizations speak for all Jewish Americans when it comes to Israel

-that being pro-Israel means you cannot support creation of a Palestinian state

- that American Jews vote for candidates based largely on their support of Israel

- that talking peace with your enemies demonstrates weakness

- that allying with neoconservatives and evangelical Christians is good for Israel and good for the Jewish community.

Ben-Ami, whose grandparents were first-generation Zionists and founders of Tel Aviv, tells the story of his own evolution toward a more moderate viewpoint. He sketches a new direction for both American policy and the conduct of the debate over Israel in the American Jewish community.

Scars of War, Wounds of Peace

Shlomo Ben Ami

Phoenix ISBN 9780753821046

November 2006

This book is about the pendulous movement of Arabs and Israelis between war and peace, in one of the most protracted conflicts of modern times. It is written from the perspective of a professional historian who was also a major participant at key junctures of the peace process. The narrative and analysis begins with the War of Independence and the creation of the state of Israel; the Sinai campaign of 1956, and the relative calm that followed; the Six Day War of 1967, where the Arabs were defeated but the Israelis were also defeated by the euphoria and complacency produced by their overwhelming victory; the Yom Kippur War and the recovery of Arab pride; the ascendancy of America 1973-77; Camp David; the first Intifada, the Gulf War and the Madrid peace conference; Rabin and Oslo; the Netanyahu impasse; the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The final chapters deals with the crisis of 9/11, the Iraq War, and the reactivation of the peace process. They also address the new situation that emeged with Hamas' election and the change of political guards in Israel with the disappearance of Sharon.

The Turkish-Israeli Relationship: Changing Ties of Middle Eastern Outsiders

Ofra Bengio

Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 9780230620339

January 2010

Turkey and Israel are two of the most important countries in the Middle East, but also are outsiders to the region for political and cultural reasons. Here Bengio examines the historic, geo-strategic and political-cultural roots of the Turkish-Israeli relationship, from the 1950s until today. Linking the relationship's evolution to the complexities of Turkey's historical ties with the Arab world, and changing domestic, regional, and global conditions, the book traces the ebb and flow of the curious ties between the two countries. Bengio calls for a significant revision in the received wisdom about inter-Arab and Arab-Israeli conflicts and rivalries, placing Turkey in a more central role. The book approaches Middle Eastern affairs from inside the region, based on Turkish, Israeli and Arab sources, providing a much-needed corrective to American- and British-centered accounts.

The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes

Avraham Burg

Palgrave MacMillan ISBN 9780230607521

October 2008

'Short of being Prime Minister, Burg could not be higher in the Zionist establishment.' - David Remnick, The New Yorker
 
'This is an important book by a very courageous man... In Burg's view

Israel must move beyond Hitler's poisoned legacy; Jews and Israelis must stop invoking the memory of the Holocaust in paranoid self-justification at every turn. If they cannot or will not do this, the Middle East will never see peace and Israel has no future.'
- Tony Judt, bestselling author of Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 and Professor at New York University

The Israeli opinion maker and former Speaker of the Knesset offers a radical exploration of modern day Israel and advances the controversial notion that if it is to live in peace with its neighbors it must overcome the trauma of the Holocaust.

Avraham Burg has been active in politics as a leader in the Labour Party and the One Israel party. His article in The Guardian called 'The End of Zionism' was widely read and debated. He lives with his wife in Nataf, a small village outside Jerusalem. 

Golda Meir: The Iron Lady of the Middle East

Elinor Burkett

Gibson Square ISBN 9781906142076

December 2008

Golda Meir was known as the Iron Lady well before Margaret

Thatcher. In this authoritative new biography, based for the first

time on Israeli cabinet archives, a new perspective on Meir emerges. The Yom Kippur War saw the decline of Meir’s reputation, yet here it is revealed for the first time that her iron resolve stood between Israel and surrender while she prepared

for suicide if the invading forces would capture her. Voted most admired woman in Britain and throughout the world, her leadership of Israel became a blue-print for the West’s response to modern terrorism with the Munich massacre of eleven Israeli athletes taken hostage at the 1972 Olympics. Many members of Meir’s inner circle have gone on record for this biography about her influence and personality. Privately Meir had affairs, refused to recognise one of her grandchildren and became estranged from her long-suffering husband.

Elinor Burkett holds a doctorate in history. She is the author of several previous books, on the Middle East, and a Pulitzer Prize nominee.

Major Farran’s Hat: Britain’s War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1945-48

David Cesarani

Heinemann ISBN 9780434018444

March 2009

It is May 1947 - Jewish activist Alexander Rubowitz is abducted and brutally murdered in Palestine. At the abduction scene, a grey felt hat is found belonging to Major Roy Farran, decorated WW2 officer now in charge of the British counter terrorism unit in Palestine, then a British mandate.

As evidence mounts of Farran's involvement in the murder, he flees to Syria, and though diplomatic pressure eventually brings about his return, at the trial he is all too easily acquitted. Returning to Britain to a heroes welcome, he survives an assassination attempt when brother Rex mistakenly opens - and is killed by - a letter bomb sent by clandestine Zionist group Irgun, who have their own notions about the Major's guilt. Farran went on to become a successful politician in Canada, but his death in 2006 has reopened the mystery.

Reading like a mix of true crime and polemical narrative history, Major Farran's Hat investigates a shady murder mystery of violence, cover ups and expediency that throws light on Britain's legacy in the Middle East - a cautionary tale with remarkable and troubling resonances with today.

Israel is Real

Rich Cohen

Jonathan Cape ISBN 9780224089265
September 2009

From Rich Cohen, the author of the acclaimed Tough Jews, The Avengers, and Sweet and Low, comes a new approach to a story we thought we knew.

Breaking through the heated polemics and intractable politics, Israel is Real is a fresh voice, a tale of people and ideas, of the background of present-day Israel. Cohen relates Israel's story as that of a place long ago destroyed and transformed into an idea ...and which, sixty years ago, was retransformed into a place, and therefore into something that can once again be destroyed.

From the medieval false prophets, to the nineteenth-century Zionists, and on to present-day figures like Ariel Sharon, Cohen tells the stories of the people obsessed with this fine line between place and idea, creation and destruction. He reclaims from obscurity a multitude of figures marginalised by history, but whose lives are key to any real understanding of Israel.

The Palestine-Israeli Conflict: A Beginner's Guide
Dan Cohn-Sherbok & Dawoud El-Alami

Oneworld Publications ISBN 9781851683321

May 2008

With coverage of all the recent events, the new edition of this best-selling book gives a thorough and accessible account of the history behind the Palestine-Israeli conflict, its roots, and the possibilities for the future. The book is divided into two parts — the first by an American rabbi and Professor of Judaism, and the second by a Palestinian lecturer on Islam. The result is a real insight into the situation, with each author giving full vent to the emotions behind the two sides of the debate. Two new chapters outline recent developments, while an updated conclusion consists of a direct debate between the two authors, which raises many issues, yet offers real solutions to which future peace talks may aspire.

Rabbi Professor Dan Cohn-Sherbok is currently Professor of Judaism at the University of Wales, Lampeter. Dawoud El-Alami is a lecturer on Islamic Studies at the University of Wales, Lampeter.

Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait

Uri Dan

Palgrave ISBN 9781403984975  

In 1954 reporter Uri Dan met a young military commander named Ariel Sharon and followed him closely for more than half a century. Dan became Sharon's trusted advisor and a witness to the defining moments of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- from secret meetings with heads of state, to open warfare in the Sinai.

This riveting combination of political history, narrative biography, interviews, and correspondence sheds new light on the conflict in the Middle East and provides an intimate, definitive portrait of Ariel Sharon, a man whose life is inextricably intertwined with Israel's destiny.

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

Alan Dershowitz

Wiley-Blackwell ISBN 9780470379929 

September 2008

Who are Israel's most dangerous enemies?Not Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists, argues Alan Dershowitz. In this passionate and powerfully written new book, he challenges those he considers to be the most critical threat to the existence of Israel, including Jimmy Carter and other Western leaders who would delegitimize Israel as an apartheid regime subject to the same fate as white South Africans; Israel's academic enemies, led by professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, who would accuse Israel's supporters of dual loyalty - or even disloyalty - to America; certain religious groups, such as the Presbyterian Church, which would divest from Israel - and Israel alone - for its alleged human rights violations; and Iran, led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which threatens Israel with the possible development of nuclear weapons that it has publicly warned it could use against the Jewish state.

At a time when the future existence of Israel is increasingly imperiled, Dershowitz argues that these enemies of Israel are also enemies of peace, who imperil not only Israel but the rest of the world. With this book, he changes both the tone and focus of the debate about the country's adversaries.

Alan Dershowitz (Cambridge, MA), the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is one of the country's foremost appellate lawyers and a distinguished defender of individual liberties.

Identity and Modern Israeli Literature

Risa Domb

Vallentine Mitchell ISBN 9780853036609

This book explores through literature the long and complex evolution of Jewish identity in Israel and the central role that language, ideology, memory, and culture have played in that journey. Language is possibly the most important component of any collective identity. Indeed, any nation can be better understood through its imaginative literature and never more so than in the case of Israeli literature, whose story runs in parallel with that of the State of Israel and with Zionism. The political task of nationalism directed the course of Israeli literature into a distinct national literature and in turn the literature participated in the formation of the nation. Language became inseparable from identity. But whose Hebrew is it? Through key texts by such authors as Y. H. Brenner, S. Y. Agnon, Nathan Shaham, Yoram Kaniuk, Aharon Appelfeld, A. B. Yehoshua, Gabriela Avigur-Rotem and Sami Michael, Risa Domb explores the connections between language, ideology, memory, culture, and identity, and asks whether ideology and identity are on an inescapable collision course.

The Deadliest Lies: The Israel Lobby and the Myth of Jewish Control

Abraham H Foxman

Palgrave ISBN 1403984921

September 2007

The representative of the Jewish community and staunch defender of human rights, Foxman delivers a powerful blow to such ideas as The Israel Lobby. He shows how old bigoted stereotypes have been resurfacing and taking subtle new forms. Foxman advocates forthright and decisive solutions to an international crisis.

Abraham H Foxman is the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and one of today's pre-eminent voices against hatred, discrimination, and violence across the world. He is the author of Never Again?: The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism.

The Makers of the Modern Middle East

Tom Fraser, with Andrew Mango and Robert McNamara

Haus Publishing ISBN 9781906598952

This book will draw on three volumes in the series ‘Makers of the Modern World: The Peace Conferences of 1919-23 and their Aftermath’; namely, T.G. Fraser, Chaim Weizmann. The Zionist Dream; Andrew Mango, Turkey, From the Sultan to Atatürk, and Robert McNamara, The Hashemites. The Dream of Arabia. It will also include new material, bringing these volumes together. Its purpose is to present a comprehensive analysis of how the decisions taken at the end of the First World War forged a new Middle East, setting in place a pattern which formed the political shape of the region as we know it today. Based upon original research and recent interpretations, it explores the complex interactions of the high politics of the conferences with how Arabs, Jews and Turks created new realities on the ground, often confounding what the statesmen had decided. With events in the Middle East rarely absent from the world’s headlines, the book will offer a scholarly and objective analysis of a critical phase in its development. The volume will conclude with an overview of the contemporary Middle East in the context of the decisions taken at the end of the First World War.

Tom Fraser is Professor Emeritus of the University of Ulster. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Andrew Mango is the author of the definitive biography of Atatürk (2002), as well as an account of modern Turkey, The Turks Today (2004). Robert McNamara is currently a lecturer in International History at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. His publications include Britain, Nasser and the Balance of Power in the Middle East from Egyptian Revolution to the Six Day War (2003).

Can I Bring My Own Gun?

Seth Freedman

Five Leaves Publishing with the Guardian ISBN 9781905512645

February 2009

Seth Freedman grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb and worked in the City for six years, before moving to Israel where he served for fifteen months in a combat unit of the IDF, between 2004 and 2006.

Seth Freedman reports from the front line of Israel and Palestine, and behind the lines. As a former Israeli soldier reporting from the West Bank he is unique. From soldier to peace activist, this book follows the author’s journey.

"Seth Freedman bring(s) the real lives of the people behind the headlines into sharp focus. Curious and opinionated… prepared to go where no other journalist ventures: into the Israeli settlements where lies the solution (or not) to the conflict." - Linda Grant, Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction

"Seth Freedman's blog from Jerusalem has become an instant must-read for those who follow this most intractable of conflicts. His mixture of close-up, eye-witness reporting and heartfelt polemic is intoxicating. He is one writer to watch." - Jonathan Freedland, Guardian journalist and novelist

Seth Freedman is a contracted journalist on the Guardian’s Comment is Free, his reports are followed, praised and condemned in equal measure, by tens of thousands of readers.

Holy Land Mosaic: Stories of Cooperation and Coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians

Daniel Gavron

Rowman Littlefield ISBN 9780742540132

December 2007

The unrelenting conflict between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East is reported daily, but the ongoing dialogue and cooperation between the two is less known. Holy Land Mosaic chronicles the less reported side of the Middle East scene: the ongoing projects of conciliation and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, and between Arabs and Jews in Israel.

Daniel Gavron presents a personal journey through the different movements, projects, organizations, and NGOs that promote tolerance and understanding between the two warring peoples, depicting some remarkable Jews and Arabs. Among the projects described are the village of Neve Shalom, where Jews and Arabs have lived together for three decades; the Hand-in-Hand bilingual schools, where Arab and Jewish children study in Hebrew and Arabic; and an Israeli group that rebuilds demolished Arab houses.

In no way does the author play down the grim reality of the Middle East conflict, but his narrative shows that the enmity is not endemic.

The Kibbutz: Awakening from Utopia
Foreword by Howard Fast

Rowman Littlefield ISBN 9780847695263

2000

The Israeli kibbutz, the twentieth century's most interesting social experiment, is in the throes of change. Instrumental in establishing the State of Israel, defending its borders, creating its agriculture and industry, and setting its social norms, the kibbutz is the only commune in history to have played a central role in a nation's life. Over the years, however, Israel has developed from an idealistic pioneering community into a materialistic free market society. Consequently, the kibbutz has been marginalized and is undergoing a radical transformation. The egalitarian ethic expressed in the phrase,  From each according to ability, to each according to need,  is being replaced by the concept of reward for effort. Cooperative management is increasingly giving way to business administration. Kibbutz members, who were obligated to and dependent on their community, are now responsible for running their own lives and earning their own living.

Through Daniel Gavron's portraits of ten kibbutzim we hear the voices both of the veterans who are witnessing the collapse of their dream and of the youngsters who have rejected the vision of their parents. The author also analyzes the economic collapse that triggered the changes and the failure of the unique kibbutz education system to perpetuate communal values. The opening and concluding chapters provide a compelling overview of the situation and look toward the future.

Daniel Gavron, a former kibbutznik, is a long-time journalist. His work has appeared in The New York Times, the Jerusalem Post, and Ariel and aired on NBC and National Public Radio. He is the author of The Other Side of Despair and lives in Israel.  

The Story of Israel

Martin Gilbert

Carlton Books ISBN 9780233002101

April 2008

Celebratory books, 64 pages long, covering events from the Herzl's endeavours to the erection of the separation barrier, replete with maps, detachable posters, illustrations and pullout facsimile documents.

Just over 100 years ago, Theodor Herzl launched the Zionist Movement. They called for a Jewish State in their ancestral land, Palestine. Fifty years later, the State of Israel came into being. Israel was established so that Jews anywhere in the world could have a homeland of their own. After independence, that process began with the in gathering of three quarters of a million Jews from Arab lands. As Communism disintegrated, more than a million Jews emigrated from the Soviet Union. Despite war and terror, Israel has sought peace through both secret and public negotiations. These efforts continue to this day.

Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew across the Middle East Divide

Jeffrey Goldberg

Picador ISBN 9780330488204 

The story of an American Jew and a Palestinian who forge a friendship out of what appear to be irreconcilable differences.

Jeffrey Goldberg moved from Long Island to Israel while still a college student. In the middle of the first Palestinian uprising in 1990, the Israeli army sent him to serve as a prison guard at Ketziot, the largest jail in the Middle East. Realizing that among the prisoners were the future leaders of Palestine, and that this was a unique opportunity to learn from them about themselves, he began an extended dialogue with a prisoner named Rafiq.

This is an account of life in that harsh desert prison and of that dialogue—the accusations, explanations, fears, prejudices and aspirations each man expressed—which continues to this day. We see how their discussion deepened over the years as Goldberg returned to the States, to Washington, D.C., where Rafiq coincidentally became a graduate student, and the political landscape of the Middle East changed. And we see, again and again, how their willingness to confront religious, cultural, and political differences made possible what both could finally acknowledge to be a true, if necessarily tenuous, friendship.

Prisoners is a remarkable book: spare, impassioned and unstinting in its candour about both the darkness and the hope buried within the animosities of the Middle East.

Jerusalem, City of Longing

Simon Goldhill

Harvard University Press ISBN 9780674028661

May 2008

Jerusalem is the site of some of the most famous religious monuments in the world, from the Dome of the Rock to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the Western Wall of the Temple. Since the nineteenth century, the city has been a premier tourist destination, not least because of the countless religious pilgrims from the three Abrahamic faiths. But Jerusalem is more than a tourist site—it is a city where every square mile is layered with historical significance, religious intensity, and extraordinary stories. It is a city rebuilt by each ruling Empire in its own way: the Jews, the Romans, the Christians, the Muslims, and for the past sixty years, the modern Israelis. What makes Jerusalem so unique is the heady mix, in one place, of centuries of passion and scandal, kingdom-threatening wars and petty squabbles, architectural magnificence and bizarre relics, spiritual longing and political cruelty. It is a history marked by three great forces: religion, war, and monumentality. In this book, Simon Goldhill takes on this peculiar archaeology of human imagination, hope, and disaster to provide a tour through the history of this most image-filled and ideology-laden city—from the bedrock of the Old City to the towering roofs of the Holy Sepulchre. Along the way, we discover through layers of buried and exposed memories—the long history, the forgotten stories, and the lesser-known aspects of contemporary politics that continue to make Jerusalem one of the most embattled cities in the world.

Simon Goldhill is Professor of Greek Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge.

The Anatomy of Israel's Survival

Hirsh Goodman

Perseus Books ISBN 9781586485290

September 2011

In May 2011, coinciding with the sixty-third anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, young Palestinians carrying the black, red, greed and white Palestinian flag tried to cut their way through and climbed over the fences separating Israel from Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. The symbolism was unmistakable: they were ready to plant their flag – for the moment at least – in the land they consider theirs. It was the latest in a continuous stream of events designed to threaten or deny the right of Israel to exist.

In seeking the answer to the question “Can Israel Survive?” amid the new upheavals in the Middle East, Hirsh Goodman, a senior research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies at the University of Tel Aviv, has conducted a detailed analysis of the country’s security and prospects for survival. He examines the real menace posed by Iran behind the splenetic rhetoric; the geo-strategic perils that crowd a country barely ten miles wide at its narrowest; the fragility of the relationships with Egypt and Jordan; the vulnerability of Lebanon; the uncertainty of Syria; and above all the internal fissures within Israel that threaten a state whose abiding strength used to be its founding unity and sense of common purpose. Goodman’s insights are many, and his counterintuitive and deeply informed conclusions are often contrary to conventional wisdom or the forum of the daily news beat. Throughout he steers away from the tired rhetoric that sees conflict as inevitable, and instead offers a surgical view of Israel’s fault lines, those of its neighbours, and the common future for the region that remains within reach. He has written a wise and exquisitely timely book.

HIRSH GOODMAN is a senior research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University where he directs the Bronfman Program on Information Strategy. Prior to joining INSS, Goodman was the vice president of the Jerusalem Post. In 1990 he founded the Jerusalem Report and served as its editor-in-chief for eight years. Between 1986 and 1989 he was the strategic fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and four children. This is his fourth book.

The People on the Streets: A Writer's View of Israel

Linda Grant

Virago ISBN 9781844082544

March 2006

'The further away anyone was from that block of Ben Yehuda street, the easier it seemed to find a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, that stubborn mess in the centre of the Middle East and the more I studied these solutions, the more I thought that they depended for their implementation on a population of table football men, painted in the colours of the two teams: blue and white for the Israelis, green, red and black for the Palestinians. All the international community had to do was to twist the levers and the little players would kick and swing and send the ball into the net, to victory' One block of a Tel Aviv street is the starting point for Linda Grant's exploration of the inner dynamics of Israelis - not the government and its policies, but the people themselves, in all their variety. Iraqi shop-keepers, Teenage soldiers, Mob bosses, Tunisian- born settlers, Russian scientists, and the father of the child victim of a suicide bomber are some of the people she meets.

Man in the Shadows: Inside the Middle East Crisis with the Man who Led Mossad
Efraim Halevy

Phoenix ISBN 9780753821930 

April 2007

From Operation Desert Storm to the beginning of US incursions into Iraq, Efraim Halevy was Deputy Director and then Director of Israel's Mossad, arguably the most developed and, sometimes, ruthless intelligence service in the world. Having served as the secret envoy to Prime Ministers Rabin, Shamir, Netanyahu, Barak and Sharon, Halevy was privy to, and collector of, some of the most sensitive information coming out of the region.  Beginning with a prologue that describes a visit he made to Jordan in 1993, Halevy looks back to Desert Storm, an event he calls 'an epic of unfinished business' and brings the reader up to the present day through 9/11 and the WMD crisis in Iraq.

He writes frankly of the Israeli PMs he worked under as well as most of the other major players in the region and around the world: Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Hafez Assad, Hosni Mubaraq, Crown Prince Abdullah, Muammar Gaddafi, Presidents Clinton and Bush, as well as former CIA director George Tenet and counter-intelligence chief James Angleton. Though Halevy looks to the past, he also looks to the future and talks bluntly about how the world might achieve peace in the region and elsewhere. 

Efraim Halevy was head of the Mossad between 1998-2002 and then Head of the National Security Council and National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Sharon from 2002-2003. Previously he had been deputy head of the Mossad from 1990-1995 (which included Operation Desert Storm)and Israel's ambassador to the European Union, from 1996-1998.  Efraim Halevy is now the Head of the Centre for Strategic and Policy Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has received the Chaim Herzog Prize for extraordinary contributions to the state of Israel.

An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel

Jeff Halper

Pluto Press ISBN 9780745322261 

February 2008

The Israeli anthropologist and activist Jeff Halper throws a harsh light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the point of view of a critical insider. While the Zionist founders of Israel created a vibrant society, culture and economy, they did so at a high price: Israel could not maintain its exclusive Jewish character without imposing on the country's Palestinian population policies of ethnic cleansing, occupation and discrimination, expressed most graphically in its ongoing demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes, both inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories.

An Israeli in Palestine records Halper's journey 'beyond the membrane' that shields his people from the harsh realities of Palestinian life to his 'discovery' that he was actually living in another country: Palestine. Without dismissing the legitimacy of his own country, he realises that Israel is defined by its oppressive relationship to the Palestinians. Pleading for a view of Israel as a real, living country which must by necessity evolve and change, Halper asks whether the idea of an ethnically pure 'Jewish State' is still viable. More to the point, he offers ways in which Israel can redeem itself through a cultural Zionism upon which regional peace and reconciliation are attainable.

Jeff Halper, an Israeli Professor of Anthropology, has been a leading figure within the Israeli peace movement for over thirty years, and the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Halper was nominated by the American Friends Service Committee for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and is the author of Obstacles to Peace (2005) and Between Redemption and Revival (1991).

Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism

Judith Palmer Harik

IB Tauris ISBN 9781845110246

July 2007

Since the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in early 2005, Lebanese politics has been plunged into a new era. Will Syrian withdrawal send the country back into civil war? How will the seismic political shifts underway affect the stability of the region? At the centre of the turmoil stands one player that will affect the outcome more than any other: Hezbollah. Hezbollah, or the ‘Party of God’, is one of the most powerful and the most misunderstood forces in Middle Eastern politics. In this new edition of her acclaimed book, Judith Harik explains what it actually believes in, what its real relationship with other regional players is, and in what direction it is heading.
Hezbollah arose amidst the chaos of the Lebanese civil war to resist the Israeli invasion of 1982. Based amongst the poor Shi’ite population, it takes its inspiration from the Iranian revolution and the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini. Today Hezbollah’s military wing controls the major fault-line of the Middle East: the Lebanese-Israeli border. To the US, Hezbollah represents one of the most dangerous terrorist networks in the world. In Lebanon, it is a democratically elected party within the Lebanese parliament, backed not just by Shi’ites, but by Christians and secular Muslims. To the wider Arab world, Hezbollah is a legend: the only Arab fighting force to have defeated Israel, forcing its withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000.
Harik draws on her considerable first-hand experience of the movement to tell the story of how a clandestine, radical militia transformed itself into a seemingly moderate and mainstream player in the Lebanese political arena. She looks at key questions: why do so many non-Shiites support them? Who controls the movement - the Mullahs, or the grassroots? Harik’s penetrating analysis helps us make sense of fast-moving events as the future of Lebanon - and the region - hangs in the balance.

Judith Palmer Harik is a political analyst who has spent over twenty years lecturing and researching as a Professor of Political Science at the American University of Beirut. She is one of the world's foremost experts on Hezbollah.

A Time to Speak Out

Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity

Edited by Anne Karpf, Brian Klug, Jacqueline Rose and Barbara Rosenblaum

Verso ISBN 978184467229 5

September 2008

In A Time to Speak Out, a collection of strong Jewish voices, drawing on an established tradition of Jewish dissidence, come together to explore some of the most challenging issues facing diaspora Jews, notably in relation to the ongoing conflict in Israel-Palestine.

Nearly all contributors were associated with the Independent Jewish Voices declaration which, when launched in Britain in 2007, opened a floodgate of responses. This book bears witness to the urgency of that continuing debate.

With articles on such topics as international law, the Holocaust, varieties of Zionism, self-hatred, the multiplicity of Jewish identities, and human rights, these essays provide powerful evidence of the vitality of independent Jewish opinion as well as demonstrating that criticism of Israel has a crucial role to play in the continuing history of a Jewish concern for social justice.

At once sober and radical, A Time To Speak Out reclaims an often intemperate debate for those both inside and outside Israel who prefer to confront uncomfortable “truths.”

With contributions from: Julia Bard, Geoffrey Bindman, Emma Clyne, Stan Cohen, Howard Cooper, D. D. Guttenplan, Abe Hayeem, Anthony Isaacs, Gabriel Josipovici, Anne Karpf, Brian Klug, Francesca Klug, Tony Klug, Richard Kuper, Michael Kustow, Antony Lerman, Antony Loewenstein, Mike Marqusee, Jeremy Montagu, Jacqueline Rose, Anthony Rudolf, Donald Sassoon, Lynne Segal, Richard Silverstein, Gillian Slovo, Eyal Weizman, and Sami Zubaida

Visit the Independent Jewish Voices website at http://www.ijv.org.uk/.

Palestine Betrayed

Efraim Karsh

Yale University Press ISBN 9780300127270

April 2010

The 1947 UN resolution to partition Palestine irrevocably changed the political landscape of the Middle East, giving rise to six full-fledged wars between Arabs and Jews, countless armed clashes, blockades, and terrorism, as well as a profound shattering of Palestinian Arab society. Its origins, and that of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, are deeply rooted in Jewish-Arab confrontation and appropriation in Palestine. But the isolated occasions of violence during the British Mandate era (1920-48) suggest that the majority of Palestinian Arabs yearned to live and thrive under peaceful coexistence with the evolving Jewish national enterprise. So what was the real cause of the breakdown in relations between the two communities? In this brave and groundbreaking book, Efraim Karsh tells the story from both the Arab and Jewish perspectives. He argues that from the early 1920s onward, a corrupt and extremist leadership worked toward eliminating the Jewish national revival and protecting its own interests. Karsh has mined many of the Western, Soviet, UN, and Israeli documents declassified over the past decade, as well as unfamiliar Arab sources, to reveal what happened behind the scenes on both Palestinian and Jewish sides. It is an arresting story of delicate political and diplomatic manoeuvering by leading figures - Ben Gurion, Hajj Amin Husseini, Abdel Rahman Azzam, King Abdullah, Bevin, and Truman - over the years leading up to partition, through the slide to war and its enduring consequences. "Palestine Betrayed" is vital reading for understanding the origin of disputes that remain crucial today.

Barrier: The Seam of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Isabel Kershner

Palgrave MacMillan ISBN 9781403968012 

January 2006

To the Israelis it is a security fence or separation barrier; to Palestinians “an apartheid wall”. The two sides agree that it is ugly, both in appearance and in effect. Looping around the Israeli-occupied West Bank, thrusting occasional fingers deep into the occupied lands to take in a far-flung settlement block, the wall divides many Palestinians from their own fields and schools, and traps thousands in a Kafkaesque “seam zone”, with the wall to the east of them and the old “green line” border with Israel to the west.

If you really wonder why Israel is building its wall, and want to understand its human consequences, invest in Isabel Kershner's readable, compassionate and thoroughly fair “Barrier”. An Israeli journalist, she talks to victims and activists from both sides of the line, bringing lives and landscape vividly to life at the same time as putting the wall in its political context.

Goals from Galilee: The Triumphs and Traumas of the Sons of Sakhnin, Israel's Arab Football Club

Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JR Books ISBN 9781906217433

February 2010

The Arab village of Sakhnin in Galilee may have only 25,000 citizens, but it does have its own champion football team, The Sons of Sakhnin, a small team with a mixture of Arab and Jewish players. When, against all odds, they won Israel’s State Cup, qualifying for the UEFA Cup, they caused a sensation. And, when their star and captain, Abbas Suan, scored a last minute magical equalizer for Israel

against Ireland, keeping Israel’s World Cup dreams alive, he became a national hero.

The sight of thousands of Arab fans waving the blue and white flag of Israel made even hardened Middle East observers do a double-take. Could a game of football achieve what Israeli politicians have failed to deliver – a truly integrated society?

Can the cardinal issues of equality, acceptance, identity and coexistence be squared into one round ball?

In a region more attuned to disharmony, The Sons pursue their dream to win on the field, and to win acceptance. For all their astonishing triumphs, they struggle for survival in Israel’s Premier League – without their own home ground.  This powerful and moving book follows their fortunes through an emblematic season

that mirrors the challenges of the broader complex society in which they live and play.

Holy Land, Unholy War: Israelis and Palestinians

Anton La Guardia

Penguin ISBN 9780141028019

July 2007

Writing dispassionately about the Holy Land, said Mark Twain, is as hard as being dispassionate about your own wife or children. Today, more than a century after Twain led the way for mass tourism to what was then a remote corner of the Ottoman Empire, the difficulties are redoubled.

The modern struggles of the Israelis and Palestinians - with their larger-than-life stories of disaster and redemption - command the obsessive attention and passion of sympathizers around the world.

With the experienced journalist's eye for the telling detail and anecdote, Anton La Guardia offers an intimate portrait of the people behind the headlines. He explores their histories and cultures: from the religious upheavals of Jerusalem to the extremism of Jewish settlers and Islamic suicide bombers, from the first Zionist pioneers to the post-Zionist generation in Tel Aviv, from the stirrings of Arab nationalism to the Lebanon War. The author explains how the searing traumas of the Holocaust and the Palestinian exodus have shaped Israeli and Palestinian societies. He also looks at the role of the outside world, from the awe-struck visits of medieval Christian pilgrims to the scheming of world powers. He traces how the promise of peace has turned into the curse of war, drawing on his reporter's notebooks from years spent covering the peace accords, Islamic suicide bombings, the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the outbreak of the latest Palestinian uprising.

This book is part contemporary political reportage and part iconoclastic history. A dispassionate account of Israel and Palestine may be impossible, but this book is written with the first-hand knowledge, affection and exasperation of one who writes about embittered relatives.

Memories After My Death

Yair Lapid

Elliott & Thompson

ISBN 9781907642029

February 2011

Memories After My Death is the astonishing true story of Tommy Lapid, a well-loved and controversial Israeli figure who saw the development of the country from all angles over its first sixty years, written by his son Yair.

From seeing his father taken away to a Concentration Camp to arriving in Tel Aviv at the birth of Israel, Tommy Lapid lived every major incident of Jewish life since the 1930s first-hand.

This sweeping narrative is mesmerising for anyone with an interest in how Israel became what it is today. Lapid’s uniquely unorthodox opinions – he belonged to neither left nor right, was  Jewish, but vehemently secular – expose the many contradictions inherent in Jewish life today.

Yair Lapid is the broadcaster of Friday Night Studio, the prime-time news magazine of Israel’s Channel 2.  His weekly personal column, which appears in the Friday edition of Yediot Ahronot newspaper, has been considered for years to be the most widely read in the country.  His plays have been staged at the national theater, Habima, as well as the Cameri theater.  My Postmortem Memories is his tenth book, and nearly all of them – including two novels, three thrillers, a collection of columns and a nonfiction book on Biblical heroes – have featured on the bestseller lists in Israel and have been translated and published in French (Fayard) and Greek (Polis).

The History of Zionism

Walter Laqueur

IB Tauris ISBN 9781860640325

This text offers a definitive account of Zionism. The term "Zionism" was first coined at the end of the 19th century, but the idea long reflected the misery of Jewish existence in central and eastern Europe, and the longing for the ancient homeland. Updated, and with a new preface, Walter Laqueur's comprehensive history begins with a discussion of the background of Zionism since the French Revolution, covers the many decades of Zionist activities worldwide, and ends with the establishment of the state of Israel.

Dying for Jerusalem

Sourcebooks ISBN 9781402206320 
2006

A quasi-memoir of his time spent living and working in Jerusalem, Laquer's volume exploits the author's experiences and relationships with key figures in Jerusalem's history (Eliezer Sukenik, Golda Meir, Richard Kauffman, Gershom Scholem, Mordechai Shenhabi) as the starting points for several discussions and reminiscences of the people, events, trends and movements that shape Jerusalem. Laqueur, a know-it-all without the pretense, is clearly conflicted: the writing has a cathartic element to it, as the author laments the economic plight of the city, "the exodus of the young, secular, and enterprising among the population," the increasingly ultraorthodox culture of the city and the diminishing hope for compromise between Jerusalem's Jews and Muslims, while confessing his undying feelings for the place. From the "second religion" of archaeology among Palestinians and Israelis to the distinctive architecture of the city's neighborhoods to the first contact of well-established Palestinian Arabs with newly arrived Ashkenazi Zionist immigrants, Laqueur's account creates a remarkable sense of time and place-a worthwhile read for anyone interested in knowing more intimately the city and its history.

Walter Laqueur, one of the world’s foremost historians, was born in Breslau in 1921. He divides his time between London, Israel and Washington, where he is a director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Israel, Palestine and Terror

Stephen Law (editor)

Continuum ISBN 9780826497932

June 2008

This book brings together the thoughts of 15 leading philosophers on one of the most important political and cultural crises of our time.
Many Westerners are beginning to realize the extent to which terrorism and the Israel/Palestine conflict - and the ways in which we handle them - are likely to be determining factors in shaping the West of the future. 
This short and accessible book introduces the key issues from a philosophical perspective and presents a powerful, provocative and engaging overview.

Contributors include Ted Honderich, Tomis Kapitan, Timothy Shanahan, Richard Norman, Igor Primoratz, Noam Chomsky, Gerald Cohen, Ardon Lyon, Michael Neumann, Patrick Riordan, Tamar Meisels and Brian Klug.

Stephen Law is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Heythrop College, London and editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy Journal, THINK. He is the author of several introductions to philosophy, including The Philosophy Files and The Philosophy Gym. 

City of Oranges: Arab and Jews in Jaffa

Adam LeBor

Bloomsbury ISBN 9780747586029 

January 2007

Jaffa - famed for its orange groves - was for centuries a city of traders, merchants, teachers and administrators, home to Muslims, Christians and Jews alike. That is, until the founding of the state of Israel, which was simultaneously a moment of jubilation for the Jews and a disaster - the Naqba - for the 100,000 Arabs who fled Jaffa in 1948. Through the stories of six families - three Arab and three Jewish - Adam LeBor delicately illuminates the complexity of modern Israel, going beyond the media stereotypes and political rhetoric to tell a moving human story. From the Christian Arab car-dealer, the Jewish coffee-and-spice merchant and the Arab baker who makes bread for the whole community, to the Jewish schoolgirl who befriends an Arab drug dealer, these people strive to make a life in a country born of conflict.

'Outstanding LeBor uses the recent fortunes of Jaffa as a magnifying lens through which to explore the entire knotted history of Israel and Palestine in the twentieth century' Guardian

Adam LeBor was born in London and read Arabic, International History and Politics at Leeds University, graduating in 1983, and also studied Arabic at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He worked for several British newspapers before becoming a foreign correspondent in 1991. He has reported from thirty countries, including Israel and Palestine, and covered the Yugoslav wars for The Times and the Independent. Currently Central Europe Correspondent for The Times, he also writes for the Sunday Times, the Economist, Literary Review, Conde Nast Traveller, the Jewish Chronicle, New Statesman in Britain, and contributes to the Nation and the New York Times in the US. He is the author of six books, including Milosevic and Hitler's Secret Bankers, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. His books have been published in nine languages. Visit him at www.adamlebor.com.

The Punishment of Gaza

Gideon Levy

Verso ISBN 9781844676019

May 2010

Israel’s 2009 invasion of Gaza left well over one thousand Palestinians dead and devastated the infrastructure of an already impoverished enclave. In this searching examination of Israel’s policies, award-winning journalist Gideon Levy shows how the ground was prepared for the assault from 2005—the year of Gaza’s liberation —through to 2009and documents its continuing effects. 

Levy’s powerful journalism shows how the brutality at the heart of Israel’s occupation of Palestine has found its most complete expression to date in the collective punishment of the residents of Gaza.

Described by Le Monde as a “thorn in Israel’s flank,” Gideon Levy is a prominent Israeli journalist. For over twenty years he has covered the Israel–Palestine conflict, in particular the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in his column “Twilight Zone.”

Balfour and Weizmann: The Zionist, the Zealot and the Emergence of Israel

Geoffrey Lewis

Continuum ISBN 9781847250407

March 2009

On November 2nd 1917 Arthur Balfour, then Foreign Secretary, wrote to

Lord Rothschild to say that the British Government viewed with favour the

establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

Eleven years before his declaration, Balfour had met the passionate

Zionist and émigré chemist Chaim Weizmann while electioneering in

Manchester. It was shortly after Uganda had been mooted as a possible

homeland for the displaced Jews. Weizmann tried to explain his reasons

for insisting on Jerusalem as the home of Zion. 'Suppose' he said, 'I

were to offer you Paris instead of London?'
'But, Dr Weizmann, we already have London,' Balfour replied. 'That is true, but we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh.' Balfour was visibly surprised. 'Are there many Jews who think like you?' he asked. 'I believe I speak for millions of Jews,' replied Weizmann. 'It is curious' Balfour remarked, 'The Jews I meet are quite different.' 'Mr Balfour' said Weizmann, ' You meet the wrong kind of Jews.' At the centre of Geoffrey Lewis's compelling book is the story of this encounter and the developing relationship between these two men: the Zionist and the Zealot, so different from each other, yet drawn together by forces that neither quite understood, with consequences that were to have a profound effect on the modern world.

Hello Everybody! One Journalist's Search for Truth in the Middle East

Joris Luyendijk

Profile Books ISBN 9781846683848

May 2010

A powerful and moving wake-up call to the dangers of media manipulation. In Hello Everybody! a bestseller in his native Holland, Joris Luyendijk tells the story of his five yearsas a reporter in the Middle East. Young and inexperienced but fluent in Arabic, he speaks to stone throwers and soldiers, taxi drivers and professors, victims and aggressors chronicling first–hand experiences of dictatorship, occupation and war.

But the more he witnesses, the less he understands and he becomes increasingly aware of the yawning gap between what he sees on the ground and what is later reported in the media. As a correspondent he is privy to the multitude of narratives with conflicting implications, yet again and again the media favours those stories that will confirm and reinforce the oversimplified beliefs of the West.Hello Everybody! Is a story of disillusionment and enlightenment, by turns hilarious and despairing, but most importantly it is a powerful wake up call to the way the media gives us a filtered and manipulated version of reality in the Middle East.

A Place in History: Modernism, Tel Aviv and the Creation of Jewish Urban Space

Barbara E. Mann

Stanford University Press ISBN 9780804750189

April 2006

"A Place in History" is a cultural study of Tel Aviv, Israel's population center and one of the original settlements, established in 1909. It examines the city by exploring places which have been central to its history. Each chapter is devoted to a particular place in the city, and includes literary, artistic, journalistic, and photographic material relating to that site. The book describes how a largely European Jewish immigrant society attempted to forge a home in the Mediterranean and explores the difficulties and challenges of this endeavor. This is the first book-length study of Tel Aviv in English. It will appeal to readers interested in urban cultures, the contemporary Middle East, modern Jewish history, and Israeli literature. It also contributes to the ongoing public debate regarding the role of memory and memorials in urban identity.

Hamas: The Islamic Resistance Movement

Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell

Polity Press ISBN 9780745642963

March 2010

Declared a terrorist menace yet elected to government in a free election, Hamas now stands as the most important Sunni Islamist group in the Middle East.

How did Hamas grow to be so powerful? Who supports it? What is its future? This essential insight into Hamas answers these questions.

Milton–Edwards and Farrell have between them spent decades researching and reporting from the heartlands of the Hamas movement and gained unrivalled access to the world of Islamic resistance and radical Islam in its potent Palestinian form.

Drawing on their frontline experiences of recent events, their access to secret documents from the western intelligence community and interviews with leaders, militants, and commanders of Hamas′ armed battalions, they reveal the full story of Hamas and the future of political Islam in the Middle East.

Milton–Edwards and Farrell show Hamas to be a broad and thus more powerful regional phenomenon than previously thought, and by doing so contend that it is now time to rethink the war and the nature of Islam and its role in the Middle East.

Beverley Milton–Edwards is Professor in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queens University, Belfast. She is the author of books such as Contemporary Politics in the Middle East (2006) and The Israeli–Palestinian Conflict: a People′s War (2009). Prize–winning journalist Stephen Farrell is Foreign Correspondent for the New York Times and was previously Middle East correspondent for The Times.

Jerusalem, the Biography

Simon Sebag Montefiore

Weidenfeld & Nicholson 9780297852650

January 2011

Jerusalem lies at the centre of the world, the capital of three faiths, the prize of many conquerors, the jewel of many empires, and the eye of the storm of today's battle of civilisations. 
But the city lacks a biography. It lacks a secret history. Simon Sebag Montefiore's epic account is seen through kings, conquerors, emperors and soldiers; Muslims, Jews, Christians, Macedonians, Romans and Greeks; Palestinians and Israelis; from King David via Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, Herod, Caesar, Cleopatra, Jesus and Saladin, to Churchill, King Hussein, Anwar Sadat and Ariel Sharon. Their individual stories combine to form the biography of a city - a gritty, dramatic, violent tale of power, empire, love, vanity, luxury and death, bringing three thousand years of history vividly to life.
In the course of its history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. It has been Arab, Persian, Jewish, Roman, Greek, Babylonian, Turkish, Marmeluke, British, Byzantine, Crusader, Ottoman; Napoleon almost took it but marched past, Kaiser William visited, the Allied forces fought for it in the First World War. The extraordinarily rich history of this small city in the Judean hills forms nothing less than a history of the world.

The epic story of Jerusalem told through the lives of the men and women who created, ruled and inhabited it.

1948

Benny Morris

Yale University Press ISBN 9780300151121 

May 2008

This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. This is a riveting account of the military engagements and it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation.

The Arab side, where the archives are still closed, is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials.Morris stresses the jihadi character of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Throughout, he examines the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the refugee problem, which was a by-product of the disintegration of Palestinian Arab society.

The book thoroughly investigates the role of the Great Powers - Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union - in shaping the conflict and its tentative termination in 1949. Morris looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making processes and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the successive battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world, a humiliation that underlines the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel.

The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited

Cambridge University Press ISBN 9780521009676

December 2003

Benny Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem was published in 1988. Its startling revelations about how and why 700,000 Palestinians left their homes and became refugees during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948 undermined traditional interpretations as to whether they left voluntarily or were expelled as part of a systematic plan.

This book represents a revised edition of the earlier work, compiled on the basis of newly-opened Israeli military archives. While the focus remains the 1948 war and the analysis of the Palestinian exodus, the new material contains more information about what happened in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa, and how events there led to the collapse of Palestinian urban society. It also sheds light on the battles and atrocities that resulted in the disintegration of rural communities.

The story is a harrowing one. The refugees now number four million and the situation remains a major obstacle to peace.

The Road to Jerusalem

Benny Morris

IB Tauris ISBN 9781860649899

July 2003

General Sir John Glubb was the last British pro-Consul of the region and commander of the Arab Legion during the crucial years between 1936 and 1956 - which were to witness the collapse of Palestine and the final foundation and establishment of the State of Israel. As well as an analysis of Glubb’s personal vision of the Middle East and its peoples - a surprisingly racial vision that would condition his politics - the book examines his
reactions to the Arab Revolt in Palestine and the periodic plans to partition Palestine and establish a Jewish state.
It offers the first in-depth account of his thinking and actions during 1948, as he led his small army into Palestine and war against Israel. His aims and actions - which lie at the very heart of the controversy between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ historians of the Arab-Israeli conflict - are carefully detailed using, for the first time, contemporary British, Arab Legion and Israel Defence Forces intelligence sources. This masterful account of Glubb the soldier, strategist and pro-Arab mouth-piece will become a vital addition to the literature on this defining period in Middle Eastern history.

Benny Morris is Professor of Middle East History at Ben-Gurion University. His pioneering revisionist work on the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem and on Israeli-Arab relations during the 1950s has overturned some of the most basic assumptions about the formation of the State of Israel, and has made him one of the most controversial historians working there today. His books include 'Righteous Victims', 'The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem', '1948 and After', 'Israel's Border Wars (1949-1956)' and 'The Roots of Appeasement'.

Crossing Qalandiya: Exchanges Across the Israeli/Palestinian Divide

Daniella Norris and Shireen Anabtwawi

Reportage Press ISBN 9781906702212

May 2012

Crossing Qalandiya is a series of letters between two women, Daniela and Shireen. They live less than 100km apart, but could never visit one another at home - so instead they write letters. In these letters they discuss family, childcare, recipes, the local beaches … war and ethnic hatred. Daniela is Israeli and Shireen Palestinian. Their exchange is fraught with challenge, but also a sincere desire on each side to understand the thinking and grievances of the other.

This is a moving and illuminating exchange of ideas – at once accessible and profound, personal and political - and a beacon of hope in the wilderness of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Shireen Anabtawi is a former Director of International Cooperation at the Palestinian Investment Promotion Agency (PIPA) in Ramallah. She grew up in Nablus. Daniela Norris is a former Israeli diplomat, turned writer. She has lived and worked in Angola, Peru, France and Switzerland.

Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East 1776 to the Present

Michael Oren
W. W. Norton & Company ISBN 9780393330304 
February 2008

As Oren explains in his introduction “America is deeply, substantively, and perhaps even existentially involved in the Middle East.” Most people, however, would think that America’s involvement began with the creation of Israel in 1948, or with the Suez Crisis of 1956, or even with the Oil Embargo if 1973. What Power, Faith, and Fantasy now demonstrates is that the roots of the US engagement run much deeper: the United States actually fought its first international war against Arabic-speaking Muslims, and the region was so important at the turn of the 19th century that Thomas Jefferson declared the Middle East to be his main overseas concern. Not only did George Washington have a policy on the region, but also our early conflicts in the Middle East played a critical role in shaping of the American Constitution. Moreover, the great icons of American literature and culture, including Washington Irving, Herman Melville, and Mark Twain, took fundamental inspiration from this seemingly strange and alien land. Despite this legacy, most Americans remain largely ignorant of the ways our country has been continuously intertwined with the region for over two centuries.

Drawing on government documents, thousands of classified papers, and the memoirs of merchants, missionaries, and travelers, as well as personal correspondence, Oren seeks to fill this gap in our collective knowledge by reconstructing the diverse and remarkable ways in which Americans have interacted with this alluring and often hostile region. Oren tells the remarkable stories of those Americans, whether drawn by the temptation of adventure, glory, profit, or the missionary ideal, who journeyed to the Middle East to try and modernize, convert, organize, and learn from its peoples. Through these narratives -- including such remarkable figures as John Ledyard, the first American to journey to the Middle Easy, and Mark Twain, whose memoirs of his travels helped launch his career -- Oren displays the myriad of ways in which Americans have impacted the region and, in many respects, how they have been unalterably changed in the process.

Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Penguin Books ISBN 9780141014357

July 2003

The Yom Kippur War and the War in Lebanon, the Intifada and the rise of Palestinian terror, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, the peace process—all resulted from six days of intense Arab-Israeli fighting in June 1967. The Six-Day War, as it is widely known, was totally unique in history. Never has a conflict so short, yielded such profound and far-reaching results. Seldom has a war, unforeseen and mostly unwanted, concluded so astonishingly.

Six Days of War explorse both its military and diplomatic dimensions, and spotlights all its participants: Arab, Israeli, Soviet and American. It tells the story of why the war broke out and the shocking ways it unfolded.

Drawing on thousands of formerly top-secret documents, on rare papers in Russian and Arabic, and on exclusive personal interviews, Six Days of War recreates the regional and international context, which, by the late 1960s, virtually assured an Arab-Israeli conflagration. Also examined are the domestic crises in each of the battling states, and the extraordinary personalities—Moshe Dayan and Gamal Abdul Nasser, Hafez al-Assad and Yitzhak Rabin, Lyndon Johnson and Alexei Kosygin—that precipitated this earthshaking clash.

Michael B. Oren is Israel's Embassador to the US. A Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center and an expert on the diplomatic and military history of the Middle East, he has written extensively for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic.
Raised in New Jersey, Michael Oren moved to Israel in the 1970s. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces. He was the director of Inter-Religious Affairs in the government of Yitzhak Rabin.

Help Us to Divorce

Amos Oz

Vintage ISBN 9780099478553

Octobre 2004

In 'How To Cure a Fanatic' Amos Oz analyses the historical roots of violence and confronts truths about the extremism nurtured throughout society. By bringing us face to face with fanaticism he suggests ways in which we can all respond.

In 'Help Us to Divorce' he convinces irrefutably that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is primarily a dispute over 'whose house this is'. In his characteristically lucid, intelligent and inspiring prose Amos Oz is unafraid to advocate solutions to the dispute and to espouse his belief that there will, one day, be a resolution to the conflict.

'I'm no longer a European in any sense, except through the pain of my parents and my ancestors, who left forever in my genes a sense of unrequited love for Europe... But if I were a European, I'd be careful not to point the finger at anyone. Instead of calling the Israelis this name or the Palestinians that name, I would do anything I could to help both sides, because both of them are on the verge of making the most painful decision of their history... You no longer have to choose between being pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, you have to be pro-peace.'

Gandhi in The Middle East - Jews, Arabs and Imperial Interests
Simone Panter-Brick

IB Tauris ISBN 9781845115845

December 2007

Gandhi's involvement in Middle Eastern politics is largely forgotten, yet it goes to the heart of his teaching and ambition - to lead a united freedom movement against British colonial power. Gandhi became involved in the politics of the Middle East as a result of his concern over the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate following the First World War. He subsequently - at the invitation of the Jewish Agency - sought to reconcile Jews and Arabs in a secret deal at the time of the Mandate of Palestine. However, Jewish and British interference coupled with the Arab Revolt and the rise of the Muslim League in India thwarted Gandhi's efforts in the region. Like so many who would follow, Gandhi was unable to solve the problems of the Middle East, but this book for the first time reveals his previously obscure attempt to do so. Gandhi's experience in the Middle East was in marked contrast to his other successes around the world and is crucial for a full understanding of his life and teachings. Gandhi in the Middle East offers many new and revealing insights into the goals and limits of an international statesman at a critical period of imperial history.

Simone Panter-Brick obtained her doctorate in Law and Political Science at the University of Nancy, France. Her previous publications include Gandhi Against Machiavellism: Non-Violence in Politics.

Shattered Dreams

Judah Passow

Halban Publishers ISBN 9781905559060

February 2008

These photographs are more than simply a journalistic record of conflict and turmoil. They are the product of a very personal journey in a place full of shattered dreams brought about by an endless conflict which crosses the boundaries of culture and time. It's a place where the young are robbed of their youth and the elderly stripped of their dignity. The people who live here glorify their past, curse the present, and have difficulty imagining a future. Publishing this book for the 60th anniversary serves as a way of explaining the profound sense of frustration and loss felt on both sides of the Israel/ Palestine divide.

The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa

Sasha Polakow-Suransky

Pantheon Books ISBN 9780375425462

May 2010

During the mid-1950s, the young state of Israel built diplomatic ties to postcolonial African nations on their common histories of oppression. But by 1987, Israel's alliances on the continent had completely changed—despite international sanctions, Israel maintained a close and covert relationship with South Africa; their military trade kept the Israeli economy vital and buttressed the faltering apartheid government. With recently declassified documents, Polakow-Suransky, an editor at Foreign Affairs, offers an important, provocative, and occasionally disturbing analysis of this clandestine alliance. He identifies two wars as decisive turning points in Israeli–South African relations. The 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories alienated former friends and won it new enemies; and the 1973 Yom Kippur War left the economy in shambles, and created a powerful incentive for Israel to export arms to and cultivate its relations with the South African government. The author concludes his smart and readable study with a charged epilogue in which he writes that, as evinced by its policies towards Palestinians, Israel itself risks remaking itself in the image of the old apartheid state.

The Last Resistance

Jacqueline Rose

Verso ISBN 9781844671243
May 2007

In The Last Resistance, Jacqueline Rose explores the power of writing to create and transform our political lives. In particular Rose examines the role of literature in the Zionist imagination: here, literature is presented as a unique form of dissidence, with the power to expose the unconscious of nations, and often proposing radical alternatives to their dominant pathways and beliefs.

While Israel-Palestine is the repeated focus, The Last Resistance also turns to post-apartheid South Africa, to American national fantasy post-9/11, and to key moments for the understanding of Jewish culture and memory. Rose also underscores the importance of psychoanalysis, both historically in relation to the unfolding of world events, and as a tool of political understanding. Examining topics ranging from David Grossman, through W.G. Sebald, Freud, Nadine Gordimer, the concept of evil, and suicide bombers, The Last Resistance offers a unique way of responding to the crises of the times.

Jaqueline Rose is Professor of English at Queen Mary University of London, UK. Her books include Sexuality in the Field of Vision, the novel Albertine, On Not Being Able to Sleep and The Question of Zion. She contributes regularly to the London Review of Books, and wrote and presented the Channel 4 documentary, “Dangerous Liaison—Israel and America.”

A Senseless, Squalid War: Voices from Palestine 1945 - 1948

Norman Rose

Bodley Head ISBN 9780224079389

March 2009

The troubles in Palestine between the end of the Second World War and the declaration of the state of Israel on 14 May 1948 ruptured Middle Eastern history and left an indelible mark on the modern world.

Chronicling in gripping detail this critical period that led, for the Jews, to the establishment of their national homeland, and, for the Palestinians, to their Nakba ('Catastrophe'), Norman Rose's 'A Senseless, Squalid War' gives powerful expression to all those who took part in these stirring events: Britons, Jews and Arabs alike.

The book draws on a rich medley of official documents, private papers, biographies, memoirs, diaries, letters, newspapers, novels, songs, plays and reminiscences. It vividly reconstructs the attitudes and experiences of the many diverse participants, be they foot-soldiers or generals, hawks or doves, politicians or diplomats, dissidents, terrorists, writers, teachers, or simply men and women on the street, each voice telling its own story, woven into a compelling historical narrative that shifts seamlessly from one level of experience to another.

A diplomatic stalemate amidst the horrific revelations of the Holocaust; militant guerrilla groups plagued by internal divisions on both the Palestinian and Zionist sides, seeking to undermine the British presence; Jewish refugees in their tens of thousands trying to reach Palestine on the notorious 'death ships' from war-torn Europe, with tragic - often fatal - consequences; the mounting tensions that culminated in an inter-communal 'civil war' and later in the threat of a 'war of extermination and momentous massacre'; and finally the plight of many thousands of Palestinians who emerged from the war without a home.

All these events, and the voices of those who lived through them, are recreated as never before. A Senseless, Squalid War' makes a dramatic and original contribution to our understanding of one of the most deep-rooted and controversial international problems that continues to baffle and bedevil us to this day.

Transformations from Ethiopia to Israel

Ricki Rosen and Micha Odenheimer

Reality Check Productions ISBN 9789652293770

May 2006

Renowned photojournalist Ricki Rosen documented Israel’s rescue of 15,000 Jews from Ethiopia during the historic Operation Solomon airlift. Thirteen years later, she searched for and photographed the same Ethiopian Jews now settled all over Israel.

This is an inspiring story of remarkable transformations. Rosen’s compelling photos portray dramatic scenes of the mass exodus of the Ethiopian Jews -- thousands wrapped in white robes heading towards the Promised Land, like the biblical Exodus from Egypt. Her contemporary photos are poignant portraits of these Ethiopians radically transformed by their Israeli experience. Children in rags have grown up to be proud Israeli soldiers, malnourished babies have developed into fashionable teenagers, and mothers who lost children to starvation and disease have given birth to new families.

Rosen’s insightful images take us on a journey from the mud huts of Africa to the skyscrapers of Israel, from the exotic and traditional to the ultra-modern. We see an ancient lost tribe become the newest Israelis, and we travel with them from exile to the Promised Land.

The photos are accompanied by an introductory essay by writer Micha Odenheimer, whose reporting from Ethiopia, as well as founding the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, have made him one of the most important activists for Ethiopian Jewish immigration and integration.

Photographer Ricki Rosen has been published in every major international magazine, including on the covers of the New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, People, and Figaro, and featured in numerous books and exhibitions. She began her career in New York and has been based in Israel for the last seventeen years.

The Volunteer: My Secret Life in the Mossad

Michael Ross

Vision ISBN 9781905745197

August 2007

In 1982 a young Michael Ross joins the legion of Canadian twenty-somethings backpacking in Europe. Through happenstance, he winds up working on a Kibbutz in Israel, where he falls in love with the land and its ancient, multi-layered history. He immerses himself in Israeli culture, converts to Judaism, and adopts his new country’s struggle for survival as his own, joining the Israel Defence Force and eventually Mossad’s most elite and storied covert-operations unit, Caesaria.

For seven-and-a-half years, Ross worked as an undercover agent — a classic spy. In The Volunteer, he describes his role in missions to foil attempts by Syria, Libya, and Iran to acquire advanced weapons technology. He tells of his part in the capture of three senior al Qaeda operatives who masterminded the 1998 attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; a joint Mossad-FBI operation that uncovered a senior Hezbollah terrorist based in the United States; and a mission to South Africa in which he intercepted Iranian agents seeking to expand their country’s military arsenal; and two-and-a-half years as Mossad’s Counterterrorism Liaison Officer to the CIA and FBI.

Many of the operations Ross describes have never before been revealed to the public.

The Invention of the Jewish People

Shlomo Sand

Verso ISBN 9781844674220

October 2009

Was there really a forced exile in the first century, at the hands of the Romans? Should we regard the Jewish people, throughout two millennia, as both a distinct ethnic group and a putative nation – returned at last to its Biblical homeland?

Shlomo Sand argues that most Jews actually descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered far across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The formation of a Jewish people and then a Jewish nation out of these disparate groups could only take place under the sway of a new historiography, developing in response to the rise of nationalism throughout Europe. Beneath the biblical backfill of the nineteenth-century historians, and the twentieth-century intellectuals who replaced rabbis as the architects of Jewish identity, The Invention of the Jewish People uncovers a new narrative of Israel’s formation, and proposes a bold analysis of nationalism that accounts for the old myths.

The central importance of the conflict in the Middle East ensures that Sand’s arguments will reverberate well beyond the historians and politicians that he takes to task. Without an adequate understanding of Israel’s past, capable of superseding today’s opposing views, diplomatic solutions are likely to remain elusive. In this iconoclastic work of history, Shlomo Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel’s future.

Shlomo Sand studied history at the University of Tel Aviv and at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, in Paris. He currently teaches contemporary history at the University of Tel Aviv.

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Shared Histories
A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue
By Paul Scham, Walid Salem and Benjamin Pogrund

Left Coast Press, ISBN 9781598740134  

'This book provides a view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unavailable in any other single volume...The reader, whether steeped in the history of the conflict or simply looking for some explanation of why it is so intractable, sees through the eyes of the protagonists themselves why mutual understanding is so difficult and, in the process, begins to understand why the two sides have not been able to come to terms.'
Edy Kaufman, University of Maryland & Hebrew University of Jerusalem

There is no single history of the development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are two.

The Israeli historical narrative speaks of Zionism as the Jewish national movement, of building a refuge from persecution, and of national regeneration. The Palestinian narrative speaks of invasion, expulsion, and oppression. No wonder peace remains elusive.

Paul Scham, formerly a lawyer, is currently a Scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., and a Visiting Scholar at George Washington University. Walid Salem is a journalist and director of the Palestinian Center for the Dissemination of Democracy and Community Development (Panorama), Jerusalem. Benjamin Pogrund is a journalist and director of the Yakar Center for Social Concern, Jerusalem.

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The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Jonathan Schneer

Bloomsbury ISBN 9780747599487

August 2010

Drawing on new research, The Balfour Declaration gets to the heart of the present crisis in the Middle East by going back to the roots of the conflict in a British government communication of autumn of 1917.

On 2 November 1917, after much discussion, the British War Cabinet under Lloyd George finally approved and issued a statement in the form of a short letter from the Foreign Office to the English Zionist, Lord Rothschild. It was signed by the foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour and contained the key short paragraph that began: ‘His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object...’.The Balfour Declaration, as it came to be known, set in motion a series of events, entirely unforeseen by its authors, which shaped the modern world and continues to shape it.

Conceived against a backdrop of the First World War, its midwives were an extraordinary cast of diplomats, scholars, soldiers and spies, Arab insurgents and Zionist zealots. It is a tale full of intrigue, betrayal, adventure, death and triumph. And ranges from London to Cairo to the Deserts of Arabia, where the enigmatic figure of T.E. Lawrence achieved lasting fame. Alongside the scrap of paper with which Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938, the Balfour Declaration is one of the most important documents of the last 100 years and Jonathan Schneer’s scrupulously researched and vivid retelling brings to life this key episode in one of the world’s longest lasting and most damaging conflicts.

Jonathan Schneer was born in New York City. He earned his BA from McGill University and his PhD from Columbia University. He has taught at Boston College and Yale University and is currently the professor of modern British history at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has held numerous fellowships in the US and UK and is the author of five previous books, most recently London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis and The Thames: England's River. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

1967: Israel, the War and the Year that Transformed the Middle East

Tom Segev

Little, Brown ISBN 9780349115955 

May 2007

1967 did not mark the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it was a year that changed the course of history. When Egypt's President Nasser closed the straits of Tiran to Israeli navigation, it triggered a conflict between Israel and the armies of Jordan, Syria and Egypt. Within six days the Israelis had occupied territories three times wider than their own, populated by over a million Palestinian Arabs.

Israel suddenly became something of a colonial empire, more Goliath than David. The war granted political legitimacy to Menachem Begin's right-wing Herut party, and Arab terrorism paved the way for Israel's secret service to become a major factor in the country's power structure.

1967 will not be a military history, nor will it focus mainly on political developments. The year 1967 dramatically altered the lives of millions of individuals and this book will focus on the personal stories from both sides of the conflict.

Tom Segev is the acclaimed author of One Palestine, Complete and writes a weekly column for Haaretz, Israel's most prestigious newspaper.

Not the Enemy: Israel's Jews from Arab Lands

Rachel Shabi

Yale University Press ISBN 9780300122756

January 2009

In this remarkable, page-turning book, Rachel Shabi lays bare the painful division within Israeli society between Ashkenazi Jews, whose families come from Eastern Europe, and Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews, who come from the Arab countries of the Middle East. Herself from an Iraqi Jewish family, Shabi explores the history of this relationship, tracing it back to the first days of the new state of Israel. In a society desperate to identify itself with Europe, immigrants who spoke Arabic and followed Middle Eastern customs were seen as inferior; David Ben Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, famously described them as lacking the most elementary knowledge.Sixty years later, Mizrahis are still much less successful than Ashkenazis, condemned, often, to substandard education, low-quality housing and mockery for their accents, tastes and lifestyles. Through a combination of archival research and personal interviews, Shabi brings to light the prejudices that permeate Israeli society and demonstrates how they affect Mizrahi lives and hopes. Even more importantly, she argues that the treatment meted out to Mizrahis reflects a wider Israeli rejection of the Middle East and its culture, a rejection that makes it impossible for Israel ever to become integrated within its own region.

A Rift in Time: Travels with my Ottoman Uncle

Raja Shehadeh

Profile Books ISBN 9781846683305

August 2010

Raja Shehadeh is the most celebrated Palestinian writer working today. To his surprise, when researching his family history, he discovered a great uncle who had also been a writer entangled with the authorities, and who, like Raja, had dedicated his life to the freedom of the Palestinian people. Najib was a journalist and romantic living in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. When he voiced his opposition to Ottoman participation in the First World War, a death sentence was put on his head. So he fled, living on the run and off the land for nearly three years.

The quest for Najib, the details of his life, and the route of his great escape consumed Raja for two years. As he traces Najib’s footsteps, he discovers that today it would be impossible to flee the cage that Palestine has become. A Rift in Time is a family memoir, but it is also a reflection on how Palestine – in particular the disputed Jordan Rift Valley – has been transformed. Most of Palestine’s history and that of its people is buried deep in the ground: whole villages have disappeared and names have been erased from the map. Yet by seeing the bigger picture of the landscape and the unending struggle for freedom as Raja does, it is still possible to look towards a better future, free from Israeli or Ottoman oppression.

Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine

Profile Books ISBN 9781846682506
July 2009

Raja Shehadeh was born into a successful Palestinian family with a beautiful house overlooking the Mediterranean. When the state of Israel was formed in 1948 the family were driven out to the provincial town of Ramallah. There Shehadeh grew up in the shadow of his father, a leading civil rights lawyer. He vowed not to become involved in politics or law but inevitably did so and became an important activist himself. In 1985 his father was stabbed to death. The Israeli police failed to investigate the murder properly and Shehadeh, by then a lawyer, set about solving the crime that destroyed his family. Shehadeh recounts his troubled and complex relationship with his father and his experience of exile - of being a stranger in his own land. It is a remarkable memoir that combines the personal and political to devastating effect.

Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape

Profile Books ISBN 9781861978042

August 2007

Winner of the Orwell Prize

Raja Shehadeh navigates recent Palestinian history, from Ayn Kenya to

the Shukba Caves, the Ramallah hills and the Dead Sea.

Literally entwined within the chinks and fissures of these walks is a mine

of conflict and failures, which Shehadeh chronicles with vigour and

poignancy.

Raja Shehadeh is the author of the highly praised When the Bulbul Stopped Singing . A Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah, he is a founder of the pioneering human rights organisation, Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and the author of several books about international law, human rights and the Middle East.

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

Robin Shepherd

Weidenfeld ISBN 9780297856641
September 2009

The Jewish state of Israel has now acquired the status of a pariah across much of the West and especially in Europe. 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?

A State Beyond the Pale: Europe's Problem with Israel 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 United States. 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. This book explains why.

Israel and the European Left: Between Solidarity and Delegitimization

Colin Shindler

Continnum Publishing ISBN 9781441150134

February 2012

This is a historical overview and analysis of the changing attitudes of the International Left towards Zionism and Israel. Why has the European Left become so antagonistic towards Israel? To answer this question, Colin Shindler looks at the struggle between Marxism-Leninism and Zionism from the October Revolution until today. Is such antagonism in opposition to the policies of successive Israeli governments? Or, is it due to a resurgence of anti-Semitism? The answer is far more complex. Shindler argues that the new generation of the European Left was more influenced by the decolonization movement than by wartime experiences, which led it to favor the Palestinian cause in the post 1967 period. Thus the Israeli drive to settle the West Bank after the Six Day war enhanced an already existing attitude, but did not cause it. Written by a respected scholar, this accessible and balanced work provides a novel account and analytical approach to this important subject. "Israel and the European Left" will interest students in international politics, Middle Eastern studies, as well as anyone who seeks to understand issues related to today's Left and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Triumph of Military Zionism

IB Tauris ISBN 9781848850248  
October 2009

Why did Israel shift from a state based on pioneering egalitarianism and 'making the desert bloom' to one which is chiefly known for its military prowess? The Triumph of Military Zionism examines Israel's shift to the right at the hands of Menachem Begin, the supposed 'disciple' of Vladimir Jabotinsky. Shindler's book uses original research to challenge the conventional wisdom that Begin was the natural heir to Jabotinsky. He demonstrates through hitherto unpublished sources how Israel drifted away from Jabotinsky's ideas towards a maximalist Zionism because Begin's very selective interpretation of his mentor's words did not reflect Jabotinsky's intentions. This invaluable addition to the study of Israel's political history will appeal to both Middle Eastern and military historians.

What Do Zionists Believe?
Granta ISBN 9781862078369

April 2007

Zionism was a movement of national liberation. It sought to establish a permanent home for the Jewish people where they could attain political independence and instigate a national renaissance. Some Zionists were inspired by a vision of religious redemption and the onset of the messianic age. For others it represented the construction of a perfect society. Others aspired to the more modest creation of a modern technological, capitalist state. The Hebrew Republic which came into being in May 1948 embellished all these possibilities. Today thirty-eight per cent of all Jews live in Israel.

The tragedy of Zionism was that it arose during the same period of history as Arab nationalism - and in the same land. Our perception of what it stood for and how it came about has been shaped and distorted by the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Colin Shindler explains the evolution of Zionism as a unique ideology and provides a clear and perceptive analysis of its ideas.

A History of Modern Israel

Cambridge University Press ISBN 9780521615389

February 2008

The state of Israel came into existence in 1948. Colin Shindler’s book traces Israel’s history across sixty years, from its optimistic beginnings - immigration, settlement, the creation of its towns and institutions - through the wars with its Arab neighbours, and the confrontation with the Palestinians. Shindler paints a broad canvas which affords unusual insights into this multicultural society, forged from over a hundred different Jewish communities and united by a common history. Despite these commonalities, however, Israel in the twenty-first century is riven by ideological disputes and different interpretations of ‘Jewishness’ and Judaism. Nowhere are these divisions more revealingly portrayed than in the lives and ideologies of Israel’s leaders. Biographical portraits of Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime-minister, Yitzhak Rabin, whose assassination is still a traumatic memory for many Israelis, and the controversial Ariel Sharon, offer fascinating examinations of those who have led the country to where it is today.

Colin Shindler is Reader in Israeli and Modern Jewish Studies at the University of London.

Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations

Avi Shlaim

Verso ISBN 9781844673667
September 2009

Avi Shlaim reflects on a range of key issues, transformations and personalities in the Israel-Palestine conflict. 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.

Israel and Palestine 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 Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World

Penguin Books ISBN 9780140288704

February 2001

Israel's conflict with the Palestinians, and with the Arab world at large, casts a long shadow over her history. When Zionist leaders formulated the 'Iron Wall' strategy in the 1920s - dealing with the Arabs from a position of unassailable strength - they intended that when sufficiently strong Israel would be able to make peace with her Arab neighbours. This has been an elusive hope, and Shlaim explores with an uncompromising lens the reasons for Israel's long reliance on military power in the absence of a settlement. His analysis will bring scant comfort to partisans on both sides, but it will be required reading for anyone interested in this fascinating and troubled region of the world.

Avi Shlaim was born in Baghdad in 1945 and grew up in Israel where he did national service from 1964 to 66. He is now a Professor of International Relations at St Antony's College, Oxford. His previous books include Collusion across the Jordan (winner of the 1988 Political Studies Association's W. J. M. Mackenzie Prize); The Politics of Partition (1990 and 1998); War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History (1995) and The Cold War and the Middle East (co-editor, 1997). Avi Shlaim is a frequent contributor to the newspapers and a commentator on radio and television on Middle East affairs.

Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation

Ella Shohat

IB Tauris ISBN 9781845113131

April 2010

When the Hebrew edition of this groundbreaking book came out, it provoked a stormy public debate. The author has now up-dated "Israeli Cinema", adding a substantial new postscript that reflects on the book's initial reception and points to exciting new trends in the cinematic representation of Israel and Palestine. Ella Shohat explores the cinema as a productive site of national culture, dating back to the early Zionist films about turn-of-the-century Palestine. She offers a deconstructionist reading of Zionism, viewing the cinema as itself participating in the 'invention' of the nation. Unthinking the Eurocentric imaginary of 'East versus West', Shohat highlights the paradoxes of an anomalous national/colonial project through a number of salient issues, including the Sabra figure as a negation of the 'Diaspora Jew', the iconography of the land of Israel as a denial of Palestine, and the narrative role of 'the good Arab'. The new postscript examines the emergence of a richly multiperspectival cinematic space that transcends earlier dichotomies through a palimpsestic and cross-border approach to Israel/Palestine.

The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict

Jonathan Spyer

Continuum ISBN 9781441166630

For a time, the Arab-Israeli conflict seemed a fight over real-estate and recognition, but in recent years it has transformed into an existential battle between Israel and radical Islamism. Today, Israel faces a rising force that is committed to its demise. 

Spyer, who served as a special advisor on international affairs to Israeli Cabinet ministers, provides a vivid account of what can now be called the Israel-Islamist conflict, outlining the issues at stake and gauging each side’s relative strengths and weaknesses. Israel faces not one united Islamist movement, but an array of states and organizations that share a wish to destroy Jewish sovereignty. 

Combining narrative and argument, Spyer uses first-person accounts of key moments in the conflict to highlight the human impact of this battle of wills. A thought-provoking, balanced work, The Transforming Fire provides a new understanding of a particular aspect of the larger conflict between radical Islam and the West, which may well become the key foreign policy challenge of the 21st century.

Jonathan Spyer immigrated to Israel from Britain in 1991. He is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel, and a columnist at the Jerusalem Post newspaper. Spyer holds a PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a Masters' Degree in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He served in a front-line unit of the Israel Defense Forces in 1992-3, and fought in the war in Lebanon in summer 2006. Between 1996 and 2000, Spyer was an employee of the Israel Prime Minister's Office. His articles have also appeared in the Guardian, Haaretz, London Times, Washington Times,Toronto Globe and Mail, the Australian, British Journal of Middle East Studies, Israel Affairs and Middle East Review of International Affairs.  

Gideon's Spies: The Inside Story of Israel’s Legendary Secret Service, The Mossad

Gordon Thomas

JR Books ISBN 9780312539016 

June 08

Created in 1951 to ensure an embattled Israel’s future, the Mossad has been responsible for many of the most audacious and thrilling feats of espionage, counter-terrorism and assassination ever ventured. Based on interviews with Mossad agents, informants and spymasters, and drawing from classified documents and top-secret sources, Gideon’s Spies is a riveting inside account of perhaps the world’s foremost intelligence agency.

Published to mark the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel, this brand new edition of the international best-seller has been fully updated and greatly expanded, and features previously unpublished revelations about recent dramatic events in the Middle East. Gideon’s Spies portrays a highly imaginative but utterly ruthless organisation that has vowed to “fight fire with fire” in a world increasingly plagued by ‘Holy War’ and international terrorism.

Gordon Thomas is a journalist, broadcaster and award-winning author of over forty books published worldwide, a number dealing with the intelligence world.

The Lemon Tree

Sandy Tolan

Bantam ISBN 9780593057452

February 2007

The Lemon Tree tells the astonishing true story of a 40-year friendship between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man: Dalia Eshkenazi and Bashir Khairi .

Dalia’s family flee Bulgaria during the Second World War and settle in the town of Ramla in Israel in 1948, in a house recently evacuated of the Khairi family, who have been evicted by armed soldiers and forced to flee to Ramallah on the West Bank.

July 1967, Israeli troops have occupied the whole of Palestine. Bashir is able for the first time to travel back to Ramla. So begins their long friendship. Bashir, a lawyer involved in Palestinian politics, is imprisoned several times and accused of terrorism which he denies.

Dalia is galvanized into action – the house becomes a kindergarten where Arab and Israeli chidren can play together. In a world of increasing violence, suicide bombings and air strikes, Open House offers some hope for the future.

Woven into this narrative at every stage are the global political machinations that shape Dalia and Bashir’s lives, from the Balfour Declaration to the Oslo Accords. The cast of characters includes world leaders: Arafat, Clinton, Nasser, Rabin and Sharon.

Sandy Tolan is a journalist, teacher and documentary radio producer. He has reported from more than 30 countries around the world, particularly in the Middle East, but also Latin America, the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

A Crack in the Earth: A Journey Up Israel's Rift Valley

Haim Watzman

Farrar Straus Giroux  ISBN 9780374130589

May 2007

The Jordan Rift Valley, stretching from the Red Sea to Lebanon, was ripped open millions of years ago by vast forces within the earth. This geological object has also been a part of human history ever since early humans used it as a path in their journey out of Africa. And for a quarter of a century it has been part of the biography of Haim Watzman, an Israeli journalist.

In the autumn of 2004, as his country was riven by a fierce debate over its borders, Watzman took a two-week journey up the valley. Along the way he met scientists who try to understand the rift through the evidence lying on its surface—an archaeologist who reconstructs the fallen altars of a long-forgotten people, a zoologist whose study of bird societies has produced a theory of why organisms cooperate, and a geologist who thinks that the valley will some day be an ocean. He encountered people whose life and work on the shores of the Dead Sea and Jordan River have led them to dream of paradise and to seek to build Gardens of Eden on earth—a booster for a chemical factory, the director of a tourist site, and an aging socialist farmer who curates a museum of idols. And he discovered that the geography’s instability is mirrored in the volatility of the tales that people tell about the Sea of Galilee.
As an observant Jew who has written extensively about science and scholarship, Watzman strives to understand the valley in all its complexity—its physical facts, its role in human history and in his own life, and the myths it has engendered. He realizes that human beings can never see the rift in isolation. “It is the stories that men and women have told to explain what they see and what they do as a result that create the rift as we see it   .   .   .   As hard as we try to comprehend the landscape itself, it is humanity that we find.”
Watzman’s poetic evocation of the scientific and the human is a unique chronicle of a quest for knowledge.

Shortlisted for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature

Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation

Eyal Weizman

Verso ISBN-13: 9781844671250

June 2007

Hollow Land is a groundbreaking exploration of the political space created by Israel’s colonial occupation. In this journey from the deep subterranean spaces of the West Bank and Gaza to their militarized airspace, Weizman unravels Israel’s mechanisms of control and its transformation of the Occupied Territories into a theoretically constructed artifice, in which natural and built features function as the weapons and ammunition with which the conflict is waged.

Weizman traces the development of these ideas, from the influence of archaeology on urban planning, Ariel Sharon’s reconceptualization of military defense during the 1973 war, through the planning and architecture of the settlements, to contemporary Israeli discourse and practice of urban warfare. In exploring Israel’s methods to transform the landscape itself into a tool of total domination and control, Hollow Land lays bare the political system at the heart of this complex and terrifying project of late-modern colonial occupation

Eyal Weizman is Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and has worked with a variety of NGOs and human right groups in Israel-Palestine. He is an editor-at-large of Cabinet magazine, and received the James Stirling Memorial Lecture Prize for 2006–7.

State Practices and Zionist Images: Shaping Economic Development in Arab Towns in Israel

David A. Wesley

Berghahn Books ISBN 9781845453565

November 2008

Although the Israeli state subscribes to the principles of administrative fairness and equality for Jews and Arabs before the law, the reality looks very different. Focusing on Arab land loss inside Israel proper and the struggle over development resources, this study explores the interaction between Arab local authorities, their Jewish neighbors, and the agencies of the national government in regard to developing local and regional industrial areas. The author avoids reduction to simple models of binary domination, revealing instead a complex, multi-dimensional field of relations and ever-shifting lines of political maneuver and confrontation. He examines the prevailing concept of ethnic traditionalism and argues that the image of Arab traditionalism erects imaginary boundaries around the Arab localities, making government incursion disappear from view, while underpinning and rationalizing the exclusion of the Arab towns from development planning. Moreover, he shows how images of environmental protection mesh with and support such exclusion. The study includes a chronology of events, tables, maps, and photographs.

Born in the United States, David A. Wesley came to Israel as a young adult and received his PhD in Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. For some years, he lived in a kibbutz before moving to a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood in Jaffa. He has been closely following events connected with Arab economic development in Israel since the beginning of the 1990s.

Lords of the Land: The War for Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories

Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar

Nation Books ISBN 9781568583709

October 2007

Lords of the Land tells the tragic story of Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of the 1967 war and Israel’s devastating victory over its Arab neighbors, catastrophe struck both the soul and psyche of the state of Israel. Based on years of research, and written by one of Israel's leading historians and journalists, this involving narrative focuses on the settlers themselves — often fueled by messianic zeal but also inspired by the original Zionist settlers — and shows the role the state of Israel has played in nurturing them through massive economic aid and legal sanctions.

The occupation, the authors argue, has transformed the very foundations of Israel's society, economy, army, history, language, moral profile, and international standing. “The vast majority of the 6.5 million Israelis who live in their country do not know any other reality,” the authors write. “The vast majority of the 3.5 million Palestinians who live in the regions of their occupied land do not know any other reality. The prolonged military occupation and the Jewish settlements that are perpetuating it have toppled Israeli governments and have brought Israel's democracy and its political culture to the brink of an abyss.”