In books, essays and reportage, I've been writing about Israel and the conflict since moving from the U.S. to Israel in 1982. Even as I write from within my Israeli consciousness, I have tried to understand and convey other perspectives. For Israelis and Palestinians, there is nothing abstract about this conflict; it is, instead, a matter of life and death. My writing is an attempt to simultaneously convey the passions of this conflict and offer an empathic voice for all those caught in this seemingly hopeless situation.
Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor is a series of letters to an imaginary Palestinian neighbor, in which I attempt to explain who the Jews are and how Israelis experience the conflict. The book was translated into Arabic and placed online for free downloading. Thousands of Palestinians and other Arabic speakers throughout the region downloaded the book, and hundreds wrote me in response. The paperback edition ends with an extensive epilogue of Palestinian responses, modelling a respectful disagreement over conflicting narratives, and sharing visions of an end to the conflict.
If you’re
going to read only one book on the conflict, this is it. Morris, one of
Israel’s preeminent historians, deconstructs cherished myths on both sides. As
the ironic title notes, what Palestinians and Israelis share is the certainty
that all of justice is on their side. Morris shows how each side acted from a
place of desperation, and that each was reacting to the other in a way that felt
true to their own historical experience and narrative. Morris’ insights have
been essential in shaping my own understanding of the conflict.
Righteous Victims, by the noted historian Benny Morris, is a comprehensive and objective history of the long battle between Arabs and Jews for possession of a land they both call home. It appears at a most timely juncture, as the bloody and protracted struggle seems at last to be headed for resolution.
With great clarity of vision, Professor Morris finds the roots of this conflict in the deep religious, ethnic, and political differences between the Zionist immigrants and the native Arab population of Palestine. He describes the gradual influx of Jewish settlers, which was eventually fiercely resisted by the Arabs…
Oren, a
historian and former Israeli ambassador to Washington, broke new ground with
this account of the 1967 Six-Day War that transformed Israel, the Palestinian
national movement, and the Middle East. Drawing on previously inaccessible
documents in Israeli and Arab archives, Oren writes with a novelist’s eye for
character, a diplomat’s appreciation of behind-the-scenes negotiations, and a
historian’s judgment of human folly. The Six-Day War transformed Israel and the
Jewish people in multiple ways – instilling self-confidence in Diaspora Jews,
solidifying Israel’s permanence in the Middle East, and also burdening the
Jewish state with seemingly insoluble political and moral dilemmas. This is the
best book written about the war itself.
In 1967 the future of the state of Israel was far from certain. But with its swift and stunning military victory against an Arab coalition led by Egypt in the Six Day War, Israel not only preserved its existence but redrew the map of the region, with fateful consequences. The Camp David Accords, the assassinations of Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, the intifada, and the current troubled peace negotiations-all of these trace their origins to the Six Day War. Michael Oren's Six Days of War is a gripping account of one of the most dramatic and important episodes in the…
In this extraordinary memoir, Yousef Bashir describes growing up in Gaza during the Second Intifada of the early 2000s. At age 15, an Israeli soldier shot him in the back. Paralyzed, Yousef was sent to an Israeli hospital, where he gradually recovered, making Israeli friends in the process. That experience of “love and pain” helped transform him into a peace activist. Yousef is one of the Palestinians who wrote a response to my book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. (His letter appears in the epilogue.) I know of no better window into the Palestinian experience than this beautiful, wrenching book.
A Palestinian-American activist recalls his adolescence in Gaza during the Second Intifada, and how he made a strong commitment to peace in the face of devastating brutality in this moving, candid, and transformative memoir that reminds us of the importance of looking beyond prejudice, anger, and fear.
What is the core of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and what is the key to its solution? In this groundbreaking work, Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf argue that the answer is not settlements or holy places or even the absence of a Palestinian state. Instead, the core of the conflict is the Palestinian national movement’s insistence on “right of return” of millions of descendants of Palestinian refugees to what is now the state of Israel – rather than resettlement in a future Palestinian state. What Palestinian leaders have effectively done, argue the authors, is link the end of the conflict to a “solution” that will mean the end of a sovereign Jewish state. The authors, who support the creation of a Palestinian state, argue that its creation depends on the willingness of Palestinian leaders to give up their dream of destroying Israel through a shift in its demographic balance. Until that happens, no Israeii government is likely to agree to withdraw from the territories.
Two prominent Israeli liberals argue that for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians to end with peace, Palestinians must come to terms with the fact that there will be no "right of return."
In 1948, seven hundred thousand Palestinians were forced out of their homes by the first Arab-Israeli War. More than seventy years later, most of their houses are long gone, but millions of their descendants are still registered as refugees, with many living in refugee camps. This group―unlike countless others that were displaced in the aftermath of World War II and other conflicts―has remained unsettled, demanding to…
One of
Israel’s finest non-fiction writers tells the story of Israel’s
failed war in Lebanon – the only war Israel lost – through his own experience
as a soldier. A powerful meditation on the feelings of vulnerability and loss
that are built into the Israeli experience – along with the deep commitment to
protecting Israel from threats that unite Israelis across the political
spectrum. This is the best book I know of in
English that conveys the complex experience of being an Israeli soldier.
“A book about young men transformed by war, written by a veteran whose dazzling literary gifts gripped my attention from the first page to the last.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Friedman’s sober and striking new memoir . . . [is] on a par with Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried -- its Israeli analog.” —The New York Times Book Review
It was just one small hilltop in a small, unnamed war in the late 1990s, but it would send out ripples that are still felt worldwide today. The hill, in Lebanon, was called the Pumpkin; flowers was the military code…
Benghazi: A New History is a look back at the enigmatic 2012 attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, its long-tail causes, and devastating (and largely unexamined) consequences for US domestic politics and foreign policy. It contains information not found elsewhere, and is backed up by 40 pages of citations and interviews with more than 250 key protagonists, experts, and witnesses.
So far, the book is the main -- and only -- antidote to a slew of early partisan “Benghazi” polemics, and the first to put the attack in its longer term historical, political, and social context. If you…
On September 11, 2012, Al Qaeda proxies attacked and set fire to the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing a US Ambassador and three other Americans. The attack launched one of the longest and most consequential 'scandals' in US history, only to disappear from public view once its political value was spent.
Written in a highly engaging narrative style by one of a few Western experts on Libya, and decidely non-partisan, Benghazi!: A New History is the first to provide the full context for an event that divided, incited, and baffled most of America for more than three years, while silently reshaping…
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