Israel Books

This is an excellent guide to the archeology of Israel. However the volume chronicles the work and findings only until 1974. It does not for instance cover the controversial destruction of antiquities that has been done by the Islamic Wafq on the Temple Mount, an archaeological scandal of the first- rank which for political reasons has not been given sufficient media coverage. This volume does however record the story of some of the most world- renowned archaeological discoveries, including that of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

the trickester is doing it to us again...there's a major war trying to start because the sons of Ishmeal are wanting to follow the word of Yah by allowing the House of Isreal to come home....and the Isreali people in control of the Holy City Jersulem (not from the tribe of Yudah) so therefore not even jew and may not even be of the children of father Yacob=Isreal... so if there where no uniforms no way to tell one from another....then the word of Yah would be easier to do...because the House of Isreal scattered by Yah for being disobident into these same lands that are willing to go to war for them lands that in effect do belong to them... so no uniforms then the peolpe children of Isreal can and will return home.... the false jew can not stop the word....but if we took the war from the evil one and got the uniforms taking away there would be no blood-shed any comment get back to me Ira Pray for the peace of Jerusalem... whats that you say then where are the true Isrealites....a good number of us are here In the USA BROUGHT HERE as slaves...and still under all the same task masters only the type of whip has changed....

"That a Jew feels pain upon recognizing Israel's weakness and decay," Yoram Hazony says, "is a sign of a still-living national consciousness, the essential achievement of Zionism." By this standard, Jerold S. Auerbach's _Are We One?_ is an irreplaceable contribution to the literature of Zionism. One-part history and one-part polemic by a distinguished academic historian, Auerbach's book explores the problem of identity in a post-Zionist age. Israelis have become little different from American Jews in their eagerness to "normalize," to throw off their Jewishness and assimilate to a secular Western ideal. "With astonishing speed and indifference," Auerbach writes sadly, "Israel has traded its Jewish birthright for a mess of post-Zionist pottage." _Are We One?_ is dedicated to reversing the trend. Auerbach shows that, although they come in for abuse from both Jews and non-Jews who are hostile to it, American Zionists may be the last best hope for the Jewish state. For they are the ones who feel the most pain at Israel's weakness and decay. Auerbach is among the best of them. Like Ruth Wisse, Edward Alexander, and Hillel Halkin--the writers in whose ranks he takes a place with this book--Auerbach is in love with Jewish difference, which alone provides justification for the Jewish state. _Are We One?_ spells out the character and significance of that difference. And in doing so it advances, in plain and unflinching and memorable language, a stirring defense of Israel's continued Jewish existence. A must-read for those who are sick of post-Zionist appeasement and defeatism.

This is quite simply one of the most important books to be published on the Arab-Israeli conflict in a long time. It focuses on a relatively narrow, but fascinating subject, the Arabs who worked alongside Jews in Mandatory Palestine, sometimes because they were favorable to Zionism but more often for pragmatic reasons. Cohen's contribution is not merely the scholarship but also the tales he tells of individuals caught up in momentous events.

Unlike so much of the scholarship on the Middle East this book is surprisingly un-perverted by the politics that so often weaves its way like a snake into books about the history of Israel or the Palestinians. Cohen notes that one should allow people to judge themselves, thus rather than taking the side of the modern Palestinian nationalist narrative, as man researchers do, and calling the `collaborators' "traitors" one should allow them to speak for themselves. They saw themselves as nationalists. They have found themselves, supposedly, on the wrong side of history. But they did not know that and this book allows the reader to hear these people come forward from history and speak for themselves.

The story covers the period 1920 to 1948 and examines the story Palestinian Arabs who worked with local Jews and Zionists in Mandatory Palestine. What is most fascinating is that Cohen shows that more often then not the Arabs who `collaborated' with Zionists were Muslims. This Muslim-Jewish connection took place because the most anti-Zionist Arabs were Christian Arabs, more often than not, Greek-Orthodox. Some leading Muslim families, such as the infamous Hajj Amin Al Husayni, were also leaders of Palestinian Anti-Jewish nationalism. But when king Faisal met Chaim Wiezman it was a Muslim notable talking to a Jewish one. Religious Muslims tended, ironically, to be less anti-Zionist then secularized urban Muslims and Christians.

Everywhere in Palestine there were Arabs who supported the Zionists in one way or another, usually because they resented persecution at the hands of Palestinian nationalists who called them traitors. Sometimes the reasons were economic as in the land purchases. Sometimes they were pragmatic as with the family feud of Nashashibi versus Husayni. Sometimes they were by other marginal groups, such as Bedouin near Beit Shean, or Druzim who were marginalized by the Nationalist Palestinian elite.

This book tells a unique story and reminds the reader that nothing is as black and white as most of those who write on the Middle East want to make. The Zionist movement made tremendous efforts to work with local Muslims, sometimes through bribes, but more often than not through persuasion and using Jews fluent in Arabic to work with locals. The outbreak of war in 1948 ended all those dreams of coexistence. But this coexistence was not the pipe-dream of Buber and Brit Shalom, but very real hands on coexistence between two nationalisms. Modern historiography prefers the more extremist version of Palestinian nationalism, this book dares to tell a different story.

Seth J. Frantzman

Unable to purchase this when we were in Jerusalem. We were happy to find it on Amazon.com. Even though it was used, it was in great condition.

World of Art contemporary artists book series, in fact, is nothing other than a reflection of the idea or philosophy of a transversal, complex and at times even incomprehensible our cultural era, to provide innovative spatial dimensions, new temporal dynamics in book form.
Andrea Pagnes, art critic

Rivka Ashbel was a distinguished biologist who in retirement took upon herself the admirable task of interviewing the major scientists of the Yishuv (The Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael) on their life- stories and contributions to the Allied War effort. These interviews comprise the heart of this book. What is remarkable about it is the struggle and idealism of so many of these Israeli pioneers who in the course of their lives and work contributed much to humanity. Their work in certain areas for instance in treating malaria has had significant implications for humanity as a whole. The previously untold record of their contributions to the war- effort is a chapter of history which otherwise would have been forgotten but which Rifkah Ashbel by her effort, and persistence, redeemed.

...Author David Korn reveals a compelling tale of how Arafat and his PLO organization kidnapped and assasinated two American diplomats. In the minutes before 7 p.m. on March 1, 1973, a routine diplomatic reception was breaking up at the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. But as the ambassadors left the party and disbursed to find their drivers, a volley of machine-gun bullets suddenly interrupted the quiet scene. Eight masked gunmen of "Black September", a covert Palestinian organization, burst into the embassy's main reception room. There, the diplomats were forced to sit on the floor and identify themselves by nationality. The masked men then proceeded to release most of the reception attendeed, keeping just five: two Americans (Ambassador Cleo Allen Noel, Jr. and Chargé d'Affaires George Curtis Moore), a Belgian, a Jordanian, and a Saudi. The gunmen then sent out a list of their demands, which included the freeing of jailed Palestinian terrorists, including Abu Daoud, a leader of the "Black September" organization; the freeing of Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy's killer, from jail in California; and the freeing of "Palestinian women in prison in Israel."

Twenty-six hours of feverish negotiations then went by. On the evening of the 2nd, the Beirut headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) sent an order of execution to the terrorists via radio broadcast: "Why are you waiting? The people's blood in the Cold River cries for vengeance" ("Cold River" was the code word for executing the captives). Yasir Arafat, chairman of the PLO then as now, personally delivered this order to murder. Soon after he did, the two Americans and the Belgian were bound, lined up against a basement wall, and executed in gangland fashion -- all eight gunmen simultaneously pulling on their triggers.

A decade earlier, the author David Korn, had worked Moore, one of the two dead Americans. During the siege at the Khartoum embassy, Korn worked at the Department of State's Operations Center, doing what little he could to save the lives of his two colleagues. Unsuccessful in that effort, he kept the story in mind and now, twenty years later, has published a study which suitably remembers the victims and honors their memory.

But Assassination in Khartoum does more: it has a current significance the author could not possibly have anticipated. Korn's meticulous inquiry into the killings at Khartoum raises important questions about the PLO as an institution, the character of its chairman Arafat, and American policy towards them.

Bringing the murder of Noel and Moore back to public attention highlights the unpleasant fact that the PLO has on a number of occasions attacked American citizens. Probably the best-known of these attacks took place in October 1985 when Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly invalid, was shot in the chest, and the other passengers were forced to throw his body and wheelchair over the side of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. In contrast, the most costly incident in terms of American lives is also one of the most completely forgotten: the bombing of TWA flight 707 in September 1974 en route from Tel Aviv to New York. A high-explosive bomb went off in a rear cargo compartment, sending the plane into the Ionian Sea and killing all eighty-eight persons aboard.

Korn's work clearly reveals that Americans have their own, serious problem with the PLO quite independent of Israel's.

This book simply has all there is to know about Israeli physical and human georgaphy as of the early 1980s. The hundreds of maps are wonderfully printed in color. These include a set called Israel 1:250,000 pages. Most of the labels are in Hebrew. This is not for you UNLESS you want to know all about Israel presented as map data displays.

Manfred Gerstenfeld is one of the leading students of Jewish communal affairs in the world. In this study he examines the French riots of Autumn 2005 and considers their possible impact not only on on the French future, but on France's relation to Israel and the Jewish people. As Gerstenfeld understands it the non- integrated Muslim popujlation in France constitute a long- term problem for the society.